I luuuurves Tufte because he introduced me to Minard’s infographic. You can buy reproductions and translations in his site’s shop, and they make fantastic gifts for history nerds.
(And also because powerpoint is an overpriced bit of nearly useless fluff.)
From bronze axes with inefficient bronze shafts to PowerPoint. In praise of folly? Because PowerPoint is just like that axe; too much pretty not enough function.
Yes I am a Tufte admirer.
Quoth Horace. Or not.
Did you share this with Jimmy DiResta?
I am seriously perplexed that you do not seem to have one already, Mark.
Seriously, you’ve been missing out. Start with one of the small models. Goggles, gloves, earplugs, proper clothing. Maybe a leather apron. Mind the sparks, they can ruin other stuff or even start a little fire. But a fire extinguisher in the workshop is a good idea anyway.
My implication was that the scar on his leg is likely to outlast the axe.
Horace said “I have created a monument”, I wrote “thou art creating a monument.” I think. My Latin is rusty; that too has been outlasted.
Yeah - mine too. I recognized it as the original, but I’ll defer to your scholarship as my memory of Latin is as receded and distantly past as my hairline.
That was not quite the kind of a bronze axe I expected…
As a conscript, I was trained in taking meteorological measurements in the field for artillery weather reports, and that included working with hydrogen for the weather balloons. Our kit included a bronze sledgehammer and aluminum stakes for securing the guy wires for a mast, among other things, for the same sparkless reasons.
At the transformer station where I worked years ago, we had a synchronous condenser (huge rotating machine) that used hydrogen as a coolant. There was a shed full of bronze tools for working on it, to avoid a reenactment of the Hindenberg incident.
If the bronze has enough arsenic and other toxic contaminants in it, the wound won’t heal. This is believed to be the origin of ancient tales of mad wizard smiths.
This one looks like a hewing axe, as I’m sure you’re aware @Medievalist, but perhaps not the wider readership. Hewing axes are flatter on one side, i.e. look down the handle and if it looks like the axe is bent to one side or “offset” then it is a hewing axe. These are for shaping logs into timbers for construction. I used the present tense because while this activity is most associated with the distant past, people are still hewing, because it is a look like no other.
These are hand-hewn timbers, lovingly created and a restful sight for sore eyes used to the glare of LCD screens, smartphones and sterile, smooth, modern lines everywhere you look. Rough hewn is beautiful. We need more rough-hewn things, less tidy, more homey, more personal, less mass-produced.
If anybody wants to buy some, I have a bunch of those, mostly 6-8 feet long but some 20’ long, believed to have been hewn well before 1911 - the earliest graffitti in the building they came out of was 1911, but the beams appear to have been recycled and could be far older. They have semirandom mortises and lots of old nails in them, and most have blown out tenons or half a scarf on the ends.
PM me an offer, pickup only in Delaware USA because they are heavy. If nobody wants 'em they’ll probably get burned for firewood eventually.
Hmmm, not sure I’m allowed to post this. We’ll see if @orenwolf lets my mercantilism slide!
If I were anywhere near Delaware, I would be knocking on your door before you could finish typing that.
I bet you could sell 'em and get some cash. Just put 'em on Craigslist and I bet someone will bite.
Please do! I’m all for Happy Mutant crafts (or in this case, excess timber sales) 
No slight to the sisterhood was intended, I assure you!
Yes, I’d love to go on one of his bronze age casting courses!
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