A few odds and ends (pictures and observations) from Visalia on practice day

[Boyd Allen]

I wandered down to Visalia today, to say hi to old friends, and see what I might take a picture of. Below you will see what I guess I should call big foot, a one piece rest foot, a couple of shots of a Ralph Stewart tuner (Can anyone tell me how many phases the lathe motor, that cut the tuner threads on the barrel has?), and a subtle modification to a Harrell press. I also considered writing a short story titled the death of the daisy wheel at Visalia, since all of the early arrivers showed heavy Ocock influence, with simplicity being the theme, and nary a daisy in sight. Comments?

Added later; Exceeded monthly bandwidth allowance on Imagecave. Here are links to same images on flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17420458@N06/5644742745/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17420458@N06/5645307480/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17420458@N06/5644742047/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17420458@N06/5645306702/

 

[Fergus Bailey]

I also considered writing a short story titled the death of the daisy wheel at Visalia, since all of the early arrivers showed heavy Ocock influence, with simplicity being the theme, and nary a daisy in sight.

So Boyd

For us geographically challenged shooters that have never had the pleasure (or otherwise) of seeing an "Ocock influence" at work, I take it you are describing a single vane with no prop? That certainly doesn’t sound like the kind of flag I would choose to shoot over, but then you can’t argue with the aggs mister Ocock and other are getting from their flags in recent matches. Can you comment on what makes this an effective flag design, as intuitively it seems like it would be providing less information that alternative designs?

 

[Boyd Allen]

Anything that I write is a guess. Perhaps we can get Gary to enlighten us.
First of all, at Visalia, depending on the time of day, there are a lot of eddies in the wind that make the flags within a particular line point in different directions and then change to a different combinations. I am sure that other ranges have this situation as well, depending on the local weather patterns, topography and what is growing in the immediate area. The effect of this is to minimize the time that a condition is available, and to increase the probability that one will be caught in a change. Wind velocities are not generally high, by Midwestern standards, so watching ribbons as the leading indicator of a slight or major shift is the order of the day. Also, It has been my observation that in light conditions, daisy wheels tend to add to the momentum of flags, lengthening their response time to changes in the wind. Under the aforementioned conditions, anything that decreases vane lag, short of creating a geometry that produces hunting, is good, and anything that prolongs the time that it takes to look at a line of flags and make a decision is bad. I have a set of Hood flags, with large and small vanes, cloth and survoyors' tape ribbons, tuned up daisy wheels, and all the appropriate shafts and counterweights. At one point I did some testing comparing different configurations as to their responsiveness. The winner was small vanes, with the daisy shaft extended all the way and the small weight that goes with the daisys, but no daisy. Over the years, there have been a large number of flag designs that have shown up at Visalia, and from time to time I have slowly walked down the line evaluating each design as to how easy it was to read. After all of that, it seems to me that one can make the mistake of evaluating a flag design by looking at just one, when it is more important how they work when lined up as they would be at a match. Keeping the "read" as simple, quick, and unified as possible seems to me to be desirable. This is just one opinion. I welcome comments.

 

[JerrySharrett]

I wandered down to Visalia today, to say hi to old friends, and see what I might take a picture of. Below you will see what I guess I should call big foot, a one piece rest foot, a couple of shots of a Ralph Stewart tuner (Can anyone tell me how many phases the lathe motor, that cut the tuner threads on the barrel has?), and a subtle modification to a Harrell press. I also considered writing a short story titled the death of the daisy wheel at Visalia, since all of the early arrivers showed heavy Ocock influence, with simplicity being the theme, and nary a daisy in sight. Comments?

Apparently your image hosting site is down??

 

[Boyd Allen]

I exceeded my bandwidth allowance for the month. I have added links to the same pictures on the original post.

 

[JerrySharrett]

Ir (Can anyone tell me how many phases the lathe motor, that cut the tuner threads on the barrel has?), and a subtle modification to a Harrell press. I also considered writing a short story titled the death of the daisy wheel at Visalia, since

I'd bet on that chatter not being phase induced. Looks like running too slow SFM with a carbide insert.

 

[Charles E]

Boyd, with as many picture as you take -- and excellent ones -- I'd recommend Adobe's Lightroom.

http://softwareplanet.biz/products/Adobe-Photoshop-Lightroom-2.html

Except for me, the people at our shop that work on images all use it before fine-tuning with Photoshop (I got stuck with Camera Raw, probably a precursor to Lightroom). The more powerful -- and expensive -- Photoshop is a necessity for us, because part of our business is preparing images for book publication, and to get a good image on on the uncoated papers used on a printing press (dynamic range about 10-14, using an arithmetic scale), extra work is needed. The dynamic range of the old silver-process photographic papers was over 50, for example.

But enough technical muttering. I think you'd enjoy Lightroom.

 

[Boyd Allen]

Charles,
You are quite a resource. Since you are in the business that you are in, I will relate a short story about printing technology, and my youth.

When our family moved to California, we landed in Lakewood for a year (1960-61), and I went to the seventh grade in a school that had a vocational print shop, letterpress. For the seventh graders it was a semester class that flipped with art, where we were required to learn what the teacher called the California Job Case (drawer with no labels into which type was sorted) by the end of the second week. There were a variety of platen presses in the shop, hand foot and electric motor driven. We learned to set type, and do such things as make tablets, do the old style marbleized edges of stacks of paper, cut and print with linoleum glued onto blocks, and the rudiments of book binding. If a student became sufficiently irritating to the teacher, he was assigned to sort 6 pt type. The advanced students produced copies of Poor Richard's Almanac as a class project. The year before, in central Oklahoma I had learned basic photography on a Speed Graphic, and Omega enlarger, using 4x5 cut film, from an uncle who took over the photography department of the college where my father was a professor.

I guess the point of all of this is that I take a more than passing interest when someone tells me how things are being done today, in an industry that I had a little exposure to in my youth.

Boyd

 

[Charles E]

Boyd, it's too bad this is the competition only forum. I'll risk one more post

(Actually, at the end of the 19th century, paper patched bullets started with a false muzzle were the most accurate bullets available . . .)

* * *

As luck would have it, a designer friend is writing a book, and asked me to write a chapter on typography. It's all rather fresh in my mind just now. Ignoring the technical changes, the biggest one for me was digital type. When Adobe published the source code for PostScript, font editing programs became available. That let the end users of type -- typesetters -- have far more control than in times past. Interestingly enough, the new ebook format extends that -- now readers have control over both the type and the design of the piece. Just how revolutionary that will be hasn't been considered, I think.

Your story on distributing 6-point type was fun. Perhaps alert the CIA? Just maybe you've found a more acceptable interrogation technique than waterboarding.

* * *

Tell you what. If you want, and can scan one of those pictures at 100-percent size but 1200 ppi, I'll give it a shot. One picture would be about 2 hours work, about all I can commit to right now. Even if it is a poor print, you'd be amazed at how much data can likely be recovered. As to the scanner, the $300 "prosumer" scanners do a fine job, but the really cheap printer-fax-scanner machines I've seen aren't quite up to it. Somebody you know will have fairly good scanner, and we can work via our FTP site. Don't clip the black or white points. 16-bit if possible, but 8-bit will work, too. And if you want the final image to reproduce larger than about 5x7 inches, we'll need a higher ppi on the scan.

 

[Jeff Welker]

Here is a photo of Gary's flags.

 

[Boyd Allen]

Thanks, good shot.

 

[Fergus Bailey]

Boyd - thanks for the thoughts on shooting over a single vane flag. I'm still not sure they are for me, but I appreciate the input.

Jeff - thanks for the photo.

 

[Boyd Allen]

Fergus,
You are welcome, but actually as I mentioned above, I shoot Hood flags, which are double vane, that I have configured without daisies. I know that this puts me into a minority these days, but I think that they are sufficiently responsive, simple enough to read, and most importantly, they are what I have. I spend most of my effort "listening" to what the ribbons are trying to tell me, especially when things are switchy and light.
Boyd