What are your jeans doing today?

[Double 0 Soul]

Nice at Saltburn! when i visit one of my customers at Skinningrove i swing by for fish 'n chips by the sea before i head back home.

[MJF9]

Twas my first visit and will be going again... lovely place, free of the hubbub of the coastal towns with fairs nearby

Great fish n chips too (Seaview restaurant takeaway) - they taste so much better by the sea

[scooby]

Nothing but this for the rest of the day!

[lance]

I had a visitor come by this morning. If you look just to the right/bottom of the fence, you’ll see an alligator just off shore.

[julian-wolf]

Went for a quick hike in the hills east of Santa Cruz, this weekend: classic coastal / low-elevation Northern CA: green grass, live oaks, & wildflowers

 

Likely more photos coming in the next few days

[beautiful_FrEaK]

Amazing scenery there @julian-wolf !

[julian-wolf]

More photos in from my hiking partner, now incl. wildflowers, turkeys, mossy trees, major swaths of burn damage from recent wildfires, & jeans

[JDelage]

Wow, and all that time I thought "California poppies" were a branding gimmick...

[AlientoyWorkmachine]

@julian-wolf Looks like a fantastic time. I love being a new dad but makes me miss not being able to get out into the Blue Ridge this spring to go hike this spring so I'll live vicariously through this. Care to get out to Big Sur for me sometime soon? 

[Double 0 Soul]

Last Christmas my momz bought us a brazier for the garden, she probably felt a bit sorry for us using the old hobo biscuit tin.. y'know the mystic-biscuit tin with the Questlove apparition? ...when the package arrived she thought waitaminute!! 'this is a bit small and light for a brazier' opened it up and not being au fait with the interwebz she'd ordered a fire blanket by mistake..

Anywhoo... she said 'here i'll give you the dosh, you order it'  but i didn't really want some cheap, rust through in 12months Amazon special so i held out for a re-stock of the German made 6mm thick cast iron braziers and i put the rest of the dosh towards...

 

It arrived t'other day but we sit on a decked area and it would burn a black ring so i went to B&Q to get a base but they only had some wank 20mm thick faux-stepping stone so i went to Swifty's (our local architectural salvage yard) but i didn't want to pay £60 for a 6" thick millstone so i though fuck'it i'll make my own base for nowt...

 

I made a quick plywood mould out of some old set-outs, with a recess in the middle which would stop the brazier being knocked off it's pedestal and collect the ash-saturated rain water which runs through the drainage hole in the middle.

I coated the mould with Vaseline to aid with release....

Called in at Kelham Concrete for some advice re- the best mix, they gave me a bag of glass fibre strands and said 'chuck those in too, they'll help reinforce it without adding weight'

Put it in my homemade (welded some RSJ's together, sat on a ply base with gasket glue and draught seal around the top with an acrylic lid, connected to a compressor) vacuum chamber to force the air out

Topped it up and trowled it off

24hrs later..... Cut the tape and peel off the outer

Leonard the cat inspecting my handiwork

It's not quite dry, it'll be very pale grey in a week or two..

There you have it

...and a bonus shot of a slightly swankier GRP mould ive been working on this week

Edited May 2, 2021 by Double 0 Soul

[Maynard Friedman]

Very swish. We have a brazier on our deck and I just put a couple of spare roof slates under the base! 

[Double 0 Soul]

A friend of mine makes/upcycles braziers out of old Calor Gas canisters, hinged door on the front, shelf for cooking food and a chimney out the top... ive had one on order for 3 f***ing years, i even gave him the damn gas canister but he was doing it for nowt... he usually charges £50 for the small and £80 for the large, i assume folks with cash take priority 

[Thanks_M8]

Is it a petromax brazier? Got a waffle iron from them, great thing. Only wish the handles were detachable, but works great as it is.

[freshwater]

nice walk yesterday on the Malvern Hills

[Double 0 Soul]

5 hours ago, Thanks_M8 said:

Is it a petromax brazier? Got a waffle iron from them, great thing. Only wish the handles were detachable, but works great as it is.

No, it was from Waitrose... i do have some cast iron Petromax goodies posted in the Nice Things thread.

[Maynard Friedman]

Took the pooch for a walk around Hampstead Heath today. Here’s the London skyline from Parliament Hill.

Bonus photo of pooch resting at home after walk.

Edited May 3, 2021 by Maynard Friedman

[Thanks_M8]

35 minutes ago, Double 0 Soul said:

No, it was from Waitrose... i do have some cast iron Petromax goodies posted in the Nice Things thread.

aah yes, I remember, the BBQ wasn't it?

[Maynard Friedman]

Here’s our cast iron brazier from Graham & Green - looks like yours Neal. We previously had a cheap one with legs from B&Q or similar that fell apart after about a year.

Don’t be alarmed by the jaunty angle of the parasol and stand, it’s bungee-tied to a large vertical wooden post!

Edited May 3, 2021 by Maynard Friedman

[Double 0 Soul]

Thers a few different companies which sell them, i think they all come from the same foundry..

We had a terracotta chiminea at the old house stood on a wraught iron stand, it was pretty damn good and lasted years but it eventually cracked (i think the boy booted the footy at it) it was still useable but it wouldn't have survived the move so we left it for the folks who moved in.

If you want an exorbitantly priced base, you know where to come

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by Double 0 Soul

[julian-wolf]

@AlientoyWorkmachine would love to, but not sure how much of Big Sur is open these days—after the fires a few years ago it seemed like a whole big swath was closed down for the foreseeable future, no? At least up North around Julia Pfeiffer…sad times to be a California outdoorsman (or maybe a just a member of the younger generation, in general)

@JDelage they’re pretty much everywhere, this time of year. Always really nice to be on a ridge or in a valley in the evening and see one side all closed up for the night and the other side still open soaking up sun, or the reverse in the morning

[AlientoyWorkmachine]

As luck (or a very generous partner) would have it I was able to get out with a friend for about 36 hours over the weekend to get in a few short hikes and make some work off the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

The goal was to check out a few "balds" - treeless mountaintops, usually because of clearcutting decades ago. I'm more or less a stay at home dad right at the moment but my art practice isn't going away, it's just mostly dormant for a bit. Anyways, while the view at these places is amazing most of the work I do has to do with places that have some kind of history of blatant mediation in the landscape. While I make landscape pictures - these images below aren't my work - just some iphone pics to catalog the trip a bit. 

We started off at Max Patch, which used to be a cattle and sheep pasture and even had a landing strip for airplanes ~100 yrs ago. It's right off the AT (Appalachian Trail) so you cross paths with some serious hikers from time to time who stop to enjoy the view. I'm also not sure how much they love us denim clad car hikers.

small car park after about 10 miles on gravel roads - if it's full you're SOL and need to drive the 30-40 min back out. Not quite peak season yet thankfully.

A quick view from up top.

Then crashing at the Pisgah Inn right off the parkway. It's usually tough to get a room there, but travel is still down because of Covid, and also early season. I'd never been able to get a spot at the Inn during my 5 years living in NC - so I was happy to get it finally. 

Dusk from my dinner spot. 

Doing this trip in one of my preferred tuxes - Companion Natural Indigo jacket / MF midnight 64's. Hat is Cottle. 

Woke up to that Thomas Cole / Hudson River Valley painters kinda light the next morning. The city I live in is just forested and hilly enough that I really don't get to see much sunrise/sunset so this was a treat. 

Hit a couple of more spots the after this before jetting back down the hills but will leave it here. 

Probably the last time I get up there before our family moves back to the Midwest so while a short trip I'll take it. 

@julian-wolf any part of Big Sur will do if it's open. I have no idea how it is these days, it's been almost a decade since I got out there but some of my favorite camping I've ever done - there was a spot off highway one first come first serve no reservation - overlooking the sea. Just bananas. 

[Double 0 Soul]

Did a spot of urban fishing in the Sheaf this morning, jumped over the railway bridge and climbed down the wall..

Caught 4 nice trout in 1.5hrs with a perch plug (for reference, the lure is 3" long so the fish was around 16")

This was the best of em...

I spotted them in the river on my walk up Abbeydale Rd last weekend

Edited May 13, 2021 by Double 0 Soul

[smoothsailor]

Not just today, but I made a  cargo fork (3) for a 20” wheel so you can load up on your bike.

pretty fun to make and drive. I mounted it on my old race bike.

plan is to deliver one in Amsterdam, a 200 km bike ride

[julian-wolf]

Spent the last few days hiking up and down the far south end of the Lost Coast / living on beaches

Very, very pretty country

The density of foliage made me think more of WA or MT or BC, not CA—especially not drought-ridden CA—& being able to safely build fires was a lovely change of pace

Plenty of wild garlic & nettles to snack on; fresh mussels harvested for lunch on Monday; good swimming & good bouldering

Unmaintained trail w/ heavy poison oak coverage, so persimmon Cane’s & long sleeves were worn throughout

[AlientoyWorkmachine]

@julian-wolf now this is the stuff I'm here for. At one point there were plans to explore this area. I used to see a prof out in the Bay area and we would hit up different coastal areas whenever I would get out there. Sad I missed on this one. My life (happily) went in another direction since that time but I will never be able to get enough of the coastal area out West, all the way up to northern WA state. Maybe eventually, though I'm pretty happy with what's more local these days. 

It's not pictures of scenery so much but there's a pretty great documentary photographer who did a project out that a ways. https://www.dashwoodbooks.com/pages/books/16755/curran-hatleberg/lost-coast?soldItem=true Too bad the book is $900 on the used market now. 

Looks like a beautiful trip - hope you didn't get too chewed up by the plants or the flies. 

[MJF9]

We met George walking his dog on the beach at Saltburn-on-Sea (see previous page) who mentioned Skinningrove only a few miles south along the coast
It turns out it's an old mining village with a steelworks, now demised and in decline respectively

Glorious sunshine on a big ole glorious beach - just beware what some dog walkers leave behind!

Thankfully there was no need to call Northumbrian Water

Spotted a street named after our very own jolly japester - blue badge pending, no doubt

Short visit over and out!

Edited May 28, 2021 by MJF9

[gnewix]

From last week...took my Edwin ED80s for a hike in the Peak District. 

[beautiful_FrEaK]

Had a day off and we took a little walk near the lake

Spotted a Zeppelin 

Walked through the vineyards

An old Mercedes turned into a little shop

A view of the lake (alps hidden by clouds)

The monastery Birnau

A nearby castle

And more local and older architecture 

[lance]

Nice post, b_F! I’m here for the indigo and denim, but this may be my favorite thread, great page everyone!

[Double 0 Soul]

After my bikes got robbed from our bikeshed, i started taking my commuter in the house at night, this is a f'kin pain when it's raining, anyhow ive currently got a few bikes stored at work and a few in the cellar. Our cellar floor is always damp because of the underground streams making their way to the Porter so i only keep those bikes in the cellar which are in constant use...I wanted to bring one of the bikes home from work for the summer but didn't want to leave it in the cellar so i bought a cheap bike hook to hang it in the stairwell which leads down to the cellar..

 

 

..but it wouldn't fit where i wanted it to fit so i decided to make my own hinged bike hanger which i can flip out of the way when not in use and position the bike exactly.

 

Made a wooden model which follows the desired position of the bike, tapering away from the wall, following the angle from back tyre, past pedals to bars.

 

..with a loose section spot glued in place with a couple of spots of superglue (you was right @Duke Mantee)

 

..built a little frame around the loose end section

 

..mixed some polyurethane resin

 

..poured it into the frame, trying not to get it over the edges while simultaneously looking through the camera

 

..had some breakfast while the resin cured

 

..removed the resin mould

 

..removed the loose section

 

..drilled 4x holes underneath the loose section, 1x to cast into and 3x to let the air out.

 

...coated the mould with mould release solution

 

..put the mould back into position over the bracket with what was the loose section, now a cavity within the mould.

Decided against silicone, what i use is condensation-cure, the chemical reaction of the catalyst draws in moisture from the environment so when it's hot/humid (like today) you get less pot-life (pot-life isn't as fun as what you're thinking ) and the rubber needs to flow through the thin section before it started the thicken so i used a rubberised resin instead which gives you 40mins pot life, after which time the chemical reaction of the hardener warms the resin to cure.. it's only rubberised to stop the top tube getting scratched on a hard surface.

 

..mixed the resin and ran it through the vacuum chamber to force the air out, cast the mould, ran the mould through the vac chamber to force out any trapped air and while that cured..i started to make the hinge

 

 

.. remembered i had a large spare roller hinge in my toolbox

 

..super-bling chrome offended my sensibilities, so i rubbed it down with some wirewool  and inserted and it into the brackets (it's trickier than you think, accurately inserting an internal hinge, usually you position the barrel is on the outside, but i had to carve out the ply to accept it and still get all faces to close without any gaps)

 

..de-moulded, ive dropped the rubber below the surface to prevent it pealing away from the ply

 

..and there you have it, the world's most overengineered bike hanger.

 

..painted the back to cover up the holes which i cast through

 

 

..added a little roller catch to hold it to the wall when not in use

 

Ta Daaa!

Edited June 9, 2021 by Double 0 Soul