Gym Rings

I bought a set of Gym Rings off eBay about a week ago, and it was a great investment of 25 bucks! All I used to do is weight lift and run, I thought I was in pretty darn good shape. If I was sticking to a good schedule, I could work out long and hard and not get sore. My first day on the rings and I got ripped... Literally, I was really sore the next day in all my deltoids and even my abs were sore (and I can crunch 300 on the bowflex). I mainly bought the rings for doing Dips, but now I'm doing several different exercises with them. I highly recommend them for supplementing your work out.

New Bench Record!

I have been weight lifting now for somewhere around a year, when I started I was a little over 19. When I started I weighed about 112 lbs. That's like paperweight... And man could I eat, I just couldn't gain weight. I remember when I was 18 me and my friend Jon went to Little Caesars Pizza and we each ordered a large hot and ready pizza and we both ate a large in 1 sitting, and probably drank 2 liters of pop too.

I was always skinny, but not wimpy, my 4 older brothers made sure of that for me... Anyway I bought a bench press about a year ago and started working out with my 2 friends Jon and Phil Criss. My first bench press max was 155 lbs I forget what Phil's was (if you read this Phil add your weight in the comment box) and Jon's was 230, he had already been lifting 1 year. Now 1 year later I've just pushed up 230 lbs, and I weigh 135! Our weight lifting consists of more than just bench pressing, but bench is the only thing we try to push up as much as we can. Phils max is 275 now and Jon's was 295 before his car accident.

My Istruments

When I turned 19 I became much more interested in music, and it all started with a car accident.
I was in a pretty serious crash with my friends Jon and Phil. Anyway after the crash I had some recoup time so I went out and bought a jaw harp for me and Jon (Jon got the short end of the rope, he was bad hurt) then I went over to his house and we tried for 2 hours to get it to make a sound, all the while driving the rest of the family crazy with laughter at our attempts. Now we both can pluck out any song we have ever heard.
From there I went on to buy Pan Pipes, In not as good with the Pipes, but I'm working on that. My most recent purchase was a Johnson banjo, I got it for $229 from Noisy Neighbor (my local music store, also where I bought the jaw harps). By the way they are opening their online store soon and I would really recommend them, they give lessons and really know their stuff. If you have questions, they can answer them, and they can set up beginning musicians better than any place I know.

And last comes my favorite instrument, my Winchester Model 94 in .44 Remington Magnum. Playing this instrument is much easier, more fun, and you get bigger kicks out of it! This Winchester 94 is the saddle model with the 16" barrel, a really sweet shooter!

Hand Held Touch Screen Chess Computer

The New York Times Deluxe touch chess computer my favorite hand held chess computer. It makes the most sense to me, the pieces are clear enough to play with, (which is hard to find in an LCD screen chess computer) the screen has a backlight so I can still play in bad lighting, (or in bed) and its a very portable chess computer.

Restoring Gun Stocks

I just recently bought an old 12 Ga SXS Spanish shotgun from Daves Sports Shop in Lynden WA. I got it for a killer deal, it was $200! I took that gun out to shoot it the next day, and it shot like a dream. The stock was a little bit dinged up though so I decided to sand out the nicks, and put a new finish on it. I've restored several guns before this one so I have it down to a system. I have done stocks with several different kinds of wood, and I can tell you that if you are thinking about restoring a birch wood stock, don't even bother! The only wood that is worth working on is wood you don't have to stain.
My side by side stock is made out of maple, first I took 80 grit sandpaper and got all the old finish off the stock and all the dings (always sand with the grain). You have to be careful not to over sand on the nicks you could end up with a weird looking stock. After I got all the old finish off I took 140 grit sandpaper to smooth up what the rough paper went over. It's very important to get the stock perfectly smooth and remove any cross grain sanding you may have done. When I think i'm done sanding I use an air compressor and blow off all the wood dust and look carefully over the stock, if you have one use a magnifying glass. What I am looking for is rough places in the wood, or cross grain scratches. Sand it smooth and then blow it off again, and repeat the process. Then I take some 00 Steel Wool to it to sort of polish the wood and make it even smoother. Once again I take the air compressor and spray off the wood dust.
That ends the sanding stage, and now comes the finishing stage. I take the stock into a dust free room (in my case the bathroom) and hang the stock from the ceiling to make it easier to put the finish on. I use Formby's Danish Tung Oil which acts as a sealer and a gloss. On this stock I’m using low gloss oil, you can usually find it at a hardware store. I then take a rag with NO lint on it, I put some on the rag and proceed to apply the oil to the stock using the rag (don't completely soak the rag in oil). Avoid getting any oil in the checkering, otherwise it will look nasty. You can do this process as many times as you want, the more you do it the better it will look (I've put as many as 30 coats on a gun) after you are completely done coating the gun, then take the finest grain steel wool you can get and lightly go over the finish with that. And your Done!

If you have any of your own tips or suggestions for me I'd like to hear them! Please use the comment box.