Thread: Any other eccentric hobbies?

Mostly mundane stuff

Fishing and learning about fly fishing
Classic cars (mostly 40's and 50's)
General war history, especially WWII.
Handguns
Hiking

Oh yeah and I collect sotch malt whisky.
My goal is to have had 1 bottle of each distillery before I die. I am about halfway (the whiskies, that is ).

Of course there is a number of whiskies I'll never taste because of rarity and price, but I want to have had 1 bottle of every distillery that is still in business, or of which I can find a good bottle for a reasonable price.

Luckily, my wife shares this passion, and it is one of the things she misses most during this pregnancy.
Anyway, dropping 300 euros on a malt whisky shopping trip is no problem as far as my wife is concerned. Her only requirement is that she has to like the taste of whatever we buy.

Gods I love this woman

Just realised the Astro City link didn't catch earlier. Great book really. They talk about the heroes, but the story is always told from a human perspective, sometimes the guy on the street, sometimes the heroes' daily troubles ...

X

Originally Posted by Bruno

I do have a lithography stone
Actually, I had 2. Now I have 1.5 litography stone and a norton sized waterstone made of the same material.

Hmm...never thought about using litho stones for honing...could work, if you grained it really well. Of course all the stones I use belong to the art department so I can't exactly take on home with me (besides which the ones I've been using lately require a fork lift to move around).

Yes I know those things are heavy.
Mine are floortile sized (roughly 30 cm by 25 cm). 1 is 6 cm thick, the other 3.
I could lift them together, but not that easily. I can image that a painting sized stone can only be managed by forklift.

I have been wondering about this: how much do these stones cost?

They are used by book restorers as a workbench for making leather thin.
They are flat, and it the shaving knife leaves the leather and touches the stone, the stone doesn't damage the edge.

I have cut myself a nortons sized piece and lapped it. I still have to try it for honing though.
Lapping was a bitch btw. That stone is HARD. I also needed a 2KW anglegrinder with diamond sawblade to cut it. And even that was very slow going.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Oh yeah and I collect sotch malt whisky.
...Luckily, my wife shares this passion,...Anyway, dropping 300 euros on a malt whisky shopping trip is no problem as far as my wife is concerned. Her only requirement is that she has to like the taste of whatever we buy.

Gods I love this woman

She's a keeper, that's for sure!!


-whatever

-Lou

Found this thread while looking for Ham Radio in the SRP forums. So here's my list

Model building (many sitting around waiting for completion)
Woodturning (mainly pens and other spindle work)
Numismatics
Spending odd currency ($2 bills, dollar coins, and half dollars in LARGE quantities)
Photography (Mostly Film, mostly Black and white, some digital when necessary, some color, and most of that is slides)
Collecting old cameras (especially K-Mount, and Medium and Large format)
Ham Radio (General going for Extra soon, with no equipment to operate on, looking for some for cheap)
Theology (Mainly Historic Lutheranism, History, Practice, and Belief)
Collecting Orthodox Icons
Straight Razors
And the list goes on and on.

When I get the chance I like to pick up old books (don't get the opportunity much nowadys, what with my RAD and all).

I've got (what I think) is an interesting collection of old obscure political and philsophical texts and quite a large collection of old engineering references and monographs. My most prized piece is an early-ish King james Bible (where the "s"s look like "f"s - we get a good laugh whe we read words like "succor"... ).

But probably what makes this an eccentric hobby is that I have quite a few first edition statistical texts.

During my years of study at Oxford, I used to hang out for the opportunity to get into the rare book section of the Bodleian Library - never got a huge opportunity as statistics is relatively new (not like those cursed historians), but there's nothing like leafing through old books wearing white gloves.

Oh, and I also collect old maps - I particularly like the ones of the known world before Australia was discovered.

James.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

When I get the chance I like to pick up old books ...
James.

If I recall correctly, he has one or two OTHER eccentric little hobbies!..

-whatever

-Lou (un vieux livre jete')

I could come up with a big long list of things I like doing and wish I had enough time to do ... but right now the only hobby (if you can call it that) that's taking up any significant amount of my time is karate.