I've read any number of articles. Watched any number of documentaries. Researchers trying to ferret out the information that artists of a previous age just didn't bother to record.

Often, I just tell you stories because I have had a bunch of folks, thru the years; tell me that they enjoy them. Life is a pile of kid's tennis shoes with strings tied into impossibly tight knots. Sorting it out, is exhausting. Personally, I wish that "I" had somewhere to go where there were stories that didn't foretell the end of time.

Let me give you a thumbnail of today. Last night - I was awakened by the return of the noise from Helllllllllllll. The seasons are changing. The nights are cool and crisp. The leaves and foliage - while mostly pine, still contains a lot of trees that thin their leaves. Sound travels farther and louder. It's back. And so; I made my annual migration to a smaller bedroom, as far as possible from the offending noise, and NOT on an exterior wall.

I walked into the shop - made my rounds of turning on lights, opening shades, adjusting airflow, unlocking doors, and .... walking by the Oxygen and MAPP gas tanks ... my OCD made me reach out and make sure the valves were closed. The O2 hand wheel rotated. ROTATED!!??? NOOOoooooooooo!!!!!!!! But - it was true. And ... the gauge on the regulator laughed back at my anxious stare .... empty.

Too true ... the regulator should not leak. But - it's 40 years old. Right ... it should not be 40 years old. Please add $65 to your next invoice. I still sell $5 bills for $5, plus shipping and handling. That would be ... oh ... $6.75 .... plus the $65 regulator charge ... $71.75. Thank you very much.

To continue. I have been dreading, as I work; the day when I'd have to find a place to have my welding gas tanks filled. I learned, today; yet another wonderful thing about my previous location. About 10 miles from me, was a place which would fill my tanks. They would also test the tanks when required. And, they had a nice selection of bronze, aluminum, and stainless rods. Well, down here ... NOBODY fills tanks. We proved this, this am, by calling every number in the Florida phone directory. Oh YES we DID!!!

Down here - everyone uses AirGas. A company that trucks tanks around, fills and tests them in Alabama - and then delivers full and picks up empties from their distributers. BUT ... I OWNED my own tanks. That was the deal up north. Now - we found a place that "might" swap out my tanks for Airgas tanks. BUT ... in the past - as a little tiny knifemaker ... whenever I had swapped out tanks (early before learning the ropes) ... I'd gotten stuck with a hundred year old tank about to go out of test. Guess the big "L" on my forehead gave me away. heheh.

Well, the chase with tank tests can be a long and expensive one. A small tank cost $36 to test. Might have been $50 in Md. Then, you might find it fails ... and your only option is to buy a tank (Can be $200) or rent one for a flat rate plus fills. OR ... I could join the AirGas world. Trade in my tanks ... take theirs, buy the fills, and their sticker gives me the option to trade them in at other AirGas dealers. Fine ... let's do that. So; we drove 60 miles to join the club. Very nice people. Courteous, knew their stuff. Helpful. Like EVERY business we have dealt with down here. That has been amazing and very very welcome to offset some of the other unknown unknowns.

I have the Gas fill I've needed for my MIG tank to do the welding on the Outrider 50's (and Sal's Choked 50 I now have the Oxygen tanks to heat so many other operations on knives, jewelry, cases, and maintenance.

Got back about 15-20 minutes after the headache had begun. Unloaded the tanks. Hooked them up. Took the racks out of the car. And, was in trouble. No question I was gonna lay down. Bed or floor. I choose the bed for a while. Got up - felt a good bit better. Ate something. We decided to watch something light on TV. It was 9pm now. A bit late to go back to the shop to start another cycle.

There's a new show on with a Lady Vet who treats Exotic Critters. Lizards, Parrots, Turtles, Rats, anything BUT dogs and cats. So; we started watching. Seemed the treatments were not going entirely "relaxing". Egg-bound Iguana about to die - graphic surgery removing a third of it's body weight. Then, a fella comes in with his pet Rat. Binky. Well, Binky is covered with huge tumors. You could tell the guy was very much bonded with his pet. The whole thing went awful. The consultations. The tests, exploratory surgery, findings, breaking the news, decisions, grief, putting down his pet ...... it lasted quite a while. I'm thinking ... "THIS is entertainment?" Then, a lady comes in with a lovely Parrot. They have been treating it for 6 years. It has an obstruction to it's breathing. Tests, bloodwork ... sedation ... doesn't work well ... bird is CRASHING ... BRING it out ... bring it OUT!!! Commercials .......................................................................................ad for the show we are watching ...........commercials ................................................................. back to the show. Bird makes it. Quick look up nose finds tumor. Bird is 40 years old. Can't take sedation. Send it home - make it comfortable. Great! Another happy story. Couple of days later ... Bird is back. It's weaker. Bloodwork ... Oh my ,,. this is bad. Bird is staggering around it's cage. Bird dies. SERIOUSLY???? THIS is entertainment today? I don't need a reality check. Don't need to be "disturbed" each time I turn on the miserable TV.

Well, anyway .... we're all here. Now ... to answer Sal's question about my blades. Yes - I did need to tell you all of that first. Cause it's all tied together. I sat on my bedside, at my card table workbench, at 10 years old ... and I still have some of those tools that I use today. I was building skills that I use today. I got better and better. Five decades later ... I've learned a few things. One of those things most earlier artists didn't record was ... "what's it like to reach the point where you have to force yourself to pull back?" I can't build everything to "the best of my ability". I do that far, far, far more then I ever get paid for. There are many reasons why. I can suck every dime's worth of profit out of any project by working way beyond the need. There is an illusion, for every young craftsman; that people are going to appreciate every level of excellence you achieve. But; in reality; you'll have to build to a price point. I ALWAYS overbuild. That's out of my own pocket. And, for the most part - it's in a temper line that's straight, in a part that's tool steel and wouldn't really have to be, in a symmetrical form, a tighter group, better trigger pull, etc. BUT, if you overbuild, and over achieve, and only a handful see the difference, or shoot the group, or appreciate the subtle difference between an 8.7 and a 9.5 ... (it's about six hours on a small project like an Expedition Case) ... then ... you've gone farther then prudent.

I guess it's relevant now ... for a few reasons. Right now ... fate has dumped me in this position of having to make a bunch of small works, to a price point that might be attractive to readers. I need to make many of them. And, honestly ... the experience I've gathered is more then enough to make many things I might turn out. A pendant? How long can I work on one for $40? When I make a small pocket knife ... everybody likes the back filework, and the fluted bolsters, and the natural bone/stag scales .... but do I have a market for $300 or $600 or $1,200 knives? This time bracket is putting new Barnes items on the market - where "walk in sales" have barely existed for 15 years. And, I can't pull back enough to really honestly make everything to a price point. They are always better then sold.

Well, that's enough for now. See if there's a spark of interest in any of this. Hope so. Night.

Gary

Clarify (see - I have to read my own stuff when there's no comments).

Clarify - the point about the Expedition Case ... I did NOT mean the case took six hours. (I wish). I met the DIFFERENCE between a case that scores an 8.7 on the judge's scale and one that scores a 9.5 on the judge's scale, is an ADDITIONAL six hours of work. That's the really hard part for me. "Pulling back" when I want to make everything a 10.0. And, I could, but the market would have to follow. So ... I make sure I don't go broke, but everything is way over the mark. Now ... If we had more reports and pics from the field, with owner reviews ... that would be more evident. As it is, all I can do is report on it as it was completed.

As I said above - we will see if we get any interest in these threads. I've posted a bunch of material of late. Videos, pics, stories. I'm dancing a jig here. When that's absorbed and we get some traffic on it, I'll do more.

Thanks
Gary

I read it and hear what your saying.

There's just not enough hours in the day to do the things that need doing, let alone the things that you ought to be doing, are there?

Up here we're living in an old wreck of a house (that we paid top dollar for) that can and will suck up every hour I can pour into it. Just getting it back up to snuff after decades of neglect and shoddy remodeling has turned out to be a more than full-time job. I've had to re-work everything I've touched or opened, whether it's the plumbing, the wiring, the (non-existent) insulation, the roof...literally every single thing has turned out to be a big can of worms that I often wish I'd just left alone. Even the dirt the place sits on was "broken'', since the rotten floor we pulled up turned out to have been caused by faulty drainage. Whoever came up with the phrase "dirt cheap" obviously hasn't had to hire an excavator.

As you experienced with your place in MD, the latest generation of contractors doesn't want to bother with anything that need to be analyzed and fixed, they just want to rip everything out and stick in a generic module of one sort or another from the big box store. And it had better not cost any less than $10k, or it's not even worth their time getting a quote back to you. It's gotta run at least $50k to get them to actually show up, and even then they'll be half-assing it, doing two or three other jobs at the same time. Frankly, even if I could tolerate that kind of behavior I can't afford to put that kind of cash into this place, we'd never get any of it back.

So that leaves you to the tender mercies of the "craigslist handyman" crowd if you can't or won't do it yourself. I've hired several "handymen" to address projects that I need help with or that I just don't want to do myself, like hand-digging ditches, and roof repair. Maybe it's an artifact of the tight labor market up here, but my experience with this crowd has been universally..."interesting". I suspect that every reasonably competent carpenter and laborer who can stay (plausibly) sober for an entire work week already has a full-time job. They don't seem to be very well represented in the "handyman for hire" marketplace, that's for sure. On the other hand, I have learned a lot about how the local criminal justice system works, and I've received numerous potentially useful tips about the ins and outs of the parole system as well. You never know, might be useful some day.

In any case, it's become obvious that I can't afford to hire out these kinds of projects. I have to either do them myself, or they're just not going to get done. And none of them (so far) has added one square foot to the place or "upgraded" it in any visible way. Visible being the key here, since the next buyer of this house is just going to assume that everything I've fixed was just fine when WE bought the place. You get no "credit" for making sure that the wiring is safe and that the pipes don't leak, after all, that's just assumed. Doesn't matter how many hours and how many dollars it took to get it up to that standard.

I know I sort of hijacked this thread, but I'm feeling those hours tick away as well. Not sure this helps any, but you're not alone in your conundrum with the welding tanks either. My last (and only) set became "un-fillable", not because they weren't safe, but because the local monopoly was way more interested in collecting tank rental than accomodating anything different.

You guys have seen the exact same issues with getting help for hire when you need it. It's a damn shame that you can't get good help. Are all the newer houses disposable? Can't repair a roof, just get a new lid for the house?

I think Gary has touched on part of the problem; the irrational expectations of many new home buyers, largely generated by ridiculous TV shows on HGTV. The years long real-estate doldrums have made it such a buyers market that those select few who CAN get bank financing want all the bells and whistles just like they see on TV...and they want it for a song. Decorating fads of past years are always derided by new generations of buyers, but this goes beyond that. Even houses with sound fundamentals and good locations have a hard time competing for this fickle demographic, the "spoiled rich brat" buyer. According to the TV shows it's gotta be brand-new top-end kitchen appliances with only the trendiest granite colors; tile or "plastic" countertops need not apply. You must have a giant master bedroom with enormous closets and even larger deluxe en-suite bathroom. Everything must be "open concept" regardless of structural realities, with premium flooring and tons of square footage. Though the buyers expect a lowball pricing structure, the house they desire must be lacking nothing and have no "issues"...even for first-time buyers. Hard to compete with that when you're selling a real-world home, since most real homes come with issues of one sort or another. There's a whole new generation of potential home buyers with grossly unrealistic expectations of what a "starter home" should be, created through years of living for free in mom-n-dads (usually upscale) basement and the miracle of shoddy television.

Outside of a few select "hot" real estate markets there's still a lot of inventory waiting to be sold, and a lot of home owners who'd love to move up or out are still stuck paying down loans that are more than they'll likely get from selling. I think we all expected a correction from the era of loose money and "liar loans", but I don't think anyone expected the banks to get THIS tight fisted with mortgage money. Perhaps we should have since fixed mortgage rates are so low. What's good for us isn't good for them, after all. It's certainly gotten WAY harder to borrow money to remodel a house. Unless you've got a lot of equity in the place you're basically putting in all on a credit card, which is far from an affordable way to finance needed work.

Either that, or you do things the old-school way...do it yourself.

Word Perfect. I agree.

Also ... "do it yourself" has become "give it away yourself".

Besides ... HGTV says - "Gut It! ... Nothing previously completed is good enough for you."

Gary

Perhaps there's a market there Gary. Buy old homes, gut them to the bare walls, and sell them as "project homes" along with a Home Despot credit card for ?$$$$ so they can finish it up the way THEY want it.

If it turns out that it cost more then they expected to finish it up (imagine my surprise!) or that you can't just rip out all the interior structure with no consequences, OH WELL, too bad, so sad. Shoulda bought that one that one that some old guy worked on first.