All through our earlier lives we learned something that just doesn't seem to matter any longer. Things that time has forgotten because they were replaced by some sort of higher knowledge or machine. But every now and then, while in a conversation about whatever a light will come on above our head and we will come out with something akin to, " did you know that we used to...."? An example I would like to start with is a tool called a hand saw. Not many people use them any longer and the ones who do rarely know how to use them. My dad taught me an old trick that is just a, "did you know" type of thing. Some of the older craftsmen and carpenters kept their handsaws shined and with a thin coat of oil evenly spread over the blade. Okay, that sounds good but it wasn't just for looks or to just keep the saw free from rust. When the blade of a handsaw is set on say, a 2x4 piece of wood, the carpenter would look at the starting mark for his cut but also look at the reflection of the wood in his saw. If the saw blade was tilted in any manner, up or down, side to side, or the front of the blade not exactly in line with back, it would show up out of line in the reflection. A perfectly squared image from product to the reflection would guarantee a perfectly square cut. The older, more experienced guys rarely carried a square with them other than a framing square because they knew how to use their handsaw and why it was always shined. What's your, Did You Know?
My father was a carpenter, he may well have known that @Bobby Cole , I will never know.. MY O/H still uses a hand saw for certain jobs, like cutting the branches down into smaller piece for easier removal and other small jobs ... I'm sure he doesn't know that trick I'll tell him tho'..
Did you know - we were happy with making our own Christmas decorations and all the houses had the same As we visited others houses there was no competition, no inspection, we just saw at a glance it was a Christmas room full of cheer.
Here is one that I learned back when I was a teenager, and it still works; but I am not sure that anyone does it anymore. It is how to tell whether a horse is pregnant or not. You cut a long loop of baling twine in half, and wrap it around the horse's girth, just behind the front legs, about where a cinch goes when you put a saddle on. ( if the baling twine is not long enough to reach clear around, you can use a piece of clothesline rope instead) Then, you use the same twine and measure the horse around her flanks (ahead of the back legs). If the back measurement is larger, then the horse is in foal. This works no matter whether the horse is fat or skinny, and the further along in foal the mare is, the larger the back measurement will be compared to the front one. I think now they just take the mare in for an ultrasound to find out whether she is bred or not. The string trick is lots quicker and cheaper though.
LOL...I really needed a laugh today Joe.... and that made me laugh out loud... @Bobby Cole , as I suspected , his nibs didn't know about that oil trick , and he loves learning anything new, so he's gonna try using it next time and see if it works..
This is the best I could do on such short notice, @Joe Riley . It is almost the same as a horse, but you will need some bright colored baling twine to be sure of which is twine and which is not twine. Let us know whether she is pregnant or not.....
That is pretty close to right, @Gloria Mitchell . These are actually an unusual breed of donkey from France. they are one of the largest breeds of donkeys, and were used almost exclusively for breeding mules, back in the days when farm work was mostly done with a team of mules. After machinery took over, people stopped raising the donkeys, and they were almost extinct a few years ago. Here is a website with a little more info about the Poitou Donkey. http://www.arkinspace.com/2011/05/poitou-donkey-with-dreadlocks.html
A couple of painting tips: 1. MyDad worked at a Sherwin Williams Paint store when he was younger, and once used a gallon of Super Kemtone gray floor paint to fill a "pot hole" in the basement floor. It hardened like cement. 2. My Uncle was a Painter, and when painting a ceiling white, he would mix a cup of the wall color with the white ceiling paint. It would have a slight tint to avoid the stark white look. 3. When choosing exterior house colors, always look at the color chips, OUTSIDE.
Here is some old tricks that have been forgotten and no longer useful. As we were the first family to have TV in the neighborhood and at that time when it broke down the neighborhood children were not happy as they spent ever spare minuet in our living room. So when the TV quite we learned to take the back off take all the tubes out and run down to the local store which at that time had a tube tester. We would also take out the channel selector and clean all the points. These are some of the skills that have no place now. We even could fix our own car which in this day and age has become more complicated.
I remember all the tubes in TVs also....my husband was good at fixing our TV. Flat screen is pretty impressive!
Rulers on construction sights were sometimes a rarity among the workers. Whoever could afford a folding ruler or a cloth tape had them but those who didn't would bring some twine with them to work. The guys with the twine would use someone else's ruler to measure out 12" on the string and then put a small knot on each end. If they needed a foot then they used the whole string from knot to knot. For 6" it was folded in half and then half again for three inches. Or, some of the more exact guys would put a small knot at each inch. Amazingly, when my dad went to Costa Rica to do some construction in the late 80's, he came back and reported that they were still using the string method on his sites.
Or you could measure your body parts and use them for reference if you know the length of your hand for example.
Perhaps the old shipwrights might have actually employed that method of measurement. Where else would "all hands on deck" might have come from? Unless of course, it was Marco Rubio who said it.