All About Pocket Knives

FRJ wrote:Tommy, good ol home made cherry pie ...........

...frj, that picture has done "flung a cravin' on me"!!!!........ ...........

Just another old silver coin.

....wow!!!, that one is 2 years older than I am!!!!.................... .............

Jerry, you should have saved a few from that new roll of new Indian head penny's when you were a boy! ftd[/quote]

roofsc wrote:Jerry, you should have saved a few from that new roll of new Indian head penny's when you were a boy! ftd

Well frogs, Paul. Now you tell me.

Just a nickel.

I picked this Rotozip up at an estate sale last weekend.
I have been wanting one for a while and to find one for $25 was pretty cool I thought.

Just wish I could get such a deal on the tools that go with it!

The obverse is struck almost 90 degrees from the reverse.
The obverse has a spoof looking Roman warrior.
I make out 2 guns alongside a column of some sort on the reverse.
It might not have been an actually coin.
But it seems to have the remains of a rim.

If ANYBODY can shed ANY info on it I would be in your debt!

For a variety of reasons (mostly eye health and somewhat too busy) my motorcycle sat for almost 2 years in the garage unstarted and unmoved. I took it into the dealership in to get a new battery, new tires, and a complete road ready inspection. They also emptied my gas tank which was needed. I understood them to tell me that they filled my tank with new gas. I decided to take a ride on Friday around noon and my gas gauge showed Full. Long story short I ran out of gas after about 15 miles and had to wait by the side of the road for about an hour before my dear wife could bring me some gas.

It felt really good to get back out on the road and feel some torque and hear a classic American soundtrack.

Lesson learned -- look in the gas tank before you leave. I'll be talking to the dealership about our apparent misalignment on whether a working gas gauge constitutes "road ready".

So, I have this shag bark Hickory tree in my yard. I had a decent drop of nuts this year. I haven't ever done anything with them, but I heard they are supposed to be the cadillac of nuts, so I gathered them up this year.



I know I have to take the outer hulls off, but not sure what the proper protocol is from there. I have read on line to store them in a bag in your basement until you're ready to open them. I have also heard crack them open right away and freeze them. I do understand they are very difficult to get out of the shell.

Anybody have experience with these?

Glenn

Glenn - I have been around hickory trees all my life, and here are my conclusions.

The nut is so hard that normal nut cracking methods will not work. Lay the nut on an anvil (a stiddy might do, but I suspect that it will prove too fragile) and take a four pound sledge hammer and give the hickory nut a solid whack. When that accomplishes nothing at all (which it won't), get a two hand hold on the hammer and hit the nut with all your strength. At this point the nut will either remain perfectly whole or else be mashed completely flat. If it is still whole try again, maybe with an eight pound hammer. If it is mashed flat, scrape it up and try to separate the nut meat from the shell. a pair of tweezers and a couple of dental picks, and a magnifier lens will make it easier. Hope this helps!

Dinadan wrote:Glenn - I have been around hickory trees all my life, and here are my conclusions.

The nut is so hard that normal nut cracking methods will not work. Lay the nut on an anvil (a stiddy might do, but I suspect that it will prove too fragile) and take a four pound sledge hammer and give the hickory nut a solid whack. When that accomplishes nothing at all (which it won't), get a two hand hold on the hammer and hit the nut with all your strength. At this point the nut will either remain perfectly whole or else be mashed completely flat. If it is still whole try again, maybe with an eight pound hammer. If it is mashed flat, scrape it up and try to separate the nut meat from the shell. a pair of tweezers and a couple of dental picks, and a magnifier lens will make it easier. Hope this helps!

Glad to have someone with some personal experience weigh in...

It has been my experience that the meat of the hickory nut is THE worlds most difficult to extract. Getting the hulls off the nuts is easy. Spread them out on the driveway and run over them with the car. Once the hulls are removed, you're on your own. It's almost as difficult as Mel made it out to be. When you finally get it out, the meat is really good though.


Edit: I called my redneck cousin who knows more about these things than do I. He said just hit it with a hammer and keep at it a little bit at a time.

Oh, come on, they're not that hard.

We had three huge hickory trees in our front yard when I was growing up.

Also, there was a defect in one of the front porch concrete steps where an air bubble had been. It was about half the size of a hickory nut.

My sisters and had were tasked with gathering the nuts, but we generally waited until the outer shells dried and curled away from the inner nut.

We laid a nut in that air bubble with the seam facing up and struck it with a common hammer. Everything was put into a grocery sack and then the whole family would sit around with bona fide nut crackers and picks and remove the meat.

It was free food back then.

Charlie Noyes

jerryd6818 wrote:It has been my experience that the meat of the hickory nut is THE worlds most difficult to extract. Getting the hulls off the nuts is easy. Spread them out on the driveway and run over them with the car. Once the hulls are removed, you're on your own. It's almost as difficult as Mel made it out to be. When you finally get it out, the meat is really good though.


Edit: I called my redneck cousin who knows more about these things than do I. He said just hit it with a hammer and keep at it a little bit at a time.

....jerry, I used to put 'em in the vise, that way you can kinda control the pressure without squashing them!!..........where's your cousin live???.....anywhere close to me???.................... .................

No. Originally from Southern Illinois, he has lived in Central Indiana for a little over 50 years.

.....when you said redneck, I thought maybe you were talking about miss.!!...........I lived in O'Fallon, ill. for about a year when I was stationed at scott AFB....as fer' north as I ever lived!!!.......... ................

Ain't that somethin'? I have another cousin that lives just a skosh over ten miles due south of O'Fallon in a little town called Freeburg.

RobesonsRme.com wrote:Oh, come on, they're not that hard.

We had three huge hickory trees in our front yard when I was growing up.

Also, there was a defect in one of the front porch concrete steps where an air bubble had been. It was about half the size of a hickory nut.

My sisters and had were tasked with gathering the nuts, but we generally waited until the outer shells dried and curled away from the inner nut.

We laid a nut in that air bubble with the seam facing up and struck it with a common hammer. Everything was put into a grocery sack and then the whole family would sit around with bona fide nut crackers and picks and remove the meat.

It was free food back then.

Charlie Noyes

Charlie - the Indians used something similar to your concrete hole. Here is a nutting stone that I found along the bank of a local river. I have spent some time holding that stone and imagining what the person who made and used it looked like, what he or she thought. How what mattered to them compares to what matters to me. Probably like the river, completely different back then and yet essentially the same.

jerryd6818 wrote:Ain't that somethin'? I have another cousin that lives just a skosh over ten miles due south of O'Fallon in a little town called Freeburg.

.........I remember freeburg!!...next time I talk to the oldest son,i'll find out exactly where he lived in Rockford, he worked for some company there in Rockford and lived there for about a year!!................ .................

You guys are too funny...

I'm gonna give it a shot anyway, and let you know how smashed my thumb gets..

I have a great nut cracker my Dad used to crack pecans. No reason it could not be adapted to hickory nuts.

It is mounted on a wooden base and consists of two connected parts, a concave ended heavy threaded metal bar mounted in a heavy threaded sleeve and a lever activated cracker that also has a concave end.

Adjust the two concave ended metal bars so that when they are at their closest, they are just a bit closer than the average size of the nuts to be cracked.

When the lever handle is activated, the nut is cracked, but not crushed.

Adjust it just right and the shell, especially on pecans, almost just falls off.

Dad modified his by making a longer, more sturdy lever handle and therefore increased mechanical advantage.

Charlie Noyes

....that ought to do the job, Charlie!!!................ ..................

The handle is threaded and screws into that hinge apparatus. Dad worked in a steel fabricating plant, so getting a better, stouter, longer handle made was easy.

Charlie Noyes

They sure make shelling pecans less of a chore. The place my folks retired to had at least a half dozen pecan trees in the back yard (it was on an acre of ground) and dad picked up one of those nut crackers someplace. It's one of the things that got away after mom died (long ugly story). They work great, especially when you have a five gallon bucket of pecans to shell.