Reverend

15x20 lean-to attached to my shed. More things like walls, ventilation, windows, and a seperate breaker and service would be nice. Considering it's my hobby and not my primary income earner... It also has lower priority. For now... ;-)

Sorry if I missed this, but I'm pretty darn new here. Will there be another run of T-shirts/stickers? I'd be in for two t-shirts. Top Ten list and an FE/modeling clay shirt that were in the gallery a few months ago.

For long range gongs, use the brinell 500 plate. To prevent a similar incident from the guy in the .50BMG video, use an "L"shaped hanger bracket. With the weight of the plate hanging from it, it will slightly angle the plate to deflect the round into the dirt. For silhouette pistol targets, use brinell 400. Make the plate channel at an angle so the top of the target leans towards the shooter. Again, this deflects the round into the ground. For a falling plate rack, use the 400 again and mount the plates on a common shaft. A cam on the shaft can be used to lever all of the plates back up at the same time. Put a wheel, or a lever, on one side of the shaft with a rope or chain going back to the firing line. Remember a counter-weight so the shaft/cams rotate down out of way after resetting the plates.

I picked up a set of Caterpillar steel toes back in '95. Beat all to heck now. Still serviceable. Steel toes, steel eyelets, steel shank in the arch, chem resistant non-slip soles. I've dropped stuff on 'em, been run over with a forklift, used as a tire stop for a truck, etc... Nothing too major though. They are ugly, but they've held up well. Next pair will probably be a set of Redwings though. Some times quality really is worth the extra pricetag.

Now I'll need to go back through the Genealogy and see if Great-great-great-granddad shows up in there anywhere. ;-)

Built my forge in the lean-to off the side of my utility shed. Open on three sides so I get all kinds of things wandering through. Mostly my dog Mocha. Also seen wolf spiders, garter snakes, mice, bats, a doe with a couple of fawns, a fox, and I apparently have a rabbit hutch under my shed. Spooked a bunny more than once heading in there to work. Haven't seen him in the forge yet, but there's a Great Horned owl in the woods out back. We see him sometimes close to dusk when we're out taking a walk.

Utter newbie here... Just fired up my very first forge the other day using Royal Oak. As Jeff pointed out with that other brand, most of the pieces were pretty large. Hard to keep a localized heat over my stock. Found that dumping it into a 10 gal bucket and smashing it up a bit with a 8lbs sledge seems to work pretty good to reduce it to a good size. I tripped over watering down charcoal while trying to bank the fire for a bit. I was worried that it'd break down the lump charcoal, but all it did was wash some of the ash to the bottom of my firepot. Was able to bring it back up to a decent forging heat with just a little extra blast. Lots of sparks from the Royal Oak though. I'll keep my eye out for Cowboy and see if it works any better.