Downside to Buffing Edges to Sharpen

[D_W]

Mice eat the bars.

A couple of weeks ago, I started to see a mouse in my shop. My shop is a garage and there is no opening to the house, but since the garage is below grade, there is a grate outside and a pipe into a sump in the house. In the old days, this would've been a closed pipe going to a municipal connected drain. Changes in rules have this directed into a sump which pumps the water back up and out in a common pipe shared with the roof. The sump top has a small opening so that you can see in it to make sure that the level is staying down.

What happens with that? Chipmunks and mice come into the pipe, grasp the concrete sides of the sump and walk up out of it and into the garage. This doesn't bother me that much, there's no food and they're usually gone.

I started to see this mouse and figured he must've been looking for safety. But I have seen him 4 or so times now, and I don't plug the sump hole because any of the chippies living outside could still come in at some point when I have the door open grinding, and I'd rather they can use their regular route to get back out.

At the same time, my yellow 5 micron buff bar started to get a clean corner on it where the bar had been worn off. I thought this was odd, but maybe I wasn't looking and it got stuck under a buffing wheel and buffed off.

Then I moved, it, and it started to get a little worse and more areas, and I suddenly realized, the mouse is eating the buffing bar.

So now I have to put the buffing bar in a metal drawer and I haven't seen the mouse.

Why would a mouse eat a buffing bar? I know the answer to this only because I thought of making a few of the bars. Some part of the stock that makes the cakey bar is animal fats. I don't know what they're rendered into or transformed into (partially saponified? I don't know - I guess not or they'd have lye in them and the mouse wouldn't eat that).




I'll bet he's got just about the shiniest cleanest teeth of all mice in the neighborhood.

And i haven't seen him since then. His bigger concern, I thought he was going to become a pet - if he gets in the house, the resident cat is a straight up killing machine, nabbing about 10 or more small animals per week outside, and she hunts in the house when she's downstairs even though the bulk is closed off and has nothing more than the odd spider here or there. I've seen her pick birds out of the air - my newfound pet wouldn't have a chance.

 

[Tony Zaffuto]

Watch your house beagle around your hide glue pot!

 

[Orraloon]

I had this guy In the shed a couple of years ago because I left the window open. Dont think anything was eaten.
I felt guilty evicting him so built a nest box.
As to why the mice eat the buffing stick there is likely wax or a vegetable oil in the in it. Still cant be doing them much good however.
Regards
John

 

[pgrbff]

We have Roman dormice, lots of them, mainly in the roof but I also see them in my workshop. Theyre protected, not sure why as they slowly eat all the insulation in the roof, you see it coming down the rainwater pipes, and travel down the walls and into my underfloor heating manifold where they eat the pipe insulation. They also ate the wire on the temp sender on my solar water heating panels.

 

[Cozzer]

....They also ate the wire on the temp sender on my solar water heating panels.

Didn't I read somewhere that the 'plastic' sheathing on cables is made with a certain amount of soya these days?

 

[cotedupy]

Koalas are normally pretty grumpy and aggressive, but one summer we had a female around our garden who was the opposite - very friendly, inquisitive, and calm around humans. When I was working down in the shed at night (Koalas are nocturnal) she'd often come sit in the doorway and watch.

We called her Pat, because she'd actually let you stroke her.