blacksmithing take two

With the cold weather ensuing one thing is eminent in my family, a fire. now your normal wood fire has very little practical smelting or blacksmithing applications, too much soot, not hot enough etc. However there is one thing they are good for, making charcoal. We all need some sort of fuel to heat our kilns, and some including me do not have the ability or time to go drive into eastern Oregon to get a tonne or so of coal to use, even though it only costs a few dollars. which leaves my fuel of choice to be charcoal, at least until I can get my waste oil burner working properly.
     So how do you go about making charcoal in a fireplace without it all burning up with the fire? It's really not all that hard, all that you need is a good nice steel can, the thicker the better. The can needs to have a loose lid or holes in the top to allow the wood gas somewhere to escape to. Fill the can full of wood and stick it in your fire and let  It sit in the fire until you don't see any more smoke or flames coming out of the holes or edge of the lid then let it sit in there for another ten minutes then pull it out leave the lid on until its cooled down then use the charcoal to your hearts content.
      About the flames coming out of the lid this is because of wood gas production which then the wood gas catches on fire, you don't have to worry about your charcoal burning. Wood gas is a product of heated up wood it is highly flammable, so flammable in fact that it can be used to power a car if the engine is converted slightly.
      So after an entire winter of this I should build up enough of a stock to be able to run the entire summer without having to buy any charcoal. if you have any questions leave a comment or shoot me a message.

MORMONS ARE AWESOME

So I don't know how many of my readers are LDS, or how we are affectionately known, Mormon. As many in the Idaho area know the Boise temple was just refurbished, redone, redesigned, and redecorated. Now it is time for it to be rededicated, which will happen on this Sunday the 18th. Before the dedication our prophet Thomas S. Monson has asked the youth of the temple district and the rest of Idaho to have put on a cultural celebration.
     For the past couple of months the youth have been meeting in their respective wards and stakes learning the dance routines if they are on the dance crew, and learning the songs if they are in the choir. I personally am in the choir, and in fact so is our very own Dan. its been great because i was able to have a spiritual experience at each of the practices, when we were singing songs of praise, to our God.
     So this Saturday the 17th we are having a huge rehearsal and then do the presentation for our beloved prophet. That is what I get to do all of tomorrow, sing praises and then preform to the mouthpiece of God on our earth at this time Thomas S. Monson. 

Jazz Combo

      A Friend of mine who is in choir with me is an amazing pianist. And a few weeks ago he was playing in our auditorium and he said hey Andrew come in here with your trumpet, and because I'm always the curious type and i love doing anything involving music i said sure what do you want me to do. I walked in there and he played me a song. He told me there were four parts to the song and he wanted to jam with me. So we worked in the next ten or so minutes through the four parts of the song and then jammed on our newly written song. 

     So for the past few weeks we have been developing our sound and working through this song multiple times, just listening and jamming and seeing how it goes. So far its been going great, we play twice a week or so just through the song that we recreate remix distort and fix every time. It is great. The "practices" (more like jam sessions) are different every time  some times the song is super upbeat and happy, the other times its kind of a slow swing jazz where it flows very methodically over the notes. 

      The only reason we call it the same song is because from practice to practice can hear the old song in the new one. Every time we come into practice he says how does it go and I say "A" minor and he says oh yeah, and then we play, and that's why it is different every time, because neither of remember what the old song sounded like. 

     So yeah if anyone needs a little two man jazz combo to come play for hours on end with it all being different and with little to no down time hit me up with a message, we work cheap, and we bothe double up as male vocalists.  

final note on algae bioreactor

I went outside to check on my algae bucket and found that it was full of water. I stuck a stick down to see if I still had my layer of algae on the bottom, and I didn't. So its still sitting out there, maybe this time next year it will have lost all its water again  but anyways that's the end of my algae project for this year, largely because Idaho just gets slightly too cold every night. maybe Ill work on my VAWT, vertical axis wind turbine, and try to get a battery bank to charge and a use for that battery bank, maybe powering my sisters dogs heat lamp?