Took the 1911 out a few days ago. Haven't been shooting any pistol in maybe months. Oh, that was depressing. At my best I'm not very good, but that was awful.

Re-committing to daily dry fire practice, then live shooting more regularly.

Did you do snap capping in those months?

CDFingers

I've been slack on that myself. And I even have a MantisX!
I thought this was going to be a thread on all kinds of vanishing skills like
Writing in cursive
Math tricks like the Rule of 3 and Rule of 9
Driving a stick shift, using hand signals, rolling down a window
Using a hand plane
Long division and taking square roots
Creating, on a drafting table, with paper and pencil, a mathematically correct multi-vanishing point image from a floor plan.
Actually WIRING a home entertainment system rather than just blue-toothing everything.
Reading a vernier scale.
Using a slide rule (My dad was a master but when I showed him a calculator that could do trig, he retired his slide rule!)
Getting old GRACEFULLY!

CDFingers wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 10:22 am Did you do snap capping in those months?

CDFingers

No. I've barely touched the 1911 or the revolver.

YankeeTarheel wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 10:37 am I've been slack on that myself. And I even have a MantisX!
I thought this was going to be a thread on all kinds of vanishing skills like
Writing in cursive
Math tricks like the Rule of 3 and Rule of 9
Driving a stick shift, using hand signals, rolling down a window
Using a hand plane
Long division and taking square roots
Creating, on a drafting table, with paper and pencil, a mathematically correct multi-vanishing point image from a floor plan.
Actually WIRING a home entertainment system rather than just blue-toothing everything.
Reading a vernier scale.
Using a slide rule (My dad was a master but when I showed him a calculator that could do trig, he retired his slide rule!)
Getting old GRACEFULLY!

LOL.

I drive a stick shift, formerly known as a standard transmission.

Cursive is useless. I know I'm an old curmudgeon, but even I know that. People keep bemoaning lack of time spent in schools on cursive. I say spend that time on keyboard skills. That's where kids will be spending their time. Until the next thing I can't imagine replaces that.

Getting old gracefully for me includes snap capping a few light switches with the 1911 and the GP100 to keep internalized the squeeze.

CDFingers

I have snap caps in all of mine except the Ruger 22s. I used to practice at night, but I've gotten too lazy to go to the safe and get the handguns. Good resolution for 2022 is to do more dry firing.

I still have one vehicle with a standard trans, the ranch beater truck. We collected two beds full of fire wood together today. She's a great little billie goat. Goes where the big manly trucks can't fit.

featureless wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 7:13 pm I still have one vehicle with a standard trans, the ranch beater truck. We collected two beds full of fire wood together today. She's a great little billie goat. Goes where the big manly trucks can't fit.

Nice. Our farm beater truck is the only automatic I drive. F150. It leaves a trail of rust behind me so I can find my way home. The bed is rusted through in one corner so it's not attached to the fram there anymore--biggest rattle ever.

Mine is a 1990 Nissan 4x4. Mechanicals are good but every plastic bit on it is in the process of disintegrating. The hood and roof are of a fine rust patina.

Building good habits lately. Frequent short sessions of dry fire. Here's hoping.

Just got a Mantis X2, after discovering the difference in feel between a DA/SA trigger and a striker-fire trigger.

That sure does make practice more convenient and less expensive, which is going to help me up my aiming game, for certain!

BearPaws wrote: Tue Feb 08, 2022 8:04 pm Just got a Mantis X2, after discovering the difference in feel between a DA/SA trigger and a striker-fire trigger.

That sure does make practice more convenient and less expensive, which is going to help me up my aiming game, for certain!

I may need to look into that.

YankeeTarheel wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 10:37 am I've been slack on that myself. And I even have a MantisX!

I also have a Mantis, but it hasn't been getting as much use, by me, as it should. It has been on my daughter's airsoft pistol for quite a while. She is getting quite good with it.

I thought this was going to be a thread on all kinds of vanishing skills like
Writing in cursive

I still use cursive. As a teacher, we send notes that a student might fake, in cursive. It reduces the likelihood that a student will fake them.

Math tricks like the Rule of 3 and Rule of 9
Driving a stick shift, using hand signals, rolling down a window

Up to my last two cars, they have all been stick shift. Then I got an FJ Cruiser, and a Jeep Compass. Both were automatics. The Compass is gone but the FJ remains.

Using a hand plane
Long division and taking square roots
Creating, on a drafting table, with paper and pencil, a mathematically correct multi-vanishing point image from a floor plan.

Try teaching CAD skills to 6th and 7th graders, it just isn't grade appropriate, but the decision has been made where that which is decided must be

Actually WIRING a home entertainment system rather than just blue-toothing everything.
Reading a vernier scale.
Using a slide rule (My dad was a master but when I showed him a calculator that could do trig, he retired his slide rule!)
Getting old GRACEFULLY!

I demonstrate vernier but the students are not quizzed on it. My father also taught me slide rules when I was little. I use them at one point when I am demonstrating the concept of an analogue computer. However, that is as far as I go with slide rules

cooper wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 4:09 pm

YankeeTarheel wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 10:37 am I've been slack on that myself. And I even have a MantisX!
I thought this was going to be a thread on all kinds of vanishing skills like
Writing in cursive
Math tricks like the Rule of 3 and Rule of 9
Driving a stick shift, using hand signals, rolling down a window
Using a hand plane
Long division and taking square roots
Creating, on a drafting table, with paper and pencil, a mathematically correct multi-vanishing point image from a floor plan.
Actually WIRING a home entertainment system rather than just blue-toothing everything.
Reading a vernier scale.
Using a slide rule (My dad was a master but when I showed him a calculator that could do trig, he retired his slide rule!)
Getting old GRACEFULLY!

LOL.

I drive a stick shift, formerly known as a standard transmission.

Cursive is useless. I know I'm an old curmudgeon, but even I know that. People keep bemoaning lack of time spent in schools on cursive. I say spend that time on keyboard skills. That's where kids will be spending their time. Until the next thing I can't imagine replaces that.

I like to think of a standard as the 3-speed shifter on the steering column. Toward you and down is 1st, up and away is 2nd, down and away is 3rd, Toward you and up is reverse. To me the stick was "4 on the floor", then 5, now 6--my 15 year old Beemer clam-shell is a six-speed and every time I think of selling it I drive it and want to keep it!

Cursive isn't completely useless--when all you have is a pen and paper it's far, far faster than hand-printing. Not EVERYTHING works well electronically--speaking as the man with over 600 books on Kindle! But cookbooks and service manuals still work far better on paper.

Hasaf wrote: Wed Feb 09, 2022 7:28 am

YankeeTarheel wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 10:37 am I've been slack on that myself. And I even have a MantisX!

I also have a Mantis, but it hasn't been getting as much use, by me, as it should. It has been on my daughter's airsoft pistol for quite a while. She is getting quite good with it.

I thought this was going to be a thread on all kinds of vanishing skills like
Writing in cursive

I still use cursive. As a teacher, we send notes that a student might fake, in cursive. It reduces the likelihood that a student will fake them.

Math tricks like the Rule of 3 and Rule of 9
Driving a stick shift, using hand signals, rolling down a window

Up to my last two cars, they have all been stick shift. Then I got an FJ Cruiser, and a Jeep Compass. Both were automatics. The Compass is gone but the FJ remains.

Using a hand plane
Long division and taking square roots
Creating, on a drafting table, with paper and pencil, a mathematically correct multi-vanishing point image from a floor plan.

Try teaching CAD skills to 6th and 7th graders, it just isn't grade appropriate, but the decision has been made where that which is decided must be

Actually WIRING a home entertainment system rather than just blue-toothing everything.
Reading a vernier scale.
Using a slide rule (My dad was a master but when I showed him a calculator that could do trig, he retired his slide rule!)
Getting old GRACEFULLY!

I demonstrate vernier but the students are not quizzed on it. My father also taught me slide rules when I was little. I use them at one point when I am demonstrating the concept of an analogue computer. However, that is as far as I go with slide rules

Recently, I took the cats to the vet we've used for 25 years that's no longer close. I took my 15 year old Beemer, which is a 6 speed. One cat was calm but the other complained the whole way there, a screaming banshee. Since his carrier box was falling apart I had them get him a new one. We were almost to the highway when he pushed out through the BOTTOM of the brand-new box! I've NEVER seen a cat do that--then he tried to crawl into the driver's foot well! I had to pull over, of course. I reassembled the box, put it on the floor of the passenger side, shoved him in it, and drove home with my right hand holding down the box so the little asshole couldn't get out as much as he tried. Then we hit a traffic jam on the highway, which is where most people HATE sticks, but when you have just seconds to move your hand off the carry box to shift, then shift again...I was just a little frazzled when we got home. We immediately ordered the new kind of airline carriers that open from the top as well as the front!

I do not know who got Dad's beautiful slide rule. I must admit I've forgotten how to use one...Haven't needed to since HS physics which I took in 1972! The teacher had a giant one over the blackboard that had to be 6 or 8 feet long with the slide being 3 or 4" wide!

I don't know a lot about analog computers. But that reminds me of something else we don't see anymore: Graphic equalizers! And analog equalizers were rare, expensive and rather difficult to use even back then!

How about sharpening a plane iron? Or a chisel? Using a hammer instead of a nail gun. Using a hand saw. Sharpening a hand saw (I learned when I was an organ builder. I don't know anyone outside of Fanno Saw Works in Chico who knows). How to file clean a set of burned-out points with a Diamond Deb nail file. Drilling pilot holes instead of using sheet rock screws.

As an old fart living in a 95 year old house, I feel comfortable living in a place that was made with skills I have--I can understand it viscerally. I can see the mill marks from the yuge circular saw on the redwood joists that are actually two by four. As an old fart, I look in the same way at guys who spend a couple of hundred on a compressor, then another hundred on a nail gun instead of buying a hammer, look at them in the same way as I look at folks who back their car down the driveway to get the mail then drive back to the door. Freedom is untidy. That's when the blind carpenter picked up his hammer and saw.

Slide rule: I have my dad's loglog duplex from 1946. The big slide rule over the blackboard was yellow, wasn't it?

CDFingers

Coping corners

With a miter box.

CDFingers

Resealing a cast-iron pipe point with lead wool and a punch.

Waiting for mercury-vapor rectifiers to warm up before applying the high voltage.

Pulling out the choke before stepping on the starter pedal.

Putting in a new pane of glass with white lead putty.

Jeebus, the crap I've done in my short life...

SR

CDFingers wrote: Wed Feb 09, 2022 9:02 am How about sharpening a plane iron? Or a chisel? Using a hammer instead of a nail gun. Using a hand saw. Sharpening a hand saw (I learned when I was an organ builder. I don't know anyone outside of Fanno Saw Works in Chico who knows). How to file clean a set of burned-out points with a Diamond Deb nail file. Drilling pilot holes instead of using sheet rock screws.

As an old fart living in a 95 year old house, I feel comfortable living in a place that was made with skills I have--I can understand it viscerally. I can see the mill marks from the yuge circular saw on the redwood joists that are actually two by four. As an old fart, I look in the same way at guys who spend a couple of hundred on a compressor, then another hundred on a nail gun instead of buying a hammer, look at them in the same way as I look at folks who back their car down the driveway to get the mail then drive back to the door. Freedom is untidy. That's when the blind carpenter picked up his hammer and saw.

Slide rule: I have my dad's loglog duplex from 1946. The big slide rule over the blackboard was yellow, wasn't it?

CDFingers

Love it! I know how to do ALL that stuff and have done it! I don't have a sawtooth setting tool, however, but I have to add sharpening circular saw and chain saw blades with a hand file.

I used to use a coping saw all the time for base boards, moldings, and window stools, I have a super-nice hand miter box I found used and my favorite finish carpenter's tool, a miter knife. I was taught that if there's a crack between the header and the uprights of a door's casing, take it down and refit so you can't get a hair into it.

SubRosa wrote: Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:59 pm Resealing a cast-iron pipe point with lead wool and a punch.

Waiting for mercury-vapor rectifiers to warm up before applying the high voltage.

Pulling out the choke before stepping on the starter pedal.

Putting in a new pane of glass with white lead putty.

Jeebus, the crap I've done in my short life...

SR

Most small engine tools require a primer AND a choke. I have puttied in a pane of Lexan to replace glass.

SubRosa wrote: Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:59 pm Resealing a cast-iron pipe point with lead wool and a punch.

Waiting for mercury-vapor rectifiers to warm up before applying the high voltage.

Pulling out the choke before stepping on the starter pedal.

Putting in a new pane of glass with white lead putty.

Jeebus, the crap I've done in my short life...

SR

Was that on a horizontal run, per chance?

[/quote]
Was that on a horizontal run, per chance?
[/quote]

Yep, under my childhood home. It was a transplanted W2 officer's cabin my dad bought at the Yuma Proving Ground in 1952 and had it moved some 25 miles to a nice neighborhood.

The problem was some of the original cast iron plumbing was leaking at a joint, as it had pulled apart over the years. I was in my 20's when it was too much to ignore.

I asked an old-school plumber how to fix it, and he schooled me on what to do and gave me the lead wool.

A really shitty job, btw.

SR