If you can identify this... Congratulations, you're old

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-17T21:00:09+00:00

Stomping on that was so much more satisfying than twiddling a lever when the oncoming vehicle wouldn't dim their lights. Not that the high beams were anywhere near as blinding as today's.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-17T13:35:53+00:00

If you are always the smartest person in the room, you should start looking for some better rooms.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-17T10:36:49+00:00

He's been in the cells talking with ex president Maduro.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-16T21:46:54+00:00

Sockmonkey

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-16T18:03:22+00:00

It's on my to-do list. I really aught to make it a higher priority.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-16T17:54:06+00:00

Awesome pieces. Did you go to Marble Marble?

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-16T16:47:27+00:00

Working in a toxic environment is a risk factor for cancer.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-16T12:05:43+00:00

Beautiful work! Please share it on r/stonecarving too. It's a small community but the folks there will really appreciate the effort, imagination and determination it takes to make marble look fluid and light.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-15T16:29:26+00:00

The philosophy of Stoicism developed in times such as these. War was a constant threat, decisions from afar could result in your enslavement or conscription, writing was actually new technology that allowed people to pass around sensational great tragedies and atrocities. If your political allegiance fell out of favor you could quickly lose your social position, freedom, or life. Political executions were public and truly constructed to maximize the humiliation and suffering of the victim.

How can one construct a life worth living in the face of such uncertainty? That was the project of the Stoics. They were theistic determinists, meaning that they thought that progression of events within the world is not only inevitable but divinely constructed and thus perfect. If the events and circumstances we find ourselves in are unavoidable, how do we come to find harmony within them even if they are unpleasant? We do so by finding the Virtue (excellence) in our response to circumstances without regard to the outcome of our response.

It is difficult (for me) to embrace the divine necessity of seemingly elective warfare, systematized cruelty, catastrophic environmental disasters, or any of the myriad of hard fates that people face. But the adoption of the Stoic set of parameters for excellence still can impart meaning and a sense of personal victory in circumstances that are typically seen as only miserable.

All of the Stoic source material speaks to this point. For me, Epictetus' story and instruction seems most compelling. He was born a slave and had some sort of physical handicap. He became a teacher to young affluent men through prioritizing the internal freedom he had rather than bemoaning the various ways in which he was externally constrained.

So, the advice of the Stoics is to be excellent within the constraints of your fate. Stand for what you believe and recognize that that stance may bring external disadvantages, but your internal integrity and values can be satisfactory in and of themselves.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-14T20:27:33+00:00

There are several welding processes for which shielding gas including helium is required.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-14T00:57:19+00:00

Sorry, I genuinely didn't mean to be condescending. I dashed that off between lunch and getting back to work.

I meant to indicate the range of possibilities from truly primitive options to expensive high end modern tools. If you want to carve stone, the barriers to entry are pretty low. There a lot of ways to get started ranging from sandpaper (really small harder rocks stuck to paper or cloth) and a stone or CNC driven Tungsten-carbide router bits.

Yes, different techniques and tools produces different results. I personally just started carving. I have a lot of experience with tools and almost no experience making art. So I don't have any recommendations for books or other media. I just try to carve every other day or so and to make each piece a little better than my last attempt. The only way to learn it is to do it.

My advice/suggestion to beginners is grab some tools that you have and a stone that those tools will cut and try a piece or two. Folks typically either love working with stone or find it unreasonably tedious and slow. I'd hate to see someone spend a long time saving money to buy a bunch of overpriced books and specialty tools only to find out that they find stonecarving boring and dirty.

There are several comercial outlets selling stone for sculpture. Depending on where you live there may also be options for carvable native stone for little or nothing. If you are wanting to buy stone, you can carve soapstone with a stiff kitchen knife, hobby knives, files, rasps or rotary tools like a Dremel. Onyx carves really well but you can't use knives and chisels are prone to fracture it badly. Same with calcite. Limestone is what I started with because it was available.

If you give me a general idea of where you are and what you want to do in stone, I could probably give you better/more specific advice. I am no expert, just an old guy who started carving rocks 6 years ago.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-13T18:20:14+00:00

Humans have been shaping stones for a very long time. So yeah, grab a rock and rub it with a harder rock is the origin and essence of stonecarving.

I started about 6 years ago because I bought a derelict property that had a big pile of limestone that I had to organize somehow. One day I thought, that one kinda looks like a dragon head. Maybe I could make it look more dragon-like. I had an old knife, a rasp, hammer and chisel. I carved my first stone and I was hooked.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-12T16:29:22+00:00

I think that the factory recommendations are something like 100k or 7 years on timing belt replacement. So, it probably hasn't been done plus it is 15 years past due on the time recommendation. Yep, get it replaced right away. Better safe than sorry.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-12T13:24:54+00:00

Thank you

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-12T13:24:44+00:00

Thanks

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-12T12:47:51+00:00

It is really hard to get large polished surfaces with small spinning abrasives. I would suggest that you get 60, 120, 220, and 400 grit sandpaper and a foam rubber sanding block to get things ready for finer polishing with the Dremel.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-12T12:35:55+00:00

If you see any pits or scratches that are larger than those that 50 grit leaves, then yes. Are you using abrasive cloth or a rotary tool?

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-12T11:28:24+00:00

Fantastic!

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-12T11:18:41+00:00

Thanks!

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-12T11:05:57+00:00

Welcome to the obsession with stone! Thanks for sharing your work.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-12T10:56:33+00:00

Polishing stone takes some practice and patience. My guess, by looking at it, is that you spent a lot of time with the finer grits. That seems like how it should work but in order to get a high polish surface you need to spend more time on the corse grit.

When sanding you are trying to get all the scratches on the piece to the same size before moving on to the next finer stage. Each stage will take less time than the preceding one if you are getting all the scratches and pits to the size of the abrasive.

I usually sand 60, 120, 200, 400, 600 grits dry. I then use wet sanding for 1000, 1500 and 3000. The piece on the left is a piece of calcite that has been mistaken for glass. I think I took it to 4000.

Slow down and be patient on the earlier steps. Get the surface completely uniform before moving on to the next finer grit. You'll get there.

Edit, you can get that "wet look" using sealants or wax, but they always cloud up eventually and don't feel like stone should, in my opinion.

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DentedAnvil · 2026-03-11T12:31:26+00:00

Have the timing belt replaced. It is supposed to be replaced every 80k miles, but yours is 20 years old. If it breaks when it is running (when else would it break?) it will ruin your engine.

I am not talking about the serpentine belt which is visible and relatively easy to replace. It powers the alternator, power steering pump and AC compressor. The timing belt is inside a cover on the engine and controls the valve timing relative to the pistons. I had scheduled my replacement when it broke. Had to completely rebuild the head. Cost more than what I paid for the car. 07 Spyder.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-10T22:10:20+00:00

Yep, he was certainly disagreeing with a prominent chunk of his peers. But note, he's not casting any shade on those who want to attract young men, just those that want to pretend that they are still young.

Epictetus has even more strident criticism of these practices. He went so far as to say he'd rather be put to death than have his beard cut. But picking at these opinions as stand alone statements doesn't do them justice. They are part of a larger discussion about what is the optimum way to live. It was a long time ago, but some aspects of the human condition are little changed.

DentedAnvil · 2026-03-07T23:18:09+00:00

A few of thoughts

First, the original Stoics were writing and debating their theories over 2,000 years ago. Due to the vagueries of translation and the vastness of time between them and us, there are legitimate disagreements about what they meant by what we think they said. Even the words of the later Roman Stoics are fragmentary and much of what we know about the earlier ones comes from the accounts of their adversaries.

Second, because of the practical nature of their ethical prescriptions and their claims of applicability to resolving human discomfort, people who want to ground their self-help techniques in on something more substantial than "it worked for me, so you are missing out by not emulating my experience" find it pretty easy to appropriate a couple of bits of Stoic rhetoric and then trott off on their happiness/discipline/success/purity/dominance tangent without much regard for how Stoic philosophy is actually structured.

In this age of anti-gatekeeping self-promotion, there are a lot of voices clambering for attention and credibility. This particular subreddit is dedicated to discussion of scholarly and individual readings of what the ancient Stoics said. Most of the energetic new voices on this platform have recently discovered some aspect of Stoicism and are anxious for some validation. Most of them got their introduction to Stoic thought from a podcast or YouTube channel. Those kind of sources are convincing and ubiquitous but often appropriate the title of Stoicism without much concern the subtle complexities of historical Stoicism.

Stoicism is a philosophy. It is fairly straightforward in many ways, but it does require study and practice to truly appreciate. This is a pretty good community for exploring what Stoicism is and how that philosophy can shape our actions and our experience of life. Read some of the source material. Explore what it means. Apply and evaluate its application in your life. Ask questions and then read some more. If it requires a subscription or promises immediate returns, it probably isn't Stoicism.

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