rod
~ Elite 1000 Member ~
Many of us know that the yearly FEGA Reno show (soon to be in Las Vegas) is a place to see old friends and meet new ones, as well as being a great place to view excellent engraving. Altogether, it is a bargain one-stop-shopping experience, especially good when we all come under the same roof after journeying from afar.
Last weekend, three of us Californian 'Reno alumni' downed tools and met up at Katherine Plumer's base up in the high country. Dr John Gunn, eye surgeon, put down his scalpel, or whatever impliment was on his 'workbench', I switch off my lathes and milling machine in Mendocino, both of us set out for the north, John's drive was a bit longer than my 5 hour journey, yet we both arrived, within four minutes of each other, at the ranch on Saturday.
What ranch? Last year Katherine moved north from the greater Sacramento area, to set herself up in a small studio apartment above the barn on a ranch in Shasta county, owned by a couple she befriended in college, who divide their days between running the ranch and creative metal engineering. I have been there once before, last May, to record the eclipse of the sun, this time it was my intention to star gaze with my new "go-to" computer tracking telescope. We engineers are fond of saying, "...reliability equals one over the number of pieces...". In layperson's terms, complicated stuff breaks down more often than simple stuff. Sure enough, my telescope got the hiccups when attempting to crank up its automatic pointing sysem, but it still worked in the old fashion manual mode.
Katherine has been working on a bulino commission, along with her usual scrimshaw and drawing commissions, so there was shop talk going on. There was music going on, since John and I had a guitar and mandolin available. All of this happened, surrounded by ranch and animal life, in a setting of rough rocky grasslands with scattered oaks, watched over by the huge dormant volcanoes of Shasta and Lassen, in dry, hot weather, under a canopy of bright stars, an environment totalament differente from my Coastal foggy, chilly town of Mendocino.
We had fun, took a rugged hike along the pristine creek, swopped many stories. We three want to do it again, maybe in another location next time, and possibly with a few more engravers within range. We combined a few photos, which Katherine has given permission to post as a short slide show. It will be the first album on my picasa sight, here is the link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rodcameron2/
Rod
P S Katherine read the above draft, and added:
It was really so much fun having "the guys" over this last weekend and spend some time with people who speak the engraving language! I have to say it felt like the whole bunch of engravers should have been there picking and singing in my tiny loft on Saturday night, though it would have been pretty cozy!
Last weekend, three of us Californian 'Reno alumni' downed tools and met up at Katherine Plumer's base up in the high country. Dr John Gunn, eye surgeon, put down his scalpel, or whatever impliment was on his 'workbench', I switch off my lathes and milling machine in Mendocino, both of us set out for the north, John's drive was a bit longer than my 5 hour journey, yet we both arrived, within four minutes of each other, at the ranch on Saturday.
What ranch? Last year Katherine moved north from the greater Sacramento area, to set herself up in a small studio apartment above the barn on a ranch in Shasta county, owned by a couple she befriended in college, who divide their days between running the ranch and creative metal engineering. I have been there once before, last May, to record the eclipse of the sun, this time it was my intention to star gaze with my new "go-to" computer tracking telescope. We engineers are fond of saying, "...reliability equals one over the number of pieces...". In layperson's terms, complicated stuff breaks down more often than simple stuff. Sure enough, my telescope got the hiccups when attempting to crank up its automatic pointing sysem, but it still worked in the old fashion manual mode.
Katherine has been working on a bulino commission, along with her usual scrimshaw and drawing commissions, so there was shop talk going on. There was music going on, since John and I had a guitar and mandolin available. All of this happened, surrounded by ranch and animal life, in a setting of rough rocky grasslands with scattered oaks, watched over by the huge dormant volcanoes of Shasta and Lassen, in dry, hot weather, under a canopy of bright stars, an environment totalament differente from my Coastal foggy, chilly town of Mendocino.
We had fun, took a rugged hike along the pristine creek, swopped many stories. We three want to do it again, maybe in another location next time, and possibly with a few more engravers within range. We combined a few photos, which Katherine has given permission to post as a short slide show. It will be the first album on my picasa sight, here is the link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rodcameron2/
Rod
P S Katherine read the above draft, and added:
It was really so much fun having "the guys" over this last weekend and spend some time with people who speak the engraving language! I have to say it felt like the whole bunch of engravers should have been there picking and singing in my tiny loft on Saturday night, though it would have been pretty cozy!
Like I'd said in my email to Rod it was great to get to "speak the language" for a couple days with people who know what I'm talking about! And it gave me an excuse to go out walking after dark (the dark star-filled sky here is AWESOME), which I normally am too chicken to do. Oh, "big cat" sounds coming from the ravine the last few nights. Hmmm, maybe a mountain lion? Yikes!
