Tree Tuesday

Majestic 800 year old oak tree, ©rq, all rights reserved

This week rq has sent us gorgeous photos of a majestic oak tree that looks straight out of a fairytale. rq says:

This oak is 800 years old or thereabouts and has earned the title of dižozols, which means ‘Grand/Great Oak’. If a tree adheres to specific criteria regarding trunk diameter and height and other things, it can also aspire to dižkoks status and people can send in submissions to the registry. They get marked on a map as objects of tourist interest, and also go down for preservation measures if anything happens or threatens their surroundings.

This one! Is the second tallest Great Oak in the country at 23m in height, with a trunk circumference of 7.1m or so. It is well and alive, and hosts a large number of birds in its branches, including being permanent home to an owl. It is also hollow inside, home to an unidentified bird, possibly a dove or wood pigeon or some such (see final photo, it’s dim, but there was definitely a bird hissing at me when I peeked in).

 

I visited at sunset, it sits above a winding creek and overlooks some farmland and marshes. 

rq thanks so much. 800 years seems like an impossibly long time for a tree to live, but there it is. This is definitely a tree that I would like to see in person. There are several photos (all of them beautiful) and the rest are below the fold. [Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

Portage River, Gaspe Peninsula, ©voyager, all rights reserved

When most people think about the east coast of Canada they think about the ocean, but because of the beautiful Chic Choc Mountains we have here there are also lots of fresh water rivers and streams. This is the Portage River which flows into the Malbaie Salt Marsh before finding the sea. It’s a great place to canoe or fish and just happens to be behind Jack’s favourite ocean beach, Coin de Banc, making it a great place to rinse saltwater off a tired soggy dog. I’ll spare you another photo of an all wet Jack frolicking in the water.

Monday Mercurial

Hello and welcome to Monday Mercurial, a regular feature for all the critters out there. Sadly we won’t be able to keep up the Daily Bird, but we will replace it with three regular features throughout the week for the winged and furred inhabitants of planet Earth.

This is a young magpie that kept begging for food, even though it was already old enough to get over to the bowl of dogfood some campers had forgotten outside.

Young magpie with open beak

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Yound magpie, begging for food

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Young magpie with open beak

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

Chic Choc Mountains, Gaspe, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I are still on the east coast of Quebec in our little village called Perce. There are so many beautiful vistas here that it’s hard to choose, but today I’ll share the Chic Choc (pronounced Shick Shock) mountains. They’re the Canadian part of the Appalachian mountain range and are among the oldest mountains in the world. I love the soft rounded peaks that roll one into the other in a long unbroken chain. I’ll be sharing more photos of certain places in the mountains, but this is the long view to whet your appetite.

After today, Jack’s Walk will be here Monday to Friday only.

A change for Submissions

Giliell’s post of earlier today noted that we want Affinity to continue being a community gathering place and that your submissions are an important part of this blog. We want to see your photos and artwork, hear your stories and share what matters to you so we have set up a new mailbox and are ready to receive whatever you want to send. Charly, Giliell and I will be sharing this mailbox so it would be helpful if you could tag your submissions with a topic such as trees, birds, flora, recipes or Tummy Thursday. If your submission doesn’t fit one of those categories be creative with your tags and we’ll figure out where it goes. The new email is:

affinitysubmissions@gmail.com

and it has been linked in the sidebar. I’ve tested it out and it’s working for me, but if you have any difficulties with the link please let us know. We’re looking forward to seeing what you have for us.

Remembering Caine

Descent of Night, ©Caine/Chris Ford, all rights reserved

In April of last year Caine blogged about the creation of this painting, Descent of Night. I fell in love with it instantly and wrote Caine to tell her how much it reminded me of shooting off fireworks at a place called Corner of the Beach. My husband and I do this every year on our anniversary and the colours Caine chose are the colours of the cliffs surrounding the beach. The rich reds and oranges with browns and touches of green. And all those stars are so full of energy, just like fireworks in motion. I asked Caine if it would be possible to get a good quality photograph of the piece and she said yes with no hesitation.

Imagine my surprise when I received a package that was not a photograph, but rather the painting itself. I was dumbstruck. Caine only knew me at that time through a few photo submissions and some comments I’d made on the blog. I was essentially a stranger to her and here she had sent me this incredible piece of art. Imagine! The painting is now a cherished possession of mine. It not only reminds me of fireworks, but also of the kindness and generosity of a stranger who became a treasured friend.

I know many of you also have stories or thoughts about our beloved Caine so we’ve created this thread for you to share them. It will be left open and once I can figure a few things out it will be linked in the sidebar. The rules that Caine put in place still apply. Anything disrespectful will be immediately removed and don’t be an asshole.

The road goes ever on and on…

Way emerging between two dark rocks

The road goes ever on and on
©Giliell, all rights reserved

Dear readers, dear friends

After talking among ourselves, with Rick, and PZ, we, the Affinity writers Charly, voyager and Giliell have decided to continue the blog as a joint endeavour.

Affinity was always about community, about bringing people together, about sharing our lives, our highs and lows, and we decided that we do not want to lose the community, but to continue and keep it alive, in Caine’s memory as well as her spirit.

Of course, we do not want to continue as if nothing had happened. The blog will change. Not only does none of us have the time that Caine could invest thanks to being a professional artist, more importantly, none of us can replace her and we will not even try. Some regular features will remain, others will change or be replaced. TNET will continue as a place to hang out and chit chat. Also, the blog has always lived off the contributions of its readers, be it your pictures or projects and we absolutely want to continue this. Affinity shall remain a place for all.

To me personally, this is home and I would love to share it with all of you.

 

Caine is gone

Dear readers

Sadly we have to tell you that Caine has lost her battle with cancer and died yesterday morning.

Life threw much more at Caine than it had any right to, yet she was still and always a passionate and compassionate fighter for what is right, for human dignity and decency. Many here started our time out on Pharyngula by being whacked over the head by Caine, whose zero tolerance for people being assholes made her a fierce commenter.

But Caine was so much more than that, she was a wonderful artist, great photographer, a loving partner and a good friend, even though most of us never met her in person. She created this space and this wonderful little community.

Dear Rick, we feel your pain and our heartfelt condolences are with you.

Dear Caine, you will be missed and remembered. None of us believed in an afterlife, except for the one in the hearts and the memories of the people we touched. Dear Caine, you live on in many hearts and the tears that are cried for you.

Two feathers swimming on water

Jack’s Walk

Through the meadow, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Toward Perce Rock and Mt. Joli, ©voyager, all rights reserved

So much Blue, ©voyager, all rights reserved

The weather here is perfect today, a rare treat for the Gaspe where it is frequently cool and damp. Jack and I decided to walk the meadow path that leads to the edge of the cliff overlooking North Beach. The ocean looks so blue today and the sky so clear that we wanted to take it in from on high. You can walk even higher, all the way up to the cross which sits atop Mt. Joli, but that’s a steep climb we’ll save for another day.

Making a Rondel Dagger – Part 15 – Troat of the Scabbard

I have decided to make the fittings for the scabbard from the same shovel that provided steel for the rondel. It is good carbon steel of appropriate thickness and I reasoned that after I grind it to remove all pitting from the outer side, it shall be thin just right. However, because I wanted to bend the steel at least in part whilst it is cold, I had to first anneal the shovel – in case you do not know, shovels are hardened and tempered. So I have decided to burn some more rotten wood, bbq dinner and anneal the shovel at the same time. Luckily the droughts in the place where I live are less severe than in the rest of CZ, so we do not have ban on fires (yet). Nevertheless, despite how it might appear, I am actually careful with fire – I always watch the direction in which the wind is blowing, I have water prepared and I douse all coals when I am done. And I have portable fireplace that I position in the middle of a gravel field¹.

I proceeded to make a paper template by wrapping it around the scabbard and adding about one cm for length. That I transferred onto the shovel and I cut the rough shape with angle grinder.

My improvised bending setup did not work as intended. The main problem being, that this steel proved to be extremely tough and hard, even annealed. I tried and tried, but it just did not work. After a few attempts I gave up and had to think up another way. I have decided that I have to do what I did not want to – forge it hot.

I could not go outside and make fire, because firstly it was way too hot outside for that and secondly because my improvised anvil for this delicate task was an old annealed file held in a vice. As a source of heat therefore I had to do with handheld propane torch and a few fireclay bricks as an impromptu forge. Unfortunately I forgot to make more detailed pictures of this process so you have to be content with red-hot glowing steel on fireclay brick laid on a granite paving stone laid on wooden bench. I see you cringe with my mind’s eye and I agree. For subsequent works I moved the whole assembly onto the circular saw table (also seen in the picture) which is made from metal and therefore fireproof. Needles to say, bucket of water was on standby the whole time and I checked the workshop a few times after I finished. I do not like doing these things inside, I will have to get some better setup, perhaps a mobile vice? I will have to think about it.

The bent strip did not fit neatly around the scabbard whatever I have done, so I decided in the end to shorten it even more so the ends do not meet, but lay just outside the stitches in leather. And to cover that gap with another slim strip of steel. this proved to be a very good fit all around.

I was thinking about whether to make the throat covered in steel or whether to let it be just the wood and leather on the inside. I decided to go for steel, which of course meant third piece, flat piece covering the throat with cut-out rough shape of the blade. Very rough. I was not even trying to aim for a good fit and I left a good 0,5-1 mm free space on all sides.

When thinking about how to connect those three parts in the most authentic manner I decided to go for silver brazing. I do not know how much silver is actually in the brazing rod I bought, but it costs 12,-€ a piece. Compare that with brass brazing rods that costs 5,-€ per five (or more) pieces. Whew. But I wanted to first try it with the more expensive silver rod because it has lower melting temperature than brass and my welding, brazing and soldering skills are not top-notch, to put it mildly. I also hoped that the silver solder will have less profound color contrast with the steel than the brass one would have. Which it does, but the color contrast is still very strong.

It took three attempts to braze the thing together with no gaps anywhere and I used up almost the whole rod. Oopsie-daisy, this is proving to be expensive. So when removing all the excess solder, i was filing it carefully and slowly onto a piece of paper and collecting all the silver dust into a little plastic bowl that I later have sealed with a lid. I hope to be able to mix that dust with boric acid and use it for brazing the chape. I certainly would not like to spend another 12,-€ on the chape alone.

As far as I know – and I would love to inspect some medieval originals sometimes – medieval craftsmen did not take particular care about the “back side” of the scabbards and scabbard fittings, or even swords for that matter. After all what is the point in finely polishing something that will not be seen? Today the aesthetics sense is slightly different and people expect things to look just perfect from all angles. I have decided to not overtly polish the back side, but I did somewhat polish and buff it for the sole reason that polished steel resists corrosion better. But, unlike on the front, I did not remove all pitting and I did not bother about some minor file scratches remaining visible there. And here you can see the result of my works these last few evenings. I will buff it with hematite befoe fixing it ont he scabbard for good.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The most important lesson of this exercise was perhaps that I should do these metal fittings before I shape the scabbard to its final shape and cover it with leather, and not the other way around. In retrospect it seems like something from The Collected Sayings of Captain Bloody Obvious, but fitting a piece of soft wood and leather into a steel tube should be easier than to form a steel tube around a piece of soft wood and leather. I tried to google how to do scabbard throat before I did anything of this, but I do not remember seeing this mentioned anywhere.

Last piece in the mosaic is the chape then. And then there will be pictures.


1 – The bough you can see is one that I “harvested” near the road, where it broke off of an elderly apple tree. The city seemed unwilling to clean it up, so I confiscated it for knife handles.

Jack’s Walk

Perce Rock…going…

…and gone.

Fog is pretty common in Perce and it shows up at any darned time of the day. One minute it’s sunny and the next minute there’s a thick fog. When Jack and I set out this morning the sun was shining and the air was warm and clear, but by the time we got to the beach (a 5 minute walk) the fog was thick and there was a cool breeze. I like the film noire feeling of walking in the fog so Jack and I set out as usual down North Beach where suddenly the Perce Rock disappeared in the mist.