Funny pic/gif thread...

Also, put a towel over the top and keep it wet. Works good.

And because I like to play the Devil's Advocate - does that hold heat in, or let heat out. Eventually, that wet towel will warm up? Ultimately, adding water to a towel will decrease the ability for air to pass through it, are you holding hot air in from the bottom or are you letting cold air in from the top. Again, look at the grocery store fridge. And to complicate things, sometimes those grocery store fridges have lids so I'm guessing, it will help?
 
And because I like to play the Devil's Advocate - does that hold heat in, or let heat out. Eventually, that wet towel will warm up? Ultimately, adding water to a towel will decrease the ability for air to pass through it, are you holding hot air in from the bottom or are you letting cold air in from the top. Again, look at the grocery store fridge. And to complicate things, sometimes those grocery store fridges have lids so I'm guessing, it will help?

As long as you keep the cloth wet, works good in a hot environment.

edit: Just thinking, I grew up in the South and it probably wouldn't work so well on the 100 over 100 days there (i.e., 100+ degrees and 100% humidity where there are no clouds in the sky but it's raining on you -- that is, sun showers). But, works pretty well in the arid southwest.
 
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What did you do where you needed that boning knife? I'm asking because I thought you did steel work but not sure why you'd need a boning knife? I have an elderly friend (78) who was a union insulator for decades so when we hang out I like to get him to tell stories (yesterday he was telling me about working at the top of the stratosphere and he has all kinds of stories about working at the "test site", the Nevada military test site) and I guarantee you he has mentioned a boning knife before. Just curious.

And the knife in the door reminds of a time I was hanging out a friends house (5' tall cute little brunette) and she came down the stairs giving me crap joking around so I grabbed a hammer and acted like I was going to throw it at her, problem is, when I stopped swinging the head of the hammer when flying her way and hit her in the head!!! She didn't bleed so it just grazed her but it put her on the ground. Whoops.

Actual pic of 5' tall cute little brunette from 1984'sh. And no, it won't show up in any Google pic searches, it's one of two Polaroids I have of her from back then and she is not on social media ;)

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Fun side story: In early 1986'sh my brother had a baby blue '66 mustang Coupe, 289, 4 spd, mint, paid $1300!!! I had a '76 Cutlass at the time. Him and a buddy were messing around one night doing cookies, who really knows, and his buddy rear ended him and totaled the Mustang. The night before the insurance company picked it up I may have went out and took the front grill emblem off (gee, the rims may have been missing also ;)). The cute little brunette loved that car so in shop class I made a little plaque and mounted that emblem on there and gave it to her. Sometime around 2018 I contacted her (around 20-25 years of not talking) and she still had that plaque ;)
 
As long as you keep the cloth wet, works good in a hot environment.

edit: Just thinking, I grew up in the South and it probably wouldn't work so well on the 100 over 100 days there (i.e., 100+ degrees and 100% humidity where there are no clouds in the sky but it's raining on you -- that is, sun showers). But, works pretty well in the arid southwest.

And the technical side of me says - at what point does the water in that towel become warmer than the ambient air temp in the cooler - is it sitting in the sun or the shade? I live in Idaho, it was 99 degrees the other day and when I walked to the store (3/4-1 mile round trip) I stayed in the shade of the trees most of the time and never broke a sweat, when I walk to the grocery story in the opposite direction (1.5-2 miles round trip) there's less shade and I sweat. In other words, if the sun is beating on me here it's HOT, if the sun is not beating on me it's not that bad. If the sun is beating on that towel it will get hot - fast. Although heat rises, if it runs up against ambient air temp that is higher then what's the limit - is the air in the cooler going to continue to rise or is it going to hit that heat riddled wet towel, which will then irradiate its heat around it, is the air going pass through or stay in the cooler. Again, simply playing devil's advocate because I don't know?
 
And the technical side of me says - at what point does the water in that towel become warmer than the ambient air temp in the cooler - is it sitting in the sun or the shade? I live in Idaho, it was 99 degrees the other day and when I walked to the store (3/4-1 mile round trip) I stayed in the shade of the trees most of the time and never broke a sweat, when I walk to the grocery story in the opposite direction (1.5-2 miles round trip) there's less shade and I sweat. In other words, if the sun is beating on me here it's HOT, if the sun is not beating on me it's not that bad. If the sun is beating on that towel it will get hot - fast. Although heat rises, if it runs up against ambient air temp that is higher then what's the limit - is the air in the cooler going to continue to rise or is it going to hit that heat riddled wet towel, which will then irradiate its heat around it, is the air going pass through or stay in the cooler. Again, simply playing devil's advocate because I don't know?

One word -- evaporation. If evaporation occurs on the cloth on top of the cooler, voila the cooler is cooler.
 
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Clearly, that is photo-shopped, that being said and relatively speaking, he does not have chicken legs. And if it's any consolation, I don't look good in brown either, I'm much more of a blue or gray kind of guy :)
I can't tell if its photo shopped or not. but there are plenty of body builders that big. My old trainer that owns the gym i go to benches over 900lbs- no joke look for 2700 a powerlifters story on youtube.
 
What did you do where you needed that boning knife? I'm asking because I thought you did steel work but not sure why you'd need a boning knife? I have an elderly friend (78) who was a union insulator for decades so when we hang out I like to get him to tell stories (yesterday he was telling me about working at the top of the stratosphere and he has all kinds of stories about working at the "test site", the Nevada military test site) and I guarantee you he has mentioned a boning knife before. Just curious.

And the knife in the door reminds of a time I was hanging out a friends house (5' tall cute little brunette) and she came down the stairs giving me crap joking around so I grabbed a hammer and acted like I was going to throw it at her, problem is, when I stopped swinging the head of the hammer when flying her way and hit her in the head!!! She didn't bleed so it just grazed her but it put her on the ground. Whoops.

I was usually an industrial insulator/sheet metal mechanic. Good sheet metal mechanics were far fewer than people that could hang insulation and patch up openings from a poor fit. An extreme but my partner and I went on a union job with eighty men on it and not one could hang sheet metal at much more than beginner level! Out of eighty there would usually be a dozen or so reasonably competent sheet metal mechanics. Due to the disparity my work partner and I rarely did anything but hang sheet metal. Cleaner and easier work, suited us!

I bought my tools by the handful. I often ran jobs and in an extreme I could outfit ten men out of my smallish carry around tool box, a long carpenters tool box was what they were usually called. I usually had four to six boning knives in there. I also had a butcher knife that had been reprofiled into a boning knife to make it reach across the inside of a piece of insulation for marking purposes. Robert Dozier who built as good a custom knife as anyone in the world did that work. Probably a fifty or sixty dollar boning knife when he got through. We were friends and I had a habit of bringing us each a quart of beer to hang at his shop so I got the work at the nice price!

Most of the sheet metal was screwed on. If you made the screw holes with a round punch the screw wanted to skate on the sheet metal instead of biting to start the thread and it took a lot more down pressure than if the hole had flat sides. All of my scratch awl/punches were filed to be triangular, but the knives worked as well and were one less thing to carry. With the thin aluminum and stainless metals the knives worked just fine and were one less thing to get caught climbing and squeezing into tight places, it got old in a hurry if something fell a couple hundred feet and had to be retrieved. I could etch the metal deeply enough with the knife that I could bend it back and forth twice and break it cleanly too, effectively cutting it with the knife. I often found myself running the sheetmetal fab shop and a handful of scratch awls came in handy driving them in the table top and wrapping my spring steel four foot tinners' rule around them to make smooth curves cutting out gores. I was also very good at cutting out sheet metal to fit over unique shapes.

A very long answer to a simple question. The knives stayed in the pouch better and served more purposes than a scratch awl/scribe/punch. Another purpose, at lunch or with a little other spare time we often drew a target on a sheet of plywood and threw the boning knives at it. The knife had to stay in the plywood no matter how many knives were thrown afterwards and the closest to the bullseye won.

Six or eight guys throwing at a dollar apiece it was easy to make a nice little score. Jim Bowie had been one of my childhood heroes from his feats of strength and daring long before I realized what a scumbag he really was. I was throwing knives by the time I was out of three corner pants and by the time I was twelve I could throw my Puma boot knife thirty or forty feet into a tree and bury it deep enough I could stand on it. I had practiced with the boning knives enough that though they would never match the Puma I won over half the rounds throwing knives. With five to one or better odds on my money that was pretty sweet.

Bragging a bit, first job I did for a company, just me and a helper to insulate and hang the sheet metal on one of those funky assed misshapen riveted together tanks in the oil field. To make things more interesting, this tank moved up and down a foot from empty to full. Finished the job and called the company owner to ask him what to do with the left over material. "How much more sheet metal do you need?" "None, the job is finished and I have two sheets left over." "Impossible, I measured that tank to the inch and sent out just enough sheet metal to cover it with no allowance for waste." "You didn't allow for manways and big pipes. Where do you want this extra sheet metal?" "Take it home, it is yours!"

Another brag, a top sheet metal man asked me to teach his son. Like pool, I often heard I was the best somebody had ever seen. Didn't go to my head too much, like pool, I wasn't the best sheet metal man I had ever seen. Like your friend, I could tell lots of stories of hanging sheet metal. I have written half a book here. Some was fun, some was dangerous, some were both. Trying to hang big sheets of thin razor sharp stainless over three hundred feet up by myself in 30-40MPH winds I had to let go of about a half dozen of them, three feet wide, over six feet long. I could easily imagine them cutting somebody half in two if the metal hit them wrong! Nothing I could do though, it was either turn loose of them or go with them.

Hu
 
I was usually an industrial insulator/sheet metal mechanic. Good sheet metal mechanics were far fewer than people that could hang insulation and patch up openings from a poor fit. An extreme but my partner and I went on a union job with eighty men on it and not one could hang sheet metal at much more than beginner level! Out of eighty there would usually be a dozen or so reasonably competent sheet metal mechanics. Due to the disparity my work partner and I rarely did anything but hang sheet metal. Cleaner and easier work, suited us!

I bought my tools by the handful. I often ran jobs and in an extreme I could outfit ten men out of my smallish carry around tool box, a long carpenters tool box was what they were usually called. I usually had four to six boning knives in there. I also had a butcher knife that had been reprofiled into a boning knife to make it reach across the inside of a piece of insulation for marking purposes. Robert Dozier who built as good a custom knife as anyone in the world did that work. Probably a fifty or sixty dollar boning knife when he got through. We were friends and I had a habit of bringing us each a quart of beer to hang at his shop so I got the work at the nice price!

Most of the sheet metal was screwed on. If you made the screw holes with a round punch the screw wanted to skate on the sheet metal instead of biting to start the thread and it took a lot more down pressure than if the hole had flat sides. All of my scratch awl/punches were filed to be triangular, but the knives worked as well and were one less thing to carry. With the thin aluminum and stainless metals the knives worked just fine and were one less thing to get caught climbing and squeezing into tight places, it got old in a hurry if something fell a couple hundred feet and had to be retrieved. I could etch the metal deeply enough with the knife that I could bend it back and forth twice and break it cleanly too, effectively cutting it with the knife. I often found myself running the sheetmetal fab shop and a handful of scratch awls came in handy driving them in the table top and wrapping my spring steel four foot tinners' rule around them to make smooth curves cutting out gores. I was also very good at cutting out sheet metal to fit over unique shapes.

A very long answer to a simple question. The knives stayed in the pouch better and served more purposes than a scratch awl/scribe/punch. Another purpose, at lunch or with a little other spare time we often drew a target on a sheet of plywood and threw the boning knives at it. The knife had to stay in the plywood no matter how many knives were thrown afterwards and the closest to the bullseye won.

Six or eight guys throwing at a dollar apiece it was easy to make a nice little score. Jim Bowie had been one of my childhood heroes from his feats of strength and daring long before I realized what a scumbag he really was. I was throwing knives by the time I was out of three corner pants and by the time I was twelve I could throw my Puma boot knife thirty or forty feet into a tree and bury it deep enough I could stand on it. I had practiced with the boning knives enough that though they would never match the Puma I won over half the rounds throwing knives. With five to one or better odds on my money that was pretty sweet.

Bragging a bit, first job I did for a company, just me and a helper to insulate and hang the sheet metal on one of those funky assed misshapen riveted together tanks in the oil field. To make things more interesting, this tank moved up and down a foot from empty to full. Finished the job and called the company owner to ask him what to do with the left over material. "How much more sheet metal do you need?" "None, the job is finished and I have two sheets left over." "Impossible, I measured that tank to the inch and sent out just enough sheet metal to cover it with no allowance for waste." "You didn't allow for manways and big pipes. Where do you want this extra sheet metal?" "Take it home, it is yours!"

Another brag, a top sheet metal man asked me to teach his son. Like pool, I often heard I was the best somebody had ever seen. Didn't go to my head too much, like pool, I wasn't the best sheet metal man I had ever seen. Like your friend, I could tell lots of stories of hanging sheet metal. I have written half a book here. Some was fun, some was dangerous, some were both. Trying to hang big sheets of thin razor sharp stainless over three hundred feet up by myself in 30-40MPH winds I had to let go of about a half dozen of them, three feet wide, over six feet long. I could easily imagine them cutting somebody half in two if the metal hit them wrong! Nothing I could do though, it was either turn loose of them or go with them.

Hu

Were you union by chance? Did you travel? My buddy has stories from New York to LA and all points in between. If you were union and traveled at all I wouldn't doubt it if you two crossed paths.

As mentioned, and I'm mostly posting this for posterity but, he's 78 and getting pretty close to the end, he doesn't have much family in this area and can't do much on his own so when we're together (once or twice a week) my #1 goal is to get him out into the desert where he starts to reminiscence. I also like to poke and prod him on his best years. I love to hear his voice perk up and then he starts rambling about living out of his camper in Wyoming and rabbit hunting for lunch meat, or how an earthquake hit Arco's, ID when he was working on the nuclear plant, or all the pool stories of him playing for 1 or 5 dollars a game (big money to him in the late 70's/early 80's). Or driving his International Harvester from Wyoming to Connecticut - in the winter - with no heater! Or using a Coleman lantern for heat in his 69 beetle when he had to sleep in it because he couldn't afford a hotel.

As I'm sure you, and most of us, are aware that the memories we put in our minds stay forever but, as we get older they are harder to access. What I have learned with him is if you poke and prod them about the things they love the memories just flow. I remember when he started going downhill a few years ago he was in my garage and we were working on my lathe and I was trying to figure out some math when turning down a piece of wood and I started writing down the fractions to calculate it and he just rambled off the number I needed and didn't even realize it. It's the same thing on a table, if he's struggling that particular day I start playing safe's, it makes him think and it all just comes natural. If he's struggling too bad I might shank a ball or two ;)

If you were union what local? I'll bring it up and see if he knows of them.


Either way, don't hesitate to ramble on with your stories, I enjoy reading them ;)
 
Were you union by chance? Did you travel? My buddy has stories from New York to LA and all points in between. If you were union and traveled at all I wouldn't doubt it if you two crossed paths.

As mentioned, and I'm mostly posting this for posterity but, he's 78 and getting pretty close to the end, he doesn't have much family in this area and can't do much on his own so when we're together (once or twice a week) my #1 goal is to get him out into the desert where he starts to reminiscence. I also like to poke and prod him on his best years. I love to hear his voice perk up and then he starts rambling about living out of his camper in Wyoming and rabbit hunting for lunch meat, or how an earthquake hit Arco's, ID when he was working on the nuclear plant, or all the pool stories of him playing for 1 or 5 dollars a game (big money to him in the late 70's/early 80's). Or driving his International Harvester from Wyoming to Connecticut - in the winter - with no heater! Or using a Coleman lantern for heat in his 69 beetle when he had to sleep in it because he couldn't afford a hotel.

As I'm sure you, and most of us, are aware that the memories we put in our minds stay forever but, as we get older they are harder to access. What I have learned with him is if you poke and prod them about the things they love the memories just flow. I remember when he started going downhill a few years ago he was in my garage and we were working on my lathe and I was trying to figure out some math when turning down a piece of wood and I started writing down the fractions to calculate it and he just rambled off the number I needed and didn't even realize it. It's the same thing on a table, if he's struggling that particular day I start playing safe's, it makes him think and it all just comes natural. If he's struggling too bad I might shank a ball or two ;)

If you were union what local? I'll bring it up and see if he knows of them.


Either way, don't hesitate to ramble on with your stories, I enjoy reading them ;)

Oh, and since this is the funny thread. He had a 69 Charger with a 440 6 pack that he would drive across the country for work! I grew up in Nebraska and anytime I mention that he informs me or reminds me (depends on the day) that he hates Nebraska because he received more tickets in Nebraska than anywhere else. LOL.
 
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