GAPP 07 Journal Assignment Set 2

GAPP 07 Journal Assignment Set 2
July 8 Michael Baszto
July 9 Jordan Nohle
July 13 Kellie O’Keefe
July 14 Bailey Allen
July 15 Nick Terry
July 16 Heather Shultz
July 17 Sara Cushing
July 18 Jada Ormsby
July 19 Josh Kohl
July 22 Ned Schelleng
July 23 Krista Juczak
July 24 Meaghan O’Rourke

July 8 Michael Baszto
On Saturday we made a visit to Köln, or Cologne. Timo, Greg, Christoph, and I (Baszto) went along with Angelika and Kurt Schoppmeier. We rented a Citören C4 and drove for 3 hours to visit the big city. We saw so many things there such as the Kölner Dom (a HUGE Gothic cathedral) and die Altstadt. We climbed all 509 stairs in the Kölner Dom, half an hour both ways, to the top which was a spectacular sight. You could see the entire city from the top of the church. After the church we saw some of the old architecture from the city and it was just marvelous what was built so long ago without all of the technology from today. Cologne’s history goes back to Roman times. Along with many old things we saw many new and exciting things. We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in Cologne and experienced the very interesting waiters and waitresses there. Along with many different kinds of sights to see, we also had a ton of fun wondering the city and saw many funny things. For example, there was a man who stood outside of the Kölner Dom, dressed in a grey gargoyle suit, who would entertain people for money. Unlike many other street perfromers who seem very friendly, he was very scary to many of the children and acted quite strangely. We also, on accident, stumbled into the celebration for Christoffer Streets Day, it’s like a holiday for homosexuals. We wandered through the big celebration and met some very nice people. All and all, the day was very exciting not only in Köln but later on that evening we went to Abi-Fete 07, but that’s a story for another day...Viel Spaß! Sincerely, Heinz

July 9 Jordan Nohle
On the 9th, there wasn’t a planned activity, and as such, I took the day to relax , and more fully adjust to the still new surroundings. For a while I sat in the room they had graciously provided for me, and I looked over the movies that were there. A surprisingly high amount were simply famous movies from the states, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings among them, translated into German. It was one of the first times I noted that the world seemed to be taking an American culture. Oh: and I later just sat online, listening to the same bands as I do at home. Still for all the similarities, there are definite differences between our cultures. Getting used to having sandwiches for breakfast was a bit difficult, and the fact that they had six different breads and 8 spreads at the table, yet didn’t have simple salt and pepper shakers were nearly always absent. French Fries and Curry Sausage with a side order of cucumbers was also odd. Though larger differences were that it seemed that the adults had more faith in the children and teenagers. Being able to just go out, or leave school if classes are done that day. Another difference was the view on alcohol. It wasn’t there as a tool to loose your mind and party, even with the young adults. It was simply a tasty beverage that helped you to relax after the days toils were over. Though, every now and then you will see a drunk German, or a group, but it is far less common.

July 13 Kellie O’Keefe still pending

July 14 Bailey Allen
Family Weekend: On Saturday the 14th, my host Thea didn’t do much until the afternoon. Once 3:00 came around, we rode our bikes into the city to meet some of her friends. Her friends were playing a game that involved alcohol. The idea of this game was to walk either 2 or 4 Km with a big case of beer and a partner to help you. While walking you had to drink and whoever drank the most at the end won. The game was nothing I was interested in so Thea and I rode our bikes ahead of them. Later, around 6:00 Thea’s dad took us to a barbeque at a friend’s house. We stayed there for about two and a half hours. After the barbeque was finished we left with one of Thea’s friends and went to the Delftfest, or city festival. We met quite a few of the Gappers. We ate crepes and Spaghettieis, rode on the Xenox (a ride at the festival) and just walked around and had a good time. We ended up leaving the Delftfest aroiund 1:15 a.m. with Thea’s friends who took us home. After the day was over, I was very exhausted from the great time I had.

July 16 Heather Shultz still pending

July 17 Sara Cushing
Trip to Bremen. The day did not begin at our usual meeting place, the Nordseehalle, but at the Emden train station. We rode by train to Bremen which was an interesting experience because the train was a double decker, so the view of the German landscape was beautiful. Oh, it was also interesting to almost lose two members of the group! Luckily, they were on the train all along with us, just in a different car, and every thing turned out to be fine. In Bremen we visited Beck’s Brewery. We were given a very insightful look on the world of beer brewing. Oh and the best part was after the tour was when they gave us free beer to sample and soft pretzels to eat! We had to distinguish between several types of brews according to the guide’s descriptions.
We also were given a tour of Werder Bremen Bundesliga soccer Stadium. And we were VIPs for the day and the were allowed into all the expensive box seats and lounges. The day was followed up by a few hours of shopping in downtown historic Bremen. I can’t think of any better way!

July 18 Nick Terry
I got up this morning like any other morning. I woke up at six thirty, showered, ate my toast, and drank my coffee. My host brother Daniel said that we only had to go to school for three lessons – I was excited. Since it was the last day the students and the faculty had a soccer game. It was not like an American students vs. the teachers game where the students would embarrass the teachers. It was the opposite. The teachers were very good and won 4 to 2. After the game, the students received their report cards or “Zeugnis” auf Deutsch. The grades are 1 to 6 with 1 being the best. Most students received 2’s and 3’s while only a few received 1’s or 4’s. After school, we went to the harbor to celebrate the beginning of vacation and the end of school. We drank Fanta and ate Wurst and cookies. We then proceeded home on our bikes, for we needed rest for the next day. Since school is over, only more fun can come.

July 19 Josh Kohl
Yesterday was our last day of school so now we have more free time with our families. Some of the GAPP students are going to Berlin for a couple of days. Other families are going to the Netherlands or to places in Germany. So far we have been to Hamburg, the VW factory, Papenburg-Meyer shipyard, the mud flats, and Bremen. All of our trips have been a lot of fun. While in Hamburg we enjoyed Minature Wonderland, a boat tour thoughtout the harbor, and in the evening we attended “Dirty Dancing”. Our next adventure was to the VW plant. It was interesting to see all of the machines assemble the cars and the various processes that it took to build the cars. Later that week we went to Papenburg-Meyer shipyard, it was neat to see the huge ships in the building process. Even though there were technical difficulties it was a good time. After we went to Baltrum, an island in the North Sea, where we walked around the (car free) island for the day, then we walked back to the mainland . On our last trip we went to Bremen where we took a tour of Beck’s brewery. Then we rode the city bus to the soccer stadium, homeof the Werder Bremen Bundesliga profi soccer team. After that we enjoyed some free time to look around downtown Bremen.

July 22 Ned Schelleng still pending

July 23 Krista Juczak, group coordinator
As our stay here draws to a close, I too want to reflect on the group and our stay in Germany in general. This group is smaller than our previous ones, and I think this is a good thing. When everyone is together we fit on a bus or in one gathering room. The Americans as a whole are very friendly and outgoing. The Germans were very interactive with me as well their guests of course. On the days we were in school our kids did MANY presentations. Mostly we had computers with projectors available, but sometimes not. No matter, they willingly improvised. Especially enthusiastic were the German 5th and 6th graders, the beginners in English. They had great questions like asking to see our American money, or arranging small groups with snacks and drinks. They are our future GAPPers and ready for the task.
As a group the South Jeff and Belleville-Henderson kids have been polite, enthusiastic, understanding and flexible. The typical attitude of ‘I’m not doing that’ or ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’ seem not to exist. Our German hosts have been SUPER too, much thanks to them. Our trips were interesting and educational, not always an easy combination. The school days were chocked full as well. The few days of vacation time we had were well spent travelling to visit extended family in small groups, and for my little family to visit my German relatives as well. I really appreciate that my students could hang in there ‘on their own’ while we tripped across Germany for four days. Coordinating this trip is a lot of work, but these kids have really made it a 100% worthwhile effort. :)

July 24 Meaghan O’Rourke
Every moment of Germany was amazing- I honestly cannot think of one negative from it- well maybe only being away from home and family for so long! Our trip back felt shorter than our trip there; almost like time has gone by faster. Perhaps this is because we knew what awaited us: loving families who had missed us for three and a half weeks and we them. Going to Germany, we had no idea what awaited us and what our families were actually going to be like, but I don't think any of us were disappointed or felt unwelcomed when we arrived or throughout our stay. It's hard for me to decide which has been my favorite part of this trip to Germany: my incredibly generous and kind host family; living the German (Ostfriesland, to be exact) life style; our numerous and exciting field trips to places like the soccer stadium and Becks factory in Bremen, Dirty Dancing at the theater and ferry trip in Hamburg, the ship mill in Papenburg, and the many other places we went to. All I can say is everyday we had something to do and everyday I learned something, whether it be new German words and/or something cultural and at times ways our American history would correlate to the Germany history. I did not realize it during our time there, but my German has improved immensley; less often do I open my German/English Oxford Dictionary to look stuff up for meaning, but spelling. We all have our own personal anecdotes to share, new formed friendships to carry with us, and for some new impressions of the world and society, from this trip. All of these will hopefully last a lifetime. I want to again thank everyone who has made this trip possible: Frau and Mr. Juczak, Vati Bingle, all of our parents and family, and Frau Prekel and Herrn Bochers and all of our host families back in Germany! This was the experience of a lifetime, my one and only to live as a European (well Ostfrisian) teenager, and every moment of it was enjoyed to its fullest!

for the latest pix see PHOTO ALBUM 'gapp week1' :)

please see Photo Album 'gapp week 1' for our latest pix :)

GAPP 07 Journal Assignment:
July 3 Jordan Shultz
July 4 Jenny Mosier
July 5 Greg Kedenburg
July 6 Andy Richardson
July 7 Meaghan O’Rourke
July 9 Jordan Nohle
July 10 Kristey Simmons

July 3 Jordan Shultz
So we all met at 10:30am at the Syracuse airport. It was my first time riding on a plane so I was nervous. The first plane was very small. It was a smooth flight. We landed in Detroit, then we had a long four hour lay over. Most of us went to eat, or shop, while some people (Mr.Juczak) took a nap. The second plane was a very nice plane equipped, with T.V.'s and about twenty movies, and games. The second plane ride was the longest flight, it was about eight hours long. They served us dinner, and breakfast on the plane. For dinner we had chicken with a weird tasting rice with a packet of cheese. For breakfast we were served a dry egg and cheese sandwich on an English muffin, yogurt, and a fruit cup. Since I was sleeping when they brought breakfast, I only got to eat yogurt before they took my plate. We arrived in Amsterdam and had to get our carry-on rechecked and our passports stamped. There was a layover about an hour long, so some of us got something to eat. Since we weren't used to the layover, some of us had burgers for breakfast. The third plane was small and old. It was different than the other two because we took a bus to the plane and walked up the stairs rather than going to the actual terminal. They served us a little meal of two sandwiches and a drink. When we arrived in Bremen we had to retreve our luggage and find Frau Prekel. We only had to wait about 15 minutes then we got on our bus which was the final leg of the trip to Emden. The bus ride was about 2 hours long. We arrived in Emden to see all of our German partners hold colorful signs and gifts. We went home with our families, got tours of our town, and houses. We met our families and began our month long stay in Emden.

July 4 Jenny Mosier
Today was our first day at school. There are lots of people including a plethora of obnoxious middle schoolers. The people aren’t as considerate in the hallways as they are in the United States. They push and shove and hit your bag, and then they never apologize or say excuse me. I never thought of American high schoolers as being polite, but compared to these students, we are angels. I also thought it was strange that the other German students scarcely noticed us. When the Germans come to our school, I’m sure everyone will turn and notice them.
My host family is very nice. I still feel rather uncomfortable, but I’m sure time will cure that. My host sister’s little brother is always peaking around the corner at me. He’s so cute! If he can’t find me he says “wo ist Jenny?!” We all eat breakfast and dinner using little cutting boards rather than plates. I love them; they’re so adorable.
My biggest adventure happened that evening. Kristina, my partner, and I biked to the welcome party at Amke’s. Unfortunately, the bikes here are mammoth! They don’t make them for 5’ almost 2” Americans. I couldn’t even get on the first bike. By the sweet grace of God I managed to get on the second bike, albeit wobbling and almost crashing in to the shrubbery and Kristina for a few seconds until I steadied myself. Kristina traveled there really slowly. Kellie and I found out afterward that they were going slowly because we Americans couldn’t handle it! Pish posh. It’s a lot easier to bike on this flat land than it is where we are from. When Kristina and I finally arrived at Amke’s I knew getting off the bike was going to be bad. I’m embarrassed to say that I fell right over. What made it worse was that I was laughing hysterically and she was not. When it was time to go home, Kellie tried pulling me up on my bike, and then my guest father came over and picked me up and put me on.... how embarrassing but really quite funny.
From now on I’ll request to speak more of the German language. My partner is so excited about speaking English that it’s it makes speaking German even more difficult. Today there was a crying child sitting on the back of his mother’s bike. Oddly enough, I found comfort knowing that no matter what language the people are speaking, babies still cry in the same language.

July 5 Greg Kedenburg
Rathaus On July 5th, the GAPPers all took a trip the mayor’s house of Emden. We got there by walking through the city, while also looking at the sights and finding out other information about the city. We eventually ended up in the Rathaus, or CIty Hall. There, we were treated to tea and buttered raisin bread. The tea was superfantasticidocious, and I unfortunatley did not get a piece of the bread because of the hoggish habits of Mike Baszto. Then, we listened to a speech given by the vice mayor of the city, as the more important mayor apparently had a more pressing engagement. The speech was translated by Frau Juczak, and she did a fantastic job I might add. Then, I was forcibly (by Frau) made to stand in front of various individuals that I did not know, and read a letter from Barry Ormsby in a language that half of them did not understand. Seemed kind unnecessary when you think about it, however politically correct.

July 6 Andy Richardson
On the sixth of July we went to the VW plant in Emden. The tour was interesting in that they showed how they make the chassis for the Passat Variant and the Passat Limo. For me the plant was awesome because my father works on the finished product back home at FX Caprara when there is a problem and for service. Contrary to popular belief the plant is all animated except for one building where the assembly line is not operated by robots but by people who put on the finishing touches on the engine and the chassis. The way the chassis is put together is by robot spot and laser welding. The laser welding is very dangerous to humans because of the zinc given off by the galvanized welding stops oxygen flow to a person’s respiratory system. But this process apparently is more efficient and uses less energy.
Instead of training their personnel for all car creation, VW instead basically trains their personnel to be computer technicians to operate the robots on the assembly line. Those robots are all connected to a computer box that lists the function of that robot and what that each one is doing. In the plant there is even an automated parts carrying system that uses little “floor” robots to carry parts to different places on the assembly floor. These robots are “smart”, they will not run into you or run into obstacles because they have seeing sensors and touch sensors in the front of the robot at floor level.
The tour finished with a visit to the employee lunchroom where we ate and got some souvenirs from the tour. What I think is that mechanics should visit these car plants to see what and how a car is made so they can service them better.

July 7 Meaghan O’Rourke
Germany is amazing. It is almost too difficult to describe in words, how awesome it is. I have yet to find something negative and no anticipation of doing so either. I am so grateful to our teachers, the Juczaks, Herr Bingle (Vati), and all of our parents who have put so much endless work and effort into this phenomenal trip of a lifetime. Vielen Dank.
Out of all the cultural differences, the arhitecture seems to be what fascinates me the most- at least so far. Everything here seems to be fancier, maybe it’s just the appeal of having gone across an entire ocean for the first time, but I’m not sure. All of the houses, both old and new, are made of brick or some other kind of stone. The refrigerator in the ktichen is designed (well almost disguised is almost a better word) to be a part of the kitchen cabinetry; the concept of this is a bit interesting to me. Even going into public buildings things seem to be a bit... well I want to say ritzier looking; yet the atmosphere is relaxed.
Riding bikes to most every place is definitely a staple in the North German lifestyle. In fact, Mr. Bingle had talked it up so much, this is definitely among the things on my “must do” list; however, the average German, I’d say is no shorter than five foot six, which is undoubtedly much taller than the four foot ten inches I stand at. Because of this height diffrence, I have yet to ride my bike to school or into town, as they have all been much too large for me! My unsuccessful attempts to simply ride the bikes out of the driveway have been quite humorous, but Frau Prekel’s bike seems to fit me well.
So far as a group we have had tea with the assistant mayor, Frau Risius; toured the Rathaus Museum, and also toured the Volkswagon Factory (as the vehicles are manufactured in the city). In the upcoming weeks we have scheduled trips to Hamburg and Bremen. I have also already done so much with my host family. In fact today, I went into the Netherlands with my family. What surprised me most, was that they do not always check or have a customs point to go through at the border.
Hopefully all is well for all of you back home. Bis spaeter!

July 10 Kristey Simmons
The day started with getting up at 6:00am. Took a shower, got ready, ate breakfast, and packed my bag with everything I would need for the day’s activities. This day was going to be full of lots of walking, miniature trains, shopping, eating, and dancing.
We all met at school at 7:30am. We were cold and tired. Everyone loaded up the bus and we were on our way to Hamburg. On the three and a half hour bus ride, we discovered the bathroom that was located in the bottom of the bus and were already planning to eat at McDonalds for lunch.
When we arrived at 11:00am, the sun was shining and was the perfect day for an outing. First, we went to Miniatur Wunderland. A museum for miniature trains. Here we saw tiny towns, fairs, and cities. We saw professionals building a new landscape and we enjoyed seeing different lands sculpted with tiny figurines. There were fairs, ski slopes, saloons, harbors, and country sides. We got to see the control room where these little machines were powered from.
At 1:00pm, we headed to the harbor. At 1:15pm, we set loose to go get lunch. Finding out that McDonalds was a thirty minute walk, some of us settled down at a small cafe. After eating pommes frites mit majo [french fries with mayo], we got ready to head back to the harbor. As we headed out, our beautiful day turned into a wet and rainy one. A couple of us huddled under an umberella of a small cafe. There we bought some ice cream to wait for the rain to let up.
At 2:15pm, we headed to the docking station. After a couple of minutes of searching for our boat and boarding a couple of the wrong ones, we found our boat. This boat was called “Anita”. After everyone found a seat, we pulled out and headed out on our tour of the warehouse island district within the city. During this tour we went through an old lock, where the government used to check boats before leaving and entering the harbor. The locks also control the water level within the harbor, which has tidal level changes daily even though the city and harbor of Hamburg are 60 miles from the open sea. It is technically on the Elbe River, although it is Germany’s biggest port city. Then we turn the corner and there we find the huge ships. Some are used for the German Navy. On them, there were bright orange life boats that looked like little submarines. The captain told us that these life boats are the safest method used today. Towards the end of our tour, we pass one of the largest container carrier ships. This ship carried 6800 containers in one load. One container goes on one tractor trailer. As we pull into our dock, we see a Lion King shuttle boat. This was carrying passengers over to the Lion King Theater that was on an island in the middle of the harbor.
At 4:00pm, we were let loose again. But this time it was to go shopping. After riding on a subway for the first time, we headed off to the shops.We stopped at a gummi bear shop, a couple of clothing stores, McDonalds, and a book store. We turn back to go to the theater. After almost getting lost in the subway, we come to the theater just in time!
We went inside and found our seats. The show, ‘Dirty Dancing’ by Eleanor Bergstein, started. Remind you it was in German. So it was a good thing that most of us had seen the movie a couple times before hand. Because if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have a had a clue what was going on. At 10:00pm, we went into intermission. During our ten minute break, we stretched our legs, ate, went to the WC, and bought some souvenirs. Then we had to go back to our seats to watch the rest of the show. It was really cool, especially the mobile multi-media sets.
At 11:45pm, we pulled out of the parking lot and headed home. There are a lot of people sleeping and the people who aren’t, are finding someone to sing with and make noise. We are expected to pull into the school parking lot at 2:00am. Thank the Lord that we aren’t expected to be to school until fourth period tomorrow!

July 12 Jennie Illingworth
Today we visited the Papenburg-Meyer Shipyard after school. It was about an hour an a half bus ride from Emden. When we first arrived we were taken into a large corridor where our tour guide told us about the ships they build. He showed us models progressing from the first ship the company built in the 1700’s to the latest model. They have just finished building the AIDA-DIVA in April from where it traveled to Palma de Mallorca. The shipyard is also building a ship for Walt Disney World that has a theme of ‘Remember the 30’s’. They have orders in place through 2012. Each ship costs around 315,00,000 Euros or ~ $400,000,000 and takes about a year and a half to build.
We then proceeded to view the ships now being built. The ships are constructed from large pieces of metal that are cut within a fingernail’s width of precision to form the curves of the hull. This must be constructed very precisely. The AIDA-BELLA is an immense cruise ship that will be finished in April 2008. Each ship holds over 2000 passengers and 1000 crew members. Inside it is like a small city with restaurants, tennis courts, stages for entertainment, and exercising centers, all of which are made and installed there. We all learned a lot from this trip and I thought it was very interesting and something I have never learned before.

GAPP Student Exchange Commentary

GAPP Student Exchange Commentary: for Woodhenge news see previous posts.
As written by Krista Juczak:
Guten Tag Freunde und Familie, or better put as they say here in Emden, Moin! This is our first attempt to update the website since Detroit due to technical difficulties. My apologies for that; it was not for lack of trying. Please also see the photo album updates, I have been making regular contributions, but will soon be collecting student photos again on Tuesday on our day trip to Hamburg to make some new album pages.
We arrived exhausted on Tuesday about lunchtime. Our German students host families were welcoming us waving colorful posters and bright smiles. It was an awesome, if somewhat scary sight. Here were our new families for the next month, but we also had to leave the comfort of each other’s now familiar company.
After a welcome meal and a short nap, for some of us, introductions to family and tours the neighborhood, the city or the harbor were the order of the day. Wednesday morning, bright and early, we all met at school. Everyone was holding up pretty well, and we went to some classes with our hosts and got tours of the new and old parts of the school facility. At one they threw us a super reception, with a skit, music, homemade Tortes and Kuchen, welcome and thankyou speeches, and a tumbling demo. See photos all around the big horseshoe tables.
Later that day we had another welcome party, this one a barbeque at the deBoer farm, on the outskirts of town. The food was great, the views of the countryside as well as of the gardens were spectacular. From the grown-up point of view, there was much laughing and comfortable chatter, this promises to be an easygoing, light-hearted group.
Thursday started with a rallye through the city, a scavenger hunt of sorts to familiarize the Americans with their surroundings, a reception and formal tea at the City Hall. Students read the letters from our North Country dignitaries, it went well. We also had a tour of the City Historical Museum. Friday we were in school again and toured the VW Plant. They manufacture the Passat here, highly automated and fast paced, also interesting to observe.
Now it’s the weekend and there will be more to report in a few days. Student journal entries to follow as well.

GAPP Introduction and Welcome

Hi, welcome to Jim and Krista Juczak's GAPP trip 2007. Seventeen students plus Lisa Juczak, 10, from South Jefferson Central and Belleville-Henderson Central Schools have banded together to spend the next month in Emden, on the North Sea coast bordering the Netherlands. Our partner school is Johannes-Althusius Gymnasium in Emden.

We have left Syracuse and New York State behind, and are waiting in Detroit to board our flight to Amsterdam. Tomorrow morning, when we arrive in Amsterdam we will transfer to our last plane to Bremen. Our GAPP host school teachers will meet us at the plane, and we will travel the final leg by bus to Emden. Expected arrival time is noon GMT+ 1 (6 AM Eastern).

Expect regular student journal entries and photo albums. The trip is from July 2 through 24.

Now I'm really behind, really, really

Hi All; Tons of stuff happening since my last blog...my apologies fo the huge gap in blogs.
We're preparing for a short camoing trip to an island in the middle of a lake in the Adirondacks.
After that we flying to Germany with 21 high school kids for an exchange trip. We'll be back in late July.

The deep well water pump works. I upgraded the rod and some of the fasteners to heavier duty ones so that it will be a 50 year with minimal maintenance product.

We're offering two seminars this Summer. August 17th - 19th is the all solar weekend. This seminar can be taken for all three days or individual days. Friday we'll be building some solar powered lights, Saturday we'll be building some solar food dehydrators and Sunday we'll be building a solar powered water preheater.

August 24th - 26th This is the Preserve the Harvest weekend. It can also be taken as individual days or all three together. Dehydrating, water bath canning, pressure canning, simple cheese making, yoghurt, beer, wine, mead, pickling, making jams, and a bunch of other things will be covered.

Call us at 315 771-7333 or write us at
Woodhenge
14910 Fuller Rd.
Adams Center, NY 13606

For further information.

Thanks for your patience. -Jim-

I'm behind again!

The sun is shining, the wind is blowing (howling actually), and we got a SNOW DAY! I've also just updated my Blogger account and figured out how to publish comments. Live and learn. I've allowed myself to be streached a bit thin...mentally and timewise, not physically (I'm working on that). There are a lot of projects going on behind the scenes here at Woodhenge. 1) The prototype deep well hand pump has been preliminarily tested. The part that goes in the well was built as a student and teacher project at school and sucked water wonderfully out of a #10 can. But, I get ahead of myself here. I set out looking for information on how to build a deep well hand pump and had very little luck. There were some simple ideas from a site "Gaviotas" (sp?), and some rather primitive designs on a few other sites, but nothing substantial. Woodhenge is looking for businesses that can be based out of our property and help others in a time of crisis. Water is an essential need. If the power goes out for an indeterminate time the crises of heat and water will be the first felt by a vast majority of the suffering population. My goal is to design a pump that can be built with "off the shelf" components with very few modifications. I hope to perfect the design over the next few months and offer the design (parts list, detailed plans and maybe a dvd), or the design and the modified parts, or a complete kit minus the drop pipe and sections of all thread. The lower section needs to be tested to see from how deep it will pump. Right now it consists of a section of 1 1/2" pvc pipe, a 1" pvc foot valve connected to the bottom of the pvc pipe, a 3/4" foot valve minus the screw in sand screen, several fittings that adapt the moving 3/4" foot valve to allow it to be connected to a piece of 1/4" all thread. The 3/4" foot valve has had two grooves cut into it to allow o-rings to fit in a moderately tight fit inside the 1 1/2" pipe. The top of the 3/4" foot valve has a bushing, a 1/2" pipe nipple and a 1/2" galvanized pipe cap. The nipple has been drilled with 3/8" holes and the cap has a 1/4" hole to allow the all thread to be attached. The upper part is made up of 2" galvanized pipe parts. The pipe flange has been modified to allow the reducing bushing to attached (I brazed it) to the underside of the flange. I believe that I can make the 2" fittings tight enough to allow the pump to not only deliver water at the upper part, but to pump water under pressure uphill from the pump. I'm experimenting with modifying the top plug to accept a packing gland of a standard washer and a smaller plug drilled with a 1/4" hole and the upper plug drilled and threaded to accept the smaller plug. More on this project as it progresses. 2) The "Emergency Old Folk Power System". My parents complain occasionally about the power outages the experience in west costal Florida. They live in a retirement community of 12,000 homes and about 1/6 of the residents own a battery powered golf cart. I looked at their golf cart and immedaitly saw it as a portable battery bank. The biggest obstacle is the voltage of the battery bank isn't compatable with most inverters. I'm hoping to get some 'sample' dc:dc converters and some discount inverters, meters and safety systems to build a couple of prototypes and send them to my parents. The basic idea is simple; make sure the cart is fully charged before bad weather comes, when the power goes out go to the cart flip a switch, plug in a heavy duty extension cord, run the cord into the house, hook a strip outlet to the end of the extension cord and plug in your fan, radio, light, etc. The initial system will be small, around 800 watts or so. Bigger systems would require a means of charging the battery bank from an alternative source...again the dc:dc converters could be used in conjunction with a small wind turbine, or a photovoltaic panel or even an adapted automobile (basically an auxiliary plug hooked to the car's alternator). More on this one as it progresses. 3) The bicycle powered TV. This is a project that allows you to quickly hook your bike up to a stand that has a small dc motor/generator that spin against the back tire of the bike. The dc generator would charge some small set of 12 volt batteries. Hooked to the batteries would be either a small inverter or a power adapter for dc equipment. Steve Spence (of Greentrust) and I will be prototyping this project for a group assembly at the Canton Energy Fair. My students are already converting a recumbent exercise bicycle for this purpose. 4) Solar powered food dehydrator. We've built several versions of this in the past and had great success with drying all kinds of things from beef jerky to those giant, out of control squash/zucchinis. I'm presenting a workshop on building these at the Energy Fair too. 5) The high Art and Science of Scrounging is up to 20,000 words....I'm pretty sure about half of those words are useable. I've commissioned my neice, Olivia, to do the illustrations. My fingers are crossed that I can get the first draft finalized by the beginning of the summer. There's lots more going on, but my day has to move on....-Jim-

I'm behind again!

The sun is shining, the wind is blowing (howling actually), and we got a SNOW DAY! I've also just updated my Blogger account and figured out how to publish comments. Live and learn.

I've allowed myself to be streached a bit thin...mentally and timewise, not physically (I'm working on that). There are a lot of projects going on behind the scenes here at Woodhenge.

1) The prototype deep well hand pump has been preliminarily tested. The part that goes in the well was built as a student and teacher project at school and sucked water wonderfully out of a #10 can. But, I get ahead of myself here.

I set out looking for information on how to build a deep well hand pump and had very little luck. There were some simple ideas from a site "Gaviotas" (sp?), and some rather primitive designs on a few other sites, but nothing substantial. Woodhenge is looking for businesses that can be based out of our property and help others in a time of crisis. Water is an essential need. If the power goes out for an indeterminate time the crises of heat and water will be the first felt by a vast majority of the suffering population.

My goal is to design a pump that can be built with "off the shelf" components with very few modifications. I hope to perfect the design over the next few months and offer the design (parts list, detailed plans and maybe a dvd), or the design and the modified parts, or a complete kit minus the drop pipe and sections of all thread.

The lower section needs to be tested to see from how deep it will pump. Right now it consists of a section of 1 1/2" pvc pipe, a 1" pvc foot valve connected to the bottom of the pvc pipe, a 3/4" foot valve minus the screw in sand screen, several fittings that adapt the moving 3/4" foot valve to allow it to be connected to a piece of 1/4" all thread. The 3/4" foot valve has had two grooves cut into it to allow o-rings to fit in a moderately tight fit inside the 1 1/2" pipe. The top of the 3/4" foot valve has a bushing, a 1/2" pipe nipple and a 1/2" galvanized pipe cap. The nipple has been drilled with 3/8" holes and the cap has a 1/4" hole to allow the all thread to be attached.

The upper part is made up of 2" galvanized pipe parts. The pipe flange has been modified to allow the reducing bushing to attached (I brazed it) to the underside of the flange. I believe that I can make the 2" fittings tight enough to allow the pump to not only deliver water at the upper part, but to pump water under pressure uphill from the pump. I'm experimenting with modifying the top plug to accept a packing gland of a standard washer and a smaller plug drilled with a 1/4" hole and the upper plug drilled and threaded to accept the smaller plug.

More on this project as it progresses.

2) The "Emergency Old Folk Power System". My parents complain occasionally about the power outages the experience in west costal Florida. They live in a retirement community of 12,000 homes and about 1/6 of the residents own a battery powered golf cart. I looked at their golf cart and immedaitly saw it as a portable battery bank. The biggest obstacle is the voltage of the battery bank isn't compatable with most inverters.

I'm hoping to get some 'sample' dc:dc converters and some discount inverters, meters and safety systems to build a couple of prototypes and send them to my parents. The basic idea is simple; make sure the cart is fully charged before bad weather comes, when the power goes out go to the cart flip a switch, plug in a heavy duty extension cord, run the cord into the house, hook a strip outlet to the end of the extension cord and plug in your fan, radio, light, etc. The initial system will be small, around 800 watts or so. Bigger systems would require a means of charging the battery bank from an alternative source...again the dc:dc converters could be used in conjunction with a small wind turbine, or a photovoltaic panel or even an adapted automobile (basically an auxiliary plug hooked to the car's alternator). More on this one as it progresses.

3) The bicycle powered TV. This is a project that allows you to quickly hook your bike up to a stand that has a small dc motor/generator that spin against the back tire of the bike. The dc generator would charge some small set of 12 volt batteries. Hooked to the batteries would be either a small inverter or a power adapter for dc equipment. Steve Spence (of Greentrust) and I will be prototyping this project for a group assembly at the Canton Energy Fair. My students are already converting a recumbent exercise bicycle for this purpose.

4) Solar powered food dehydrator. We've built several versions of this in the past and had great success with drying all kinds of things from beef jerky to those giant, out of control squash/zucchinis. I'm presenting a workshop on building these at the Energy Fair too.

5) The high Art and Science of Scrounging is up to 20,000 words....I'm pretty sure about half of those words are useable. I've commissioned my neice, Olivia, to do the illustrations. My fingers are crossed that I can get the first draft finalized by the beginning of the summer.

There's lots more going on, but my day has to move on....-Jim-

Odds and Ends

Hi All; We do a lot of things here at Woodhenge. Yesterday we had a two high School classes from Saranack Lake High School come for a tour and explaination of how to build axial flux wind turbines. They could only stay for four hours and really needed eight! I'm hoping that some of them come back for the longer tour and explaination.

Is anyone interested in turkeys? My wife has put the challenge forth for me to grow everything we need for this coming Thanksgiving dinner. I'm going to order either eggs or poults from one of the hatcheries. They come in batches of 15 to 20 and there is quite a variety. If anyone wants us to grow their turkeys for them or wants some birds that are ready to move and grow on their own just drop us a line.
We'll hatch and grow the birds for the first 8 weeks or so in our school's agriculture classroom. We might include some guinea hens in the batch, just for the fun of it..I've heard they are good (noisy) watch birds.

Who'd like to earn $100 in a finders fee? Woodhenge is looking for a water pumping wind turbine. New ones go for over $10,000! We want to buy a good used one for well under $1000. The most important part is the gearbox that is on top of the tower. We can fix the blades, we can build our own tower. We'd like the part of the pump system that goes into the well, but that's not necessary. Anyone interested in going on the hunt for us; it would be really appreciated!

Well Ive got to go off and finish my grades, insulate a wall and fill our fuel tanks.
Enjoy your day.
-Jim-

The odds and ends of our world and my community

"We're an intentional community; what are your intentions?" This is a quote from Phil the other day...we we're wondering how to approach people who expressed an interest in moving to our community. To further that thought I should put into words what I forsee as the result of 'forming a community'.

First, I grew up mostly on suburban Long Island (near New York City) and realized early on that I didn't want to live there for the bulk of my life..too crowded, busy, too many mindless activities (lawn mowing, competitive consumption, etc.) and I get a 'trapped feeling' when I'm there. I wanted enough land to support myself and family no matter what life brought along. Woodhenge's 52 acres is much more than enough to do this. Sharing the land with others helps me to realize my ever evolving philosophy of living. The more participating people, the smoother the pace of developments here.

I'm also paranoid, I don't think our planet can support 6 billion people. I can imagine a number of scenarios that would lead to the demise of half or more of the beings alive right now. The primary of these potential disasters may have already begun. It's called "Peak Oil". We're not running out of fossil fuels! We're running out of cheap fossil fuels. There's a big difference. What we have left in the ground will serve mankind for generations, but at an ever increasing monetary cost. The oil that's left is the thicker stuff that has settled into the bottom of the wells (that's a vast oversimplification), it has to be pumped from deeper and deeper regions and in a lot of cases we don't have the technology to do this. The coal deposits are vast, but what remains is dirtier (containing more impurities, including sulfur) and will provide less energy per ton and more pollution. Natural gas is simply running out. The tar sands and oil shale deposits are enormous, but it takes two barrels of conventional oil energy to derive three barrels of new oil; plus thousands of gallons of water for processing each barrel...lots more pollution.

That said; the real crisis will be economic. The populations and economies of India and China dwarf that of what we've come to call 'western culture'. We've surrendered the bulk of our manufacturing and a lot of our technological service industries to those countries. China alone owns over a trillion dollars in United States securities (Treasury bonds, etc.). In a bidding war for energy products both of these countries and those that are economically linked to them would be the hands down winners. If this crisis were for some reason to occur, it would make the "Great Depression" of the 1920's-30's look like a party.

The biggest single factor stopping this economic crisis that is the fact that world oil is traded in petrodollars....any nation thinking about switching to "petroeuros" has had some problems. Let's see, these nations would include Iraq, North Korea and Iran,....hmmm makes you think.

Western nations represent around 17% of the world's population and consume over 45% of it's non renewable resources. That's a fact. I don't make judgments, I just try to set an example. The interdependance of the world economy will lead to it's downfall more assuredly than any number of bombs. Speaking of bombs, the style and face of war have changed. It isn't giant armies massing on a battle field with huge ships and convoys of trucks to support them. It's small carefully planned surgical style strikes by small bands of people. The small attacks on our shores (no, I'm not trying to belittle the twin towers/pentagon/etc. incidents) were just that, small. Think what would have happened if four or five of our major economic centers and shipping ports had been bombed, worse yet, with nukes or dirty bombs...our economic and living conditions would rapidly move down to that of Cuba.

The pace of technology and the changes it brings to society has surpassed our psychological ability to handle the change. Most have lost sight of what we've been given a life for. We're no longer 'stewarts of our land'. Consume and let others figure out how to fix the problems associated with that consumption.

What we're trying to do here at Woodhenge is to set up a place that will exemplify how to not mindlessly waste our resources. We're doing it as a place where people can come to look and learn how to take a little step aside and view what they are doing in the small and big scale of things.

My first thoughts were to build a survival enclave (imagine barbed wire, poured concrete, guard dogs and stacks of freeze dried foods). I rapidly reached the conclusion that this was a bad idea, because it was limited in both scope and time...barbed wire rusts, dogs die, food is consumed...to do something on a longer scale takes knowlege and thinking. That is the stage we're at now. We're beginning to understand the skills and constraints we're under to create something that will endure. Material goods do not last, knowlege and skills, when learned well and passed on carefully last virtually forever.

The old quote; if you give a man a fish he'll eat for a day, if you teach him to fish he'll feed himself for a lifetime" isn't quite enough. It should be more like "if you give a man a fish he'll feel he's entitled to get one from you every day, if you teach a man to fish he'll be hungry until he gets good at catching fish".

I don't want to tell people how to survive a crisis. That's too short of a timespan. I want to show them that sometimes the simple stuff works the best, but just like advanced technologies have their pitfalls, so do simple technologies. The problems of modern technologies are pollution, resource depletion and depersonalization of peoples. The problems of simple technologies are having to learn them and practice them until you become proficient at them. No instant gratification here! You actually have to ask and talk to people to learn how to do stuff efficiently. Yes, you can learn from a book or how to DVD, and I do this a lot of the time, but I find my efficiency level goes up at least an order of magnitude when I learn directly from 'them that's doin'.

O.K., enough babble. -Jim-

More on Woodhenge Infrastructure

This is another letter I sent to an inquirer about Woodhenge. He was asking how we took care of laundry and water heating here.

Right now we have a 40 gallon propane water heater in our home, nothing fancy. We just got a 4' x 12' solar water heater from one of my old professors..it's 20+ years old, but still servicable, I also buried 100' of 3/8" flexible copper pipe in my central column - both systems will be used, in their season, for preheating my domestic hot water. I'm offering a workshop[ this summer on making solar water heaters and the other buildings will get solar heaters this summer. I'm trying to renovate two nat.gas instantaneous water heaters to propane for the common house.

Neither the common house or Phil's place have running water yet, let alone hot water. We're within a weekend of getting water connected to the common house though! All of the greywater lines are in and all of the supply water lines are in. All that remains is to connect the line that is buried between our house and the common house and do the final connections to the sinks. Phil has a food grade water barrel with a hand pump on top for his cold water, he heats water on top of his wood stove.

Methane is on the list of things to explore for water heating as is cogeneration of power and hot water when we get the diesel generator set up.

We dry our clothes on a clothes line in good weather and on racks during the rainy/snowy season. Krista has expressed an interest, but not a strong one, in getting a gas dryer for our home. We're going to have a washer and dryer in the common house for people in our little community. There's also a hand powered washer that my friend Richard uses for his family that in combination with a manual wringer keep their clothes clean....too many interesting things to check on....too little time.

Phil and I took a cheese making class at the Jefferson County Cooperative Extension. It was really neat. We had two instructors; one was from the NY Agriculture Department he talked about the rules and regulations for making cheese for retail sale, he used a local goat cheese operation run by a retired couple who were frustrated by having to live only on social insecurity...they have accumulated 29 purebred dairy goats and gross over $30K a year for their cheeses, mostly at local farmer's markets.

The second teacher is a local doctor that makes cheese as a hobby. He showed us how to make mozzarella in 30 minutes with our store bought milk. He also demonstrated how to make ricotta and explained how hard cheeses were made and aged. We can make and sell as much cheese as we want without any regulations IF we don't exceed what would be 'normal' for a home kitchen. There is a lot of wiggle room there. For now we're just going to try making cheeses we'll eat here. When we get the root cellar in and buy the small cow....you get the point. -Jim-

THings that are going on around here.

I said I was going to post more often and use the letters I write to people that cover the 'business of Woodhenge'. The following is a letter I just sent to my friend Steve Spence. He lives in his own intentional community near Canton, NY. We visit each other regularly and help each other out on a wide variety of topics. He built the Woodhenge website for us, fixes our computer problems and likes to drink our hard apple cider. He is trying to fufill the same kind of destiny as we are at Woodhenge. Look his site up at www.green-trust.org.

Hi Steve; I was sorry about your migraine at the NCPOSAG (North Country Peak Oil Study and Action Group) meeting at Patricia's place. I think a lot of my present and your present health problems is because we're both going through the same kind of angst over working conventionally in places when we'd rather be developing our own sustainable communities/businesses.

WOW! What a great meeting though! This is more of what I'd imagined going on at an action group meeting. To be handed a hot bowl of delicious squash soup and mingle with a crowd that is activly doing things about a danger filled future was cathartic! To further have these people active in a group that was beyond their own families is amazing. I'm glad they allow me to participate from Jefferson County. I'm ordering a copy of the film we watched "The Community Solution" so I can continue to corrupt our youth in the public school system. Do you know where it came from? I'll check with Patricia if you don't know.

There were some major topics and minor topics discussed that you might have missed out on. Major ones included the fact that there are other groups that are overlapping some of our efforts and it would be good to combine forces to reinforce and take advantage of our mutual interests. Cooperative extension was one example, the historical societies and hands on museums were another. Minor ones included a sign up sheet at Richard and Aimee's Arc neighborhood party later this month. The list would include topics people would feel comfortable teaching to small groups and topics that you wanted to learn about. Patricia also wanted to get a women's skill study group started that would cover topics such as woodworking, home repair, home wiring, plumbing and welding. I offered to teach them with her.

I mentioned the fact that I have a new acquaintence that has his "Curio and Relic" license and regularly buys servicable firearms and ammunition that come under this category. Mostly rifles from the former USSR. Many of them are available for under $100. A mix of bolt action and semi-automatics are available. If anyone else is interested drop me a note. Maybe we can do a group purchase and later a group lesson on their safe use, and maintenance.

I'm looking forward to the trip to pick up your Listeroid Diesel power plant. If the timing is right I can come up to your place, pick you up, go to Canada for the engine and lesson on how to use it, come back to your place, help you unload and set it up, pick up my Todd wood fired cook stove in Potsdam and get home....it sounds like a busy weekend.

The rental house we have in Watertown still hasn't sold. Krista and I have pretty much decided to spend the next few months fixing it up so it looks really good and market it in the Spring. We'll be putting on a steel roof, redoing the bathroom, sheetrocking the second floor rooms, new supply plumbing, new floors in the kitchen, bathroom and living room, removing the rotting entryway addition and installing a small deck in its place. Phil has agreed to do between ten and fifteen hours a week on the place. I think that adding about $10,000 worth of improvments will gain us about $30,000 more in resale price from the low offers we've been tentativly been given. My kid workers had all of the old flooring in the kitchen and living room out (including moving appliances) in under an hour. That gave me some hope for the future work. I'm going to try to deliver the sheetrock to the place today and get some of the painting done next week.

Phil, maybe Shane and I are attending a Jefferson County Cooperative Extension workshop this Tuesday evening on home and farmstead production of cheese. It could be a future Woodhenge 'cottage industry'.

All for now. -Jim-

Our power system

I have been sending a large group of individuals e-mails answering their questions about Woodhenge. I have also been negligent about posting more frequeently on the Woodhenge site. A flash of the brilliantly obvious hit me the other day...I could be using the individual notes to post to the site to give you all an idea of the scope of projects we do here. The following is a description of most of the electrical power systems we use here

The electrical system can be broken down into several parts. The energy production systems are covered several ways: We have a Bergey XL1 wind turbine on a 105' tilt up tower (tower, turbine and control system cost $3200, this price is not what you are lead to believe if you call a home wind power dealer...they usually think grid intertie and $30,000 to $50,000), a Whisper 400 at Phil's place and an Air 403 at the common house (these are salvaged units that I rebuilt with students on 30' - 35' homemade towers).

Our house has 500 watts of photovoltaics, the common house has 30 watts and Phil's place has 50 watts. We have a 10' diameter concrete block building with a 5000 watt generator - just a gas generator from the local hardware/lumber yard. It is connected with a twist plug to our house and if you switch plugs to the common house. Phil is a bit further away and has his own recycled gas generator. All of the generators run through the inverters in each of the buildings - the inverters act as battery chargers when the generators are running. We hope to switch to a diesel generator in the generator building this summer...I got a Kubota 3 cylinder diesel engine on a two wheeled trailer and want to tune it up and attach a generator head (10Kw) and convert the unit to run on waste veggie oil or, at least biodiesel. The long range goal is to get a 'lister' type engine and go with technology that will last decades.

We have a battery bank that consists of 16 L15 type batteries (130# each and 6 volts each) they're tied together to form a 24 volt battery bank (4 strings of 24v). Each string has a 2 gigahertz pulser to prevent sulfation of the batteries. I hope to get 15 years out of our present set. The common house is connected to our house with an underground wire, but it has a switch to let it run off it's own small system. The common house has two sets of batteries- I bought one set of 6 deep cycle marine/rv batteries and the next day a friend dropped off 25+ deep cycle batteries (AGM Type!) that had been surplused at his job. Phil has 6 deep cycle 12v batteries from Sam's Club hooked in series for a 12volt system. THe common house has a 24v system to be compatable with ours.

Each house has an inverter. Ours is an Outback 3824 (3800 watts continuous power and 10,000 watt surge) it is a puresine type inverter (this means that it produces power with almost no harmonic distortion). The common house has our old Trace 3524 modified sine inverter. Both of these inverters have a built in charging circuit that will deliver between 70 and 80 amps of charge. Our big battery bank only takes 2 hours to fully charge when it gets to a 20% to 25% depth of discharge and we don't have wind or sunshine to charge. Phil's place works off of a cheap ($35 from Harbor Freight) 400 watt or so inverter and a NAPA battery charger. Phil's controls and monitors are all salvaged junk that I rewired...hey, it works!

I built a 6" pelton wheel type microhydro turbine with my students several years ago and it'll eventually go into the waterfall area we have about 700' from our house. It needs a shaft that connects it to a military 100amp vehicle alternator, a housing, the weir, and pipe and heavy enough wire to run to the generator shed without too much loss to get it up and contributing to our power network.

We have no wires that connect us with the road. We have cell phones, satellite tv, and a wireless phone thingy that hooks into the side of our laptop computer for internet work.

I'm estimating that when all of the people that live here are actually here we use up to 6 KWh of power a day. A sunny day or a windy day will just about replace what we use. Many times we have a surplus of power, especially after a series of windy days and I'll run a crock pot or bread maker to use up the surplus. If we're using a lot of lights or power tools or doing multiple loads of laundry or vacuuming and my batteries drop below 24.8 volts I'll throw the generator on for a few hours. It uses around a gallon of gas per hour. If all of the renewable stuff was gone we'd have to run the generator for around 2 hours every three or four days. As we start to develop more home based businesses here I anticipate we'll bulk up both our renewables and mechanical generating systems (i.e. the waste veggie gen sets or more PV panels or more wind turbines)

I teach workshops on how to build axial flux wind turbines from locally available materials and have several under construction now. One of these home made units will go to the area that we're building guest cabins near the water falls site. Our/my goal is to show people that is really isn't hard or complicated to make enough power for a home or group of homes...it's a matter of getting over the brainwashing that you've had since birth about power companies.

Happy Holidays!

Here's hoping the holiday season finds you all in good health and in a good mood. THe past few weeks have seen some progress on several fronts. I recently experimented with some unusual home canning. Hummis and home squeezed grapefruit juice. Both worked out! I'm sure we lost some enzymes and vitamins on the juice, but we bought three cases of grapefruit from our school's FFA and I've always wanted to try this out. We also got to spin out of our combs...about a gallon and a half of our own honey! Plus wax; candles will be the next experiment...

We have this week off from teaching and we're using it to finish the wiring and plumbing at the common house. I have two junction boxes to finish up to complete the circuits. There's A bit more to do on the drain and supply plumbing; about 4 more pvc fittings will complete the below floor part of the drain system. The supply lines are going smoothly, I'm experimenting with "PEX" flexible pipe and crimp on fittings. So far I like it a lot, we'll see after I pressurize things a bit.

Phil has begun the final steps for enclosing his driveway side room. He's been working on his crafted main door and side lites with his "Woodhenge Door Style".

Today we'll be spending a couple of hours on the plumbing and wiring and then we'll be having some some fun with our "ELBG's" (Evil Looking Black Guns). In reality they are cheap former soviet bloc military surplus rifles that we got at Herb Phillipsons's. They fire really cheap 7.62 x 39 mm ammo and can make a scrap toilet really hop around!

All for now. -Jim-