Windows 93

[yogi]

CARBON OFF; https://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Produc ... 00EFZBN6Q/

Here we go; $27 a pint from Amazon. It can be had for a couple dollars cheaper from some other places, but Amazon offers free shipping. It looks like it would do the job but it also looks highly toxic; it probably uses hydrochloric acid as a base. Disposing of the waste properly could be an issue. Plus, this stuff is a paste and not a liquid like the housekeepers used in my kitchen. They cleaned up the stove in a couple hours but the Carbon Off needs to sit overnight. Be that all as it may, I now have to deal with a ceramic cook top powered by electric. It would accumulate the same kind of baked grease as the gas stove if I did not clean it regularly. And, the only reason I do clean it is that the charred carbon acts as an insulator as well as preventing the bottom of the pot from touching the cook top.

By the way, I got myself some of that Wenol you recommended. It's pretty good stuff but doesn't work the way I thought it would. I can get a shiny bottom on the pans using Barkeepers Friend, but it isn't as good as getting the baked on grease off as is Wenol. Wenol does a great job of cleaning my pots but there isn't much of a shine afterwards. Regardless, I like it for the really tough jobs.

[Kellemora]

Wenol is what we used on all our brass buttons in the service. You can get it down to a mirror polish if need be.
I also used it on our door pulls for the flower shop, and they always looked like brand new highly polished brass.

I wonder if this is what they used, but it's not instant.
There is a thicker formula that is like over 500 bucks a gallon, maybe that's it?
https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/ ... eenjet.php
But I don't really think this is it.

[yogi]

I like that stuff in the link you posted, but I agree that it's probably not what those old gals used. However, on that same website a product called Extremely Simple Green Aircraft Cleaner does seem to be pretty close to what I remember. Even if it's not the same stuff it looks like something a clean freak like me should have in my arsenal. LOL The immediate problem I see with it is that a quart spray bottle costs $12.50. It would cost $13.22 to ship it via ground carrier. Hmmm, I wonder if there are any aircraft janitorial services around here within driving distance.

[Kellemora]

I'll bet there are.
Back before Rain-X came on the scene, I was buying 55 gallon drums of the stuff from the Lambert Field supply depot.
It is used as a coating on almost all the commercial airliners, or was back in the day.
The product was nothing more than Acidified Isopropanol Alcohol.
I made rain sheet off the airplanes to reduce weight and drag by keeping the outsides of the planes dry.

Eons ago, I used to buy Tons of stuff from Grainger. Mainly because most of it was commercial grade, so a lot stronger than the store bought stuff. They seemed high on many things, until you compared how they worked to how other things worked.
But you have to keep an eye on them with prices. They sell a lot of stuff you can get elsewhere cheaper, that is the same stuff, only a different label on the can in some cases.

[yogi]

We used to deal with Granger when I worked in the test labs at Motorola. Since then I've found another company called U-Line which has at least as much industrial grade junk as Granger. LOL They also are high on prices but as you say the quality is not what you find at the the local Ace Hardware. I could buy that green goo from Aircraft Spruce if I didn't object to the shipping costs. There probably are some industrial supply houses in the neighborhood but I could not deal with a 55 gal drum of any liquid regardless of the price. First of all I don't have a truck to haul it and secondly I'm not going to be around long enough to use 55 gallons of aircraft degreaser. LOL

[Kellemora]

Yes, but at the time I made the windshield water shield, nobody had it in small bottles.
So technically, I was starting another side business, and where I lived at the time, I had access to forklifts.

Don't know if you remember Ambroid Glue or not. Every hobby shop used to have it in 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, & 16 oz tubes, plus in pints, quarts, and gallons.
They decided to only sell it in quart size and larger cans. They had no more in tubes of any size.
For those who did use it, the hobby shops started selling aluminum plunger type glue pens.
I found a place to buy empty metal tubes, and they directed me to a cheap manual tube filling machine. And then I had to buy a roller crimper to seal the ends of the tubes.
Also had to have small boxes made with an egg crate inside to hold a dozen of the tubes, and of course cases to hold four cartons.
My first order from Ambroid was a 33 gallon carboy, and also all the permissions I needed to repackage and sell under their product name, but with the stipulation that is was privately packaged and came with no warranty.
Sales were great for that first 33 gallon carboy. So Ambroid sent me like 10,000 12 oz tubes they still had in their warehouse, already with all their advertising on it, along with the next 33 gallon carboy of glue.
Once I saturated all the distributors, sales finally started slowing down.
I was fortunate that at the time I ran out of all those tubes, was low on glue and boxes, Ambroid just up and disappeared.
I did hear after I moved south that there are claims they are back again, but I don't think so.

But that just gives you an idea of how I got into some of the short term businesses I was in over the years.
They were basically a whim, when I found something was discontinued that I knew I could still get, hi hi.

There are many products used in the florist business that are not readily available in small quantities.
Most of the years I was manager of the flower shop, I repackaged over 100 different bulk items into small consumer sizes.
But around the time we were getting ready to close up shop, several hobby shops and crafts stores started selling the same things in small sizes, but for a lot more money than we ever charged, hi hi.

[yogi]

I do indeed recall using Ambroid to build model airplanes. As I recall it came in tubes back then, something like toothpaste. I was good friends with the kid of the guy who owned the local hobby shop, and it is this friend of mine who recommended Ambroid. It's all kind of vague after 60 years of not modeling anything, but I don't think I was very impressed with Ambroid. Or, at least not as impressed as the kid from the hobby shop. What I used probably was not what you repackaged unless you were into that business as a pre-teen. LOL You CAN still buy Ambroid --> http://www.ottertooth.com/Canoe_pages/ambroid.htm but the original company that made it is long gone.


On a vaguely related note, you told me a while back about another business project you ran involving packing and selling single (I think) carnations in a box. I recall your narrative because I thought it was an absolutely brilliant idea. A couple days ago my wife of many years brought home something similar. She bought a transparent glass vase with three red tulip bulbs in it. The bulbs were flowering but still fully inside the vase. It looked interesting in that the bulbs were rooted in a clear liquid which I presume is water. Thus all the roots are visible. Today the stems and flowers are nearly twice as tall as when she brought them home. I'd give them only a few more days before the petals on the flowers start to drop off.

While the vase of tulips reminded me of your project, a question comes to mind that you might be able to answer. Apparently the bulbs were forced to flower successfully because all the growth nutrients it needs were absorbed during the previous growing cycle. The question is, do you think the bulbs would be worth saving and planting in dirt after the flowers drop off?

[Kellemora]

Interesting article about Ambroid.

The reason we used Ambroid, especially when building balsa wood model airplanes, is because it was semi-flexible, yet still hard as a rock.
Nearly every other model cement on the market would break apart when you added a motor to a balsa model.
And for boats it was a must, 100% waterproof and could give and stretch as wood expanded or contracted from humidity or moisture.
I do know the Ambroid of later years was NOT the same stuff, not even close.

We used to sell that clear gel also, tons of it, hi hi.
Bulbs are stored in bunkers over the winter the moved to hot houses to force them to bloom earlier than normal.
But yes, you can reuse flower bulbs for many years.
Once you get them planted in the ground outside though, on things like Tulips and Jonquils, they can stay planted.
But plants like Canna's are best if you dig the bulbs up and store then each year.
Bulbs will normally grow larger each year, until they divide into smaller bulbs, or put small bulbs out on the side.

[yogi]

I'm not surprised that you used Ambroid for your model boats. It was invented by a guy for the purpose of repairing canoes. LOL I got myself some Plyobond for the exact reasons you liked Ambroid. It's durable as all get out and flexible too. Plus, it's a lot easier to get than Ambroid.

The reason I asked about the tulip bulbs is that they are not getting any nourishment sitting on our kitchen table. I suppose there might be enough stored in the bulb to carry it through the next season, but I was thinking the transition from a hydroculture environment to open field dirt might not go well. It doesn't really matter in this case because the flowers were bought for a temporary purpose. I was just curious about the possibilities of preserving the bulbs for the next season. The care you give it, or don't, this season more or less determines how things go next season. I know that is definitely true for Amaryllis plants. I used to grow a lot of those just because they were showy.

Tulips In A Vase

Tulips.jpg (105.73 KiB) Viewed 2827 times

[ocelotl]

I happened to bring tulip bulbs home the last time I went to a job training to Israel, because I had to change planes at Amsterdam both ways. Followed the instructions on the package as best as I could, and got beautiful flowers, yet the flowers dithered fast due to the climate and the bulbs didn't survive to a second season... By the way, checked they were approved for export to North America before buying them.

https://aviflora.nl/en/

[yogi]

Holland is notoriously famous for their tulips. I'd be surprised if they were restricted anywhere on earth. I've been to Holland, the one in the state of Michigan. They have a festival every year where they show off all the tulips in that city. I missed the peak time to be there but what I did see was amazing. Nothing like the European version of Holland, but still amazing.

[Kellemora]

Of the Tulips we raised for cut flowers, all of those bulbs got dumped on a big pile in the back 40 for people to come grab, and they usually snatched every bit of everything we ever put back in that particular area.
We couldn't reuse them ourselves due to licensing agreements.
But we did have quite a few we had to raise for two or three years ourselves to get them to the point they were salable.
However, in the later years, nearly everything we sold was bought for resale purposes.

You won't have any problem transferring those bulbs to soil Yogi. Just wait until the blooms die off and then you can pull them out, wash them off, let them dry, and store them until spring. But don't expect them to bloom again this year.

[yogi]

I suspected that these tulips in a vase will not flower the next time they grow but I wasn't sure they could be replanted in soil, or clay as they have around here. We re talking three whole bulbs and it's going to be a nothing-burger experiment. As far as my wife is concerned they have already served their purpose. My gardening days are over since we moved to this place so that if we end up with three healthy tulip plants it will be a bonus.

The park district back at the old house had an annual event. For some reason they dug up all their bulbs each year and tossed them in a pile just as you describe. I believe they did sort them out so that your jonquils didn't turn out to be purple tulips. To be honest I don't know why they did that because those kind of bulbs do not need to be removed. They over-winter quite well. In fact many of our jonquils bloomed early in the spring and often saw a few inches of snow on the flower petals. I might even have pictures of that ... somewhere. Apparently the park district had way more money than they knew what to do with so that they just replanted new bulbs each year.

[Kellemora]

Debi got a pot of tulips that had six bulbs in it, the second year we moved down here.
After they died off, I knocked them out of the pot and put them in a brown paper bag in the garage.
Got them out the following fall after I stumbled across them, and planted them around a tree in the front yard.
Those suckers came up and bloomed every spring for about 5 years, until we had the trees and shrubs mulched with an underlayment. That killed em!

When we moved here, there were like 6 rows of jonquils about 30 feet long, partway up the back hill.
Debi said her dad planted them the year after Debi got married to her first.
About a 4 foot wide band of them, came up fairly thin every since. But they kept getting smaller each year.
I've been here for 20 years now, and about 20 of them still come up.
I dug up about 15 and let them overwinter in the garage, then replanted them the next fall to see if that would rejuvinate them. I didn't see that it made much difference.

Ironically though, an area I backfilled with dirt to make a more level area in the yard, a few tulips came up there. They must have been in the dirt I used to do the backfill, which was dug up from where I placed my two storage sheds.
A couple of them grow very large too. There are not many, and haphazard in that area.

Between a few of the highways down here, they have miles long stretches of either jonquils, tulips, paperwhites, irises of many types. They sorta hide the weeds until the first mowing of the medians.
There is one five mile long area of median planted with some type of decorative grass. It never seems to get over a foot tall, and looks nice. But a few months later, the weeds finally get taller than the decorative grass so they spray the entire area with some greenish blue stuff. It does kill the weeds without hurting whatever type of decorative grass that is.

Now if you get over by the agricultural areas of the local college. You never know what they are going to have growing over there each year. They have acres of perennials of all types. Somehow they use it to make money to fuel their other agricultural operations. So I imagine they harvest the seeds or something. I'm not over that way, except maybe once every couple of years.

[yogi]

I liked tubers because they are hardy and very difficult to kill off. Along the west wall of my old garage was a row of day lilies. My neighbor, a country gal, would laugh at me for growing them. She called them weeds that were obnoxious and grew everywhere out in the country. Being a city boy I didn't have that bias and did all I could to cultivate them. They grew tall and were prolific. I had to thin out the bed every few years but never threw away the old tubers. I planted them randomly out in the back forest where they grew just as well as the ones I cultivated. Then one year a strange vine appeared among the garage day lilies. It looked like something peas would grow on, tendrils and all. They attached themselves to the day lily stems and grew prolifically. I tried many things to get rid of them with no success. The people who bought our house were also country folks. One of the first things they did was remove the day lilies. LOL

The only thing I know about tubers and bulbs is that they absorb nutrients while the plant is flowering. It's pointless to fertilize them at any other time. Plus, any nutrients they do absorb are stored in the bulb for next season's growth. I used that knowledge to apply fertilizer and that is how those lily plants came to be so big. My wife planted two of those same day lily plants here the year after we moved in. They get to be about 12-14 inches tall and die off inside of a month. I don't pay much attention to them which might have something to do with their poor performance. Then, too, the soil here is not what it was aside my garage up north.

[Kellemora]

Most flowers are a weed somewhere.
For the florist, we used to raise about 3 or 4 acres of gladiolus, since they were heavily used in funeral arrangements.
We only used the bulbs once, and the pile where we put them, usually stayed, as nobody wanted them.
So at the end of the season, they would get scooped up and put into the mulch bins along with a bunch of other stuff to decompose. We blew steam through our mulch before moving it to another mulch bin, basically a turning over operation.

Debi's mom had all kinds of unusual plants she raised in different areas of her yard. Many of them I had never seen before.

[yogi]

That's a great observation about most flowers having their origins as weeds. I know that the biodiversity of the world's jungles is a great source of plants and we probably would be doomed without them. I liked glads and grew them at the first house I owned. They lasted only a few seasons which was much sorter than other bulbs I grew. But the glads were ostentatiously beautiful in my opinion with a wide variety to choose from. If I recall correctly, those were bulbs that could not be over-wintered, which is why I didn't grow a lot of them. And, yes, they did smell like a funeral home. LOL

[Kellemora]

Most Glads all grow the same height, which is why I think my uncle went with Canna's for his monster size flower bed in his side yard. It was planted all with Red Canna's but of different varieties based on how high they grew.
I did something similar when I lived in the apartments in Kirkwood, only I used several different types of bulb flowers, some were early spring, like Tulips and Jonquils, a little later like Iris, and I forget now what bloomed before fall.
I liked that apartment complex, and being like the on-site maintenance man, I also got a whole yard to myself.
Where I planted a vegetable garden, the flower garden, and even erected a brick wishing well with a cedar roof and recirculating pump.

[yogi]

Yes, you are right about the Glads being uniform in height. I planted them in front of a chain link fence because the plants would hide the rusty chain. LOL One of the really nice things about that one acre I owned up north was the variety of plants that were scattered about. I did what you did and tried to arrange things by order of their blooming season. That didn't quite work out as well as I hoped because people kept giving me plants they no longer wanted in their gardens. Those plants were scattered about in no particular order. The only thing I really maintained was the front garden which was between the house and the sidewalk. That is where I had the jonquils, tulips, roses, and quite a variety of flowering plants. It was in full sun and very showy. Unfortunately it took a lot of maintenance to keep it looking good, and I didn't put weed killer on any of it. All the weeds were pulled by hand. I kept the soil as friable as possible so that the weed pulling wasn't that bad. But, it often filled two wheel borrows from about a ten foot circle of plants.

[Kellemora]

I hear ya. That is one reason I always kept all the bulb plants located in an area I mowed. They always came up in the spring, and I would let them be until they were done blooming. Then it was just a matter of mowing them down.
I have a couple of flowering bushes like that also. I mow around them until they are done blooming, and then they get leveled down too.
Good thing, because now I can't do much of anything anymore, just watch the weeds grow.