Being jewelers we are used to working with fire and after using it for years you begin to think you are the master of the glowing orange entity. At least I did until a few days ago. Everyone has good fire stories. I hope I am not alone.<\/p>\n
Anyway, after this event I began to recount some of my less than masterful moments while learning to tame this fiery beast. My dad was grilling steaks and he said, “Kevin, don’t touch the grill it is hot.” He failed to impress upon me how hot is hot. So the second he turned his back I touched the grill. Yep it was hot and being young I didn’t just use my finger, I stuck my hand on the grill. It looked like one of those steaks on the Sizzler commercials with the grill marks branded in.\u00a0 No permanent harm, nothin’ a little cold water and some discipline wouldn’t fix.<\/p>\n
You know how hot a tire gets when you have a blowout on the highway? I do. My dad was changing the tire and he said, “Kevin don’t touch the tire it is hot,” and he gave me the look. Well at least this time I only used my index finger not my whole hand. I only got a big blister and a “What the Hell is the matter with you? I told you it was hot!”<\/p>\n
I was in second grade and my mom got me this orange and brown shirt and said this will look so nice on you honey. The Hell it will, I look like our shag carpeting. Anyway, I was pushed out of the house in this get up and told to go to school. That was not happening. I hid in the garage where I found some matches. You can see where this is going. That’s right. I now have the power to make my own fire. My mom left to go shopping and I just hung out in the yard. Realizing it was kinda boring with no one to play with, I decided to make a camp fire on the side of the house. I got a little blaze goin’ and was nursing it along when my dad pulled up in the driveway. I tried to put it out but the bushes caught on fire and before you know it was fully involved as they say. My dad was called by the school at work because I didn’t show up and he comes home to see me not in school and the bushes on fire.<\/p>\n
I didn’t get in trouble. If you break new boundaries in lawlessness at a young age you get taken to a psychiatrist. These are just a few of the highlights with the best yet to come. The first time I saw molten metal I knew that was for me. I mean my two favorite things in the world – metal and fire combined. Holy cow that is awesome. That glowing orange gelatinous goo with the shimmering surface, dang that is sweet.<\/p>\n
Have any of you ever touched it real quick like, just poked it? You know just to see what it feels like?\u00a0 I have and if you have any preconceived notions about what it feels lik, let me confirm them for you – it feels hot. Real hot like flaming jello. The decision to do this was not a planned one, but I am embarrassed to say it was intentional. I was casting a few ounces of gold, yea the good old days. Anyway, let me set the scene for you. The shop was dimly lit and it was brisk out and the smell of a freshly boraxed crucible tinged with just a whiff of burnt wax from the kiln. The flask was bone white, a nice clean burnout and a large glowing button of gold just shimmering in the dim light calling to me, whispering to me, “Touch me. You know you wanna. Just do it, I won’t tell.”\u00a0 With lightening speed of which I did not know I possessed I\u00a0 stuck my highly callused index finger into the glowing goo. That will wake a fella up. I was immediately shocked back to reality by the smell of my own burning flesh. Smells like burnt hair because of the fingernail. Good thing I have real thick calluses or I think it would have hurt alot worse. After all these shenanigans you would think that I would have burned the house down by now. That is what my dad always says, “You are gonna burn your damn house down and you are not movin’ in with me.”<\/p>\n
Two days ago I got to experience being on fire totally by accident, and I do mean accident. Not carelessness or stupidity. Well maybe stupidity. I was machining some stuff on the lathe and using lots of cutting oil and since I never have any shop towels handy I wipe my hands on my shirt tails. Well after machining this stuff, I went out and used my grinder. Lots of sparks were hitting me. I had ear protection and eye protection on- kinda like being in a fish bowl. Well I noticed that one side of me felt kinda warm. I stayed on task carefully grinding this radius. Dang what is so hot! I glance down, holy crap I am on fire! I try to pat it out because it is one of my favorite shirts. This is getting serious it is really raging! The first instinct I had was to stop, drop and roll but that is not what I did. The primal animal took control and I ran around yelling holy ….. I am on fire! I deduced that their was no saving my shirt at this point. With flames licking your back, you experience a sudden onset of clarity. The solution was clear – save my skin, sacrifice my shirt. So I tore it off and threw it on the ground where it became fully engulfed and no amount of stamping it out would stop it. So I just stood there and watched it consume itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Being jewelers we are used to working with fire and after using it for years you begin to think you are the master of the glowing orange entity. At least I did until a few days ago. Everyone has good fire stories. I hope I am not alone. Anyway, after this event I began to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}