Ed Steinkirchner

This is the new folder i made last week. patterned after the japanese higonomaki but with some extra work.
The case is brass sheet chased with a pattern (that i freehanded), chiseled in using butcher chisels, a small flatter, a small X stamp, and a pointed nail for the stippling. The blad is a scrap of sawblade off the bench, and the copper pin is telegraph wire.
 folder1.JPG   1012.62K   322 downloads
 both sides (2).JPG   1.04MB   309 downloads

any opinions or suggestions welcome.

Ed Steinkirchner

I've seen many hot and cold bluing/blackening formulas, but all that I tried have not worked out.
Well i guess my question is, what blackens steel without tarnishing/discoloring copper, brass, nickel silver, or aluminum. I ask because, short of letting it blacken with age, i cant get iron to blacken without changing the color of the inlayed wire. I've tried cold bluing but that does not work, i have tried tannic acid, and though it blackened the steel, is sanded off too easy. The spray with diluted acid, let rust, brush, and boil method is the only one that has shown any promise so far.
I've seen it done,I just do not know HOW its done.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

Ed Steinkirchner

what can you make out of 2 bicycle seat adjusters, a cheap lamp from the goodwill, a locking collar from some free weights, a piece of curtain rod, and about 10$ in hardware? an adjustable lamp for the shop! thats what.
when i saw the bicycle part in the burn pile after my brother scrapped a bunch of bikes, i knew it would be good for something. so I grabbed the other 3 of them and threw them it the shop until I thought of something good for them. finally, when I was working on the lathe, i got sick of the inadiquate light in the shop and bought an 8$ floor lamp from the goodwill and sat it behind the lathe. but it kept falling over, so I tried to think of a way to get light without cluttering up the floor of the shop, and this is what i thought of.
 lamp1.JPG   357.79K   267 downloads  lamp2.JPG   403.27K   327 downloads  lamp3.JPG   373.29K   292 downloads  lamp4.JPG   356.42K   265 downloads  lamp5.JPG   248.72K   237 downloads  lamp6.JPG   230.08K   161 downloads

now the lamp stood about 5.5 feet tall stock, and the bracket pushes it out from the beam about 6 inches, so it is almost to the opposite wall of the shop! the shop is 7 feet by about 25 feet, we added it to the garage so it is a wierd shape. not bad for a grand total of about 20 bucks. also it is at about 7 feet over head, so a person like me don't even need to duck under it.

Ed Steinkirchner

decided that i needed a real set of wood chisels and wanted a set that would hold up and not snap off at the transition between blade and handle when hit with a hammer/mallet. so here are the first of a growing set.
they will be approxamately 1 foot long, and proportioned as 4" handle,4" socket, 4" blade. the handle is apple wood and the ferrule is just a piece of a bicycle tubing, while the blade is forged from leaf spring, triple normalized, quenched in water, and double tempered to a purple/brown. the handled one is 1.25" wide and the smaller one is 1". bothe sockets are about an inch in diameter.
 ch1.JPG   543.94K   315 downloads
 ch2.JPG   547.64K   353 downloads
 ch3.JPG   490.75K   286 downloads
 ch4.JPG   524.55K   299 downloads
 ch5.JPG   226.87K   297 downloads
 ch6.JPG   424.01K   212 downloads

more to come
Ed Steinkirchner

i really needed a lead ladle to consolidate all of my lead scrap, so i made this in a little over an hour so it is fairly rough, but i needed to cast some pewter and a soup can wasn't handy nor would it have been a permanent solution to the problem. the burns on the handle were from when i lent it to the school art class for pewter casting(not always recommended), and a few were my fault
But anyway, the bowl it riveted in 2 places to the handle(rivets are coat hanger), and the wood is jambed on the tang. the shank had the end flattened for the rivets and the handle end pointed and barbed, and jambed in a hole in the handle, which is a piece of old 2X4. There is a staple on the other end of the handle for hanging it on the bench.
 ladle1.JPG   234.65K   135 downloads  ladle2.JPG   137.69K   162 downloads
 ladle3.JPG   131.11K   147 downloads  ladle4.JPG   125.07K   118 downloads

now I need to make a bigger one!

Edward Steinkirchner