And Gawd blefs us, evey wone!
–Simon
Fa La La La La 2024
Vise Vise Baby
I like old tools. They’re my primary focus when antiquing. They have an individual history with their prior owners, which I don’t know about but enjoy imagining, and I feel a sense of purpose when I buy one and add to its legacy. Plus they’re usually made better than their contemporary counterparts, have already proven their durability, and cost less.
And so it was that with the Veterans Day holiday, I went antiquing with Liz and acquired this bench vise:
I wanted to replace the cheap clamp-on that I had been using, which would never stay in place no matter how hard I cranked down its grips. Now I have a bench-mounted beast. 3 5/8, 2″ bolts say that it’s not going anywhere! I even added lock washers.
And for the second best part: researching the crap out of it! Starting with the cast printing, which reads “THE DESMOND STEPHAN MFG. CO.”
The Desmond-Stephan Manufacturing Company was founded sometime over 100 years ago1. It’s odd that I can’t find an exact date of incorporation, even on their own website2. I’m guessing that they don’t use it as their established date because they were probably a family business when they started operations and tax codes back then were somewhat different and they didn’t get an EIN until much later – ergo they don’t view that as their start date and want to proudly claim their lengthier history.
The vise design and manufacturing actually predated them anyway, having been the property of Simplex Tool Company, later Simplex Corporation, and was sold to Desmond-Stephan in 1931, who continued to make the vises until 1964, when they in turn sold the rights to Ridge Tool Company3. I’m assuming then that my particular vise was made by Desmond-Stephan during this 1931-1964 time period.
My vise, with a single-swivel base and a 3.75″ jaw width, is also conveniently listed in a company catalog from 19414. It has a listed price of $15. Adjusted for inflation using CPI, that’s around $320 today5. I got guud dearl!
Additionally, just for more historical nerding out; The Desmond-Stephan Manufacturing Company; which is in Urbana, OH; was just today at the time of me writing this post coincidentally featured in the local news’ callout that Ohio Magazine named the city as one of Ohio’s 5 best hometowns6. So we get a little bit of local Americana as part of the story too.
So there we have it: a chance find on an antique tool for a good price and made by a local company that’s apparently in one of Ohio’s best little towns to grow up in. I will feel honored the next time I have to cut a board or sharpen a lawnmower blade.
(Or dispatch of a murderous sentient doll.)
–Simon
1https://www.cepohio.com/key-industries.html
2http://www.desmond-stephan.com/
3http://vintagemachinery.org/mfgindex/detail.aspx?id=11518
4https://archive.org/details/desmondstephanmfgco1941/page/n3/mode/1up
Lights Out
I heard a joke once about why hurricanes are given women’s names. I won’t repeat it here, as it’s too lowbrow for even my blog, but I’m chuckling to myself nonetheless. Fortunately, she only took my silver maple when she left, and cut the power for 4 days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Helene
I’m no stranger to these weather events, but Ohio is not prepared for hurricanes. Tornadoes, we all collectively know it’s a gamble and if you get hit directly it’s game over, but hurricanes always seem to sneak in and do more damage than expected.
I am not a Prepper, but I am a Something Will Go Wrong-er, so I had some contingencies in place. Still, it’s interesting how quickly things go downhill without power. So, following the cataclysm, I took the opportunity to document a timeline of failure events for future reference. Here’s what I can expect for the next event that cuts off our electricity:
After…
- 2 hours, the UPS will fail and the network equipment will go offline (the internet was out anyway since the cable had been severed).
- 6 hours, the upright refrigerator/freezer will exceed 40 and 32 degrees, respectively.
- 20 hours, the emergency hall lights will fail.
- 48 hours, the cooler (if packed with ice), will exceed 40 degrees.
- 48 hours, the emergency basement light will dim to the point of being unusable.
- 72 hours, the chest freezer will almost reach 32 degrees.
More condensed, these are the priorities:
- Day 1: wired communications will fail and short-term food storage will reach unsafe temperatures. Backup lights will begin to fail.
- Day 2: More backup lights will continue to fail and the cooler will need to be restocked with ice if being used for backup food storage.
- Day 3: Long-term frozen food storage will begin to thaw.
Overall, we made it out with minimal losses, but the area that needs addressing is a backup power supply for the chest freezer. Provided we can source ice, refrigerator food can remain safe in the cooler, but substantial losses would have occurred had we not borrowed a generator. Lesson learned.
I also bought a chain saw.
–Simon
Easement Acres
With my post hole digger out from the squirrel centrifuge, I finally got around to installing one of my Christmas presents.
Now that the estate has an official name, it needed a declarative marker. So Liz bought a sign.
Which I then affixed to a plywood backer, painted for contrast.
And then erected in the gardens, alongside the pipeline easement.
Snarky, but in good humor.
–Simon
Eternal Damnation
Karens, cockroaches, and blood parasites will survive the apocalypse. I know this because Fallout told me which bugs will mutate into low-XP enemies. And Hollywood showed me how I’ll die horribly. And Karens will always tell me what I’ve done wrong, and will always exist in some form. If there were a just and loving God, then the bugs would kill the Karens. But there obviously isn’t if the apocalypse were allowed to occur. That would be a vengeful and punishing God. The Old Testament told me that.
Fortunately I live in pre-apocalypse times, so the bugs are smaller. The Karens are more numerous, but I’ll take the tradeoff. Here’s my latest attempts at blood parasite mitigation:
Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelensis. I stumbled upon this recently. The concept is as follows: put a bucket of water somewhere, fill it with debris so it mimics the kind of stagnant pools that mosquitoes like to lay their eggs in, and inoculate it with a mosquito dunk, which is a block of dormant bacteria (species mentioned above) that infects and kills insects. The idea is to gradually decimate the local mosquito lineage as they reproduce, with the caveat that the trap should be the only pool of standing water available. Persistence is the key here.
For more immediate needs, I use a fogger. But the compounds it uses are sold very diluted and are more repellent than lethal, obviously targeted to the casual consumer. Instead, I purchased something that’s more of a commercial variant: a standard Pyrethrins/Piperonyl Butoxide mix, as is growing in popularity. As a bonus, it’s considered “safe” for agricultural purposes. The latter chemical disqualifies it from being organic certified, but it’s better in theory than much of the long-living spectracides. And I enjoy seeing cucumber beetles flee in terror. Finger of God indeed.
And lastly, in an attempt to capture adult mosquitos actively searching for blood, there’s the lactic acid-baited UV trap. The bait simulates the smell and CO2 emissions of a human, and upon getting too close the mosquito is pulled into the trap via a fan and held in a basket where it’s exposed to UV light, killing it. This captures a lot of moths as collateral damage, probably more drawn to the UV, but we don’t like those either.
I have it on a smart timer that comes on one hour before sunset, with the goal of starting capture during optimal hunting time, with a dawn shutoff.
Results so far have been encouraging, though gross.
The verdict so far? Fewer mosquitoes, but they’re not gone entirely. I think I’d need to get my surrounding neighbors onboard, but I know that’s not going to happen. Regardless, I’ll settle for the net reduction, and hope the remnants are primarily biting the neighbors instead.
–Simon