Finally!

[Paul Saffold]

LOL Thanks, Jim.

[Zach England]

I recently looked at the installation instructions for my twin screw vise and even those are not without humor.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I thought I was the only one here! I'll stick with canning wax for my grease and cardboard for my strop.

Not the only one, although I've been known to use repurposed used leather.

I like paste wax over canning wax - maybe it's too cold in my workroom, but this time of year, I have a hard time getting anything effective out of the canning wax.

I'd love a veg-friendly glue with all the working properties of hot hide glue, without being, well, hide.

[george wilson]

Joshua,we can't stop the World from working!! We have been accused of having a "cow culture" by some vegetarians. Use your hide glue,and repeat 500 times in your head:" This is a vegetable glue." Soon,you'll be o.k.

I had a vegetarian friend at my house one evening. He was pretty vehemently opposed to our "cow culture". However,It didn't take TOO much persuading to have him enjoy a few bowls of my vegetable beef soup,which I do make very well!! He was a gray haired INTERN in the furniture conservation shop,and used hide glue all day,as required. I never heard him remark about that. Maybe he was a closet carnivore.

He had been in the music business,and in his late 50's decided to go in a different direction.

If you ever saw the movie "Fast Food",it is horribly depressing. Enough to make most go vegetarian. But then,you hear on the news about trucks carrying vegetables just after they carried a load of garbage. I mean,WHAT can you do? Save up your pennies and buy enough land in the boonies to grow your own food? And,we all can't do that,either.

[David Weaver]

pesticide free bees wax is about $6 a pound on ebay.

Mineral oil is about $12 a gallon at a horse supply place or somewhere around there at commercial kitchen supply.

a 1 to 1 mix of the two (if you heat them in a double boiler), makes a nice (and cheap) supply of shop lubricant for saws and also makes a nice sheer finish on shop tools if you wipe it off. Good for dry skin on your hands, too.

I would much rather have that than mutton tallow. You can use the unmixed bees wax for planes if you want, I haven't tried it because I haven't run out of paraffin.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

That's basically what paste wax is - although I think the yellow-can Johnson stuff uses naptha instead of mineral oil - I've got enough wax kicking around (from when I was potting guiter pickups) that I've been thinking of making my own, but I still haven't made it through the can I've got kicking around.

Works decently for rust-protection, too.

[Jim Koepke]

The only humor outside AFD I ever get out of LV is the box tool, funny but accurate description of a tool I would never expect to be able to buy from LV. I keep meaning to order one but forget it every time I order.

Some hardware stores carry what is called a box hammer. A similar tool without the hatchet edge. I used to have two of them. One I used when I worked as a train tech for freeing train doors that were stuck in their tracks and wouldn't close. For a small pry bar they are great.

The one I didn't lose still gets used all the time.

If you search > crate hammer < and select images you will see a lot of variations.

A very useful tool.

jtk

[john brenton]

I feel sorry for all you older guys that were forced to eat mutton. My dad cringes at the thought of lamb. I just mention it and he looks like he smelled a fart. It's too bad because he loves food and he'll never know how friggin good the lamb is at the Outback.

Amazing how much you can get for an ounce of sheep fat!! I don't want my planes all greasy. Maybe I'm prejudiced. We were always poor when I was growing up. There was an abandoned sheep farm near us at one place. My step father would shoot one of the filthy,unshorn,extremely shaggy and uncared for sheep in the head with a .22 short. They were so easy to kill! Try that with a pig. They just keep on eating. (He did that as a kid when his folks told him to kill the pig. The pig didn't even stop eating.)

Then,he'd hang it (the sheep) upside down in the basement and gut it. The smell was TERRIBLE. Then,we ate mutton forever. I hated it,and will not eat it to this day(and tomorrow,too!)

[David Weaver]

Works decently for rust-protection, too.

Yeah, and easy and quick to apply since you don't have to wait for it to haze.

I'm about 1/8th of the way through my first quart of it. I guess when all is said and done, it costs me about $10 with shipping on the wax included to make a quart of it.

I'm not worried about solvents in paste wax for general use in terms of environment, but I am not that excited about using my favorite (briwax) in an enclosed space and killing brain cells. I still use the briwax for furniture, though, because I haven't mixed any beeswax with anything that dries. but I don't crack it open for something every shop session any longer like I do with the beeswax.

(and I haven't had to buy anything to keep my hands and lips from chapping this winter, that's a plus).

[Jim Matthews]

I wonder if Roy and Chris call each other to see what outrageous, obscure reference will be taken up as an expensive "must have" product...

jim
wpt, ma