electrathon

It is hard to believe that anyone would feel that conservatives have ruled for 30 years. Congress has been liberal for about that long. My memory says that the only time it was differant was when Clinton was in office and there was a republican congress and senate. A lot did get fixed then, some did not. Once liberal thinking got back in control, liberal spending followed. Now we have three branches of govenrment (senate, house and executive) and within a few months the deficate has gone up at levals that were unimaginable in the past.

I just looked, the minimum wage where I live is $8.40 per hour. It is not the same in all states. I am sure that you are aware that minimum wage is not what most Americans make. It is where, generally youth, start into the job market. The mean averare salery is really what matters. People only want to bicker about minimum because it is an easy target. I have worked since I was 14 and I have never in my life been paid minimum wage. One of the reasons there has been so much prophit in the stock market is that so many Americans are heavily invested through retirement investments. The prophits that the evil job providers make is what is funding all of our retirements. The more they make, the more the stockholders (all of us to one extent or another) make. You have not mentioned the huge numbers of corperations that have lost money. Using your reasoning that prophits should be shared, should not all of the people that work for the loosing companies pay to work there? That is likely as absurd to you ( I hope it is) as I see it being absurd to beat up the companies that are providing work for the rest of us. Unfortionatly, that is exactly what your current administration is doing. Remember, the construction workers and other middle calss people are paid what they earn relitive to what housing sells for. If new housing was priced 30% lower, respectively, we would be paid about 30% less to build those houses. There is a little room for wiggling, but not all that much. One of the huge increases in housing costs (at least around here) is the exorberant fees that government charges. All of those fees are added into the price of the house (about $30-$50,000 around here). I do not agree that paying more for one thing and less for another (coming out to a nearly equil end outcome) makes for a lower standard of living. To me, it makes a leval standard. I know of very few people that would accept the lifestyle today that our parents lived 30 years ago. I personally have struggled. Looking back to when I was a child, my family has so much more than we did as kids it is not even vaguely an equil comparison. I have never, and may father never recieved and assistance from the government either, we earned our way. Funny (pathetic actually) story. My moms husband was a highley educated economic professor at a university. He declared bankruptcy twice in his life and woudl haev a third time if he had lived a little longer for his third financial colapse. He taught that this was OK, even good as it helped keep the economy moving. It made sure that risk takers took risk. You loose, you do not have to pay. You win, you make lots of money.

For one of your first projects, you are doing well. My input: Try to even out the backgrounding. You can hit the same places over and over again. Just keep the tool moving. This will create more depth. Try to drive it all down the same amount. Loose the funny looking "stop" that Tandy sells. It does not look natural at all. Learn to double loop lace, once you get the pattern it is very easy. On the back: If you are going to scribe a line, make it less prominate. Better yet, use a piece of low stick painters tape and work off that line, then remove the tape and go the other direction. No line when done. Aaron

You know... Depending on a few details, it could be one of the more interesting items in the profile.

AVG is good, will not slow your computer like many more famous name programs and is free in the basic version.

Ed has begged forgiveness for saying that. But it definatly does show the predisposition of a belief to be able to arrive at a conclusion. Yes, I do know people on both sides of the fence do this, but this statement was so far away from any posibility of reality it is scary.

I am bad enough at typing in the first place. Toss in not wearing glasses to see and the meaning of things do sem to change a lot!

The part that I want to see is a city, even a state where people are located. Maybe I want to buy something or personally look at an item. I am far more inclined to do so if I can see that you are close and not 1500 miles away.

When I am using handsaw blades, I do not re-temper them. I cut them out and then sharpen. They likely fall about 55 on a rockwell scale, so they are good but not great. 65-70 hardness would be awsome, hard to sharpen but will stay that way for a long time. Personally, I sharpen everything nowdays on a belt sander, then move on to a "cardboard stone" on a grinder with rouge on it. I can take a unfinished knife to razor sharp in a couple minutes. When I am carving I do still constantly strop, I do it all the time, no matter what knife I am using. Tomcats explanation of temp was great. Use a magnet and keep testing to see if it sticks. Once it is hot enough, it will no longer stick, quickly do the quench. You can only harden the edge (some sawblades are like this) but I have always done the whole knife. Hardness on a knife is a double edged sword. If the knofe is easy to sharpen, it will dull quickly. Hard to sharpen and it will hold an edge for a long time. Kitchen knives are a good source of steel to work with. Chicago Cutlery is a good steel, there are many others. If you are at the thrift store pass up the shiney ones, the knives that have a duller finish are better quality. Old files are great steel too, depending on how hard you want to work to shape it though.

Do not quench in water, use oil. The water tends to make it brittle. If you are going to try using your torch use the rosebud tip. Also, box it in somehow to make a makeshift oven so that the blade heat will be more consistant. You do not want one part of the blade being a couple hundred degrees hotter than the other parts. I have made round knives from hand saw blades. It works well.

Yes, on some of the screans, the "page" is wider than the screan, horibly annoying. Not on all of the pages though, not sure why it is differant from one to another. I do not mind having to scroll farther to the bottom, I do mind the width of screan format change.

I don't think (I may be totally wrong here) that anything is smaller, it is just all squished to the left side, which causes the line to line formating to change. As I stated I am 100% for adds, lots of them. I just think there are better solutions than to cause a format change, or to force us to scroll left to right to see the page. Situate the adds throughout the page, great! But keep for page width formating "standard".

I am all in favor of having adds to help support things. I actually think this is the best thing, people that want to advertize being provided with a venue to do it, providing the rest of us with this great place. BUT, I find the new adds at the right very annoying. It has narrowed the screan. Can the adds be placed between the sections as we scroll down so the text boxes are not scrunched?

I was going a lot farther back than 1776. I ment in the beginning, the early pioneer times. It has been a long time since I was in school, but this is pretty well known. They were all working togeather for the good of the comunity, farming, raising crops, and whatever else early settler life consisted of. They did very poorly. Someplace a few years into this, someone came up with the idea of allowing each person to farm their own land, keep what they wanted and sell the rest. The process worked out well. Also, America is not a democracy, it is a republic.

Very good tutorial. A couple things I would like to add: When oil quenching, any oil will work. Used engine oil really stinks. Cooking oil is a lot more plesant smelling. Olive oil almost smells good. A lot of people use old engine oil for cost reasons though. When doing the quench, if you do not submerge the steel in the oil and keep it moving you tend to get a mixture of very hard and softer spots. If you just plunge it in without moving it there will be bubbles formed from the boiling of the oil that can even damage the blade. If the blade is completely submerged, the fire will generally go out right away. If you leave the hot metal partly out, you will have flame as the oil is igniting on the not submerged steel.

I missed this statement earlier. I think this fact is from the same source as the minimum wage thing. In America nearly everyone is far better off than our parents. We have so much more than any generation has ever had before. I am not sure if I personally know anyone who is not better off than their grandparents (40 years = 2 generations). I have heard the stories of the past, they were tough times. I am thankfull that I do not have to work as hard for so little as my father or grandfather did.

Bruce, Have you though of teaching? In reading your postings it seems to me that you have the personality/temperment for being able to do it. Chan Geer teaches classes and is rather booked. It is dificult to get a highly skilled leather worker to put on classes. It seems to me there is a large glut that someone could step into and while they may net get rich, would be able to make a very good living. Aaron

If you cut it without showing color, the temper will stay. If you get color, grind past it, and all will be good. This is not as good of an answer as tempering it initially, but is a great solution for home work.

Why should the FORMULA change? If data is properly adjusted (inflation/deflation verses income/expenses) then the only reason for adjusting the formula is because the formula is wrong, not to be able to include a larger percent of people to arrive at a preconcieved notion. Example: If the poor are the bottom 15%, then adjusting the formula to include the bottom 20% or the bottom 10% would only be done to "prove" that things are now worse/better than they were before. The poor do get a lot of help in our country. Remember they are the 40% who eat at the table for free. Some of them do pay in some, but they also use more than they contribute. I am enjoying the exchange of thoughts/ideas. I am not trying to offend or upset anyone. It is good to see the other side of the island sometimes. Another thought here: I really do not understand the uber rich at all. I do know though that a "living wage" to that segment of society is far above what I would consider wealthy. Just as my middle class earnings is far above rich to the poorest segment of society.

I think you are making my point. If you have all the above listed expenses, they are mixed into your total sale price, plus some more so you can pay yourself. If you had few to no expenses, you could easily charge less and make the same amount of prophit. Raise the expenses on you (because you become successfull) and you will need to pass those on to the consumer as well. I totally agree, you and others should be able to keep the money YOU earn. It is both ethicly and morally wrong to take your money and "redistribute the wealth" so that others can sit at home watching jerry springer stoned out of their mind philosiphising about why the world treats them unfair.

Only took me a minute to find the truth: http://www.dol.gov/ESA/minwage/chart.htm

The statement that minimum wage has not been raised since the 60's is so far wrong it makes me doubt every fact that you have listed. I am not sure about everyplace, but in 1978 when I got my first job the minimum wage was $2.85 and hour. Living wage means much differant things to differant people. That term is just a slur that the unions have started throwing around to try to get more. I agree with what was said above. I could live comfortably on $50 an hour. Of course, once I get that, I will want more, then I will want more, then I will complain about the evil greedy people that do not pay me $75 an hour, so I could have a living wage. Actually two differant issues are involved here. First is the greed of the 4 people that are eating at the table for free. They "deserve" the same as those that work. The level of care that we currently expect in America is not the same as the level that many are recieving in socialist countries. There is a reason so many Canadians willingly flood across our boarder to get health care, they can get it. There is not waiting list, there is not rationing of service. It is available now, not in 6 weeks. I have an aunt that lives near the boarder, the come into their office all the time. Another differance is here we hold Dr's acountable for malpractice. Want to drop the cost? Take away the acountability. It has worked well in other countries. The Dr's can literally cut the cost of service nearly in half when they no longer have insurance premiums that are 5 times most Americans income. One other issue to remember in all of this. There is not a business in the country that has ever paid a single penny in taxes, fees or whatever. 100% of those have all been passed on to the consumers, just in a hidden form.

Just so you know, you as the seller will always be ruled against. Take it in the shorts and move on. You need paypal, suck it up. Look at it like your store was just shoplifted.

I like it, looks very nice. Aaron

Sorry, but no. There are a pair at the local Tandy though. I may have to try getting all the measurements off them and go from there. I was just hoping...