DeeLoaf

I was able to attend Robb Martin’s basic blacksmithing course this past weekend May 26 to May 28 2006. Robb has his blacksmith shop in the village for Floradale which is close to Elmira here in Ontario, Canada. I had had my mind on taking this course for a while now, motivated by peak fossil energy and wanting to get into metal working at the most basic level before moving back onto things like torch cutting/welding and arc welding. I wanted to get a feel for working with steel with simple tools and setups, to get a feel for what is possible. I have that now.

I’m not one to send money in the mail and I don’t like running things through the bank via cheques. So I spoke to Robb on the Thursday to find out if the course for the weekend was still running and if there was a spot available. Luckily yes it was and there was one spot available, so I told him I’d like to come and pay cash, which he said would be fine. And I accepted that if someone else wanted to pay first before I could pay, then well I would be out of luck. But that was not an issue at any rate.

The shop is about an hour and ten minutes drive away from where I live. Initially I believed the drive would take longer than this and had planned to sleep in my car overnight instead of driving back. There are accommodations in Elmira but I couldn’t justify even the least expensive bed+breakfast stay of $75 per night, so I packed a sleeping bag and a box of baby wipes instead.

The first session ran from 4:30PM to 8:30PM on Friday. Robb has 3 forges set up, two propane and one coal. The coal forge can achieve a greater heat and faster than the propane forges but is hotter to work around and requires constant attention to keep it going right. I worked on the coal forge the first day, and the propane forge on Saturday and Sunday. In this first session Robb taught us how to draw the steel out and make simple hooks and loops and points. This required much practice by me to get anything close to what Robb produced in his demonstrations. I also found my wrist to be very weak and it became difficult for me to keep my wrist straight while hammering after a while. Robb also demonstrated making the tongs that we would be working on the next day.

I’d planned to sleep in my car the first night, so after the day was done I cleaned up with baby wipes and set out for some McFood and a side order of reefer. After that I drove around and tried to find internet access, which I was successful at eventually. I was about to settle in for the night in the first location when a Police state authorized agent of gun wielding force slowly pulled up behind my parked car but then turned right. He probably didn’t know I was there but I didn’t want to be bothered by a cop not least of all when the interior of my car stinks like so much burnt flowers. So I drove back to the area of the McD’s where I could see so many secured wireless networks but no open ones, but decided to turn down a residential street (which is where I was able to find unsecured wireless in the other part of town where the cop buzzed me) and, surprisingly, I found a great connection within seconds of turning down that street. So I decided to stay there, and committed to passing out around 11. Things didn’t work out. By 12:40 I was still awake and uncomfortable as anything. I gave up and decided that an hour drive home would be worth it if I got some sleep because at the rate I was going I would see sunup with no shuteye. I’m glad I chose to go home as the rest was truly vital. I then decided that I’d just commute for the rest of the course, which I did without incident.

The second day was focused on completing the shovel that we made the handle of on the first day as part of the loops and drawing out exercises and beginning to make the pair of tongs. The shovel was interesting because we joined the handle to the scoop using rivets. The tongs were challenging and gave a good chance to build hammer precision striking experience because of the shape that was required for the finished product to function. I made 4 unsatisfactory attempts (heres two) before I had the techniques down well enough to pull it off, and the last 2 of the 6 total that I made were good enough with a bit of tweaking on my part. After Robb was satisfied with the two sides of our tongs, he demonstrated the power hammer to draw out the handles of our tongs. The power hammer is an amazing machine, it makes short work of drawing out hot steel. We also made hot and cold chisels plus a center punch out of recycled automotive suspension springs, a 5160 steel (carbon steel with a little chromium, very strong for high stress applications, as opposed to the 1020 steel, common carbon steel, that we used for the other projects). These striking tools were to be heat treated, the first stage of which was to slow cool them by plunging them hot into vermiculite, an insulator, and then leaving them there overnight.

The third day was spent finishing the chisels and punch, finishing the tongs, making a fire rake, and then a chance to play with some of the other techniques that Robb demonstrated such as upsetting, splitting and twisting. The heat treatment of the chisels and punch were completed by reheating them to a orange/yellow, then waiting for magnetism to return to the tips. As soon as magnetism was detected the tip was quenched. Then the scale (oxides) was pumiced off so the temper colors could be observed. As the yellowing color began to reach the tip, the tip was again quenched. The hardness of the tools was tested by using them and mine all stood up to a few initial uses. Time will tell how well they stand up in the future! Also, finishing the tongs was exciting because they are simple machine with moving parts and one that could be used in future work. It was very satisfying to be able to use them in handling hot work pieces later in the day. The two sides of the tongs were fitted together using a rivet and a striking mold to have the hammered side of the rivet take on the same shape as the rounded side. By the afternoon of the third day I was quite worn out and would have been happy to call it quits after finishing my chisels, punch and tongs, but I did want to complete my fire rake (top) (it doesn’t look so great) and at least do something with some of the other techniques. I ended up putting a plain twist on my bar-stock fire rake. I then put a slight squaring on a piece that I’d made of rod steel and put a twist on that section to show one of the twist patterns (one of the simplest hehe b/c the others are too much work!) that Robb demo’d. This piece is the one I am most proud of, possibly I will use it to hang a plant one day. I also made this strange thing on the third day. I wanted to come out with at least one thing that I could consider stabby or stabworthy. I used Robb’s high speed wire brush tools to clean up my work pieces and almost had one of them totally wrecked (I’d tried to use the big high speed wire brush to clean up the detailed hook end and the machine ate the workpiece and bent it to hell – fortunately it didn’t break the machine and I was also able to straighten it back out without too much trouble!). I then found out Robb has a smaller wire brush suitable for details that wont grab your work out of your hand haha.

All in all it was a long, tiring, dirty, sweaty, blistered and burned good time, and worth the money and long drives.

Link: Flickr Photo Stream (In here you’ll see all the pics, pics of Robb, a pic of me working hot steel, pics from around the shop, and pics of my work. Side note: Flickr always fucks up the order of the photos no matter what I seem to do, so I give up on it, too much hassle to try and deal with it!)

Well I finally did it. I went and took that basic blacksmithing course I kept talking about doing. I will be writing up a full report and link to some pictures, but in the meantime suffice it to say that it was interesting and a lot of hard physical work. But the experience was well worth the CDN$475 federal cash fiat money handed over for it. I am confident that I now posess the basic skills to work steel into useful things. One thing that struck me was how artsy the other people who were taking the course tended to be. I am ... well, not artsy at all. I dont care so much what it looks like over whether it works. But of course I do take pride in something that both works and looks good ;)

I plan to write and post the detailed report over the next day or so. Some time in the future there will be additional photographs to add as well, when I can get them from the other students. For now I'll just be posting the pics that I got on my own camera.

This isnt news. This information has been anecdotally available for years. But ... now its MSM material.

"A U.S. study concludes there is no link between smoking marijuana and increased risk of lung cancer -- even among heavy, long-term users.


"People who smoked more marijuana did not have any increased risk of cancer compared to those who smoked less marijuana or none at all, the study found.

"The researchers said they were surprised by the findings.

The full article at Forbes.

I had thought that surely there would be a deflation before the big inflation. That is, that money would increase in value first, the idea being that the Banks need to take posession of all the homes they have out on loan at the moment. And of course they do, but they wont achieve it by money supply tightening to increasing the value of the currency. I had reasoned that a deflation was coming to take away jobs and that is what would get the homes back to the banks. But no, that is ass backwards, I mean, yes that would work for them, but it could take a while for the tightening to start showing up as lost jobs. And the people who still had jobs, still getting paid the same amount, would find themselves with dollars worth more, and .. hello, same wage, just keep making the mortgage payment. And hello, same wage, as the price of goods is falling. Ok, so who's losing their homes? not many people. Not right away.

So, back to the hyperinflation scenario. What happens if the value of the dollar goes down very quickly? Stagflation. Yes thats it, super stagflation. People getting the same wages, but allt he prices of goods are going up, and rapidly!. Same wages. So then you are devoting an ever larger slice of your income to living, whilst the old mortgage payment stays the same. Not long and you are deciding whether to eat or pay the mortage bill. Easy decision right, and back to the bank with the house. And I bet in this scenario, people will try to hang on for as long as possible, further enriching the banks.

Ok, yes, this sounds a much more practical way to get people out of their homes. Hyperinflation only lets people easily pay back loans when WAGES INCREASE IN STEP. Fuck. Thats the rub. thats the fucking rub, wages are going nowhere. Wages are giong DOWN for some people. Hyper-stagflation. We'll have to see how things go. But this could be the great Malthusian conclusion to the little game central banking directed capitalism. Peak Oil, Peak Money, Peak Food, Peak People, Peak everything.

To understand WHY it is that the freezer just stops working altogether if you leave the door open for long enough, you have to understand what is going on. To keep cool inside, a gas which normally wants to be a gas is compressed into a liquid state in pipes outside the fridge, it moves into the fridge through the pipe, and through a valve where it is allowed to expand. this expansion takes energy which has the effect of making it cool inside the fridge. w00t. (Ok I think I got that sciencey part right). Problem is, if you leave the door to the freezer open you will make the compressor work too hard and it will ... die. Hopefully mine isnt really dead, just overheated. Gotta be a little more careful after getting popsicles out!!

Given Putin's recent statements about selling oil in Rubles ...

http://www.futuresource.com/quotes/quotes.jsp?s=RU&t=future%2Cindex

Ruble futures! Of course. Well I never looked for them until now.

I'm sick of money but you need that shit to live. Did you buy it it was made for you, just for you, not me. If you bought it then you own it and its probably chinese! Made in china chi chi china just for me and just for you thats the best thing to do, from overseas made by chinese shipped on a boat, giant cargo float, petrodollar recycling and the trading gap, what are we going to do with all this fucking crap!

And in related news, Putin is sick of USD as much as Iran.

Putin say:

"The ruble must become a more widespread means of international transactions. To this end, we need to open a stock exchange in Russia to trade in oil, gas, and other goods to be paid for with rubles."

As for Iran, they've recently granted license for the euro denominated bourse.

Oh and WTF Euro was almost at $USD1.29 today, haha. $CDN doing well to, around $USD0.91
(that link will go to current currency futures page, you can also use id=metal and id=energy for metals and energy futures, respectively)

Cowards. Bloody fence sitting cowards is what I call them. Come on coppers, bring it on. Shameful, shameful, shameful. Dont sit idly by -- do your jobs or go somewhere else. Yes, it _IS_ a conflict of interest for you to watch over us while we peacably violate the laws. Your duty is to enforce the law, not babysit us. We frankly dont need babysitting and if there is a law then do your duty otherwise WHY ARE YOU HERE? I wrote this to the police Union:

Hello, I would like to know the Union's official posion on non-enforcement of criminal laws. I witnessed this past saturday a number of officers near Queen's Park sitting idly by as a crowd of thousands flagrantly violated several CDSA provisions. Do you stand behind your officers failure in their duties? If not, what sort of disciplinary action are you prepared to take? Thank you for in advance any information.

Lets see what kind of response I get if any.

I forgot to blog this a while ago. Theres a mutual credit system open to anyone to sign up, and it smacks of being along very much the same lines as I've toyed with. I'm not sure if transactions are cryptographically secured but I think that is a solvable problem. Key is that its out there and working already. Now I dont have any trading partners so maybe someone else wants to go on here and push through a few transactions with me just for fun.

The site is ripplepay.com, the software is open source.

Pedex's comments over on an oil drum post really hit the mark for me, talking about the money interests:

It isnt "our" financial future, its "their" financial future they are managing, and its an important point. We have a fiat currency, a banking cartel, and capitalism.........this is not and never has been a "free market". Basic monopoly game rules are in effect, the guy with biggest empire at the end wins period and the rules of the game are both manipulated and rigged in their favor. If they have to drain every resource on the planet mineral or human in the process then so be it. IMHO, chance are good that peak oil will do nothing more than cause a crash of the current system followed by a shake up in the the elite uber rich running the show then it will be back to business as usual with those same people in charge yet again. Same story has been played out countless times thru history, the scale just keeps getting bigger.

Inflation is an insidious way for the banking cartel to do exactly what they are in business to do, take your energy and money away from you and make money doing essentially nothing.

He's so right.

Yep, that was the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner with Stephen Colbert and Pres. Bush.

Download it via BT - the full thing courtesty of SonOfShun's forums syoung333 or just the part with Colbert via an eztv release.

Balls of steel my friends, balls of steel. An historic moment too IMO.

Well, _I'd_ consider $USD0.90 a milestone! I dont think the $CDN has been this high in years. I havent really been paying much attention to forex until recently though, but look at the chart.