[TheForge] Re: test

[Mike Spencer]

Frosty wrote:

> The snow's almost all gone...I usually just pee on the ground, I've
> never thought of installing a trellis. Is that better?

Yeah, well, where you are, it ought to be.  See, a pea trellis is 7 or
8 feet high so it sticks up through the mid-winter snow where the
garden is going to be next year and shows you where to pee for
greatest return on imbibed-liquids investment.

We did have 4 blizzards back to back here in February of 1990 but a
typical winter is open much of the time so it's easy to see where to
pee and the pea trellis just shows us where to plant the peas.

ObSmithing: Peggy found a short, double-edged knife in the dirt under
the pea trellis today, heavily caked with rust.  It's in a sodium
carbonate electroclean bath now.  It'll be badly pitted but it's a
curiosity.  Not as old or interesting as the late 18th and mid-19th
c. hand-forged axe heads my son dug up years ago. Cleaned up, the older
one showed a very interesting construction method: Forged down to form
a poll, folded around a mandrell with a steel bit welded in as
usual. But then an extra chunk of wrought iron about 3/4" thick was
welded onto the poll with the grain running parallel to the helve to
strengthen it. A very pretty broad axe when it was new.

The newer of the old axe heads, style like a modern axe, shows why you
might want to reinforce the poll.  Someone used it either to drive
splitting wedges or as a splitting wedge itself.  The poll is saddled
and cracked and the eye distorted and also cracked.  Looks like
great-ganpa took care of his axe but granpa was cluelessly hard on
his tools.


- Mike

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