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2002-09-09 - 10:53 a.m.

What a great weekend!

Spent Saturday in Williamsburg hangin out with my folks. Lota of good stuff was learned/traded/accomplished that day. First off I taught my little brother how to change the oil and transmission fluid on his car. This was followed by a grill swap. See my little bro has a Light Titanium 1989 Ford Taurus SE (as opposed to my Light Titanium 1989 Ford Taurus SHO). This means that his car can be a parts donor for a variety of parts (excluding the engine. His car has a 3.0 Vulcan as opposed to the 3.0 Yamaha in the SHO). Well we got to talking and it turns out that he wants to up grade the speakers in his car. I also am wanting to upgrade the speakers in my car. So what does that mean. Well my little brother saves $200 and gets my JBL speakers, and in trade I get his front grill. See mine had this HUGE Scratch in it�that only bothered me I think. So all is good now. I have a replacement scratch free grill, and my little bro will have some speakers�soon.

Saturday evening Educait, her Samurai, and I went to see Blood work. Good movie I guess. Actually it was only ok. The acting was a bit over done, and the story line was a little predictable�but it did have one VERY redeeming quality. It had an SHO in it. It was a lovely green gen2. Nicely maintained with leather interior. Granted I also got to see this lovely car get shot 4 or 5 times with a shotgun, abused by some rather high curbs, and finally get t-boned by another car�but here is the cool part. The damn car still drove away�very very fast! I tell ya, I only know of one other car that can withstand that kind of abuse and continue running�but your going to have to ask Tholen to tell ya the story of that T-bird.

Yesterday I spent slaving away at the forge. Which of course was a rocking good time. Some more time was spent working on the Cable knives�including one that I made look like a mini scramasax. I really like the way that one is turning out. I also worked with the Badger on preparing a pattern welded billet for making a full size sax�This has got to be the hardest part of the entire project. We are basically forge welding various types of metal into a sandwich, and then folding and folding and folding the material. Each fold gets forge welded, so eventually we will have a chunk of metal that we can turn into a blade or what not. This is the same process that is used in making katanas. Only they are a bit (a lot) more precise than what we are doing. Our work more closely resembles the Viking pattern welded steel. Well what makes this so hard it there is a lot of heavy striking that goes on here at very high temps. So not only does your arm get tired from all the work, but you are constantly being sprayed with red hot globs of flux that burns like a MF! I have all sorts of little burns all over my arms today. Granted the final product is so worth it.

My evening wrapped up with a wonderful Japanese dinner cooked by Educait. I wish I could tell ya what it was, but I can�t remember the names of any of the goodies. Perhaps she can tell ya what it is called. Dinner was capped off by a rousing game of Hero Clix�in which my happy little x-men got their butts handed to em. So that goes to prove�I don�t always win�I only win when I play Hulk.

This morning I was greeted by a hateful exhaust problem. It seems that one of my 2 year old mufflers has broken. Sigh�and of course it was at a spot that could not be welded. So $60 later, I have a new muffler that does not quite match up with what I had�this of course results in the exhaust tips not being symmetrical anymore�grrr�

So today I learned that when drawing down the blade on a knife, you must first put a curve in the material opposite the blade edge. This way when you begin to hammer the edge it pulls the material straight, instead of curving the blade.

What have you learned today?

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