Dr Dean

On 7/14/2016 at 10:43 AM, Adair said:

The best tip I can give for public demonstrations, and this is really crucial when your audience is random:  Demonstrate items that you can forge in your sleep.  Confident, linear processes from beginning to end are infinitely more captivating than fussing and tapping as you try to work out something new  Additionally,  a well rehearsed operation will free up your mind to interact with the crowd while you forge.  That is a skill in itself I've found.  I'll make the same product repeatedly, striving to make each one like the next.  If you can dictate what you are doing while you are doing it, and wind up with consistent, quality products, you will be honing your own skills in addition to entertaining the crowd. That determined certainty about every move is really apparent, even to someone who has never seen a blacksmith work.  

-Adair

 

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.

well at least it still makes fire
all i have to say is if my work ends up having a yellow patina i am going to be pissed

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.

The only way to do this job reliably IMHO is to clamp triangular piecs top and bottom so that the drill bit enters and exits perpendicular to the faces of those added triangles. If you can band saw the triangles quickly than they are sacrificail and no need for hardening. Maybe you can tack weld them in place. That will prevent slippage.

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.

Dr Dean-

I'm think'en hair could go on the list but I could be wrong... Does not include scalp:o


Sometimes the boss needs to know who's boss....Glad it worked out

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!

Freelance, I had a run in with the boss today on a safety issue, he wanted something done his way, I said no. I told him that I had made a list of the body parts I could live without and it doesn't have any entries. I got the job done but it was done my way.


BODY PARTS I CAN LIVE WITHOUT
#1

Yep thats my list.

...your young daughters know the diffrence between good and bad coal.
...Your 10 year old daughter asks for a rounding hammer for Christmas.
...threatening with coal in thier stockings brings a smile to thier faces.

Here's one that was sent to me after a serious lack of grace. Seriously Frosty it's good to see you back!

You guys crack me up. I didn't get a darn thing done this weekend, SWMBO had her plans for me and the kids are intent on going to the movies tonight. So I will have to get the snow shoveled and chimney built during the next week.

I'm hoping to brave the cold this weekend and get the chimney built so I can get a fire going out there. The tubes have a bolt flange on one end so I'm planning on having a flange just above the fill cap height and modifying the existing cap to run the tube through, The additional height will be bolted to the top and I'm planning on using a hog pan on a rod that runs down through the roof so I can cap the chimney when not in use without climbing the roof. I'll add a wye for the wood stove that will be built at a later date. Now as long as no one tells me to pee in a corner I'll be alright!:D

Spent the entire afternoon pushing snow on my brothers Case 90XT skidsteer, after running that monster I wonder how we got anything done with the little 1818. 90 horse versus 18 horse powered scoop shovel. I've been saving unloading auger tubes from combines and with what I brought home Monday I should have plenty of material. Would 14" tube be too big?
My plan is when I build a better shop the corn crib will be moved and turned into a gazebo.

After dinner (that's noon meal) I cleaned off the concrete pad that the crib is now sitting on and backed the hayrack into position. I then rounded up all the blocks I could find and 6 steel fence posts. I drove the posts into the dirt around the concrete to act as guides and wired the crib to the posts. The next problem was that the crib had to go up 18 inches before I could get the hayrack out. I used a handyman jack and went up 2 inches at a time untill the hayrack would clear and I got the hayrack out of the way. I next started down 3 feet 2 inches at a time. It was after dark by the time I had it on the ground. I had orignally planned on wrapping the outside with used barn tin but since it's cold and I really don't have time now I decided to go with tarps. I had an old lumber tarp and I bought a couple cheap plastic tarps. The lumber tarp held up well to the blizzard last night but I need to do something better for the plastic tarps. Here's a view from the kitchen window

Ok Sunday morning came and my youngest daughter and I went to go get the corn crib. We hooked onto the hay rack with the pickup and headed home. The first power line was a 220 volt triplex low and behold it was too low to go under, we hadn't even gotten out of the field. Ok plan B we went across the field to another field gate, that particular farm is 3/4 section so I had choices on where to get out. At this point we had 3 power lines to worry about instead of 2 and all 3 are high tension lines 17,000 volt. We made it to the other field gate after having to deal with going around terraces and some steep areas. When we got to the first line I had my daughter go across the road and watch, she said all was clear so we headed out for the final mile. 30 minutes later we were home, lots of room under all the power lines. I haven't taken many pictures but here are 2 that show how it is tied down to the hayrack.

Over the last few weeks I have been working on a way of getting all of my blacksmith equipment out of the garage. Since my garage is downstairs from the kitchen and living room fire and noise is a real concern, I'm also getting real tired of hearing "don't burn your house down". My quest started out looking for a shed that could be moved or torn down and rebuilt. After looking around and deciding that I don't have time for taking on that project I suddenly realized that a wire corn crib would be perfect. On another one of our farms there was a 1200 bushel crib. It is 16 feet in diameter and started out 15 feet tall at the sidewall. I cut out one side and backed a hayrack into the crib. The next step was to hook the bin jacks that I built onto the crib and then cut off the bottom 4 feet. We then started letting the cribdown to the ground. About 2 feet off the ground one of my bin jacks gave out and it tipped over agianst the next bin. I then tied off to the top side and pulled it back upright, no damage was done other than to our nerves. now it was sitting back on the ground and upright! We took 4 2X6's and put through the sides and tied it down to the hay rack. I then took my torch and cut some more off the bottom so it would clear the ground. By this time it was dark so I hooked onto the hay rack and pulled it off of the bin foundation, we decided to wait til daylight to move it home so we could see the power lines.

Beautiful blade! Someday I intend on trying damascus.