Sheilajeanne

Chuck, statistically 50% of the calves born are male. My uncles would castrate them and keep them until they were old enough to sell for veal. It may be different now, but that's how they did it. So, 50/50 sex split...male calves were pastured and grass fed, minimum cost as long as pasture was good.

Chuck, for many years there were two dairy farmers in my family. Of course they keep the cows for breeding and milking, but they are only 50% of the herd. The males are treated pretty much exactly the way male beef cows are treated: castrated at a young age, fattened up and sold for slaughter when they reach their full growth. Beef farmers generally keep the females to increase the size of their herd. So, no, I don't really see the difference. The hide of an old beef cow is going to be just as stretched as the hide of an old Holstein dairy cow.

Fred, sometimes the sale price is limited to a specific seller. This particular book would cost me $13.77 because I'm in Canada, and the sale price is only available to U.S. residents. They occasionally do have books that are available for Kobo users only, and I've installed the Kobo app on my tablet so I can read those books too. I love reading, and this service has turned me into an e-book junkie! After seeing how much money I'd spent in one month, I have learned to restrain myself, though have seriously thought of getting an Amazon Kindle subscription for $9.99 a month! One drawback to the book (from reading the reviews) is it's not a 'how to' book, but mostly just focuses on interviewing the people who still do these crafts. However, some of the interviews do give valuable information on how the crafts are done - look at the diagrams for the wheelwright. The leather bottle interview also gives some valuable information about how this particular craftsperson makes the bottles. Re: bitumen - it definitely contains carcinogenic chemicals: https://www.anses.fr/en/content/exposure-bitumen Definitely would not want to drink out of bottles lined with it! Dwight, I really can't understand why they would only use beef cattle for the hides. Beef cows have to produce just as many babies as milk cows, and when they can no longer get pregnant, they go to slaughter. That makes no sense to me. Males of both types of cattle are castrated at a young age, and eventually slaughtered for meat. The only difference I can think of is dairy cattle are generally leaner than beef cattle, so would be less likely to have fat wrinkles in the hides. And that's and advantage rather than a disadvantage!

Yes, I thought that might interest some people here who make drinking vessels.

I receive a daily notice through Early Bird Books of e-books that are available at a discount price. You can read a certain portion of the book for free to help you decide if you want to buy it. Today's picks included a book on Forgotten Crafts https://www.amazon.com/Book-Forgotten-Crafts-David-ebook/dp/B0072MXMZE/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ZJ7XU463C7TX&keywords=The+Book+of+Forgotten+Crafts&qid=1672425042&sprefix=the+book+of+forgotten+crafts%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1 The section you can read for free covers both the work of a tannery and a shop that makes bottles and other drinking vessels out of leather. The tannery, J. and F.J. Baker in England, is the only one in Britain which still uses the traditional oak bark tanning method. Because of this, its leather is in very high demand by high-end users, especially saddle and bridle makers. There has been a tannery on this site since Roman times. Happy reading!

Glad you edited the title, Frodo! When I first read it I thought, 'wait, did someone have a really bad date?'

I have something similar, rktaylor, but it's on its own base, and the bulb is halogen rather than LED. One of these days I should upgrade to LED as the halogen bulb is very hot and no doubt burns a lot of electricity. I have considered a headband, too, due to the problem with the shadows created by my own hand, but haven't gone that route yet. I also have a 3 ft long LED fixture attached to the shelf just above my work area, which gives a lovely bright light. Those new LED fixtures that have replaced fluorescent tubes are great! Highly recommend them.

Interesting question! Following....

Whoops! Thanks for pointing that out!

Is this what you want, Chuck? This is part of a post from a member of Twitter's Trust and Safety Council, three of whom resigned this week over Musk's new moderation policies: The 'new' Twitter has also 'refused to remove child porn': https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/twitter-sued-for-allegedly-refusing-to-remove-child-porn/amp/

What dye are you using? People have commented on Fiebing's USMC black dye not taking well. You can buff until your arms are about to fall off, and it will still be bleeding into the rag.

Yeah, Tim and I may be at each other's throats over politics, but he does very nice work... Tim, shortly after seeing this, I saw a post on FB that looked very similar, and wondered if someone was copying your work. I pulled them up side by side, and the difference in tooling made it very obvious which work was yours! I really can't post it here, as I don't have permission, but remember those tooling tips Stohlman used to do, showing good tooling vs. bad? The one on FB was the poster child for what not to do...

Cool! Good luck with the project!

LOL! I've been sewing a lot with artificial sinew lately, and the stuff is a total PITA with the way it tends to split apart. My solution was to buy the cheapest possible beeswax candle at a local craft show the other day! Buying bulk beeswax was just too expensive, as it was always in the quantities you'd need for making candles, not waxing a couple of feet of thread! I find just running the candle along the length of the thread is good enough for waxing it.

The pieces I see there look like they are from an English riding saddle. Do Australian stock saddles have horns? Can't say I've ever seen one up close, though I did watch The Man From Snowy River many moons ago.

Here's what I do - do you have MS Paint on your computer? Unless you have a Mac, you probably do. Send the picture to your computer. Open it in Paint. In the top menu bar you will see an option to Resize. Click on that, and select a figure of about 500 pixels. If you select for height, the other dimension resizes automatically to keep the photo in proportion. Save the photo. If you have some reason to save the original 1.6 mB photo give the smaller one a new name.

Good luck with your project! We all have to learn at some time, and there are lots of experienced saddle makers on this board to help you out!

Belt blanks are too wide to make leashes. You use the strap cutter to cut them to the size you want.

As a German shepherd person, who's taken part in Schutzhund, I'm familiar with the breed!

Very nice! Yup, a malingator needs a sturdy collar with a handle! Is Josie a mal too? I like your edges - great job! Looks like you used edge paint?

This is what my workspace looked like when I first started crafting: Then I moved...really need to post a photo of my current workspace, which is many times the size!

Too funny! You guys are great!

One summer, I was working as an outdoor education teacher in a park in downtown Toronto where there had been a number of rapes. One woman had died. When I finished my teaching for the day, I had to walk through the park, alone, on my way to another school where I was studying to get my French as a Second Language teaching certificate. Needless to say, I was not very comfortable doing this. I had an old WWII gas mask bag that I used as my carryall when teaching. I also had a hunting knife with a wooden handle, and a 6 1/2 inch blade. The handle made it look like maybe it was something other than a knife. It could have passed for a gardening tool. It fitted nicely in a leather sheath, and was mostly hidden inside a pocket in the bag. I probably would have been in trouble with the cops if they had ever stopped me, but they never did. It was one of the very few times in my life where I'd felt the need to carry a weapon.

Before our ancestors figured out how to knap flint, they made spears out of sharpened sticks that had been hardened in a fire. That looks like a pretty useful weapon you made her, and no one's going to complain about her carrying it!

There's still a few good ones out there!