Early Access Video: The Secret History of Mica
Added 2023-09-06 13:38:46 +0000 UTCFriends:
This post was supposed to happen on Saturday the 2nd, but I got the dates mixed up. Sorry about that; I'm dyslexic and I have trouble with numbers sometimes. Here's the original post:
We're back from our hiatus! It was a restful few weeks and the first real vacation I've taken in years. Thanks to everyone who encouraged us to take a break.
To celebrate our return, we're releasing our first mini-documentary. Today's video explores the hidden history of mica, an essential but little-known mineral. My home town has an abandoned mica mine that I often explored as a kid and I went up there earlier in the year and shot a bunch of footage. We've combined that with research and archival photographs to make a short film about mica and its importance.
We hope you like this little experiment in a new direction. We'll be back to woodworking next week.
--Rex
Comments
I'm a bit late to this party but I really want to say thank you for this video, it's a breath of fresh air, educational, relaxing and just visually stunning!
LiraNuna
2023-09-10 13:46:15 +0000 UTCThank I lived in both Mass. and Rhode Island And the country side is great with the mountains to the west and seashore to the east and lots of woods in between
Carlos Alvarado
2023-09-09 19:14:42 +0000 UTCI used to have a big piece as a kid. Later my wife and I picked up an old cast iron stove with a mica viewing port in the front.
Gerald Eddy
2023-09-08 21:42:26 +0000 UTCWith me, it's measuring. "Measure twice, cut once" takes on a new meaning for me. It's more like "measure twice, cut, curse, measure again, cut again, curse... It happens most with sheet goods. Handworks is on my bucket list. Wood by Wright posted Roy Underhill's talk. It was hilarious.
Michael Bennett
2023-09-07 21:55:58 +0000 UTC"It's only special if you decide it's special..." Great and true words to live by, RK. While I try to keep up with the hobby hand-tool woodworking, I'm always in the mood for your furniture forensics and history hikes (I'm counting your building-by-building exploration of your parents' property as a blend of these)... feel free to do more!
Joe Molloy
2023-09-07 20:15:44 +0000 UTCI love to go and explore too. But it is far to risky where I live. Alaska is known as the "Last Frontier". I can walk in area's that no man has walked in for hundred's of years.
Dan Delie
2023-09-07 18:20:34 +0000 UTCI used to live in North Carolina, and on a weekend trip to the mountains in the west of the state, we hiked to a waterfall advertised on a roadside sign. It was a beautiful waterfall, and probably got decent hiking traffic during tourism seasons. But one of the things I remember about it is that there were lots of small bits of mica all over the trail near the waterfall, the largest being only about a quarter in diameter. There were also a couple small sections of brick wall and some weirdly squared off columns of rock; I didn't think much more than "hey, someone probably had a house here" as I was mostly interested in the waterfall at the time. But now looking back on it, it almost certainly had been a mica mine/quarry some time in the past. No where near as big as your mica mine, but almost as obvious for someone looking for it. I'm now realizing that what I've generally taken to be odd natural indentions in rocky areas now covered with moss, brush, and smallish trees were often prior human-made alterations to the land, and I'm now sure I've seen literally dozens of these spaces in my life without recognizing them for what they were. Much of our "natural world" bears these traces of former human activity.
Kyle Painter
2023-09-07 16:31:38 +0000 UTCI loved the atmosphere of the whole video. Great job, Rex. I was prepared for hearing something like this: "I don't tell you where this place is because the mine is... mine." but luckily, it didn't happen, haha.
Csongor Halmai
2023-09-07 16:13:29 +0000 UTCGreat concept for a video! The coast range mountains between the SF bay and the Pacific Ocean have been heavily logged for Redwood...Leeland Stanford, Stanford University namesake, was a logger. Redwoods grow fast and the second and third growth trees are now 5' or more in diameter. Still, hiking in those forests you will still come across an old survivor 10' + in diameter that was left behind by the guys with two man whipsaws...can only guess how old;)
John Griswold
2023-09-07 14:39:43 +0000 UTCI had no idea! That's amazing!
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:38:13 +0000 UTCThere's slag all over the Cleveland area, too. I need to make a video about that.
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:37:54 +0000 UTCAs much as I love Ohio (and I love it a lot), there's something about New England. There's no where else like it.
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:37:25 +0000 UTCI used to live in West Haven. I love it!
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:36:50 +0000 UTCIt was 2 four-hour periods of filming over 2 days. I was exhausted by the end!
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:36:17 +0000 UTCEvery place is special if you take the time to look.
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:35:47 +0000 UTCThank you!
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:35:22 +0000 UTCMy biggest dyslexic problems are dates and direction. I have no sense of direction at all. Handworks was life-changing. It was that good.
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:35:12 +0000 UTCThat sounds like great fun and very useful!
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:34:23 +0000 UTCI'm glad you liked it. I didn't know about this one.
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:34:02 +0000 UTCYes, I really messed this one up. It's ready to view now. Sorry about that.
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:33:39 +0000 UTCI enjoyed meeting you, too! Thanks for saying hi!
Rex Krueger
2023-09-07 14:33:16 +0000 UTCI’ve engineered control systems for boilers and the boiler feed water corrodes glass even Pyrex. Mica is the only thing that works for level gauges. There is some of it between the glass and the water. It’s a layered material that sheds over time so it stays clear rather than clouding. Interesting stuff.
Richard C von Brecht
2023-09-07 13:27:18 +0000 UTCWhere I grew up, it was iron smelting furnaces. They were colonial industry, and they were dotted around the whole area. You might be fishing and come across little bits of slag. That old slag though made for a glassy, obsidian-like rocks moving from black to variegated red, not at all like you’d expect. But, iron mining and smelting from what amounted iron rich clays gave way to the iron mining and smelting in PA, and eventually OH, and the little furnaces were abandoned.
JKlarinet
2023-09-07 12:05:51 +0000 UTCDang Rex. You did it to me again. You got me homesick for my childhood homes. I lived in the Berkshires of Massachusetts as a teenager and had over 5,000 acres of forest outside my back door Boy, can I tell you some stories. We have some history here in Oregon, but nothing like the New England states. Sigh...
Michael Bennett
2023-09-07 06:12:09 +0000 UTCThank you for this great look at part of our mutual home state. I grew up in West Haven until my folks moved us to Woodbridge for the schools. Woodbridge had an acre and a half zoning law but none of the neighborhood residents cared if we tromped through their woods. We’d hike through and hit all sorta of trails. I made a fort out of fallen limbs and trees that I’d go hide in to escape from my younger sisters. It was right by the stone wall that divided what had once been a farms fields and then delineated the property line. If I could handle the winters I’d consider a move back in one of the more rural parts of the state for sure.
JJ Hoffman
2023-09-07 05:13:04 +0000 UTCNeat video. I am sure you got your exercise and enjoyed another way of producing a video!
Bradley Barth
2023-09-07 03:03:08 +0000 UTCI live on the central coast to California and we have all sorts of history and natural wonders. I am sure you are right most places do as well.
Dan Marcus
2023-09-07 01:55:58 +0000 UTCWell done Rex. Good to see you got some rest and were able to recharge your internal battery. Have a good weekend sir.
Matt Evans-Koch
2023-09-06 23:39:16 +0000 UTCIn woodworking, you can work around dyslexia by never using a rule and instead using the pieces to transfer one measurement to another. If it was only that simple to deal with dyslexia in real life. I feel your pain, man. How was Handworks?
Michael Bennett
2023-09-06 22:26:31 +0000 UTCVery cool video - I like the message of appreciating the slower things; I’ve been doing the same myself carving paths in the wood in rural PA just so we can enjoy the natural landscape more
Michael Falbo
2023-09-06 22:15:29 +0000 UTCVery entertaining, I enjoyed the video very much. As a kid from Long Island it brought back great memories. I grew up in the 60s out on eastern L.I. were it was all potato farms and playing in the woods was an everyday occurrence. One thing was different though, my mom stopped making me get crew cuts for the ticks around twelve. Just kidding great video as usual keep it up.
joseph severson
2023-09-06 19:07:48 +0000 UTCYouTube says it premieres in four hours. Looking forward to watching it tonight when I get home from work. Thanks and welcome back!
Joseph Vaughan
2023-09-06 14:02:26 +0000 UTCSounds like an interesting video, looking forward to it. It was nice meeting you in Amana at the get together, I'm glad things look like they'll be getting back to some sort of normalcy for you.
Matt Cottrill
2023-09-06 13:54:16 +0000 UTC
