Harpoon Removed
Jan. 23rd, 2011 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
errantemberSince we're on a roll discussing my revolting personal habits, I have another gem for ya'!
I've been working on making this dog fence out of recycled (actually, accidentally stolen) ipe, a Brazilian hardwood. It's substantially denser than aluminum (not true, actually, about 1/2 as dense as solid aluminum), and working it is like working plastic. At least, it's mostly like working plastic. Like plastic, it's very dense and hard, fucks up your tools, dulls your blades, splits easily if you're drill holes are even slightly too small, but strips easily if you're hole are even slightly too big.
Unlike plastic, it can't be melted to make working it easier. Also unlike plastic, the super-fine particles which gaily saturate the air while you're working it can cause caustic effects on the skin and lungs. And finally, unlike plastic, which requires some kind of physical interaction to create splinters, ipe will wait until you're asleep, slip into your bedroom, and stab you repeatedly while quietly whistling an out-of-tune version of the Psycho theme.
Last time this happened, I pulled about 1 cm of splinter out of my right pointer finger, but the end looked too blunt for me to have gotten all of it. This motivated a horrifying Swiss Army Knife and Rubbing Alcohol Surgery Session that, on-and-off, lasted over two hours, with me continually cutting further into my poor finger, trying to get the rest of the splinter. Finally, after seven or eight painful, bloody, and unsuccessful attempts, I decided I had to give up. It always seemed like I could see something in there, and I could sure as hell FEEL something in there, but I could never manage to get hold of it, even with razor-sharp tweezers, and all I was doing was boring a bigger hole into my body.
Cut to now, weeks later. Over time, a black dot was slowly rising to the surface of my nearly useless-for-weeks finger. The culprit finally crested the surface yesterday, and I was just able to dig out the the additional nearly 1 cm of additional splinter from deep inside my soul. I still see some darkness in there, but I'm assuming it's just blood until proven otherwise.
Thank you Jesus!
I've been working on making this dog fence out of recycled (actually, accidentally stolen) ipe, a Brazilian hardwood. It's substantially denser than aluminum (not true, actually, about 1/2 as dense as solid aluminum), and working it is like working plastic. At least, it's mostly like working plastic. Like plastic, it's very dense and hard, fucks up your tools, dulls your blades, splits easily if you're drill holes are even slightly too small, but strips easily if you're hole are even slightly too big.
Unlike plastic, it can't be melted to make working it easier. Also unlike plastic, the super-fine particles which gaily saturate the air while you're working it can cause caustic effects on the skin and lungs. And finally, unlike plastic, which requires some kind of physical interaction to create splinters, ipe will wait until you're asleep, slip into your bedroom, and stab you repeatedly while quietly whistling an out-of-tune version of the Psycho theme.
Last time this happened, I pulled about 1 cm of splinter out of my right pointer finger, but the end looked too blunt for me to have gotten all of it. This motivated a horrifying Swiss Army Knife and Rubbing Alcohol Surgery Session that, on-and-off, lasted over two hours, with me continually cutting further into my poor finger, trying to get the rest of the splinter. Finally, after seven or eight painful, bloody, and unsuccessful attempts, I decided I had to give up. It always seemed like I could see something in there, and I could sure as hell FEEL something in there, but I could never manage to get hold of it, even with razor-sharp tweezers, and all I was doing was boring a bigger hole into my body.
Cut to now, weeks later. Over time, a black dot was slowly rising to the surface of my nearly useless-for-weeks finger. The culprit finally crested the surface yesterday, and I was just able to dig out the the additional nearly 1 cm of additional splinter from deep inside my soul. I still see some darkness in there, but I'm assuming it's just blood until proven otherwise.
Thank you Jesus!
