Dr Dean

This advise is huge! I demo at a threshing bee and my go to project is leaf key chains. I find it's very important to engage the crowd as I'm working otherwise it's not interesting to the visitors. I will often single out someone in the back and ask them a question or two just to get some interaction. Many times I will start and get people guessing what I'm making as I'm working on it, this does make for some very comical responses.

The pipe is not that expensive if it were my building the pipe would be there even if I didn't plan on using it. Fiber mesh will leave a "hairy" surface so it's very difficult to get an easy sweeping surface with fiber. We used fiber in the floors of the hog houses and it took a couple of years to all wear off the surface. The pipe layout can be routed around possible places for a power hammer, just make sure you make a good map of the pipe before pouring concrete, I didn't wish I had.

Yes it was pretty cool! 1/4" hole in about 1/2" hole out. I would be willing to do some custom ventilation if the bottle was brought to my range. We may even have to take out some little orange ufo's.

This isn't probably the safest method but it worked for me. I had a 20Lb tank that needed cut in half and I was a bit nervous to be close when it was initaly opened. The valve wouldn't budge even with a 36" pipe wrench on it. Here is the part where you have to remember I live out in the country. I set the bottle out at the 400 yard mark on my shooting range. 4 shots later with my 22-250 I had a well ventilated container, the bottle was empty before shooting. After retrieving the bottle it was filled with water and cut with a torch.

Back many years ago I got a vacation from school for "informing" another student how stupid it is to toss scrap blocks of wood on top of a running tablesaw blade. One of the blocks caught me in the leg, bad thing for him I was a farm kid and he was a football jock. The "vacation" was worth it! Mighty good thing I wasn't there with those 2 idiots.

Thomas, I'd really like to hear the story on how you wound up with the nose cone from a ballistic missile.

Pun is excused, you just about caused me to ruin a keyboard! I have had a similar experience with my coal but it wasnt the cows, it was cats. The only thing I can advise is to move your forge outside and try to have the forge down wind, at least thats what I did.

So, this forge is to be your end table in the living room right? It's looking great! I probably wouldn't have painted the inside of the table though.

A line shaft typically runs at 400 rpm. What gave the diffrent speeds of output was the size of pully that was mounted on the shaft. So a 6 inch pulley would make 7539.6 inches per minute and if your driven pulley was say 2" you would get 1200 rpm on the driven shaft. To figure speeds I take Pi (3.1415) X diameter = circumfrence do this on both pulleys and write it down. Take P1 (drive) and multiply circumfrence= linear per minute (inches if you used inches to figure your circumfrence). Then take linear per minute and divide it by P2= rpm.

Unfortunatly you're in a tough situation. You need warm weather and drainage. I hope the floor is above the surrounding grade or you will continue to have problems, I've seen it many times in machine sheds. Is the soil heavy (clay) or is it a light loam that drains well? If it's clay you may have to work in alot of sand to gain drainage and possibly add drain tile below grade. The best thing to do would be to remove 1 foot of soil and backfill with crusher run rock (3/4 minus) compact with a plate compactor to gain a good base that won't shift or settle. Chrushed rock will pack and not willingly move unlike pea gravel that is rounded and will never be a good base.

That's a great idea! The triangles would need to be clamped very well, I will keep this in mind the next time I need to do something similar.

Go get a fan out of a car, remove the motor and install a series of pulleys and belts increase the speed from the crank approx 50 rpm to an output speed of 2000 rpm. Disclamer I have a manufactured blower but if I had to build one that's how I'd do it. If you want pulley sizes I'll have to do some math and get back to you.

I personally would have a hard time running let alone owning a 110V welder. The 110 wire feed units that I have run are at best heavy enough for body sheetmeteal on cars. I did run a 110 stick welder on some 12 gauge steel angle, it did it but not very well. You'd be better off with an old Lincolin tombstone,220V 180 amp AC machine.

Ok you got me on that one but I'd rather it go away on it's own instead of being assisted by something other than my clippers! Glenn I've pondered making a sign for my toolbox along the same lines.

Well I finally got the chimney built and carried down to the smithy. After that we got 14 inches of that confounded white stuff (snow and I cleaned up how I really feel). Between running the skidloader and keeping our snow moving equipment running not much else has happened. Yesterday morning on the way to the pavement (1.5 miles) we got stuck in a drift so I walked back 1/2 mile got the skidloader and dug myself out and proceded to clean the road the rest of the way to the highway. Kind of sucks took 1.5 hours to go 1.5 miles. My wife mentioned over the weekend that I should get prices on a shop building so if things work out I may be making my smithy into a gazebo much sooner than I thought! More updates to come!