Jack’s Walk

Strawberry Season

Better than candy

Too good for pie

Cherry, Cherry

Our local strawberries have been uncommonly flavourful and sweet this year. The small ones in particular are almost like candy. I’ve been overindulging, but the season is almost at its end and soon they’ll be gone for another year. That’s OK though, because now local raspberries and cherries and blueberries are ripe and ready and they too seem extra sweet this year. Maybe it was the late spring or the early heat wave, but whatever the cause I plan to keep overindulging in all the fresh produce that’s on offer.

Anatomy Atlas Part 15 – Back Muscles

Back muscles are actually much more difficult to learn (and to draw) than muscles at the front of the torso. This is because they are in two layers that interact with each other in a not overtly muscular person. So while musculus trapezius and musculus latissimus dorsi are the dominant ones, the underlying muscles are important too. And the muscles around the scapula are a nightmare.

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

I do not actually have any interesting story to accompany this picture. So I will only let you with the obligatory “lift with your legs, not with your back” warning. Back muscles around the spine are not optimised for load bearing and lifting heavy objects using your back muscles is a sure recipe for health problems later on.

Missing In the Morning (Admin Stuff).

© C. Ford, all rights reserved.

© C. Ford, all rights reserved.

I won’t be around in the early morning at all (Tuesday / 10th), but I will get stuff posted somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10 or 11 am. Oncology had a difficult time squishing me in, so have to be at the hospital by 8am. Blah. Grimhild is giving me serious grief today too, so I’m taking meds and I’m going to sleep to very last moment I can come morning. Sorry for the bump, things should get back to normal after tomorrow. I hope.

Jack’s Walk

Off we go…

Jack and I enjoy finding new  places to explore so this morning we tried a new trail that had been recommended to us by a friend. The entire trail stretches 3 km which is a longish walk for both Jack and I, but we had water and a snack and I planned to have a rest or two along the way. The morning was warm, but not humid and we set out full of the spirit of adventure. The trail winds through an area of mixed hardwood and fir trees and it’s beautiful. Everything was going along well until we came upon a pond. That’s when things started to go wrong. The area around the pond was humid and full of mosquitoes so we veered away from it and somehow got off the main trail. We clambered along a small path for a bit still being chased by vampire insects until we finally found a larger path and took it in what I thought was the direction back. The mosquitoes stayed with us though and poor Jack’s nose was being bloodied by the damn things. I was faring better because I had on DEET, but they were biting through my shirt and pants to the places that I didn’t bug spray. We stopped for water twice, but couldn’t really rest. I finally saw a clearing ahead and sighed relief that we had made it back to the parking lot…only it wasn’t the parking lot. It was a field of grain. I should mention here that there was no field of grain anywhere near the entrance to the trail so we were obviously off course. The mosquitoes weren’t too bad though so we did finally stop for a good rest. I pulled out my cell phone, found a map of the trail and figured out that we were actually on a totally different trail that connects to our original trail and that the only way back was the way we just came…through the mosquito tunnel until we picked up the main trail again. Thankfully, by the time we got going a good breeze had come up which helped control the mozzies a bit and our way home was long, but not intolerable. I even stopped at the pond for a few photos because it really is incredibly beautiful, we were already uncomfortable and I won’t be back this way anytime soon. I’ll try to get them up in a day or two, but right now Jack and I are crashed and recovering from a bit more adventure than we bargained for.

 

Making a Rondel Dagger – Part 11 – Rondel Fail

This was my first attempt at making the rondel on Saturday. Also my first attempt at forging something. I failed completely to achieve my goal, but I learned a few things.

The rondel is supposed to be circular with ten asymmetrical grooves. The simplest way to achieve that would be to take a piece of 4-6 mm steel and cut the grooves with angle grinder. It would also lead undoubtedly to the prettiest looking result I might add, with the crispest lines and smoothest surface.

However I do not want to do that for multiple reasons. One is that it is not historically correct – AFAIK that thick steel was rarely used. The other reason is that it would make the dagger very heavy towards the butt of the handle, and that would make it very uncomfortable to use and it might tend to overbalance in the scabbard and fall out off it.

So I wanted to go the more historically accurate way of making bowl-shaped rondel. With the equipment that I have (not to mention total lack of skill and experience) that unfortunately means I will not be able to make crisp and deep groves, but you can’t always get what you want. Maybe some other time.

I have decided that this old broken shovel is about the right thickness (about 2 mm). It is also good and strong steel that should withstand hammering and bending etc. Unfortunately it is also strongly pitted, but I have decided to use it anyway.

My anvil is a simple piece of rail screwed to a log, and I have not modified it yet for any kind of attachments. Therefore in order to be able to forge bowl-shaped object I could not use it at all and I had to improvise. I fixed a cut piece of thick-walled steel tube to my wood chopping block.

I also lack tongs, so I had to use adjustable pliers.  But at least I have proper ball peen hammer, one of the few usable things that I got from my uncles’ derelict and trash filled house (you would not believe how difficult it is to buy ball peen hammers around here, nobody is using them and therefore nobody sells them).

For fire I have not used charcoal but half rotten dried wood. Not for any practical reason, but because I have a pile that I need to get rid off and I do not want to burn it in the stove so I co not carry the rot into the house. It is possible to heat steel with wood fire quite easily, temperature is not a problem. Problem is smoke and long flames. If you ever try to do it, be aware that it is dangerous and I advise strongly against doing such a foolhardy thing.

I thought these tools will be sufficient to achieve my objective, but to be honest I was not overly optimistic. I assumed skill will be a bigger problem.

It started promisingly and I had a bowl-shaped object in a jiffy. It was after this that it all got wahoonie-shaped.

The problem was the diameter of the ball peen hammer, which was slightly too small for the task that I wanted to do. When trying to correct this, the bowl only got deeper, but its bottom did not get any wider. I ended up with a shape that was too deep, too thin-walled with too small bottom and completely wrong shape – I was aiming for a shape like a bottle cap and I ended up with a miniature dog bowl.

Nevertheless I have decided to try and finish it to see how it looks on the dagger. I cut off all the excess with angle grinder, drilled a hole in the middle and shaped the whole thing on belt sander, removing all rust and pitting in the process and preliminarily polishing the surface to 320 grit.

It did not look all that bad on the dagger, but I did not like it very much anyway. It was not the design I was aiming for at all, not even close, and despite looking kinda good it has completely changed the character of the dagger. I knew I will have to compromise on this part, but I was not willing to compromise that much.

Nevertheless I have tried to make the grooves, just as an exercise to see whether my intended way of making them will work. It worked, sort off. It also completely destroyed the part, because I have made it too thin-walled and the walls were so thin in one place that the steel crumpled like paper instead of bending nicely.

That was it. Time to rethink my process. With these lessons learned I went to sleep on Saturday, completely tired, but determined to give it another shot right next day morning.