Sukellos

My son-in-law lived for some years in Uruguay and now has started to build an Uruguayan "PARILLA" which is a BBQ grill. It is like an open-sided brick oven with a fire kept going in a metal basket at one end from which coals are raked out under the grill ("parilla" pa-REE-zhah, refers to the actual metal grill.). Of course, I'll be doing all of the ironwork. Some parillas have a chain hoist or some sort of a way to lift and lower one end of the grill. Others have some kind of a crane to be able to swing the grill completely off of the fire. Many just set the grill on a permanent tilt and leave it at that, preferring to move the meat from the cooler to the hotter areas and back as needed. With all of the brain power I've observed in the forum, I'm opening it up to all of you. Throw your ideas at me and I'll use the ones I fancy most. Thanks, folks!

I have to agree with the others. Replacement cost shouldn't be that great, especially if you weigh it against the cost of damage caused by the breaking of a poorly tempered blade. I've got a Saxon spear I forged out of a lawn mower blade over 20 years ago. I just let it air harden and it is somewhat springy. Old mower blades are great raw material for knives, spears and such. Buy new ones and have some fun with the old ones. GOOD LUCK!

Looks great! No criticism here! I couldn't improve on it.

I bet George W. Bush is glad that Iraqi journalists don't wear wooden clogs! I've seen a thing called a "clog maker's knife" before. This one below is shown on a bench but the one's I've seen were hooked to a staple driven into a stump.

Well, they mentioned the use of DUCT TAPE. That makes them part of MY brotherhood!

The pic sized just fine on my computer. Is that all solid iron or is any part of it made from tubular steel?

I love the show too, but I missed that one. I had no idea that those instruments were all HAND MADE! You're right, there's a lot to be learned about general metalcrafting there. Thanks for the link.

Anvilmag.com had a great article on restoring leg vises that talks about rebuilding the female thread inside of the vise. Unfortunately, they appear to have exceeded their bandwidth allowance and you can't get to the page now. Basically the method is to forge a piece of small stock so that it just fits into the thread. Wrap that into the male thread and then screw it off of the end and braze it to the inside of a cylinder to make the female nut. You might also try to forge a strip of stock into the male threads so that the outer edges just touch each other above the thread and weld them into one piece. Arc welding (Yeah, I know. Curse me for even suggesting it! ) would minimize the risk of deforming the threads at welding.

Hey thanks! I didn't even know such a thing existed.

Looks good, Sam. And thanks for giving me an idea for working down some leaf spring I have!

AMEN, Thomas! I have had the privilege of teaching old time skills (smithing, flint knapping, survival skills, muzzleloading...etc.) to hundreds of young folks over the years. Payday is when one of them grabs the torch and runs with it.

When you have a distinct re-bar pattern branded into the palm of your left hand.

The only thing I have done is springs and a frizzen. I didn't weld hi-carb onto the frizzen but made it from mild and case-hardened it. If you can get a copy of THE FOXFIRE BOOKS, I THINK it was Vol 5. It shows the making of a muzzleloader from scratch Foxfire 5, 1979, Anchor. ISBN 0-385-14308-7 . AMAZON.COM has them. If you want to look first, then buy, check your local library.

I wear some similar to Jeddlley's. The important thing is that almost ANY eye protection is better than NO eye protection. Just the other day I put on a nearly new pair of goggles and couldn't see clearly out of one eye. I wiped them down but my vision was still blurred. Upon close examination of the goggles I found tiny piece of grinder dust had melted itself into the lens. Better that than in my eye, non?

Some old f*rt , probably yours truly, once said, "Experience is the sum of all your mistakes." I am very experienced. Some decades ago I tried to burn a wooden handle onto a rat-tail knife tang by clamping the handle in the vise and pushing the blade into it with a pair of tongs. You should always do it the other way 'round. Clamp the blade and, WEARING GLOVES, push the handle onto the tang. I still have the scar on both sides of my right hand. Be glad it wasn't worse, and may you be blessed with speedy recovery. J.D.

That's a right pretty adze. You can be proud of it.

A co-worker/friend of mine just asked me to make him a spear point. The coyotes (4 legged) killed his doggy and the city won't let him shoot at them with a firearm. Frankly, if he can hit a coyote with a spear, he's a far better throw than I. I hit a jack rabbit on the run once when I was about 10 (middle bronze age;)) but that was a freak accident. The last socketed spear I forged was over 20 years ago. I made that one from an old lawnmower blade. It's good steel and I still have it. Every once in awhile I'll take it out and peg it at our palm tree. I made this from a 2" wide strap of 3/32ths +/- thick mild steel. It was some kind of a bracket or something. As you can see, I didn't waste much energy on finishing it. I just rubbed it with an old bit of grindstone and let it go at that. I forgot to put something in the pic for scale. The socket is about 4" long.

Yeah, what he said. I don't think Thor himself could make one that small, that well. I remember reading somewhere that, as Christianity spread into Northern Europe, Thor's hammers were often made with enough of the handle sticking above the head as to look like a cross. A loop was placed at each end of the handle and the wearer could hang it as Thor's hammer or a Christian cross depending on the neighborhood. Practical survival.

It's okay Sam! Now that my health is back, I plan to build a bigger forge and do things right. Currently suffering from low cash flow to buy kaowool and satanite.

Small or not, I'd hate to have one driven through my hand or foot. One old boy they dug up had one driven sideways through his ankle. Those Romans really knew how to hurt a guy!

I'm not an expert but I do know the following about copper based metals (copper, brass, bronze) from experience. Now this is for the plain old stuff, not any of the modern alloys that are used in modern machining. Copper doesn't cast well. Copper and tin (bronze) and copper and zinc or antimony (brass) are better for casting. In the ancient writings they seldom distinguished between brass and bronze. Heating to a red heat will anneal them. It doesn't matter if they are cooled slowly or quickly, they will be softer afterwards. No combination of heating and quenching will harden them. The only way I know of to harden them is by cold hammering them. Be careful, if you cold hammer too much the metal becomes brittle. If it becomes brittle you can soften it again by re-heating. You don't have to have the metal hot to forge it. Cold forge until it gets hard and then heat to anneal and keep working. In the "bronze age", swords, axes, daggers and the like were cast to shape and then the edges were cold hammered to harden them. Rubbing them with a combination of salt and vinegar will make them shiny. You now know all that I know about working copper, bronze, and brass. This is a hoot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ15vUjgqvw&feature=PlayList&p=7F338360A9BEA235&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=43

Beautiful! Did you have to repeatedly anneal the copper to finish the details?

It really brought a smile to my face. Very detailed work! I hope your godson holds onto it until he's grown. It will become more valuable with each passing year. By the way, I looked up Carelia (Karelia?) Finland. Looks like lovely country, but, do you have any dry land there? What a difference from Arizona!

Whatever your customer expects that chisel to do, it looks as though it ought to do it! Nice work! The only other place I've seen wood chisels that wide was in lists of early American tools that were used for stripping the bark from logs and/or working down clapboards. Some had a 4 foot or longer handle and a crossbar so the workman could really lean into the work. Eric Sloane shows some in A Museum of Early American Tools. I was given a paperback copy back in 1974 and it's in pretty rough shape, with a lot of black smudges on the pages.

First of all, congratulations and thanks for volunteering with the BSA. It's a very worthwhile effort. I have 18 years working with the Scouts. Many of my Scouts now have sons of their own in Scouting. Second: Where are you? I'm sure you have one of our fine iforgeiron smiths in your neighborhood that can help. Try the yellow pages (book or online) under "metals" or "steel".