It sounds like your mom was a very tolerant woman. She probably was like my mother. When I disassembled a pair of SU carburetors on the kitchen table, with a few drops of gasoline still in them, her reaction was "Just let me know if you won't have it cleaned up before dinner. And please open a window."
A good question. Was that ever answered? I make "Metal Earth" models from time to time and have improvised my own miniature brake for those. With an arbor press insert, I could step up to heavier metals.
I built an insert for mine that holds a standard trapezoidal utility knife blade and use it as a paper trimmer / poor man's die cutter. For a modular origami project, I needed a whole lot of hexagonal shaped paper. I was very dissatified with quality of the cuts on the pivot handle paper cutters when doing a stack of paper at once.
That insert allowed me to just trim stacks of square origami paper quickly with beautifully clean cuts. (Although if I needed to cut a line longer than two inches or so, that would be another story.) I'd like to someday move on to papel picado type cuts, but I'm not sure the best way forward there. Is there a good place to get hobbiest quantities of steel rule blades?
Elijah
------ and other non-walnut arbor press ideas welcome
The squirrels gnaw little holes in the shell, and somehow get the meat out. Seems like a VERY slow process. I guess they have not invented the arbor press, yet.
I'm going to have to take my binoculars to a nearby park one day and watch them. There is a big black walnut tree in one just a few hundred yards from my house.
It makes me think of the old story about why big trout won't eat mayflies smaller than a size 14 hook: they use more energy rising to the fly than they get from eating it.
I can pick some old gnawings up, take some pics if you want. Was standing in pile of them last Sunday while a pesky Red Squirrel was in my crosshairs :)
That insert allowed me to just trim stacks of square origami paper quickly with beautifully clean cuts. (Although if I needed to cut a line longer than two inches or so, that would be another story.) I'd like to someday move on to papel picado type cuts, but I'm not sure the best way forward there. Is there a good place to get hobbiest quantities of steel rule blades?
Never bought just the die stock from them but have had several dies made at
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in NJ and was very happy with the service. I'm sure they would sell you some pieces of blade stock - they offer bent dies where they shape them and you put them in a wood holder so this would just be simple straight pieces. They will also do the punching. We would have a die made, send them the foam rubber stock, they would do the punching and ship everything to us. Next time I'd send the die and more stock back, they would punch and return it all, etc.
Oh, wow, that;s great. Thanks, Leon. Those are some teeth. I never paid much attention to them -- they have less of a challenge eating the peaches off of my tree.
YouTube is amazing. What can't you find there these days?
Done many times. We adopted a baby squirrel who trapped himself in the service ceiling at work (through a decorative brick grille, which his mother could not fit through), and we fed him and handled him until he was ready to go back outdoors. (We took him out and showed him, trees a number of times, before he got the idea. :-)
He never bit us. He would run spiraling around one of us, jump to the other and spiral back down to ground level, so I guess that we were serving the function of trees at that period. :-)
This year was especially abundant for Black Walnuts. I crack them in a vise but after one hour or more soak in water shells crack much easier. Flush cut wire cutters work great for getting to the meat.
An excellent demonstration of why you should keep your fingers away from squirrel choppers. Parrots and the like can also chop through some pretty tough shells.
Hmm. So, I'll stay away from live squirrels and parrots. Most of my experience with squirrels comes after they have a .22 caliber hole through their head.
I guess I told the story about the flying squirrel we had in our living room last fall. Damn, they have big eyes. I had to catch him in my trout landing net, taped to the end of a crab net. The crab net mesh let him go right through.
Local F&G folks say we don't see them ordinarily because they're nocturnal. He apparently got in through an insulation-ventilation hole in my attic.
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