ibninja design

Kitledge Quarry

ibninja — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:33:56 +0000

Back in November I was helping my father install a granite sign and some posts for a company in Milford New Hampshire. This was at the base of the old Kitledge quarry that was once owned by Barretto Granite Co. My father started working there in the early 70s’, he started as a low man on the pole in the quarry swinging a hammer pounding in 18′s(short for 18″pins and wedges used for splitting large blocks of granite from the ledge).

"My father"

My father only spoke french at the time and and was traveling back and forth from Sherbrooke Canada to Manchester, NH were his apartment was. this was a 4 hour trip that he made every weekend. My father learned to drive a stick shit on the company jeep and after awhile bought himself a brand new ’71 GTO judge, my fathers’ first and most favorite car he ever owned. He later earned the nickname crash as he ended up getting in an accident with the car every weekend mostly due to sleep deprivation. The stories he would tell me make me wonder how I was ever born to begin with.

Back in the early ’90s’ Barretto Granite declared bankruptcy and was sold to Fletcher Granite co out of Westford MA. Not much changed at first for may dad as Fletchers still kept mostly everyone and by then my father was very valuable due to his range of skill sets and knowledge of the quarry. What a lot of people don’t realize is that the quarries are just as different to each other as the granite colors are to each other. What I mean by that is how you pull the stone from the ground is a different technique then one you would use at another quarry. Obviously in every non blasting quarries you all use cranes, pins and wedges and saws. The nuances are what can make a big difference in your production, If you can’t read the grain of the stone in a quarry it can make it very difficult also dealing with ground pressure and distances between the beds of the stone.

Around 2000 my dad got me a job at Fletcher Granite working at the Kitledge quarry for a man by the name of Tim Hall. Tim worked for Barrettos’ along side my father for along time. My father took him under his wing and trained him to be a quarry man. My job at the quarry was to be the wood bitch, not an official title but I was there to just grab the wood under the stones when my boss moved them with the forklift. eventually he trained me to cut stone. after while i began to surpass him in skill and speed due to I think was my innate artistic skills( I’ve always been into drawing and sculpting). I worked there for a few years until I took over the Westford sales department and eventually changed jobs.

So back to Nov, 2009 we were close to the old quarry so after we installed the sign we stopped up at the hole and i took a few pictures of the place, I need to find my old college film strips as I took a photo trip up at the top of the hole way back in 2001 which I will post on here when I get the chance.

The quarry is a sad place to me now as I feel a deep connection and nostalgia to it. I think a lot of it has to be from my father telling me stories of the place when I was growing up there and then eventually working there my self. Now to see it looking like a ghost town when it was once a vibrant place. there has been some good times and some tragedies from people getting killed in accidents(including my father’s best friend)to one of the Barrettos daughters committing suicide. I don’t think I’m alone I think any one that worked there would wish to still go back.

Forza Motorsport 3

ibninja — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:50:46 +0000

maple 1, originally uploaded by ibninjadesign.

Just picked up Forza Motor sport 3 on Tuesday and it is amazing, a huge improvement on Forza 2. This is my first design in the game and i think it came out not half bad. the livery editor is a bit heavy handed, what would take me 10 minutes in Illustrator CS4 it takes in the game an hour easy. I’ve done some research on my next design and I think I’m going to tackle a Battle Angel Alita car and a Domu Kun car. as far as the racing goes Forza 2 had such a great feel to it you really felt like you were driving a car and could tell when you’re going to lose it or not. Forza 3 expands on this in so many ways that are very suttle but add a huge improvement to the game. leading up to my purchase i was having second thought of buying this game i thought it was just another rehash of the first game like so many other sequels this generation. Not so with this game, indeed I don’t think the graphics are a huge improvement(they were never turn 10s’strong point) but were all the improvements are in the back ground that you don’t notice until you’re sitting in front of the t.v. and playing the game. I highly recomend this game if you’re into racing and tuning cars and customizing them. If you’re not good at painting there is plenty of great designs on line to buy with ingame currency, If you’re a true car fan this game is for you.

If you online send me a FR and we can run some laps. Gamertag LLP ibninja

Yard sale finds

ibninja — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:32:13 +0000

My wife and i have picked up a new hobby of scouring yard sales on the weekend. It fill the need of purchasing to feel better which is deeply ingrained from both our childhoods and is also a lot easier on our budget then buying DVD’s every week.(we were also running out of shelf space) Any ways I have been into antique cameras especially from the 50′s and 60′s I love the mechanical feel to them, they give of this feeling like a gun almost, when you crank the lever for the next frame. Something I can’t explain.
Last weekend i had my biggest score yet. I found a near mint Pentax K1000 body only for only a buck! yes $1.00. I was so pumped I couldn’t contain my self. a few months earlier I purchased 3 lenses of unknown origin at the local Flea market in Londonderry(right on route 102, go check it out it’s awesome!) one of them fit my new Pentax. Later in the day i also picked up a Canon AV-1 and a few weeks ago I purchased a Yashica electro. I will get some pictures up of them in the next few days and once I get a chance to play with them I’ll do a right up.

Stone Cutting 101

ibninja — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:32:22 +0000

This is a new series about stone cutting and granite carving. I will cover the basics from what tools you need to the fundamentals of cutting stone, all the way to advanced techniques of stonework. There are many types of stone from marble, sandstone, bluestone to granite. My background is in granite work, I have been cutting stone for over 10 years now so I will focus on that. Granite I feel is one of the best stones to work with besides marble. Granite is very durable and has a strength that is unmatched. My next post will be discussing the tools that you will need to get started.

Some of the topics that I will wright about.

what tools that you need and were to get them.
safety equipment.
types and color of granite.
where to get rough slabs to work with.
basic techniques.
advanced techniques.
layout techniques.
cutting granite steps.
cutting a granite bench.
cutting a hearth for a fireplace.
cutting a birdbath.

If you see something that you have a question about or would like me to add to this list just let me know!

Hand Cut Granite Hearth

ibninja — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:38:24 +0000

I was looking through some old pictures and i found some that I took of the granite hearth that I cut way back in 2003. the hearth was cut from Chelmsford Granite from Chelmsford, MA. I rock faced or chiseled the front and two sides, for the back I used a 4″ angle grinder with a 4″ diamond blade to cut the back flat. This took some time as I could only cut 1″ deep all around, the granite slab was 3″ thick.

Once I cut on the top and sides I used that as a guide to grind the rest flat using two stages. The first is taking the saw blade and cutting small vertical cuts along the back of the piece not cutting deeper then my established guide. I made these cuts every 1/2″ or so. After that was complete I took what is called a “tracer” chisel which is a carbide chisel angled inwards on both ends. This chisel is good for tracing split lines(I’ll explain in another post) and also removing excess granite material. once I am satisfied with the excess removal the surface is relatively flat but still a little bumpy. The next stage is taking a diamond wheel and “grinding” the granite surface smooth.

After that the hearth was complete! the real hard part was hefting this 60″x24″x3″ granite hearth that weighed 420lbs. up 35 flights of stairs and into my living room! Luckily I had my Dad to give me a hand, it was still damn heavy and a lot of work to get that damn thing in there.

Argoflex Seventy-Five

ibninja — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:42:33 +0000

Last year I came across an argoflex seventy-five at a flea market in Hollis, NH. the flea market there is a great place to find cool stuff, it hasn’t been overrun by the knockoff purses like the other flea markets have. Anyways I was hoping to use this baby for awhile and just never got around to it. It’s actually been gathering dust on my shelf until recently i stumbled upon a flickr group called through the view finder . In this group are photos from people taking pictures from camera threw the lens of another. Naturally a TLR(twin lens reflex) camera makes a great choice as the view finder is quite large. this started giving me ideas and I stumbled upon this group TTV-Mods. Go here if you want to see other peoples contraptions, I found one gentleman’s set up that seemed perfect to me and I recently went to home depot to get my supplies. in my next post I will list the parts needed and a sort of how to to create your own set up. I have seen simple ones were cardboard is used but it seems way to flimsy to me and has a risk for breaking one or both cameras.

Below is a picture of what i am trying to accomplish and a small gallery of the argoflex seventy-five pre-mod. Please keep in mind that I will not be permanently altering any of the cameras.

TTV mod source: lotstudio5

Call of Duty: World at War Beta Impressions

ibninja — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:49:20 +0000

Sunday night i got my token for the new Call of duty: world at war beta that there handing out. the beta was over 800 megs in size, downloaded pretty quick for a beta. The way I got my invite was that i was a member of the old charlieoscardelta.com site and have been a member ever since, I’m ranked Captain on the site. Anyways I didn’t have to pay anything to get it like most of the people that are getting this code by pre-ordering the game. I was a previous beta tester of COD 4 and that beta was badass! My initial impressions are that it plays allot like COD4 in fact i would say this is a re-skinned mod. This is not to say that it is a bad thing as COD4 is a phenominal game in itself and here they are trying to keep that going. I played a few rounds and quickly ranked up to level 5 the beta is capped at 11 so hopefully they will increase the level like they did in the last beta as i desperatly want to try out the Garrand which is unlocked at level 17. From what I could tell they bumped up the total levels to 65 up from 55 in COD4. I’m off to go play some more and i will be back to give further impressions!

Artist

ibninja — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:59:11 +0000

My little Hailey playing with chaulk in the driveway.

Look what I can do!

a new day

ibninja — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:32:45 +0000

my first post on a new blog. well this is a new thing and a learning experience for me which is very exciting.

this is just the beginning.