Sunday's Air

[jaminkw]

Morning All! 75 degrees at 8 am in Key West. Happy Days. I plan to get outside a little today but I won't be doing much. I am wiped out from yesterday. Put all the decorations away except the tree. It will have to wait until we get back from Orlando. Hey, I've had it up as late as April one year lol.

Water a few pointsettas that have loved the cold weather. Tidy utp the porch and little and take a slow walk thru my shade room. My poor orchids need grooming so badly but not today. Want to save what energy I do have to go to the Investment Club meeting tonight. They are a nice bunch of people and it's only once a month.

Have a great day everyone.

Judy

[Bud Baker]

Good morning, everyone!

Well, I got up yesterday morning with intentions of stopping by here, then going fishing, but ended up doing neither. My bismuth came in the mail, and I spent the rest of the day making my first lead free crappie jigs.

I had found a good deal on 12 pounds of bismuth, but it was just one big chunk, and after it arrived, I realized I had no way of melting something that big. It was way too big for my electric melter.

I briefly considered using one of Rose's pans to melt it on the range, but figured that I've already survived lung cancer for two years; melting metal in one of Rose's prized pans might really be pushing my luck.

The other options were to go buy a designated melting pan, or saw the chunk into smaller pieces. Walmart on a Saturday didn't sound like fun, so I sawed instead. In retrospect, the trip to wally world would have probably been faster.

Anyway, I melted it, poured it into smaller ingots, figured out how much tin to add to enough bismuth ingots to fill the melter, and poured jigs. It really pours well, even better than lead. I poured 50 jigs without a single bad pour.

Now I think research is required, so I'm going fishing to test out some jigs. Have a great day, all!

[jaminkw]

LOL at the survived lung cancer line. How exciting is that. I remember Stan's melting pot when he poured sinkers. It was small. Hope all your hard work is rewarded. Keep me posted.

Judy in Key West

[lilyjohn]

Yes I am finally home. I had a great trip but it is really true what they say about no place like home.

It is raining and cool but that is alright too. I saw a lot of rain most of the way from Louisiana to here. I didn't mind too much either. I didn't get many good train pictures for Randy but later I will share what I did get. It got a little spooky going over the grapevine (a mountain pass betweel LA and Bakersfield it was raining and at the top of the pass it started to snow. Luckily we were ready to stand on the down side towards Bakersfield because just a few minutes later they closed the pass due to white out conditions. A lot of people were stranded up there or just had to stop before getting there.

There was some excitement here while I was gone. There has been a lot of rain and wind. One day the wind was so strong it blew a crane over on the new bridge they are building across the Sacramento River. I don't think the bridge was damaged much but a sewer line was broken and spilled into the river. I understand the hiway was close there for 3 days.

The also had to close the pass going up to Oregon because of snow and from Cottonwood (about 14 miles south of here) there was 26 miles of 18 wheelers parked on both sides of Interstate 5.

I did my grocery shopping when I got home yesterday, mostly diet foods. I gained 9 pounds while I was gone It was so hard to lose the 20 pounds I had lost now I will have to really work on losing this again.

Well it is time to run, I think I need a nap before the Saint's game. I was so tired I went to bed early last night but then woke up early this morning.

Bud let me know how those new jig heads work.