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Fellow rodmakers: Mark Twain defined April 1 as that day that reminds us of what we are the other 364. In honor of Mr. Twain, and rodmaking foolishness, we once again invoke a wee contest: Describe an absurd event that occurred during your rodmaking this past year (or two). Examples of past entries include being jammed in the butt with a butt section, a black lab playing keep away with a tip section, submerging the entire rod in the dip tube, etc. These can be seen on Todd's tips site under extreme rodmaking. Here are the rules: 1. All entries must be posted to list. 2. All stories must be true, with no more embellishment that is customary pursuant to your rodmaking persona as defined by Jeff Wagner (teacher, crank, grand poobah, etc.). 3. Bob Nunley is ineligible. Bob would win anyway, and has turned pro in the sense that he has published his misfortunes in his book "Extreme rodmaking". We honor and recognize Bob with a lifetime achievement award and the satisfaction that none of us could surpass his ever more creative and daring ways of finding himself in the ER. 4. I have appointed myself as chair, judge, and arbitrator of this here contest, and assume all responsibility for decisions, which are always correct and not to be questioned. 5. There may be a prize for the winner. Or not. So let's here about the scariest, most amusing, and costly mishaps of the past year. Here is my contribution to get things started: Several years ago I watched Chris Bogart make beautiful strips by splitting oversized strips and squaring them on a beveler. I made my own squaring beveler powered by a router. It worked beautifully for about 3 strips when the bolts I had used to hold the router on to beveler let go while the thing was turning at about 20000 rpm's. The router ate the strip, the beveler's bed, and the beveler faceplate before the bit finally came off and when flying past my hand and into space. I think I found it later inside a glove that was on a shelf several feet away. I had to rebuild the beveler, throw away that entire section because I had no matching strip, and buy a new router bit because it took 6 months to find the original where it had come to rest. But I was happy because wherever that bit went, it did not come into contact with me. (Jeff Schaeffer) I will start with this one. A few weeks ago, I was roughing out some strips on my newly made quad beveler. I removed my gloves and laid them on the bench. When I put my gloves back on and started to run a few more strips through, I felt something in one of the fingers of the glove. I just ran a strip through the beveler and noticed that finger on the glove was red. When I pulled the glove off there was blood all over my hand. The "thing" in the finger of the glove was a razor blade. How it got there from the time I was using the glove till I put it back on, I will never know. It was only a matter of minuets. The finger is healing real good. (Tony Spezio) You mean besides filling my alcohol lamp with acetone? (Neil Savage) When I was splitting my first ever culm, I was using the froe-in-the-vise method. The top of the nice, new, somewhat sharp froe was sticking out of the vice, not the handle end. After I split a strip, I would put it on the bench, which caused me to have my back to the froe. I then turned to start another strip not realizing how close I was to the froe sticking out of the vice. My forearm caught the end, and neatly split my skin two inches down the inside of my forearm. The cut was so neat it hardly bled, but I could see all the innards very clearly. Now, my 7 year old daughter happened to walk in right at the time I was swearing and looking at the inside of my arm in disbelieve when she too saw the cut. All she said was "Dad, I can see your guts!". 15 stitches later I was back at splitting the culm, but this time with the handle side up just in case....... (Louis DeVos)
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