Sandblasting

What's In, What's Out

There and Back Again

1840's Village
Yesterday we took our first day off in a very long time, and rode with my parents to see the 1840's Village in Hickory, NC.  It was a full-scale recreation of a settler town, complete with blacksmith, shoemaker, saddle-maker, woodwright, etc, with all crafts and tools on display and in use.  This hand-cranked drill press to the left is a great example of a classic tool still working nearly 170

Drill Refurbishing
A note to those who may be interested - Pipe & Pint has purchased a couple of large estate collections of my pipes and other brands, including some very unique high grades that are unsmoked and essentially new pipes. Watch this space for the next week or so, because I will be photographing some standout examples of these pipes and posting them here for sale. In other news, the workshop work

Blog Redesign
Mark off another goal accomplished - While waiting for some custom pulleys to be made to get our lathes going, I'm spending the next several days working full-time on revamping our blog and website.  This blog is the first example.  It has been woefully amateurish looking for some time now, because I created the layout a couple of years ago on an old square-aspect monitor, which didn't show the

CORPS 2009
Just got back from the 2009 CORPS pipe show in Richmond, Virginia. It is still as enjoyable as ever.

Making Sanding Pads
Here's a quick little pictorial showing how my padded sanding discs and fitted together. Anyone with some threaded rod and a wood lathe could turn something similar, with work.