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18 years ago
cracker house
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18 years ago
Marvin, I doubt that anyone on this woodturning ng would be interested in a cracker house or even a cracker outhouse, but in case there is another Cracker amongst us, naturally I must muse about them, ad nauseum. :)
Mostly the term is an invention of fancy architects and writers from away, but IMO your model is more authentic than their current versions.
I grew up on a turpentine still in NW Fla. in the 20's & 30's. Then the dwellings were termed "shotgun houses", "dogtrot houses" "hands' quarters" and the lean-to camp sheds were called "tuppentine shanties".
They did not sport galvanized crimped tin roofs, wide wrap around porches, large front entrances and grassy yards. They had narrow doors, shuttered windows, cypress shingled roofs, stick & clay chimneys and were surrounded by a small swept sand yard with a tiny vegetable patch and outhouse. A few had a pig pen and chicken roost and a _very few had a shallow open well flavored with E. coli.
The Cracker houses in today's upscale neighborhoods that pamper to the nostalgia of affluent Floridians are not what the Crackers, Turp Hands, Convicts, Woods Rider, Stiller, Cooper and Tally Whacker (the "Man" who hit the tree trunk with a tally stick to indicate the Turp Hand had scraped a proper face, to tally his pay) lived in.
I was right. Inquiring rcw minds really don't want to know! :(
Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter
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18 years ago
Funny about how some things of the past are romanticized to the point of becoming upscale. Sad really, that such practices negate the hardships that existed during the time period.
Tally Whacker: really? I often attempt to figure out the meaning and origins of phrases we use today that don't have a modern reference. Thanks for the explanation. A puzzler came up just this week: do you know where "getting the short end of the stick" comes from?
(I know there are books and likely on-line resources for these terms, but then there's no puzzle to figure out or conversation when others offer the answer.)
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18 years ago
====>Owen: Go to:
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18 years ago
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18 years ago
If you pull a log or three, you create an entirely new scour pattern. This is moving water, after all. The river might choose an entirely new path from here to there which you, or others with land around it might not agree with. Besides, you need the shelter for all the new fish species....
They pull logs from lakes here, where the danger is much less, and regularly dynamite beaver dams on streams to try and preserve the status quo.
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18 years ago
Glenn, After our 'fessing up' we can't ever take on airs here again, but I was glad to meet you at the NFW Oct. meeting.
Glenn, George & All, Old submerged logs and bog wood should be of interest to woodturners. I imagine there are huge variations in their preservation. I'm told that cypress was pile driven into the Apalachicola river to impede Union gun boats during "The War Between the States". The water is brackish or salt and warm most of the year and the logs remain unharmed. I've heard that old pine logs that sunk in jams while being floated down the fresh water Penobscot in Maine that freezes part of the year are intact.
I wonder what differences in species, weather, salinity, flowing or still, vegetation, contaminants etc. etc, make for good or bad old submerged turning timber?
Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter
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18 years ago
Lack of oxygen is the best situation. Wood decays aerobically.
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18 years ago
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18 years ago
George & Bill, I'm too irked with Fla. Power & Light (FPL) to go to the Forest Products site today. Also I'm too beset with poison oak rash to love trees, so I'll ask you two and the other woodsmen here.
Are logs that lie in water for years and preserved by lack of oxygen or air, physically similar to their freshly felled state? Has the lignin, cellulose, water distribution, etc. changed in how turners need to prepare the wood for turning or carpenters for flooring?
IOW, does oxygen deprivation merely put off the inevitable need for controlled drying since cracking is not the same as decaying?
Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter
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18 years ago
They're full of water, so they have to dry, but with the lignin still firmly gluing things together, it's no worse than a log that's been rained on on the deck.
Now waterlogging _with_ decay is another matter.
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18 years ago
Hey, where I came from "Tally Whacker" was that central part of our lower extremities that frequently controls our brain!
TomNie