1/1/2008
Happy New Year to everyone!
I hope all of you had a great Christmas. We had a nice, quiet Christmas at our house. The month of December, however has been quite a busy month for us.
On Thursday, December 6th, we were blessed with the birth of another Grandchild. Aidan Charles Dunagan was born to our daughter Tara and her husband Chuck. Tara called us about 10am on the 6th to tell us that her doctor had decided to induce labor at noon that day. Mary and I rushed to Tulsa to attend the birth. All went well and Aidan was born at 11:37 that evening. The next day, Mary and I were running some errands in Tulsa when our car was rear-ended by another car. The damage to our car wasn’t too severe, but the other car was totaled. We stayed in Tulsa until Sunday and then rushed home to avoid an ice storm that was closing in on the Tulsa area. Part of the drive home was in freezing rain, but we made it home safely.
The ice storm made it to our part of Kansas two days later. I had time to wire a generator panel into the house on Monday. I also had to change the 220V outlet on our generator to make it possible to attach the generator to the new panel. I’m pretty good with single phase wiring, but had never torn a generator apart to rewire it. But, I got ‘er done. It was a good thing that I got the generator ready to power the house, because we needed it. The ice storm started in full Monday evening and caused downed tree limbs and power outages all over our area. We had some damage to our trees, but not nearly as much as some of our neighbors. Our power was out for 8 hours on Tuesday and then for 6 hours on Thursday. We were very lucky, in that many people in our area were without power for over a week, and we had the generator to keep our house essentials running when our power was out. Since the ice storm we have had two significant snow storms. The first one dropped about 10 inches of snow at our house, with winds over 30 MPH. It created a snow drift that was three feet deep the full length of our driveway. I had to use my old John Deere tractor to push the drift aside. While I was clearing our driveway, our neighbors called saying that they were stuck in their driveway in their four-wheel-drive truck and asking if I could come over and get them out. So, after digging us out, I did so for them.
The year of 2007 was incredibly busy for us. The first major event for us was the marriage of our son Chris and his wife Shanna in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The day after the wedding, we packed up Chris and Shanna’s belongings and helped them move to Kansas City. In June, I passed the Master Bladesmith test. In September I went to Alaska for a moose hunt. Next were the births of three Grandchildren. Dacia Amber St.Julien on September 20, Emma Shay Falter on October 16th and Aidan Charles Dunagan on December 6th. During the year, we also remodeled one of our bedrooms and re-stained the exterior logs on the house. Makes me tired just writing about all of this………..
With all of the events of December, I lost about a week of shop time during the month. The gun work has been steady and I have been working on knife orders, along with the collaboration knife that I am making with Jean-Paul Thevenot. I am pushing off all gun work for the next several weeks to get more knife work done. I found that some work that I had planned on the collaboration knife was extremely difficult to accomplish. Two small pieces of the knife handle have caused me a significant amount of frustration. But, I managed to complete the work on them successfully this week. I still have many hours of work to do on this knife and hope the remainder of the work will go smoother.
I am also working my business plan. I am seriously contemplating discontinuing the gunsmithing business at the end of 2008. It has been very difficult for me to schedule work in the shop, as I have no way of knowing what the gunsmithing workload will be week to week. I am planning to add several knife shows to my yearly schedule and will need time to make pieces for them. I also want to have time to work on some “special” pieces to show off the type of work that I am capable of doing. The gunsmithing has been good for me and has brought in a steady cash flow, but it is hindering my ability to advance my knife-making. I will have to apologize to many of my gun customers, but knife-making is where I want to be, so the decision will have to be made.
Have a great January!!!
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