daveh
Lifetime Member
Posts: 4,696
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Post by daveh on Feb 1, 2014 18:20:32 GMT -5
This all gets better: great posts here. I had half forgotten the Osmiroid. It was the Instamatic of the pen world here. I'm sure everyone of a certain age got through several Osmiroids. Phil, your story of the Boots pen reminds me of the old Andy Capp cartoon. Andy had had a party the night before and while cleaning up was counting the ashtrays in his house. "Good grief," he says "you can't trust anyone these days. Someone has stolen the British Rail ashtray." Mind you, it worked better as the cartoon. (For those who don't know Andy Capp he was in the Daily Mirror with his wife Flo drawn by and from the imagination of Reg Smythe. Andy was a "typical" Northerner, with flat cap, whippet (Nancy) and pigeons and he played snooker and darts. More information here.) I remember dropping one fountain pen. It impaled itself in the floorboard as though it were a knife. It took some pulling out. The only ink I can recall making was invisible ink. Now fifty odd years ago I would have known how to make it. I think we used baking powder sometimes but there was another recipe using something acidic - lemon juice or vinegar probably. Mickey, I love your sentence "I have not thrown it away as it is a good example of a bad pen."
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Post by philbirch on Feb 1, 2014 20:18:03 GMT -5
Lemon juice, milk, lemonade, sugar water etc. all make invisible ink. Any clear liquid with sugar in it. The sugar turns brown when exposed to heat. Don't remember baking powder though.
I made some red lead ink and it filled the classroom with pink smoke as some sort of reaction occurred. Oh, the old days before health & safety!
I had a Murphys Stout ashtray made by Poole pottery stolen from my house. Its worth a packet these days.
I'm quite an acquisitive person...
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daveh
Lifetime Member
Posts: 4,696
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Post by daveh on Feb 2, 2014 4:13:50 GMT -5
Bread, of course, goes brown when toasted. It is the sugars in the bread that make it so.
When I think back to doing chemistry at school, we had all manner of dangerous things lying around. All manner of experiments were done too, whether organised by the teacher or not. Now it seem everyone has to be behind armoured glass and is not allowed to go near anything of interest.
In those days too we had a ginger beer plant constantly on the go and also made things like sherbert, pin-hole cameras, trolleys etcetera, etcetera.
The trolley was a go-cart using old pram wheels with a wooden chassis and (sometimes) seat. Most had simple steering using a single central pivot for the front cross piece. This could be operated by the feet or hands, sometimes using the rope connected. The rope was also useful when pulling the machine back up the hill, especially if there was no one else to hand to give you a push. There was usually a simple friction brake. I haven't seen kids making one in umpteen years.
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Post by philbirch on Feb 2, 2014 6:01:44 GMT -5
Bread, of course, goes brown when toasted. It is the sugars in the bread that make it so. When I think back to doing chemistry at school, we had all manner of dangerous things lying around. All manner of experiments were done too, whether organised by the teacher or not. Now it seem everyone has to be behind armoured glass and is not allowed to go near anything of interest. In those days too we had a ginger beer plant constantly on the go and also made things like sherbert, pin-hole cameras, trolleys etcetera, etcetera. The trolley was a go-cart using old pram wheels with a wooden chassis and (sometimes) seat. Most had simple steering using a single central pivot for the front cross piece. This could be operated by the feet or hands, sometimes using the rope connected. The rope was also useful when pulling the machine back up the hill, especially if there was no one else to hand to give you a push. There was usually a simple friction brake. I haven't seen kids making one in umpteen years. Ah, Dave remembering the old days. In Oldham we called them bogies, in Manchester we called them guiders. The friction brake usually was your heel. They are go-carts in Warrington.
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