# Wine and Wood (handles)



## cotedupy (Jul 12, 2020)

Here's a bit of fun I had yesterday. [Disclaimer: this is the first time I've ever tried making a handle, and I only had a saw, an Opinel, some epoxy, and some sandpaper. So the results are somewhat 'rustic'.]

This is a French oak stave that has been used in winemaking. A friend of mine who is a winemaker uses them after for firewood, and I rescued one the other day. Barrels are really quite expensive, so to try to get the same effect for cheaper wines planks of oak are suspended in the wine while in tank, which absorbs their flavour. The colour is a result of absorbing, liquid, wine solids (which are very dark), and also toasting it prior to use, which intensifies the flavour. Despite the appearance this plank was completely dry, the bit at the far end is where it was suspended from, so out of the wine itself.







Thought I'd cut it up and see if I could make some blanks for wa handles. It was quite thin so I had to glue two bits together, but they turned out alright for a first effort made from a piece of scrap wood I think. You can see how the wine has soaked through certain bits of it.










But seeing as I don't have a Japanese knife atm that needs an experimental handle, I then thought I might try making some scales for this old butcher knife.






But... Oh No! After removing the bolts it seems the scales were also glued on.

[TBC below...]


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## cotedupy (Jul 12, 2020)

Is there anything you can't do with a Cai Dao?





And after some whittling and sanding, here's what it ended up looking like. As I said 'rustic', but I quite like that in this kind of knife, and the colours are interesting to play around with. I'll probably tidy it up a bit further, but I don't really have the tools to do much more.













And that was my afternoon buggering about with an old piece of dirty winemaking oak.


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## cotedupy (Jul 17, 2020)

Decided to use one of the blanks for the above chinese cleaver (just as well because the tang turned out to be well rusty).

Going to give it a go later and see if it needs reshaping or shortening at all.


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## cotedupy (Jul 30, 2020)

And another one. This is a cheap deba that I bought to practice single bevel sharpening, and making handles (it had a really crap handle!)





I was aiming for a style of handle similarly profiled to my Blenheim Forge Knives.





End result. Tho I think I'll sand a bit more on the underside.


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## cotedupy (Aug 16, 2020)

And continuing on (on the off-chance anybody is still interested ), my first attempts at basic octagonal wa handles. And another shout-out to @Carl Kotte for excellent tips and advice for complete amateurs like myself.

This is the same old oak staves, and then some pine kindling used for the ferrule, next to a Mazaki petty for size reference.





Then another couple. The first I used pine again for the ferrule, and was about to for the second when I was called on to chop up a bit of wood which didn't fit in our fire. It's apparently 'Pink Gum' a very hard Australian Eucalypt species. It didn't look like much tbh (pic attached), and also like it had come from a fire-damaged tree. I don't know if that affected the outcome, but either way when sanded and polished it turned out to be extraordinary looking stuff, kind of like wine coloured marble.





And here are the three together. The larger two are quite big atm, so may need some more sanding / re-sizing depending on the knife they eventually go on.


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## juice (Aug 16, 2020)

cotedupy said:


> 'Pink Gum' a very hard Australian Eucalypt species.


That's kickarse


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## cotedupy (Aug 16, 2020)

juice said:


> That's kickarse



Cheers! It is quite cool isn't it, I couldn't believe what it ended up looking like. This is it while it was being glued and clamped.


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## juice (Aug 16, 2020)

Yeah, it looks awesome


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## cotedupy (Aug 16, 2020)

Probably be a completely nightmare to make the hole for a tang, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!


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## juice (Aug 16, 2020)

cotedupy said:


> Probably be a completely nightmare to make the hole for a tang, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!


One step at a time, or something


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## Matt Jacobs (Aug 17, 2020)

I am really impressed based on the tools you have at hand to do this with.


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## cotedupy (Aug 17, 2020)

Matt Jacobs said:


> I am really impressed based on the tools you have at hand to do this with.



Ah thanks! Largely down to some good advice from Carl K on how to do things with the bare minimum of kit.

As a postscript to this- after a bit of research it looks like 'Pink Gum' is what my father-in-law calls Rose Gum. And also it might not be that anyway, it looks more like pictures of Red Gum, which we also sometimes get for firewood.


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## juice (Aug 17, 2020)

cotedupy said:


> As a postscript to this- after a bit of research it looks like 'Pink Gum' is what my father-in-law calls Rose Gum. And also it might not be that anyway, it looks more like pictures of Red Gum, which we also sometimes get for firewood.


Just different shades of the same thing


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## cotedupy (Aug 17, 2020)

juice said:


> Just different shades of the same thing



Are they? 

(As you can tell I'm still trying to get my head around Australian tree species. See also the thread where I made a chopping board out of some kind of Ironbark and it turned out to be like cutting on marble :/ )


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## juice (Aug 17, 2020)

cotedupy said:


> Are they?


Well, if I was FORCED to be honest - no idea. I was making a joke based on the similar colours 



cotedupy said:


> (As you can tell I'm still trying to get my head around Australian tree species. See also the thread where I made a chopping board out of some kind of Ironbark and it turned out to be like cutting on marble :/ )


The clue is in the name  

Lots of our timbers are hard, it seems. (Caveat: as you can tell, though, I'm no expert :-D


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## cotedupy (Aug 17, 2020)

juice said:


> Well, if I was FORCED to be honest - no idea. I was making a joke based on the similar colours
> 
> 
> The clue is in the name
> ...



Ha! Yes, the name might've been a bit of a giveaway I admit.


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## cotedupy (Aug 18, 2020)

Ended up putting it on one of my Chinese cleavers. Looks alright I think.


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## Carl Kotte (Aug 18, 2020)

Hey, Don’t give me any credit! You have already surpassed me. With you and @ian it seems I’m better at giving advice than actually making handles myself... well, your wood handles are better. It’s not as if you have made any impressive hot dog bun handles yet! (Universe still has a special place for me!!!!)


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## Carl Kotte (Aug 19, 2020)

cotedupy said:


> Ended up putting it on one of my Chinese cleavers. Looks alright I think.


It looks crazy good!


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## cotedupy (Aug 19, 2020)

Carl Kotte said:


> It looks crazy good!



Thanks mate! I'm certainly improving, but it will be many years before I master a truly fine bun-handle. I like the sesame seed highlights here, but it just doesn't feel right in my hand. I don't think it rose enough to get the authentically 'squishy' texture of the best Swedish examples.


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## Carl Kotte (Aug 19, 2020)

cotedupy said:


> Thanks mate! I'm certainly improving, but it will be many years before I master a truly fine bun-handle. I like the sesame seed highlights here, but it just doesn't feel right in my hand. I don't think it rose enough to get the authentically 'squishy' texture of the best Swedish examples.


Holy smokes, that looks amazing. 

now I will have to sue you


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## juice (Aug 19, 2020)

"Next up, The Beige Lion versus the Aussie Pom! Twelve rounds! Place your bets now!"


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## birdsfan (Aug 19, 2020)

Really awesome work! I love that ferrule wood, great color and contrast. And something about using the old wine barrel staves is poetic, synergistic. How did you end up doing the tang slot?


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## cotedupy (Aug 19, 2020)

birdsfan said:


> Really awesome work!



Cheers!



birdsfan said:


> How did you end up doing the tang slot?



Err... in a word... 'badly'. 

I don't have a bench clamp so end up just holding them in my hand and trying to drill a few holes by eye, a bit of filing, and then epoxy-ing the tang in. 

The latest cleaver actually went quite well (by which I mean the knife actually stayed in the hole without the epoxy, rather than it just being a massive hole filled with a feck-ton of resin!)


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## birdsfan (Aug 19, 2020)

Still amazing what you accomplished with a limited tool selection!


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## cotedupy (Aug 19, 2020)

Thank you all! 

Made another today, trying out a spacer from a bit of pine, and with the ferrule definitely from Rose Gum this time rather than Red Gum. 

It went well, tho this picture possibly flatters it slightly.


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## Carl Kotte (Aug 19, 2020)

I retire


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## ModRQC (Aug 19, 2020)

No biggie @Carl Kotte all those other handles are just way too not beige!


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## birdsfan (Aug 19, 2020)

Excellent work! Soon you will b able to quit your day job (and pick up all of Karl's work, since he is retiring)


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## Carl Kotte (Aug 19, 2020)

birdsfan said:


> Excellent work! Soon you will b able to quit your day job (and pick up all of Karl's work, since he is retiring)


That’s what sea said


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## birdsfan (Aug 19, 2020)

Though frankly Karl, I think your decision to retire is premature. There are more than enough tang slots needing to be drilled for all of us to stay busy...


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## ModRQC (Aug 19, 2020)

Carl will never retire. You'll have to pry his last Wa out of his dead hands.


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## cotedupy (Aug 20, 2020)

Btw- I asked another winemaker friend for some more oak, and she brought me a feck-ton last night. If anyone in Aus would like any I can happily cut some up and send for whatever the cost of postage is. Quite conveniently it's pretty much exactly half the width of a knife handle, so can be used for scales or glued together for a handle blank.

(I could do internationally too, but it might get slightly expensive for what is basically scrap wood.)


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## cotedupy (Aug 27, 2020)

These new staves turned out to be almost completely black all the way through, which is quite cool. These were my first efforts today.

The spacers are of particular interest... they were hewn from a cache of Ceylon sapphires that my great-great-grandfather (a dealer of rare and aged teas) won from his friend and client the King of Burma, in a game of whist.


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## cotedupy (Aug 27, 2020)

Tho next time I might just use these bits of plastic I found on the beach.


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## cotedupy (Aug 27, 2020)

I've also been playing around with carving out some of the lines in the ferrule slightly with a chisel and filling with gold coloured epoxy.

The eagle-eyed among you will again notice the spacer. Taken from a particularly large piece of ambergris brought back on the Beagle in 1843. And purloined some thirty years later by my grandfather's errant great-uncle Jack, a brigand and a highwayman, at the end of a barrel.

But usually I just use bits of pine kindling.


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## birdsfan (Aug 27, 2020)

Love that your handles have history and meaning beyond just the craftsmanship of it


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## Tim Rowland (Aug 27, 2020)

these are all looking great.
I really like the color of that new stave wood, practically looks like bog oak. Beautiful dark color.


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## juice (Aug 27, 2020)

cotedupy said:


> But usually I just use bits of pine kindling.


Is staying up that late actually GOOD for you? Asking for a friend.


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## cotedupy (Aug 27, 2020)

birdsfan said:


> Love that your handles have history and meaning beyond just the craftsmanship of it



Haha! Everybody else has fancy handles with spacers made from mammoth teeth and whalebone and the like, so I though I better make up some kind of spurious backstory for mine rather than just saying it was all just made from bits of rubbish 

Tho I shouldn't have thought putting ambergris in a knife handle would be particularly pleasant!


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## cotedupy (Aug 27, 2020)

juice said:


> Is staying up that late actually GOOD for you? Asking for a friend.



It's when I'm at my creative peak!


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## M1k3 (Aug 27, 2020)

juice said:


> Is staying up that late actually GOOD for you? Asking for a friend.


I haven't died yet...


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## juice (Aug 28, 2020)

M1k3 said:


> I haven't died yet...


Sure, but Americans are weird. Those horrendously unfunny late night shows you stay up until all hours to watch? Yeah.

@cotedupy is a man of class and culture.


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## M1k3 (Aug 28, 2020)

juice said:


> Sure, but Americans are weird. Those horrendously unfunny late night shows you stay up until all hours to watch? Yeah.
> 
> @cotedupy is a man of class and culture.


I don't watch those shows. My regular routine would have me getting off work around the time they come on.


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## cotedupy (Aug 30, 2020)

A couple more recent ones. Ongoing apologies for the quality of the pictures from my iphone 4, but it still shows quite well the difference in colour between the lighter and darker staves, and in Rose Gum on the deba and Red Gum on the cleaver.

As a side note - the difference in colour between the staves was a bit of a mystery to my two friends who donated them. Both are same species of tree, and will have been used in the same way, for the same amount of time.

Tho it was suggested the explanation is likely to be that they come from different areas of France. Almost all French oak for cooperages comes from one of five forests, and each produces slightly different characteristics. The lighter oak has a finer, tighter grain, so the wine and solids penetrate only the very surface, and normally get sanded away. Whereas the darker oak is noticeably rougher and looser, and the wine has penetrated all the way through. Probably. Tho if anyone else has any other thoughts I'd be keen to hear...


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## milkbaby (Aug 31, 2020)

The very black ones are really attractive to my eye. Nice work!


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## cotedupy (Sep 19, 2020)

Improbably enough a few people I know, or people who have shops, have expressed interest in buying handles (or knives with handles), so have been making a few in the last few days. Got my technique down pat now!

This one's from a particularly dark stave of French wine oak, and then a ferrule I cut from a piece of red gum that looks to be fire effected. I managed to shape it so that from one side it looks almost completely black, but from the other side red:






One exclusively from the same very dark stave:



This has a ferrule from the same stave, and the main part made out of Tasmanian oak, offcuts from my brother-in-law's new floorboards:




And lastly one just from the Tasmanian oak, with a knot that I slightly carved, and then filled with coloured epoxy:


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## birdsfan (Sep 19, 2020)

Once again, beautiful work! You really do have your technique down pat. Love the last one with the knot in it. Very cool color compliment between the wood and the epoxy.


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## Carl Kotte (Sep 19, 2020)

You go O! They look great! I understand why people want them!


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## cotedupy (Sep 19, 2020)

Gracias hombres! @birdsfan @Carl Kotte 

The colour compliment was more out of necessity than design, as I only had gold mica, but worked out quite nicely! (Like most of my handles it was an experiment, some of which go ok  )


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## cotedupy (Sep 19, 2020)

So nicely in fact that when my sister saw a picture of it yesterday she requested a similar thing but with blue. So after buying some blue mica, this was this evening's effort...


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## cotedupy (Sep 27, 2020)

Some more playing with blue mica and epoxy filling on Tassie oak. Mostly to go on some reasonably priced Tosa blades for friends. (Not quite finished and sized up yet.)


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## birdsfan (Sep 27, 2020)

Very nice work! Love the look of the wood and the way you treat it!


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## cotedupy (Sep 28, 2020)

Another little project today with another inexpensive Two Lions brand Sangdao.

I was going to play around with cutting some of the metal, and trying to make a new knife, but a friend wanted it, so that'll have to wait until I grab another one. The knife and the stone here cost about $10 US for the both of them. The knives are perfectly good, tho I'm not sure the stone will be much use tbh, just bought it cos it was about two bucks.





Sanded off the "KU" finish.





Made up a handle, this is wine oak staves, and a ferrule from a very hard bit of Ironbark.





Put it on, and then forced a patina with mustard. This is something I've tried before with these knives, but without much success. They're very prone to forming brown patina/rust. The key I think is proper sanding and cleaning before, and also I followed advice from another member and used a few light applications of mustard, rather than vinegar.





And the end result after cleaning up, sharpening &c.


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## juice (Sep 28, 2020)

cotedupy said:


> I was going to play around with cutting some of the metal


@ma_sha1 gonna sue you, you know this.


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## birdsfan (Sep 28, 2020)

At the advice of his lawyer, he wisely chose to just refinish, not cut metal, thus avoiding the ma_sha injunction.


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## birdsfan (Sep 28, 2020)

That is a fun project! Lots of places to learn new things. Did you try the new stone?


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## cotedupy (Sep 28, 2020)

birdsfan said:


> That is a fun project! Lots of places to learn new things. Did you try the new stone?



Briefly on the coarser side, to see how it'd go with the thinning I do on these cleavers... I'm no expert but it just seemed incredibly soft. There probably wouldn't have been much stone left if I'd kept going to the end. May give it another go tomorrow, just for sharpening rather than thinning, but I'm not holding out much hope.


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## cotedupy (Sep 28, 2020)

juice said:


> @ma_sha1 gonna sue you, you know this.



Haha! Yeah my Pennsylvania-based handiwork attorney gave me some realist advice on how easy/tricky it might be. So will be waiting a while, until I can borrow some proper equipment and have watched a feck-ton of youtube videos...


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## birdsfan (Sep 28, 2020)

Well now....I can not claim to be qualified to give any legal advice. the only experience I have with the law is being on the wrong side of it.


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## cotedupy (Sep 28, 2020)

A random question about the stone pictured above...

When I buy cheap packs of sandpaper at the local supermarket the sheets are often the same 'Diamond World Brand'. Is there anything to stop me just using that stone like a sanding block when woodworking? Cos that'd probably save me *a lot* of money...


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## birdsfan (Sep 28, 2020)

I am just shooting from the hip here, but I think the grit might get clogged just like sand paper. Worth a try though since it was cheap. You might just be able to wash it off.


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## cotedupy (Sep 28, 2020)

birdsfan said:


> I am just shooting from the hip here, but I think the grit might get clogged just like sand paper. Worth a try though since it was cheap. You might just be able to wash it off.



That was my inkling, it might test my patience if I'm having to scrub it clean every 45 seconds. But as you say- it cost pretty much the same as a single sheet of sandpaper from the hardware store, so there's only one way to find out...


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## cotedupy (Oct 3, 2020)

More random experimentation, turned out quite cool tho...

I found this weird seed thing on the ground this afternoon, apparently it was a Banksia pod. I sanded it down a bit:







Filled the gaps with some odd, grey epoxy I bought a while back, and made a 'ferrule'. And then again with nice, blue epoxy:










Came out pretty swish looking. It'll need a bit more oil, wax, sanding and filling, and even with that I imagine will still fall apart as soon as I try to drill it. Fingers crossed not tho. These things would be very cool to get hold of properly stabilized:


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## Carl Kotte (Oct 3, 2020)

What a sexy lizard!


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## cotedupy (Oct 3, 2020)

Carl Kotte said:


> What a sexy lizard!



It is rather reptilian isn't it!

(I'm just pleased I found a use for the horrid grey-green epoxy I bought by mistake the other month.)


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## juice (Oct 3, 2020)

cotedupy said:


> (I'm just pleased I found a use for the horrid grey-green epoxy I bought by mistake the other month.)


Winning in all directions, that looks awesome. I really do love that blue.


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## Carl Kotte (Oct 3, 2020)

juice said:


> Winning in all directions, that looks awesome. I really do love that beige.


So do I!


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## cotedupy (Oct 9, 2020)

One today from a handle I had half made a while back. On a cheap Japanese carbon steel Petty, c.130mm.


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## juice (Oct 9, 2020)

You need a Kanji stamp that says "Beach Trash" or something, like all those Aussies who go to Bali, get pissed and then get an Asian symbol tattoo that means "powdered milk" or the like :-D


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