Color developing isn’t really all that much harder. In fact, if you use chemistry that contains blix (bleach fix mixture), I’d say it’s actually easier and usually faster than B&W developing, except for the fact which you mention – you do need to regulate the temperature fairly accurately. On the other hand, you don’t have to look up various developing times depending on what film you’re developing. C41 all develops the same. (Quick brag: My first attempt at developing color film by hand was for the 1997 NBA Playoffs Conference Semi-finals for AFP. I was a junior in college and remember how goddamned nervous I was, having never done this before, with experience only with black and white films [though I had a lot of experience with that]. I was told not to worry about it and, in fact, it was surprisingly easy. I didn’t mess up any film and got to tech [and shoot when I wasn’t teching] the rest of the playoffs that year and the next.)
Now color printing…that’s a bit more of a pain in the ass.
I dabble in and out of various food things. I don’t know if you consider these “lost arts,” but I will make my own sausages a couple times a year (both fresh and cured types), I’ve made my own bacon, cured my own guanciale, brewed my own beer and cider, fermented my own pickles. I maintain a sourdough starter, I bake my own bread. I’ve made my own cheese (although that one I haven’t done in awhile.) I have some rye meal fermenting right now on my window sill for some sour soups. I used to dabble a bit in canning, although I haven’t bothered with that for a few years.
I wouldn’t necessarily consider those lost arts, though. I’m not sure I’d consider film developing, either, but you can chalk me up for that one, too. Even have darkroom equipment in the garage, although I haven’t broken that out in a few years. I have developed my own B&W film, though, within the last couple years (and then I just ended up scanning it.) Now wet plate photography, yeah, that’s more like it!
Oh, and we do cloth diapering, too. Our baby is only about 2 1/2 months old so far, but it’s been a lot easier than I expected.
Different sheep breeds will produce more or less lanolin than other breeds. British sheep breeds tend to grow fleeces that don’t have a whole lot of it (merino sheep are the opposite and fleeces have a LOT of lanolin).
Since the Colonies would most likely have British sheep breeds that were brought across the Atlantic, it makes sense that they might add fat back to spin the wool. Professional Guilds in England generally worked with cleaned fleeces. The soap that removes the dirt and VM (vegetative matter) also removes lanolin - probably all of it for those low-lanolin breeds.
Many spinners prefer at least a bit of lanolin in the wool, like you said. Additionally, lanolin softens and moisturizes the spinner’s hands. That’d be a significant benefit for past spinners, I’d think - completely scoured fleece would absorb the oil/moisture on their hands, which could result in dry, then chapped, them cracked skin. Adding fat back in would provide that.
I know how to make candles and such from scratch. In fact, my first real job as a pup was in a candle factory making bespoke candles. I say it was a factory, but really it was such a small operation, literally in someone’s garage, that it was just me and another guy doing just everything. I may not have learned what you would call a marketable skill, but it was more interesting work than flipping burgers at a mcwhataking, and smelled nicer too. I got to say, the senoritas are more likely to talk to you if you smell of vanilla rather than greasy meat.
And hey! If I ever magically find myself in renaissance europe, I’ll have a trade to fall back on.
Yup. Ninja’d a couple times before I came back to the thread!
I was the reason that New York State changed the rules for the AP Chem testing between 1979 and 1980 - my chem prof taught me to use a slide rule. They had just changed the rules from no slide rules to no electronic calculators, so I used my slide rule. The next year they changed it to no electronic calculators or slide rules <evil grin>
This is why you will sometimes see sheep in little coats for some of the rarer seriously long staple coated sheep [remember the picture of that angora rabbit that looked like a puffball?] Sheep also have different lengths of coat ranging from ‘carpet wool sheep’ that have a short coat like a dog, guard hairs and inner fluff to medium wool [which tend to be meat sheep] like the dorset and the long wool ‘luxury’ breeds like cotswold and romney. Then you run into what I kept, rambouillets which are related to romney and produce a very fine long staple wool that is magnificent for handspinning. If you put the little suckers in those coats it helps keep the coats cleaner. Of course if you are more or less hand raising a few sheep, like 5 or so, you can generally manage to keep them cleaner than a bunch you turn out into pasture and let wallow around in the mud.
If you just clear water rinse the crud out of the wool you can preserve the lanolin - it just takes a lot more work. If I was just doing 4 or 5 sheep, I would probably invite the goddaughters over, dump the fleeces into a clean trough filled with fresh water and let them jump around on it for a while to thump the crud loose. It would be worlds easier to put them in a mesh bag and thump them around in a running stream which I don’t have on the farm
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The best rules are the ones that are obviously in response to some incident or another. When I was living in the dorms at Texas A&M maybe 10 years ago, the resident handbook specified that “Trebuchets, Catapults, and other Siege Machinery” was not allowed in the dormitory areas.
Nope! No fried pork products involved in slug casting.
Being a guy that arrived in the printing and design fields just as digital really took over, I became fascinated in the work people like your father did. I had a 24x24 garage I didn’t park in, so it made sense to drag home a Linotype, a Ludlow, a giant letterpress and literally several tons of supporting equipment.
My wife and I just moved to Santa Barbara, and after a lot of thinking, I gave it all away. It took quite a while to find a enough suckers to take it all and promise not to scrap it. The last machine left on a truck literally 15 minutes before we got in the car and headed out!
I can do hand-sewing. Mostly I use this skill to put buttons on and change hems. I hate to sew, but I’m certainly not paying someone $7 each to sew on a button!
Also, when I was in college I worked for a company that printed wedding invites, so I can set type. This translates into being able to read upside-down and backwards.
I teach spinning and weaving; I guess that’s fairly esoteric, though among my friends and cronies, not too rare. I dye, too; and once upon a time I was a pretty fair sheep midwife. I can butcher, and prep hides, too. Power tools in the kitchen!
I have a WW1 era stadimeter that I found at a garage sale. I learned how to use it out of curiosity, since you never know when you might need to organize a submarine hunt out in the suburbs. It works really well for range finding, except against those dazzle-camoflaged raccoons.
I met a woman who’s a friend of a poster here, who does calligraphy work. When I met her she was working on a set of handwritten wedding invations, for which she charged $2 each. At 600 invitations, that’s a chunk of change.
Thanks to Linotype, I learned to read the output after it had been set on the frame (the “stone”) prior to printing. So, I learned to read my copy in mirror image. I can now speak any sentence backwards. Dubious utility. :smack:
I was born in 1980 and learned to use a slide rule in high school physics. It wasn’t actually part of the curriculum - I saw that the teacher had his own slide rule at his desk and I asked him to teach me to use it. It’s quite an interesting tool that really makes you think about orders of magnitude and also gives you a unique perspective into what logarithms really are. I think a lot of kids nowdays just see logarithms as an arbitrary operation you sometimes do.
I crochet, knit, and cross-stitch with varying degrees of skill.
A friend of mine does a variety of needlework, including embroidery and tatting. Within the last year she learned to make her own yarn using a drop spindle. Kind of cool!
There is a type of circular slide rule called the E6B that pilots can use to perform various calculations (gas mileage, flight times, windage, etc.) Due to the way it’s designed, you can more or less calculate up to infinity since each spin of the wheel is just another power of ten. You have to keep a reckoning of which power of ten you’re working in and do bullshit checks on your numbers so you don’t end up with dubious calculations like determining that you can travel 7,000 miles in a Cessna on a full tank of gas. I used to know how to use one, but I’m about 10 years out of practice on it.
I brew my own wine from wild or home grown fruit (not grapes, at least until my vine gets a bit bigger), and make jam, pickles and chutney.
I’ve hand sewn simple clothing, and am currently messing around with a drop spindle. Hopefully I’ll learn to knit or crochet after I’ve got the hang of that.
