Starvin Larry

A chicken-sized bird is ruffling a lot of feathers these days.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service faces a court-ordered Sept. 30 deadline to announce whether it believes sage grouse need federal protection by designating them a threatened or endangered species. It is an issue that strikes close to home for many Montana and Wyoming residents — especially hunters.

Why should you care? Well for one thing, sage grouse are seen as an indicator species. That means as the sage grouse thrive, or fail to thrive, so too do other prairie-dwelling species. For hunters, that includes animals like mule deer, pronghorns and sharp-tailed grouse, which inhabit the same landscapes. For bird watchers it includes species like golden eagles, hawks and falcons.

“A new cliche emerging now is: ‘What’s good for the bird is good for the herd,’” said Ed Arnett, of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, at a gathering of outdoor writers in Bozeman.

“We’re trying to protect an entire ecosystem,” said Jim Lyons, deputy assistant secretary of Land and Minerals Management for the Department of Interior. “Forty years after the signing of the Endangered Species Act, we’re on the verge of implementing the act as it was designed — to prevent the listing of a species.”

Apparently the U.S. Department of Agriculture agrees. The agency recently announced an investment of $211 million in Farm Bill funding for sage grouse projects involving private landowners. All of that attention may be paying off, a recent survey found that the number of male sage grouse per breeding ground was the highest it’s been since 1970 — 25.5 males per lek, or courtship grounds.

In Montana

About one-third of Montana contains important sage grouse habitat, most of it in the eastern part of the state, although there is also a sizable population in the Dillon area.

“We have about 18 percent of the world’s population of sage grouse,” said Tim Baker, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock’s policy adviser for natural resources. “Many of our populations are at low risk. In Montana we still do benefit from having significant intact habitat” and secure populations of birds.

Although sage grouse are sensitive to development such as power lines, road building and oil and gas drilling, “livestock grazing is not seen as a disturbance,” Lyons said. Oil and gas drilling are a big threat to sage grouse, but “more than half of the areas that are high priority for oil and gas development are not in priority sage grouse habitat,” he added.

Much of Montana’s sage grouse population, about 66 percent, lives on private land. Only 8 to 9 percent reside on state land, the rest live on federal lands – mostly the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM has already drawn up its plans to preserve 3.5 million acres of priority sage grouse habitat in Montana and the Dakotas. The BLM’s plans will still allow some gravel pits to be created, bentonite mining to continue and will not restrict motorized use on designated and open routes. But they do require “no surface occupancy” for oil and gas drilling in priority habitat.

“There was a rumor (roads) would be closed. That’s not true,” said Jamie Connell, BLM’s Montana-Dakotas director. “We will try to maintain this Western working landscape.”

The state of Montana also has crafted a sage grouse management plan. The USFWS is reviewing the plans to determine whether adequate protections are in place to preclude listing sage grouse as threatened or endangered.

“I don’t think we’ve reached a perfect solution,” Connell said. “But I feel very good about what we’re handing over to the Fish and Wildlife Service.”

Complex issue

Although coordinating a response to protect sage grouse habitat on the state scale is difficult, consider that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is examining plans across 11 states involving an alphabet soup of state and federal agencies.

“This is not a one-size fits all plan,” Lyons said. “Montana, Wyoming and Idaho all have different plans.”

Source: 17 Unbelievable Facts You Never Knew About World War II

Just think of the possibilities-you could make it into a metal  lathe fairly easily,just need a moving carriage and tool rest/holder,along with a better chuck,or chucks in many cases.

Still not that big of a modification,I may build one myself once I’m caught up on work.

Think about real old school machine shops,like WWI era.

All of the machines in the shop worked off of the same main belt,usually a big thick leather belt that drove several overhead shafts.Each machine had it’s own belt up to the big shaft that was powered by either steam,waterwheel,or diesel or gasoline engines.

That one shaft powered up to a dozen machines,sometimes more.

With this type of set-up you can make stuff out of wood or metal-probably a good idea to have the bicycle chain turning a gear hooked up to a generator to charge a few 12v deep cycle batteries,which could be used-with a voltage inverter to power a motor so you would not have to pedal all the time.

I’m sure with a longer chain,and a second generator set up,two people pedaling could produce a useful amount of power.

Add more chains,more gears,and more people pedaling,set up multiple generators so it’s one for each person who is pedaling-that would at a minimum be able to keep some lights on in your shop.

It all began with baseball

In 2014, Lewis traveled to a school in the Dominican Republic town of Punta Cana to teach woodworking. “Baseball is religion there,” Lewis told me. He said he thought about bringing bats, but decided to bring a lathe so the kids could make their own. Transporting a full-size lathe—which can weigh more than 400 pounds—was obviously out of the question. So Lewis and two friends, Eric Foster and Chris Darnell, set to work designing a lathe that could be built on-site with a few basic tools and that wouldn’t need electricity.

They first tried a pole lathe and a treadle lathe, centuries-old designs that rely on taut ropes and foot-pumping to turn the wood. Neither worked. “I’m an experienced turner and in good physical shape,” Lewis said. “But running a treadle lathe was just too hard.” That’s when Lewis and friends turned to pedal power. Scott began by cannibalizing a colleague’s donated bike for parts. The rear wheel formed the basis of the flywheel; they cut off the part of the frame holding the pedals and cranks; and the front axle became a tensioning roller. Lewis and his father teamed up on the metalworking.

View of the repurposed bike parts used in the pedal-powered lathe design.

Scott packed the brackets, bike parts, and woodturning tools in boxes and suitcases for the flight to the Dominican Republic. Once in Punta Cana, they bought the wood they needed and enlisted the schoolkids to build the lathe.

The kids couldn’t wait to begin pedaling and turning. During Lewis’s three-week visit, the kids made spin tops, yo-yos, bowls, and—of course—baseball bats. Here are some highlights of the trip. (The video was done to coincide with Scott’s article in American Woodturner.)