Photo from here:
I had the day off today due to the blowing and drifting snow. Since it rained and froze up good before the snow started, the snow just kept blowing across the driveway for most of the length. The part around the barn and where we park was a different story. I shoveled some drifts that were a couple of feet deep to get the snow away from the vehicles and shoveled about 6"-8" off the sidewalk. The old Allis Chalmers took care of the rest. I started it up about two weeks ago, put a little fresh gas in it and charged the battery up and I ran it a little yesterday. It fired right up this morning and I got everything plowed and shoveled in about 1-1/2 hours. The wind has been blowing, so it'll need another pass tomorrow.
Spent the majority of the rest of the day down the basement. I'm working on a couple of little projects that are mostly an antidote to television. When it's too cold to work in the shop or I don't want to go back to school, I can grab a cup of Joe and head downstairs. As much as I enjoy reading, I still need to be making things. I got an e-mail from my partner on the steam engine project and he's got some parts we've been waiting on. I should be able to get back on that pretty quick. I'm going to try and get a little bit done on the Rickati project this week as well. We've got final exams this week which always leads to a lot of dead time in the schedule. I should be able to accomplish something while waiting for the next final to roll around.
Speaking of accomplishing something, if your looking for a duck or goose call, check out 2 Rivers Calls. I just found out today that my old pal Shawn McDowell and his brother Casey have gone world wide with his duck calls. Shawn used to run the woodshop and was the head football coach when I started my current teaching position about 17 years ago. He was farting around making them and all kinds of other things then and looks like he still is. He's a real good craftsman, especially in the woodshop. I wish he would have stuck around a few more years so I could have gotten some turning lessons from him. I know my way around a metal lathe pretty well but Shawn could have really improved my wood lathe skills. He's a helluva nice guy with a wonderful family. Buy yourself a handmade duck call. If nothing else you can use it for a noise maker on New Year's Eve.
2 comments:
Those are some pretty duck calls. Beautiful grain. If I wasn't broke, I'd buy one just to support folks who make pretty shit like that.
It's good to support craftspeople/artisans but unfortunately as you say, the money isn't always there or you get like me and have more crap than you know what to do with. It's also hard to do much serious bartering over the internet as well. However, I'm now starting to look at things with the thought in mind of passing them along to the grandsons. I never thought of a duck call as an heirloom but no reason it couldn't be, I guess. Probably a better investment than the stock market.
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