[TheForge] Re: industrial education

[Mike Spencer]

> I had a coworker once who had lived in Barrow, Alaska in the late
> 40s and claimed she had seen an Inuit man repair a piston top from a
> Jeep by using a section of walrus ivory.  It supposedly worked.

Cool.  Probably didn't go for 40,000 miles, though. :-)

Lefty Griswold (of Amherst, Mass, now surely gone to the dirt-track
pits in the sky) reportedly burned up a rod bearing during tryout for
a stock car race some time in the late 40s.  with only a short time
before the race, he pulled the pan, replaced the bearing with a piece
whacked off his belt with a pocket knife and went on to win the race.

> Interesting how modern life requires one to be obedient vs. skilled

Knowing how to do stuff is very suspicious.  Pushrod tubes from 36HP
Volkswagen engines are just the right size to make .22 zip gun
barrels.  Anybody that knows that *might* actually make a zip gun so
(s)he's probably a "terrist".

Here's an interesting little squibb for y'all old guys who remember
Stuart Hill.  Stuart was -- I think it's safe to say -- a genius
blacksmith and metal hacker.  He did a demo at Ripley in '82 and IIRC
at Hereford in '80.  I've used stuff I learned from him to great
effect.  I still have a clay model of one of his clever tricks in the
shop.

I googled around some years ago and learned that he had given up
metalwork for other art pursuits but just the other day I spotted his
name on comp.risks (aka Risks-Forum Digest 25.20) and sent him email.
His reply included:

> Here's what I'm working on now - a surveillance-free state where the
> citizens are in charge of the running of the state:
>
>        http://www.forvik.com/  
>
> My Declaration of Dependence goes live on the website tomorrow, the
> longest day, or what is called here 'the Simmer Dim'.

Don't forget to google for "captain calamity" too, and look for his
name.

If Stuart is as good at radical pollyticking as he was at metalwork,
Gordon Brown is in for a rough ride. :-)


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^