Recent content by TarryJack

"None of them were especially mean"????? Even though they would run up and trample you?? And you call that 'docile'?? Jesus - what would a horse have to do to you before you would describe it as mean? And I can speak from years of personal experience that horses which have been properly...

By far the commonest cause of that behaviour is morons giving them 'titbits' - and the only way to deal with it is to be even more aggressive to them than they are to you, as you did (and that's exactly how a horse responds if another horse tries to bite it!) Don't have any concerns about "I...

As I said in my post, above, Jersey cows are sweethearts - it's only the bulls that are psychos. Re. Misty; no offence, but there's no such thing as a 17.2hh Welsh Cob - the biggest they get is about 15.2hh. Re. biting horses - just belt them across the nose with the flat of your hand, as hard...

And here's another one, of a dug-out canoe being built in Latvia. The way they shape the hull initially, so as to be able to stretch it later to give them a canoe much wider than the diameter of the original tree; the use of the coloured dowels to tell them when they've got the hull thickness...

You're very welcome, mate!

Demographic - I was talking about the way boatbuilders used to work back in the days when a tradesman could and did work at the same job for life, y'know? And not as things are now. Secondly - try reading my post again; I did NOT say that carpenters measured timber in sixteenths of an inch...

I came across this film on Youtube, and was so impressed with the speed and accuracy with which the Finnish carpenters use their axes - particularly the broad axe and side axe - in building a log house in the traditional manner. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did, Jack

I read an account by a Brit who moved to Provence, and had a local firm of builders doing repairs to his house. He was puzzled by the measurements they were using, and finally realised they were using the old pre-Napoleonic measurements, based on the width of a man's thumb, the length of his...

I dunno about you, but I'd call that a crime against humanity! And it puts me in mind of an old Andy Capp cartoon I saw, years ago. Andy's in the pub and the barman serves him a 'pint' like that. Andy looks at that barman and says: "I could tell youse how to sell a lot more beer, wack." "You...

My dad, who grew up in the West of Ireland, told me that he and some friends were heading for home through the country one evening, just as it was getting dark, and they came across a badger, right out in the open. They had a few dogs with them, and the dogs went for the badger, which obviously...

Go on, then - ask somebody in their 20s or 30s how tall their significant other is, and see how many tell you "She's 5 foot 2", or "He's 6 foot 1" . . . and don't have a clue how tall they are in metres! Or try asking a car owner what the fuel consumption is, and you'll get the answer in 'miles...

Actually, electronic calculators do NOT work in decimals; like all computers, they work in binary code - so they all have to convert those binary numbers to decimal to display them. That means they could just as easily convert the binary code to show the answer in feet and inches! The only...

If you asked me to find 2' 6" 17/32 on a tape measure or rule, I could point it out to you, straight off, even if the tape measure / rul was only marked in eighths of an inch. What few people seem to grasp these days is that, pre-metric, nobody needed to know all of the old measurements; once...

Rats! I spent HOURS searching the net for someone who had the tarred stuff in stock and who didn't charge an arm and a leg on postage! Many thanks for the link, PRC :)

It is, indeed - but it works best if you fray and tease it out into a 'fluffy' texture first. Once you've done that, it will catch from a fire steel or a match. The jute catches first, and then the wood pitch (also known as Stockholm Tar) melts, takes the flame and burns steadily. HTH