Hobbies... what are yours?

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

What are you guys up to in your free time? I want to know and I want photos!!! D I'll get some posted soon)

This year I have literally spent almost all my time making knives but I have a lot of hobbies when I have the time.

Exploring - I live in a great area for exploring with lots of public land, four wheeling trails, abandoned mines and public forest. When I can I like to get out and go somewhere I haven't been before, I enjoy the adventure.

Rock collecting/Lapidary work - I have always been into rock collecting, anthropology and geology. I enjoy looking for the right areas to find specimens or minerals for jewelry. I have fun on a hobby level and once cut and collected stone for a living... on my better days I have mined up to a ton of commercial material.

Brewing beer and wine - I enjoy homebrewing, I like to design and make my own all grain and mini-mash beers and lots of fun country wines. Belgian brewing methods really intrigue me as well as trying to make the perfect Applewine.

Music - Music rocks! I have fun playing drums, guitar, bass and keyboard. I used to record and produce/program a lot of music years back. I played in a bunch of bands... punk, blues, metal, jazz, my own drum and bass and house music... I love it all. I was in a punk band earlier this year and dabble in blues guitar... Lightning Hopkins being one of my biggest influences.

Gardening - I usually have a big garden each year for food and really enjoy lots of plants. I used to live in the Caribbean and have had just about every tropical plant you can grow, from sugar apple to vanilla orchids, tons of palms and fruit trees. I currently own a place on the north face of a mountain at 7500 feet elevation and am trying to figure out what works best here, we have planted apple and plum trees, blueberries, grapes and horseradish as well as seasonal gardens each year... potatoes seem to do well.

Snowboarding - I usually go a ton! I need to get out this year, I have a weekday pass! I go kind of slow but hit all the jumps and some of the rails, it is a lot of fun. My wife and I like to go together but this year we are having fun planning for out baby! Here in a few years we will all go!

Knife Making - when I get tired of making knives I make more on the side, LOL!!! It is too addictive!!!

 

[awc]

I'm an avid skiier and sailor. Here is a picture from the Canadian Inter-Collegiate Team Racing Championships (we came in second).

Music: I play French Horn in the College concert band, as well as sing in the choir (tenorish).

 

[bigcountry1315]

Mine as you all know is bow hunting. Having been a master firearms trainer for 12 years I enjoy shooting IDPA and police combat matches.Have not shot any matches since I hurt my spine but am hoping to be able to do it again some day! Lots of moving and shooting. I have quite a few trophies. I had so many at one point I donated most of them for a kids 22 tournament we sponsored a few years ago.

 

[bigcountry1315]

Oh almost forgot and using hard use knives!

 

[theflyingplatypus]

Besides knife collecting I am heavy into fishing. I am currently outfitting a fishing kayak for this coming fishing season and am having a blast with all the accessories and possibilities. I also build fishing rods and tie jigs (also a blast).

I am thinking about getting into knife making, but am unsure of how it would work with my finances. A KMG alone would be more than my pimped out kayak! Currently I am working on some kitchen knives and have them almost ready for HT. We will see how those go.

Kaleb

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

I'm an avid skiier and sailor. Here is a picture from the Canadian Inter-Collegiate Team Racing Championships (we came in second).

Music: I play French Horn in the College concert band, as well as sing in the choir (tenorish).

Cool stuff! Race boats have always intrigued me, I used to spend a lot of time designing them as a hobby.

Mine as you all know is bow hunting. Having been a master firearms trainer for 12 years I enjoy shooting IDPA and police combat matches.Have not shot any matches since I hurt my spine but am hoping to be able to do it again some day! Lots of moving and shooting. I have quite a few trophies. I had so many at one point I donated most of them for a kids 22 tournament we sponsored a few years ago.

Very nice! I need to get a bow, I used to have a few of them and they were a lot of fun.

Oh almost forgot and using hard use knives!

Exactly!!!

Besides knife collecting I am heavy into fishing. I am currently outfitting a fishing kayak for this coming fishing season and am having a blast with all the accessories and possibilities. I also build fishing rods and tie jigs (also a blast).

I am thinking about getting into knife making, but am unsure of how it would work with my finances. A KMG alone would be more than my pimped out kayak! Currently I am working on some kitchen knives and have them almost ready for HT. We will see how those go.

Kaleb

Nice! I was just looking into building fishing rods, sounds fun.

Knifemaking... stop now while you are ahead!!! lol Just kidding... I think a 1x30 for hogging metal and a drill press are great additions to files/paper. KMG's sure do rock but unless you want to make a ton of knives they aren't necessary. My swords were done with files and paper, they stay dead straight that way.

Cool stuff guys!

 

[theflyingplatypus]

Yeah, I won't be making many that's for sure. Mostly kitchen knives probably. I just have to many other things in the works and the more you have the harder it is to get good at one thing. I will always be a collector, especially if guys like you keep making me spend all my money.

On fishing rods: If you are super into fishing and cannot settle for production stuff then building them is worth it. If not, then you are better off making knives. You usually don't save any money either.

Kaleb

 

[fast14riot]

As many of you regulars here know, I sail semi-pro. I own a few racing dinghies but mostly race other peoples boats. I am a bowman and also a trimmer. I don't pretend to be great at driving, so I leave that for the real pro's. I have also managed a few raceboats over the years, which can be fun at times. Maintenance work is just part of the job description. This is one ride at the Rolex International Big Boat Series from 2006 I believe, I don't have many pics of me racing. That's the south west face of Alcatraz Island in the background.

That's me in the red hat on the left, we tied for third this regatta.

I also have hunted and shot competitively most my life, but now mostly enjoy building custom guns and rebuilding old one into something new. My curent project is this date stamped 10-1918 US Rifle, Caliber 30, Model 1917 by Eddystone. AA grade quilted maple custom monte carlo rollover stock with rose wood tip/cap, fully jeweled bolt body/extractor/follower, custom homebuilt adjustable trigger take-up, converted to cock on closing, milled and trued receiver, and custom barrel length. Still lots of work to do on this one, though...including finishing the stock.

You can see some of the quilting in the wood here, even though it is only 60grit sanded right now.

I also love cooking, my wife is a chef which means, naturally, that I do most all the cooking at home! I also have a '66 Bug I am building, I have (had) a decent bike collection, I was a musician for 20 years, love dancing with my wife at home for no reason, and just being a dad to my two-and-a-half year old son, Zyler.

I am sure there are other things I tend to spend time on that I am not listing, oh yeah, I like to make miniature knives, too.


-Xander

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

Cool stuff Xander! That 1917 rifle is looking good!

Nice sailing photos, I have a couple of those red hats myself!

 

[zxcvr13]

Daniel, you got any pictures of your mineral collecting/Lapidary work you can post ?

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

Daniel, you got any pictures of your mineral collecting/Lapidary work you can post ?

Check it out!I need to find some more photos, I have a ton somewhere...

Here is a 22# sowbelly agate from the Last Chance Mine in Creede, CO. It was collected by my friend Dick Lackmond.

Here's what I started with. The sandbags are to keep my truck on the road in the snow. Oh yeah, they also reduce bruises and cracking when polishing big stuff like this.

Here it is after most of the high spots and bruises have been removed. This material is so hard and solid I decided to leave in some of the veils and vugs. The vugs are neat too, one barely got exposed; now it is a window to a geode.

Here is a very poor photo of the finished stone. I'll try to get a better one, the stone looks much better in person. Funky angle too... I took it to 50,000 and it looks like liquid when the sun hits it right.

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[theflyingplatypus]

Gorgeous! I wish we had good mines/geo sites around here.

Kaleb

 

[bigcountry1315]

Xander keep me posted on that 1917 project.A friend of mine had his dads 1917 rifle rebuilt.Birdseye Maple,Douglas rifle barrel and a timiney trigger and topped it with a Leoupold scope. He took it to Quebec with us on a caribou hunt and shot 2 nice ones.Even though it looks like a collectors piece it is more the sentimental value for him.

 

[fast14riot]

Sure thing Big. This rifle had an old Lyman Alaskan 2.5 scope with a Griffin and Howe quick release side mount that I took off and sold for more than I paid for the entire gun and scope together! I used that money to pay for the piece of wood it sits in now. This gun was tricked out pretty well sometime in the 1950's, they took the fore end wood and cut it back, used it to build a monte carlo comb, pillar bedded, they did some trigger work, milled the receiver, cut and recrowned the barrel, and a few other little things.

One thing about these Eddystone riles is you shouldnt pull the barrel, the receiver is prone to cracking because they were heat treated differently than the Remingtons or Winchesters. This barrel is in really good condition, it can hold sub-moa out to about 250yards. That was with a 2.5 scope as well, I can't see well enough to do better than that with a low power scope.

I'm thinking of doing an Aqua Fortis stain on it to make the curl really pop but a satin hand rubbed finish. Still on the fence about bead blasting or polishing the metal. I kinda think the bead blast would look good an make it a durable finish. Another option is the Laurer Custom gun paint, which I have done on a couple of guns before and like how it turns out, but don't know if it's for this gun.


-Xander

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

These 2 Buck knives I re-scaled were my first venture into knifemaking! The scales are made from Desert Scene Jasper and Sanchez Jasper (and a little copper intarsia) which are both from my area. I wasn't finished polishing these when I took the photos.

I collected about half the stones myself. The purple stone (bottom photo) is Royalite, a super rare stone that is also a platinum ore.

black jade guitar pick

welo opal!

cabs...

other stuff...

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

My buddies gold mine...

My friend picking away at a vein of Sylvanite, a rare form of Tellerium Gold.

My bro-in-law and the owner in a large room in the main adit, there is a vertical shaft here that goes up to 4 more levels and down to one. This mine had stopes (cathedral ceiling mined rooms) up to 200 feet high and ladders, side shafts and drops everywhere. Most of the mining was done around the turn of the century but there is still literally tons of gold in the mine.

View from outside the mine

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

Here's a spot I really enjoy, the Sunnyside Mine. Most of the gold coins made in the USA have gold in them from this mine, the output here was tremendous. There is over 100 miles of tunnels and it was mined for over 100 years straight, for many of the years it was mined around the clock 7 days a week. I always keep gold in mind when I'm collecting here but I mainly come for the Rhodonite. There is about 100 varieties of specimens you can find here; Galena, Spahlerite... some of the best Rhodochrosite in the world has been found here as well, a 1" gem grade cube can easily be worth $5000.

The first photo is the remains of the mill, it was a couple of miles downhill from the mine site. The worlds most advanced tram system (at the time) was engineered to take the ore to this mill where it was processed. The main structure was a big mill built in the 1920's IIRC, the original mill's foundation is the small line you see to the left. The miners used to ski down this hill in the 1880's with homemade skis and take the tram back up! Funny enough the other side of the mountain is an active ski hill, Shawn White did his Olympic training nearby. It would be a great spot with over 30 feet of snow on average each winter!

View of the Sunnyside Mine mill, the road to the mine is the one behind the mill going upwards from the right to left.

Here I am looking through the mine dumps at the Sunnyside mine for rhodonite.

Locally everyone calls this rhodonite because it is almost the same thing. Rhodonite is MnSiO2 and Pyroxmangite is MnSiO3. They are both manganese silicates, pyroxmangite got the name becuse it is in the pyroxene group with manganese and Rhodonite means rose-stone in latin.

Here is some information about pyroxmangite: http://www.mindat.org/min-3327.html

I think this stuff is more like a 6.5 on the Mohs scale because of the high silica content, it polishes to a glass like sheen.

Here are some cabs and specimens my wife and I polished.
These are really big by the way, the calibrated cab is a 30x40 mm.
Notice the windowed rock, the rough will look like this but without the window. ;D

Here is a big piece I polished, probably 5 pounds or more.

 

[combs6136]

Nothig exciting like you guys, but i ride 4 wheelers a lot....Down in the elk country of Ky....Rode my bike over 8,000 miles last year.....I am into ham radio...Really into photography.....Keep my cameras used a lot.....For a 74 year old with 7 grand kids thats enough.........................Really into knife making.....Just heat treated some 1095 today.....Mostly hunters.........Oh yes, i just tried to grind off the end of my finger....Does that count?.....carl.....ps i need to learn how to post pictures..........

 

[Daniel Fairly Knives]

Nothig exciting like you guys, but i ride 4 wheelers a lot....Down in the elk country of Ky....Rode my bike over 8,000 miles last year.....I am into ham radio...Really into photography.....Keep my cameras used a lot.....For a 74 year old with 7 grand kids thats enough.........................Really into knife making.....Just heat treated some 1095 today.....Mostly hunters.........Oh yes, i just tried to grind off the end of my finger....Does that count?.....carl.....ps i need to learn how to post pictures..........

Sounds like lots of fun to me! 8000 miles on a bike too!

I want to see some of your knives! I'm good at finger grinding myself, I guess it counts as a part time hobby!

Thanks again for sending me the handle material and I'll be sure to keep you posted when I use it! It looks like nice stuff to me and is grippy as it gets.

 

[woodkrafter]

My main hobby is woodworking. Here's a couple of gifts I have made for my family:

A napkin holder made from pine and walnut

A storage/wine box made from mahogany, oak and walnut.