Hobby Thread - October 31, 2026 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. For this week, the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) is feeling sparkly and decided on a crystal and gem theme for this Halloween Hobby Thread.

Crystals and gems? Read on, fellow hobbyists...

[Top photo: why isn't there a picture of a crystal or diamond for a crystal or diamond theme? Answer - if you had a dinosaur Halloween photo, wouldn't you post it?]

Disclaimer - I know next to nothing about crystals and gems. I barely survived chemistry and my earth sciences class did not include gemology. Like anything I don't know or understand, I respect geologists, miners, and people that understand how the science works. In addition, my small brain and short arms make mining and cutting problematic. All of that means I've gathered random content that caught my eye, but will need help from the Horde in the gray boxes to make this work.

Credit for the hobby thread theme comes from this post last week:

The content may not be your favorite but give it a chance before you judge and bail out. More importantly, what are you hobbying? Jump in with your hobbying, interests, stories and questions.

Anything (legal) you are hobbying is welcome. If nothing resonates, offer something else relating to hobbying or just check in and say hello.

As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. Leave politics and religion to threads elsewhere (unless your hobby is building or restoring churches). Pants? Nope. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.

Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.

Apparently you can grow crystals at home with fertilizer? Has anyone done this? I'm pretty sure I would cause an explosion rather than grow a crystal.

Is faceting the same as grinding or cutting?

Can experience overcome low end equipment? Can higher end equipment compensate for a lack of experience? Either way, this video likely proves that you don't need to spend huge dollars to get into this hobby:

Crater of Diamonds state park in Arkansas (a little more than an hour north of Texarcana).

Anyone ever done this? If so, have any success?

Very impressive:

Do you know Destin? Of course you know Destin. Who better to show opal mining in Australia?

I don't know anything about leather working but this project to make a maul (mini hammer) used a lot of different crafting skills. Then he uses it on a leather project.

Remember this guy? Interesting test. Fascinating to see the measurements. These induction heaters are impressive. Anyone have one of these in your tool kit?

Horde Hobbying:

From Semper Why:

I bought a couple of smart bird feeders last year. One for my parents and one for my house. They're pretty slick.

The downside is that the squirrels will climb the wooden pole and eat the feeder dry in a day. I could mount it higher and put in a squirrel guard, but my 70 year-old mother would need a ladder to refill the feeder. So like an idiot I got to designing.

I built a pulley & carriage system for 3/4" electrical conduit and connected it to a volleyball net tension winch. I 3D printed the pieces out of PLA and after 4 versions, I seem to have hit on a workable design. Now my mother can raise & lower the feeder with the winch and the squirrels can't get past the guard attached to the carriage.

So far, so good. The squirrels haven't been in either feeder in a month.

Looks clever! Anyone else have home built squirrel solutions? (Perfessor excepted of course...)

Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did a geocaching theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.

Notable comments from last week:

Words of wisdom:

"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).

Reminder: if you put links in the comments, use a URL shortener and describe what you're linking to. Failing to do either or both makes you barrel-eligible. Don't make people click to find out what you're linking.

Boo! Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Or just email to say hello. Do mighty things.

posted by Open Blogger at 05:30 PM

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