gerald

Story boards are great, even if you are only making "S"-Hooks for elementary kids, a "board" can save you lots of talking over a day's span.

YYF, good job on the scorpion. These things are fun to make at demo's. The kids really like 'em.

Porpus a variation of Porpoise

Talk, Talk, Talk

Bail, Bail Bail

Thanks, Peyton. Lots of good stuff in one place.

Gain, Gain, Gain

Great looking work, pascalou. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Roil, Roil, Roil

Tampon, Tampon, Tampon

Cowl, Cowl, Cowl

TarpanEuropean wild horse extinct since the early 20th century

Pool, Pool, Pool

Tarter as in more tart, not the sauce.

Gill, Gill, Gill

Faster, Faster, Faster

Bick, Bick, Bick

Tester, Tester, Tester

OK, guys, you've forced me to go check my sources. When will I learn that it doesn't pay to "shoot from the lip" on this board. What I should have said was: Capt. Clark records that Charbonneau was discharged and paid off on August 17. This interpreter, husband of Sacajawea, “was offered conveyance to the head of the Illinois if he chose to go. He declined . . . observing that he had no acquaintance or prospects of making a liveing below, and must continue to live in the way he had done.” So, Charbonneau and his “blacksmith shop” remained with the Mandans, thus establishing the earliest known “permanent” smithy on the upper Missouri. Firearms, Traps and Tools of the Mountain Men , Carl P Russell, The University of New Mexico Press, ISBN 0-8263-0465-6 So it wasn't the first shop west of the Missouri as I said.

Lace, Lace, Lace

But I digress, in addition to the lightweight kit mention originally(hammer, chisel, punch, iron) I'd add a hand bellows. Now if I knew that I could always depend on having a pack animal and/or canoe, I'd add a few amenities such as tongs, small anvil, maybe a vise.

The Corps did cache a bunch of smithing tools when they left the Mandans and headed west. They recovered the cache when they came back thru. Not wanting to pack a bunch of heavy/bulky smithing tools back to St. Louis, L&C gave the equipment to Charboneau (French husband of Sacagawea). He supposedly used the equipment to establish the first permanent blacksmith shop west of the Missouri River.

Well, they've already been out looking for latrines. One of the most common meds they took with them was Mercury pills. These were used for everything except, perhaps, for broken bones. A side effect of these pills is diharea (sp). Merury is a very persistent element and the researcher thought that the latrine spots with super high mercury content must have surely belong to the "Corps of Discovery". Personally, I'd rather look for cached tools. :)

I would expect that as a bare minimum, I'd have to take a hammer, chisel, and punch If I were carrying my "kit". I'd also need to take some iron from which to forge items from. A handy rock would be my anvil, tongs made from two crossed sticks. Lewis and Clark carried literally TONS of stuff with them, much of which was cached when the got to the Mandan country. The three smiths that went with L&C had the luxury (?) of keeping/cacheing burned out iron stoves and other items from wich they salvaged iron to make trade items, repair items, etc. The fact that they had iron stoves along with them is evidence that they didn't always travel light.

M brothers, please don't take this the wrong way, but until you have a few hundred "S" hooks under your forging belt, you would probably be better off (from a learning standpoint) staying away from trying to forge a hammer. Use the time to try to perfect your hammer control and technique on less exacting items. Check out the Blue Print section for ideas.