Coffee Klatch

For those who haven’t heard, the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is an international, non-profit educational organization which studies and recreates the Middle Ages. There are over 30,000 paying members worldwide, plus untold scads of non-paying participants. There are local groups all OVER the place! Check out the map. If you want to see a list of the kingdoms and what “mundane” lands they cover (or find a group near you), check out SCA Geography. You can find a history of the SCA, a list of activities, resources for newcomers, and tons more on the SCA website. Better still, visit http://www.scademo.com/ for a thorough, well-put-together “tutorial” about the SCA. Their demo describes the SCA as “full-contact Ren Fair with better garb and fewer pirates.”
Basically, if it went on in the Middle Ages (loosely defined as pre-1600 A.D.), there are people in the SCA who do it. Except for maybe the Bubonic Plague. But if you contacted your local group, you’d probably find people that were actively doing combat, cooking, costuming, heraldry, music, dance, brewing, calligraphy, illumination, archery, stained glass, metalwork, literature, and more. You can learn about these kinds of things by DOING them, not just by reading about them.

Events include tournaments, revels, feasts, wars, demos, and that kind of thing, ranging from small, local events to jumbo/LARGE ones. The Pennsic Wars, for instance, often have 8,000 fighters on the field at one time. The largest that I’ve ever fought in was about 100 people. Still way cool, though.

And here’s a picture that I found on Flickr:

Here’s a tip that I’ve learned the hard way. If you’re going to buy a socket set, make sure that many or most have a WIDE drive. Most socket sets have a 1/4-inch drive and a 3/8-inch drive. The drive is the part of the socket wrench that goes into the sockets. Some kits only have a 1/4-inch drive, while others have both sizes plus a 1/2-inch drive for the really big sockets.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work at the library assembling and disassembling metal shelving units. Most of the time I was using a socket wrench that somebody got for the library last year. The problem with this socket set is that all the sockets take the small 1/4-inch drive. But the wrench itself has a 3/8-inch drive. So the adapter that comes with it ALWAYS has to be used!

If that was all, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but when you have to add an adapter between the wrench and the socket, that moves the point of force farther out from the wrench that you’re holding. The consequence is that you constantly have the socket wrench slipping off the nut you’re trying to loosen. That makes for stripped nuts, bruised knuckles, and high frustration levels. You have to use one hand to hold the end of the wrench on the nut, while using the other hand to crank it. And if you have to HOLD something while you’re doing that (not that I’VE had to!), then you end up trying to turn the wrench with the same hand that’s holding it on the nut, ignoring the handle completely.

Yes, it’s a point of frustration, but a word to the wise: when buying a socket wrench set, make sure that most of the sockets DON’T require an adapter.

[tags]socket wrenches, tools[/tags]