Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
I’ve been working on a wooden longbow most of the afternoon. Here are ten easy steps for making your own :)
1. Cut down a tree
2.Split that tree into lengthwise sections called staves. The dog will help
3. Build a woodshed
4. Let those staves dry for a few years in the shed
5. Remove all the shit that isn’t a bow. The dog will help again by lying on your foot
6. Make sure the handle stays centered in the growth rings
7. Steam bend and weight the wood so that both limbs start with the same bend
8. Slowly remove wood from the belly of the bow on both sides until they bend evenly
9. Add tip overlays, handle wraps, and all the fancy crap
10. Go out in the yard and practice till hunting season starts
I may need to drive to town for some human contact.
😮
Any particular wood? What was it here? I always meant to try making a bow out of my parents’ overgrown yew shrubbery, but that didn’t work out.
Pictured in the compilation above are shagbark hickory, hop-hornbeam, and common buckthorn. While English yew is rightfully considered one of the best bow woods, almost any straight grained hardwood can make a very nice bow. You can even use maple boards from the hardware store to start.
“Shagbark Hickory,” “Hop-Hornbeam,” and “Common Buckthorn,” all sound like the names middle earth kids give their high school garage bands.
😂😂😂… and now my brain just created Ent Metal as a genre. It’s pretty damn Larghissimo, but very strong.
what a fuckin’ nerd.
Okay now I want to figure out what ent metal would sound like.
I’m thinking thunder and whale song. Somehow.
The amount of notes this has gotten is absurd. That doesn’t happen to my posts, but since you crazy kids seem interested here’s (one of a gajillion ways) to make the accompanying primitive arrows.
We want lighter wood than we used to make the bows. This is white cedar- nice and light and sproingy.
Mill that up into rectangular pieces as long as your arrows need to be.
Then you use this homemade tool called a shooting board to rest them in while you hand plane them from rectangular to round.
You saved your wings from the spring turkey hunt, right? Good, we’re gonna need those primary feathers.
Make yourself a pattern out brass or copper sheet, clamp the feather to it, and burn it with a torch. This will shape the feathers into fletchings.
Now we need to make pine pitch glue by melting together pine pitch (you can pick it off pine trees where they’ve been injured) and hardwood charcoal. Think of it as ancient people’s super glue.
Get your paleontologist buddy to give you some rock from actual Paleolithic quarry sites ‘cuz that’s pretty rad.
Learn flint knapping… he said casually after years of hair-pulling-out struggles with it.
Attach your stone points to your arrow shafts using the ancient super glue stuff and leg sinew from the deer you got last year. Do the same for the fletchings.
And you’re finally ready to start practicing! Don’t worry, the dog will help again by standing directly in front of the target because she’s beautiful and loving, but not very good at critical thinking sometimes.
mansies, this post keeps getting more awesome. :)
also, proposal: should Caradhras have a different name in summertime? i’m feelin’ a more Bag End or Hobbiton vibe when the place isn’t covered in show.
You can’t go changing place names seasonally, @danipup What would the maps look like? Every place has 4 names?😂😂
The Cartosan Abyss had been the site of the fiercest battles in the
thousand giga-cycle history of the Federation-Athalan War, now that
theater of the war was nearly closed. Athalan fleets fell back, their
troops demoralized and disordered as none had ever seen them. Some
claimed that it was irresponsible to oversimplify things, that the
superior numbers and diverse tactics of the Federation had all but
guaranteed success since the beginning, that no one member race could
ever take full credit.
Others simply pointed out that seventy
five percent of the territory gained in the Abyss had been taken in the
handful of Terra-cycles since Humanity joined the war, and Lt. Dyati
wasn’t going to argue with them.
He had been assigned to one of
the few mixed units, with soldiers from a variety of races. They were
said to be a laugh, cush assignments that were more about diplomacy and
good press back home than any real tactical significance, but apparently
no one had told that to Captain Daniels.
They’d warned Dyati
and the others than humans showed remarkable genetic diversity within
their own genome, and that anything but the simplest expectations of
physical form were likely to be misleading, but that had only been the
barest of warnings to this gargantuan beast of a human, nearly as tall
as a Granx and twice as wide, rippling with muscles barely contained by
charcoal black skin, with massive paws that he had seen grab two Athalan
soldiers by the heads and crack them together like ripe fruit.
Daniels
had taken command when their nominal leader, a Granx Captain, had been
killed by an errant shard of fragmented masonry early in the first
battle, and had driven the team forward like the point of a spear,
cracking through Athalan lines and disrupting their communications net.
Dyati had watched Daniels take on War Behemoth single-handedly, climbing
it like a tree and dropping hand held ordinance (The humans called them
grenades, most other races called them suicide balls) down an exhaust
port before leaping free.
From that moment on, the platoon had
known that they would follow Daniels anywhere, and even started adopting
his mannerisms, their multilingual shouts of “WAR DAMN EAGLE!” leading
the unflappable Athalan Death Squads to fragment in panicked retreat.
They
shouldn’t have lasted an hour. Instead, they had won, the lot of them
awarded medals, and now granted an unprecedented week of shore leave. It
had taken some doing, but Daniels had convinced Dyati, too far from
home to make the trip, to instead accompany him to Earth.
And so
Dyati had ended up at a table in a small abode crawling with humans of
all sizes, shapes, and ages. They had just finished remotely spectating
some kind of violent sporting event (Though he hadn’t understood the
rules of the encounter, Dyati had been thrilled that he knew the chant,
as had been the humans) and now food was being served. Dyati didn’t know
whether he dared to be surprised that they would be eating scorched
animal flesh, and tried, as carefully as he could, to inquire if there
were any other options.
“Aww, come off it squiddie, we’re on
leave, just try a wing,” Daniels had said, in a tone Dyati had
recognized as boisterous friendliness, but before he could respond, an
elderly human had stood, walked over to the the most dangerous living
creature Dyati had ever seen in nearly three dozen cycles of military
service, and SMACKED HIM ACROSS THE FACE.
“Jackson Daniels, you apologize to Mr. Dyati RIGHT NOW!”
Daniels gaped up at the other human, elderly and, if Dyati made his guess, female. “But Momma…”
“Don’t
you ‘But Momma’ ME, young man. You bring this fine gentleman into my
house and then call him some racist word those soldiers use in the
barracks, in your Mommas house, like you some kind of ghetto ass punk
instead of a war hero on leave, and I’ll smack your mouth like the
ghetto ass punk till you remember you Captain Daniels, not Big J on the
block. Now you apologize to Mr. Dyati and go get him some rice and beans
from the back, and not the spicy stuff, you KNOW they don’t like that
off world.”
Daniels scampered off, and Dyati stared at the
elderly matron like she was a fission reactor about to purge. For all he
knew, she was.
“I’m sorry ‘bout that. He’s a good boy, deep
down, football always makes him act the fool, though, but what can you
do? He graduated in ‘43 and coulda gone pro if he hadn’t enlisted. Now,
sweet tea?”
Dyati nodded, dumbfounded, and then munched on the
rice and beans (which was maybe the most delicious thing he’d ever
eaten) and sipped the tea (which was sweet enough for him to charge his
thorax adrenal boosters without supplements) and wondered at what he’d
seen.
Did humans get more powerful as they aged? Were soldiers
like Daniels just weak cannon fodder? Not for the first time, and
certainly not for the last, Dyati was SO glad that Humanity had joined
the Federation…
These are things you’re going to want to build for yourself if you’re chronically ill. When you go out, you need to be prepared in case something goes wrong, to at least help yourself until professional help arrives or you can get to a safe space.
If you are a regular hospital visitor, you need to make an emergency overnight bag. You either grab it as the ambulance is arriving or you tell a loved one “I need X bag in X location” so that nobody has to scramble around for things and wasting time.
If I leave the house, this bag does not leave my side.
It is big enough to contain (aside from my keys, wallet, and phone)
First Aid kit (grey cosmetics bag)
Water
Umbrella
Deodorant
Wheelchair gloves
eReader
Emergency phone charger
That charger lives with you. It does not leave your bag. If you need help and your phone is dead, you’re probably not gonna be able to easily get to a working phone or remember numbers, or potentially know your location if you need to call an ambulance. Make sure your phone is charged.
Pack old clothes. Hospitals can be gross. I’ve bled all over mine, sweated etc. Not a fashion show. Old clothes you don’t mind getting ruined.
Things need to be loose. My jeans are jeggings (stretchy waist) because if I can’t wear normal pants from pain. You need things that allow doctors access (shirts easily moved for needles or what have you.)
Pack shoes for the shower (if you can shower.) Floors can be unsanitary and the last thing you want is a fungal infection.
Toiletries - tiny shampoo/conditioner, deodorant, toothbrush/toothpaste, baby wipes and hair treatment (if you can’t shower), moisturiser (cold hospital air dries out your skin), and lipbalm
Apps
ICE (In Case of Emergency) Card - lists your name, weight, height, emergency contacts, diseases, allergies, medication, and personal notes for paramedics. Can send out alarm calls or messages and is available on your home screen (if you want to set it up that way)
Medisafe - track your medication and set reminders. You can set it up to automatically text someone if you skip a dose.
FibroMapp - tracks chronic pain and sleep, and helps you illustrate pain levels, times, triggers, and relief
Emergency+ (Australian) - gives your exact location and surrounding streets to give to paramedics. You can call from this app.
First Aid (Australian) - gives you step by step instructions to help yourself or someone else
Even if you’re not disabled yourself, please rb this because it can genuinely help people who are
A loaf of bread made in the first century AD, which was discovered at Pompeii, preserved for centuries in the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius. The markings visible on the top are made from a Roman bread stamp, which bakeries were required to use in order to mark the source of the loaves, and to prevent fraud. (via Ridiculously Interesting)
(sigh) I’ve seen these before, but this one’s particularly beautiful.
I feel like I’m supposed to be marveling over the fact that this is a loaf of bread that’s been preserved for thousands of years, and don’t get me wrong, that’s hella cool. But honestly, I’m mostly struck by the unexpected news that “bread fraud” was apparently once a serious concern.
Bread Fraud was a huge thing, Bread was provided to the Roman people by the government - bakers were given grain to make the free bread, but some of them stole the government grain to use in other baked goods and would add various substitutes, like sawdust or even worse things, to the bread instead. So if people complained that their free bread was not proper bread, the stamp told them exactly whose bakery they ought to burn down.
Bread stamps continued to be used at least until the Medieval period in Europe. Any commercially sold bread had to be stamped with an official seal to identify the baker to show that it complied with all rules and regulations about size, price, and quality. This way, rotten or undersized loaves could be traced back to the baker. Bakers could be pilloried, sent down the streets in a hurdle cart with the offending loaf tied around their neck, fined, or forbidden to engage in baking commercially ever again in that city. There are records of a baker in London being sent on a hurdle cart because he used an iron rod to increase the weight of his loaves, and another who wrapped rotten dough with fresh who was pilloried. Any baker hurdled three times had to move to a new city if they wanted to continue baking.
If you have made bread, you are probably familiar with a molding board. It’s a flat board used to shape the bread. Clever fraudsters came up with a molding board that had a little hole drilled into it that wasn’t easily noticed. A customer would buy his dough by weight, and then the baker would force some of that dough through the hole, so they could sell and underweight loaf and use the stolen dough to bake new loafs to sell. Molding boards ended up being banned in London after nine different bakers were caught doing this. There were also instances of grain sellers withholding grain to create an artificial scarcity drive up the price of that, and things like bread.
Bread, being one of the main things that literally everyone ate in many parts of the world, ended up with a plethora of rules and regulations. Bakers were probably no more likely to commit fraud than anyone else, but there were so many of them, that we ended up with lots and lots of rules and records of people being shifty.
Check out Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony by Madeleine Pelner Cosman for a whole chapter on food laws as they existed in about 1400. Plus the color plates are fantastic.
ALL OF THIS IS SO COOL
I found something too awesome not share with you!
I’m completely fascinated by the history of food, could I choose a similar topic for my Third Year Dissertation? Who knows, but it is very interesting all the same!
Bread fraud us actually where the concept of a bakers dozen came from. Undersized rolls/loaves/whatever were added to the dozen purchased to ensure that the total weight evened out so the baker couldn’t be punished for shorting someone.
[wants to talk about bread fraud laws and punishments]
Many. The bread stamp was common until fairly recently. I remember one particular famine in Strasbourg that resulted in people cutting bread grain with sawdust. It resulted in quite a bit of scandal. One thing of note are the laws passed in England regarding this ty[e of fraud. the price was strictly controlled, not only to the public, but to the baker as well. Meaning the costs to them were kept low. Guilds kept incredibly tight control. Bakers could not practice without guild sanction and once in, they frequently could not leave, nor could their children. Secrets of bread making were tightly withheld and even ovens were rare among people, such that they had to bring the dough they made to a bakery to be baked on their behalf. But have heard many stories of bread fraud, from sticking coins in loaves, to pinching bits off. It was so important a resource that there were even special constables charged with inspecting bread and the punishments were very severe.
