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Here's A Look At The New Place


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Santas workshop??? (one corner)

http://images.andale.com/f2/126/125/4386526/1107572948670_MVC_005F.JPG

 

Rebuilt

http://images.andale.com/f2/126/125/4386526/1107994587625_MVC_006F.JPG

 

 

First fruits of the vine.

http://images.andale.com/f2/126/125/4386526/1105908201374_1105039573044_MVC_003F.JPG

 

Thanks for all the well wishes and patience of many people. The shingle is back out. I've got a cosy 12 by 12 shop for stock making now. Not large, but then stocks are small. Laura has a new porch and dan has a new (used) truck in the garage.

 

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D@MN! http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/ohmy.gif

 

That garage was rebuilt with a quickness!

 

I'm glad your back in bussiness! http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/cool.gif

 

Norm

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Cool shed, Dan! Record time on the rebuild. The "infant" stocks are a chip off the ol' block...aw, did I really say that? Seriously, really glad to see you're back up and running. Laura can enjoy the sun on her porch whilst you plane away. I always admire your work, as I think we all do.
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It was fast, three weeks and three days. It really helps when your father in law is a carpenter and you get to go to the front of the list of projects. A brother in law, and my father and I all put in some time also. We didn't have to pour a new garage floor, but did pour a new foundation (larger) under the porch and where we added the shop. Clean up took three days of back hoe work before new years. I've been a truck driver, (I do have a type A CDL) electrician, and plumber, but mostly a carpenters assistant (hold the other end of this board...).

 

I had one set of my wood in the house (ready to send off) that I used to remake my patterns and jigs. Some of the patterns I made off colt wood were quite a bit different (on front grips especially) that I guess I'm not to worried about working off a copy of a copy.

 

Clean up in the house meant a $5000 bill from service master and endless loads of laundry for my family. (Just some smoke damage in the main house).

 

Lost of lot of memories in that garage. I wrote a column about it in my monthly newspaper article titles "Memories"

 

As many of you know, my home suffered a garage and shop fire just before Christmas. Part of the aftermath was tallying the contents for insurance purposes. While money can replace many things, the memories that came floating up from the tally are all that will remain of many things.

 

Ducks. Harlequin ducks. Sitting on a boulder along the rocky wave swept shoreline of a tiny unnamed island near Sitka Alaska. We spotted them through the binoculars and Doug put me ashore a quarter mile or so down the way and I started my stalk.

 

Seems strange to stalk ducks, but that was the only way we found to get close to them in these situations. So, I walked, crawled and snuck my way through the dense evergreen forest undergrowth.

 

A snow squall passed over during the stalk and I wondered how Doug was faring out in the open boat.

 

Finally I was in range of the ducks and rose up and fired. The result was a couple beautiful harlequins that grace the office and formerly my porch.

 

The fishing rod was just a long smooth piece of graphite. The guides, cork, string, and other parts that make up a standard fishing rod were loosely packed in the bottom of the box. Buy a rod kit, put it together, save some money. All of these appealed to a young boy (myself) back when I had time to burn and looked for ways to enjoy a new hobby. I put together three fishing rods and rebuilt a couple after that. Putting guides on (with out any directions of course) taught me a new skill or two. The skill remains, the rods are toast.

 

The widest set of antlers I’ve ever harvested on a deer also perished. The deer was the first I shot with my newly wed wife Laura sitting in the tree beside me. It was a beautiful fall evening and this very nice buck walked by. I stuck an arrow into it and we watched it run off. Afterwards, a team effort found the dead buck.

 

A second set of deer antlers was also hanging on the garage wall. I did not shoot it. However, it was one of the first buck deer shot during Iowa’s early shotgun deer seasons back in the 1950’s. Not quite a record book deer, it was very interesting because it was obviously an old deer, thick beams and extra little points here and there.

 

Two 10 point sets of antlers were in the porch. I had made them into an actual hat/coat rack. Part of the racks survived, but there are really crumbly, the bone breaks very easy.

 

Up in the rafters was a pair of waders. It was an old pair of waders, but there weren’t mine originally. They belonged to Cecil Jones and were a poignant reminder of the times I used to watch and wade with him through the water of the Cedar River in search of northern pike.

 

In one of three tackle boxes were a couple of his lures that had come my way. I never fished with them as I would have hated to loose one, just kept them for good luck. A guy can of course still by all the rapalas you need, but none will have ever had his expert casts tossing them beneath the branches of overhanging trees.

 

An actual gun stock from a 1920’s tommy gun added fuel to the fire. A guy had traded me a little work for it. It wasn’t in pristine condition, but was still usable as a model for my stock work hobby. While I don’t know the travels that wood had, it certainly was fun to look at it and wonder if lawman or bandit or U.S. soldier ever held the gun it wore.

 

Being part packrat I guess, it was always fun to have my buddy ask “do you have one of these” and come up with the object in question.

 

Belle, my second brittany suffered enough that the decision was made to put her down after the fire. My relationship with Brittany's started 20 years ago down in Missouri hunting quail. I followed a bunch of them around and wanted one for my own.

 

Jake, my first dog followed. I bought him as an adult and hunted with him several years before he died quite mysteriously. (just dead in the kennel one morning).

 

A month or two later I found a pair of Brittany's, sisters from one litter. Picking out two of them from the squirming pile of puppies was a task, but they proved to be good dogs. They hunted with me for 13 years.

 

We were lucky the fire didn’t go further and thankful for the job the firemen did in keeping the fire out of the main house. Thanks also to those of you who have wished us well during these past few weeks. Rebuilding is going well.

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Dan--

Good to see your rebuild happen so quickly. Looks like a nice build on the house. Nothing can really replace those special things that were burnt, but you have lots of good memories yet to be made. These help us to really appreciate those around us. Best wishes!

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Dan,

Glad everything worked out.

Man, that was pretty fast!

Best, Z

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Dan, your new shop looks great. http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif Congratulations and good luck!! http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/smile.gif http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/cool.gif Regards, Walter
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Mike, all you nee to do is modify your nail gun to full auto and you can put up a garage in no time. Reminds me of a story, my nephew was sitting on a roof this fall in the evening (as he was shingling) and as darkness approached, bats started flying around. He held back the front tip of the nailer so he could "shoot" nails into the air at the bats. He was having a pretty good time until an osha inspector came by. He was not amused.
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