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Gauntlet passed again
Galootcentral.com is again passing from one galoot to another. There are no immediate changes planned while we look into our options. The future should hold a symbiosis between galootcentral.com and galootopedia.com (the Old Tools wiki).

It's important to open up a forum to discuss ideas for the site, please send your thoughts to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or contribute to the discussion on Galoot-o-pedia.
 
Galoot Central -- Under New Ownership

Okay, that all got started but never quite turned the corner on coming to fruition.  Galoot Central is now under new management. New user registration has been temporarily suspended.  What for announcements of future plans. In the meantime, continue to enjoy GIC!

 

The time has come to move the current version of Galoot Central to that great workshop in the sky. The technology platform is no longer support and  there is precious little here that can't be done better with the current crop of web tools. The photo gallery (which we all know has quirks all its own!!!) can certainly be improved but that will be a job all its own to move!

 

The new Galoot Central will reside on a new domain to more closely identify it with the membership of the OldTools mailing list.. yes, none other than:

 

http://oldtoolslist.com

 

(we will keep this domain and just do a little traffic redirection so your bookmarks will largely remain valid.)

 

New features....

 

1.  Any OldTools list member (that is, someone with a bio!!) will be able to have their own basic blog type site .. so, for example, for galoot named, say "Wilfred Wilson", he might have a site at http://oldtoolslist.com/wilfredwilson.

 

2.  These basic sites can be upgraded on the fly to have full fledged web site capability, including a radically easy way to upload multimedia content for a very low monthly fee -- much lower than buying a domain and finding hosting somewhere!!

 

3. Sponsorship advertising at ridiculously low rates .. Galoot Central receives several thousand visits per month .. get your name in front of a very targeted audience for next to nothing.

 

4. Probably won't be ready right out of the gate, but a snazzy tool to do FMM postings will give those galoots who faithfully post on the first Monday a place not only to list their stuff, but accompany the listing with photos.

 

... and lots of other stuff .. time to look at the calendar at do something about a old site that has seen better days.  Web sites are not like old tools... they just don't get better with age!!

 

 
Wood Properties Worksheet

Courtesy of Charlie Rodgers .. Wood Properties worksheet. This is an Excel 2007/2010 file.

 

http://galootcentral.com/index.php/Download-document/4-Wood-Physical-Properites.html 

 
Paddles!!
Hi Jim

I reply directly to you because I am a lurker and have an impossible lack of posting pictures etc (being over 70 doesn't help I'm afraid)

Your link to "artofmanliness" was wonderful for me in many ways...I belong to a group that was started by a friend who is a mentor to me but is not necessarily a "mens" group as we have a few women that do attend....we meet every other week or so on Fri afternoons and I refer to it as "cracker barrel meetings"

There are no rules, anything from politics, economics, religion etc (heaven forbid!) is discussed and be prepared to defend your opinion....we are all very open minded. The group consists of young and old, rich and poor, academically educated and self educated...just a mixture of everything from ditch digger to doctor...The membership is about 15 with attendance usually 8.

minnesota_2010_fort_frances_040_small.jpg

Summer outside with a cooler for beer pop water etc and open to cigars cigarettes whatever...Winter is in the barn that my friend and I built that has a pot bellied stove that we gather around for warmth.(Northeast Ohio and the cooler is inside now too!) Our discussions are totally open to business and/or personal and what is

 discussed is left behind.

For these reasons I appreciate your leading me to this website. I am also referencing this article

http://artofmanliness.com/2011/08/25/make-a-canoe-paddle/

While visiting relatives in my home towns in Northern Minnesota and Ontario two summers ago (I hadn't seen them in over 50 years) My one cousin was showing me the

minnesota_2010_fort_frances_036_small.jpg

 woodworking skills of his two sons and some of these were two canoe paddles which I am attaching pics. They did these as High School projects and I was quite impressed!

 

Sorry for the length of this email but I wanted to thank you.

 
My KaBar

This came from John Odom .. via Facebook.  John.. thanks for sharing this story --Jim

 

This is the story of a knife. Why tell this story? Because this particular knife had a very interesting history. My family moved to the Philippines in 1947. My folks were to be missionaries there. We arrived on October 8, at pier 7 Manila. (Before the war, that was one of the longest and most magnificent passenger ship piers in the world.)
Within a few days we were taken into Manila and shown the Quiapo market, and Philippine Cold Stores, where the missionary wives did their grocery shopping. On one of the first trips, but not the first, I asked Mother if I could do some shopping. I found a stall where military surplus equipment was sold, and 1 bought a USMC Ka-Bar fighting knife and a canteen and pistol belt. Mother was not happy about the knife. 1 explained that a knife is good or bad depending on what it is used for. The USMC Ka-Bar was an ugly knife with a gray-green dull finish, called Parkerizing that was intended to not reflect light in the jungle. It is a big knife with a 6 7/8" blade and an overall length of eleven and three-quarter inches. The handle is 5". The photo below is from their 2009 catalog, and is of a better looking knife, without the rough grey-green Parkerizing.


 

Read more...
 
GC is on a new home!

Cost of things being what they are, I had to make the painful (well, not painful, I just knew it was a ton of work and while I don't mind the work, finding the time to do it is akin to most of us finding shop time....) decision to migrate the entire Galoot Central empire over to a more modern hosting provider. I loved my old provider but was trapped in an outdated cost model .. funny they could only offer the really good deals to "new" customers .. the oldtimers just had to suck it up.

So... the site has been moved and there are probably a few little bits a pieces hiding in corners that still need tweaked. If you spot somthing that doesn't work, please jot me an email.  I had this and 2 more even larger ones to do this week. And one smaller one. At least that one went well!!

peace all,

 

Jim .. keeper of the house here...

 
Whozit? Whazzit?

Okay, let's try something a  little new ... a new Oldtools member asked about an unusual machinist's chest .. oh, he'll get around to setting himself up an Image Central folder, but hey, until he does, the front page needed something new ... so, here's the pic and a bit of the message from Bob B.:

 

And from Bob's message:

Attached is a photo of the oak machinist tool chest. It has an Eagle lock & key. It's unusual because the box on top overhangs the front and sides. Any idea who made it? "

Go ahead and fire up a conversation on the list .. to reference the photo, just point folks to the front page here...

 

 

 
Check out new download item!

From the looks of things, the few downloads that have been there a while have been grabbed many times. It has been a while, but courtesy of Charlie Rodgers, a new download is available showing his panel clamps.

Choose Downloads from top menu to see this one and the others.

Thanks Charlie!!

 
For The Love of Wood

Been doing a lot of reading lately, both for school and beyond .. ran across this passage in a story that I just had to capture so I could return to it...

 

Of all the handicrafts in the world there is none cleaner, pleasanter, and more fragrant than that of the carpenter. He works in friendly stuff. If he knows it well enough and can feel its qualities, it yields readily to his working and takes the outward shape of his thought - chaor or table or bed, window-frame or shelf or beam.

Well-seasoned lumber he wants, that it may not warp. Knots and cross-grains trouble him, like orginal sin in man; but he takes note carefully, and avoids or conquers them. He judges his material with his eye before he measures it with square and foot-rule. His mind guides his fingers; his fingers fit his tools; his tools work his will in wood.

What good odors rise around him as he labors! From each tree its own fragrance: the resinous smell of the terebinth and the cypress; the delicate scent of the wild-olive with its smooth, curly texture; the faint, dry sweetness of the orange-yellow acacia with its darker heart; the clean odor of the oak with its hard, solid grain; and on rare days, the aromatic perfume of some precious piece of the cedar of Lebanon, king of trees.

Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareith, was proud of his trade......

Henry Van Dyke, from "Even Unto Bethlehem"

 Ah yes, the carpenter of Nazareth (though we tend to think more about his little boy..) .. a good read this little story .. and well timed reading as I hit around the midpont of Advent. Good story indeed...

---Jim

 

 
Toolmakers -- Advertise!

At least a few of you have taken notice of the images at the bottom of the screen. These are toolmakers who were featured back in the day when I was doing a monthly toolmaker feature on Wiktor's site.  Well... I hadn't looked at the numbers in a while but did a couple days ago and felt I should share them.

In the past 15 months (today is October 13th as I peck this out...), each of the logos has appeared roughly 78,000 times .. and each is averaging a click rate of a little under 2% ... the math wizards among us will quickly tally that to around 1500 visits to those web sites.  

So.. are you a toolmaker or related artisan with goods to sell? Would you like an extra hundred visits a month to your web site.  (and coming from pretty discerning folks, no less!!).  Fire off an email to Jim E #2 .. tell me what logo you want to display and where you want visitors to land  (doesn't have to be your home page). 

Oh, cost ... nope. Sorry. I'm too busy to keep track of anything else. I'm back in school, still coaching, teaching Junior Achievement, teaching catechism and well, trying to keep track of which zip code which kid needs to be in every night.  It just occurs to me that something good is going, it takes only a few seconds to set up and then it just runs itself.... so.. like the rest of Galoot Central, the service is free.  A few have asked over the years about the costs involved in keeping this whole thing up and running. Well, there are a few costs involved and they are largely covered by a few generous folks who visit the donation link every now and then. Like most of activities in my life that I find rewarding, it's the ones I don't make a living from that mean the most.  So.. jump on board.  There just isn't a downside to this beyond the two minutes it will take you to send me an email!   You can send to:  webmaster at galootcentral dot com  (well, fix the address before clicking send!)