Windy

Luke, I am sorry to hear you have not received your PIF. If you send me your address I will gladly send you something I made. WINDY

Tom, Great looking necklace. I have to say I thought of a hawk when I looked at the middle photo. If you look long enough it starts to look like one of them War Ships in the Star Trek movies. I really like the look of it. Great job. WINDY

Steve, If you would have eaten at my place (Windy's) last night you would have had Ribs with stimulating conversation, with no mention of the sewing machine war. I am sure you would have enjoyed it more than eating at any hamburger joint. WINDY

And what a fine job. Looks real nice. WINDY

Kate, I heated up a 3D stamp once with a torch and it started to melt. You think maybe I left the flame to it, a wee bit longer than I should have.Lesson learned about heating up cheap pot metal. I left my paint scraper that I use for cleaning my grill too close to the coals once. Only once since it melted the entire end of the scraper into globs of nice gray metal. I guess someone is telling me I should take up blacksmithing. WINDY..........not a blacksmith that I know of.

Am I the only one from another planet? WINDY

A few years ago there was a smart guy who had a great idea. He printed a newspaper on his computer printer. He was the only subscriber. He then got the local paper and got the addresses of all the businesses ,that ran classified ads,he could and printed the same ad in his paper. Then he billed the businesses for running their ad in his paper. Not surprising he made a ton of money afore someone discovered what he was doing. Another good one is the company who prints posters telling employees their rights. They send me a letter every year telling me how it is illegal not posting this poster.Fos a small fee they will mail the poster that brings me up to par with the law that will put me in the hoosecow if I do not conform.The return address sounds like it is a state agency. However upon close inspection one finds it is a private company scamming all the business people who have limited reading abilities. By the way I canceled my subscription to Mother Earth News two years ago. I was informed by mail last week that they wanted to keep me in good standing by renewing my subscription by mail afore it expired next month. They offered a great price , just the same I was not interested. Dang gone it if the phone did not ring the next day. Yep you guesses it , it was the Mother Earth News calling to let me know my subscription was about to expire and since I was such a good customer whom they hated to see miss an issue. They wanted to renew my subscription for , are you ready, for fifty percent more than the mail offer. WINDY....... Not really a conspiracy theorist.

Billy, You may want to check out this page at Leather Unlimited. If you have plans on making them for a long time to come this may be a better option. http://leatherunltd.com/hardware/mallet_di...allet_dies.html WINDY

I do believe he is a member of this here forum. Maybe look him up and ask him. WINDY

Ray, This is my 75 Ford F-100 with the best motor Ford ever made the 300 straight six or inline as some say. It has extra springs donated from an old Chevy so I can haul more weight which one sometimes needs in the brick laying business.The glove box and the door handle covers are leather and I decorated them with our company logo , the skull and cross bones.The rear lights are also our company logo which I also made. As a matter of fact I spent four years in my spare time rebuilding the motor and the body work on this truck. When I brought it home from the job site it had holes in the floor boards I could crawl through. In place of the rear bumper I built a roll pan from the roof of an old Nissan. I never did the inside of the bed since it was built for work.Oh yea the license plate bolts have cast resin skulls that light up that I made while I was making the shift knob which is also cast resin and it lights up as well.I do not have photos of them for reasons I do not know. WINDY

Beautiful case, Jack. Was a pleasure meeting you at the Derby City Classic. No matter how good the photography , it is nothing like seeing the beauty of your cases in person. WINDY

Tony, How did you know which one I was talking about. WINDY

You can get the spider concho from Tandy and one of their conversion kits for conchos to snaps and wa la you have a spider snap.Oh yea you need the snap too. WINDY

My rotary cutter has a motor on it making it manly. WINDY

Steve , You may not believe this but first job was filling a barn with pancakes. I was pretty lucky for two reasons. One it was a small barn and two there was a IHOP next door.You are right it takes a lot of pancakes to fill even a small barn and I do not even want to tell you how much maple syrup it took. WINDY

Funny how one quote makes one think of another quote. After reading your wife's quote I am reminded of "you can not teach an old dog new tricks" which reminds me of another quote " better to say nothing and let them think you a fool , than open your mouth and prove it" WINDY

Wow , I had to laugh to keep from crying upon reading this thread. I am just glad that it was not an old master leather worker who put the first tire on a car. Can you imagine Henry Ford talking to Harvey Firestone in the early days as Firestone told Ford "I have been making tires for a ten thousand years and stone tires are the only way to go" . Or how the look on that old Chinese math teacher's face when someone said I have a computer for adding up the numbers and he said why I have some beads on a board(abacus) that works just fine and I have been using it for five thousand years. Then a guy tells his wife he bought her a new electric oven and she says why women have cooked over a wood fire since the beginning of time. Then there was the surgeon who said what stainless steel, surgeons have been using sharpened rocks for a hundred years to cut open people, why only a non professional surgeon would use a stainless steel super sharp scalpel. Do I need to go on afore you people see how silly you are. I believe it was Bill Gates who said " I see no reason anyone would need a computer faster than the 486". Oh and one more just for fun , what do you mean you invented indoor plumbing , people have been going in the woods since the beginning of time.I reckon my point is just because someone who is a master does mean that they are always right. We all can learn something even from a person who just took up the craft or trade. And to the guy who says all blades break , sure they do if you abuse them. A knife is for cutting , not prying and never to be used as a screwdriver. And believe it or not a knife is not a hammer either even though I have seen more than one person use it as one. WINDY

You should try your local auto parts store for the fine sandpaper. Body shops use a lot of the super fine paper. Least wise the good ones use it. WINDY

John, As long as you are in competition with the subjects at hand , there will always been some suspicion when you offer an opinion. You can point out the differences in the amount of time the two have been working with leather.Although in my opinion this means very little. Some people advance at a much faster rate than others. I believe some people have what I call natural ability. I have seen many a leather workers web site stating they have been working in leather for fifty or sixty years and you look at their stuff and wonder if they meant by working in leather they killed cows for fifty years then started actually making leather goods last week. Mu suggestion would be to tell the person interested in the cases to see them in person or ask for high resolution photos of their latest cases. As is so often stated in the business world "you are only as good as your last job" .Translation for all those who need it , it means winning a blue ribbon ten years ago means nothing today. As Ray pointed out , some people will never know the difference in quality when all the see is the design not the workmanship. And let us be honest here , how many of us when we buy things go for the better quality over the more stylish.You know people are funny creatures. Now for a small fee I will join the billiard site and promote your cases as feverishly as the other guy is promoting the competitions. Just a small fee say a little something unique to China. Oh let me think what comes to mind. Oh I know just send me a small piece of that wood they call "the emperors wood". I am sure you can find a small piece to smuggle out for me. I do not think they kill you anymore for smuggling it out of China. WINDY

How do you know it would not have taken much effort to have done better? Do you know this person? WINDY

Washroad , Why should you duck? I do not base my friendship with others on their politics nor do I choose with whom I speak based on politics.If all the people around me agreed with me all I would hear all day would be "yes Windy you are right again". I will tell you that hearing this half the day is boring enough, hearing it all day would just plain drive me nuts. So feel free to voice your opinions on every subject here. Just remember without differences we would all have long hair and beards and drive blue Ford pick ups while wearing Levi's and t-shirts that say Mitchell Brothers Masonry on them. WINDY

Ah yes, the good ol' days of the Great Depression..... Arlo Guthrie, ridin' those trains and singin' his songs of the poor working man, starting unions, causing riots. I think you mean Woody Guthrie not Arlo. WINDY

Now come out of that shell and tell us what you really think. I was a little confused about how you feel about Al Gore and the rest of the liberals in the United States. I guess being the conservative republican I am makes it hard to understand just how you feel about this subject.Once again could you be more specific about your feelings towards liberals. WINDY

Suze, For your future safety I strongly suggest you pack all your Hershey Kisses in a box and mail nay ship them UPS overnight to me for safe keeping. WINDY

Skip, Foil hats are not only stylish as all get out, they will help you learn to use the maul twice a quick. I have found that foil hats help whenever one is in need of special assistance. Remember that when making your foil hat the shiny side goes out. If you put the shiny side in the government can read your thoughts.Oh and do not use the cheap foil when making your hat as it does not contain enough aluminum to block all the penetrating rays. WINDY ............STYLING ALL OVER TOWN WITH HIS FOIL HAT