Shit, Ho Lee

The Convocation was a lot of fun -- about eight people played instruments so we had a nice 30 minutes of bluegrass from The Clinkers. After the opening, a guy did a demonstration of forging and made a nice Ice Ax out of a 4" by 2" by 7/8's block of steel. Toward the end, his striker (assistant) was messing around with something in the back of forge. Mt. Hood is an active volcano and the kind of magma is Andesite rich in plagioclase feldspar. Re-stating that in plain english, it is very glass--like. In other words -- you can heat it up and forge it. Forging rock. I will post a picture of it soon but the pick of the ice ax was driven through the stone. Excalibur. About 300 people had their minds blown -- the collective WTF from the audience was palpable and people were talking about it at dinner. I am betting that Mt. Hood will lose several tons of rock this weekend. I know I am planning to take a hundred or two back home with me. There is a very specific regimen for heating and tempering the rock to insure that it does not crack -- Jeff was very kind to leave a little crumb-trail of information for the rest of us to follow. The other 60% of the research will be mine and mine alone but I know what not to do and which path to start down...