Nobody Special

Hey, I was way more than seven years old when I wrote that.

Good afternoon, I always save broken pieces of handles whenever possible, and even will pay a buck or so at yard sales. You get a lot of hickory that way. Shovels and axe handles become hammers, broken hammer handles become knife scales, and so on.... I'm not crazy about kiln dried wood, it seems more brittle. Of course that may be because a lot of wood these days isn't "old growth" and doesn't have the same density. Pecan, mentioned above can be tough as nails. Try splitting it green and you'll see what I mean. It laughs at the maul, and I've seen it break a hydraulic splitter. I

Saw it on Facebook this afternoon, and rang the anvil for him. He helped me a lot when I was getting started.

I've used solutions to plate before, I ran across this when I tossed some harmonicas in a musical instrument sonic cleaning tank, and all the steel bits came out bright pink. I've also got looks similar to the photos above by forging copper plated grounding rods at low temps. Too much heating or beating and you can take the plating off. Not too much, and it just kind of blends them together with a lot of copper on the outer surface and looks cool. I suppose you could forge it close to shape, clean it, do a full plating first with a solution, and then beat the metal enough to ta

Heh heh...haven't played in a while, but still love how many people think of a shield as a strictly defensive weapon. Even if you only bounce one off someone's toes, those things hurt.

Good afternoon, I don't see the characteristic striations, or grain normally associated with wrought iron, especially after long exposure to salt water, although I may not be getting good enough resolution on my screen. And it's not definitive, sufficiently refined wrought iron can be hard to find the grain on. The classic test is to cut a piece most of the way through, bend it over, and then see if the end shows splitting or a grain coming apart a bit. If you like the chain, you may not want to do this, as it's a bit hard on the link in question. If you decide to try this

Jumping it to get the battery going with a stuck key can sometimes set off the anti-theft module in the computer. Then you have to practically recite the Bhagavad Gita backwards while dancing the Tutti Frutti, and balancing a grapefruit on your head before it will turn on. Seriously though, it can be a sequence of actions done over the course of say an hour.

Yardbird Forge. My ex used to keep and sell ungodly numbers of chickens, and occasionally one would get out and do unspeakable things to my anvil. I keep a few now, partly to keep the current wife happy, partly for the eggs, and partly because watching bald eagles bounce off of box wire trying to eat my birds is funny. It doesn't hurt them, but it annoys the heck out of 'em. One actually bent the wire last week trying an assault from above.

Or you could use the ashes to make soap. And that's no lye.

Gadget, have you tried blown air over charcoal? Since the first time I tried it 10 years or so ago, I haven't looked back. I had expected it to take similar times to my propane torch. Instead I melted the steel crucible (which I don't recommend for a number of reasons, this being one of them) and had about five or six lbs of molten aluminum running out of the drain hole less than three minutes after putting the crucible in. Worked a treat for copper and bronze once I slowed things down and used proper crucibles.

I was reading a Roman casting technique just today involving urine. I'll have to look it up and bring it back here. They also had a neat technique I like for separating lead ores from silver, by melting the whole, then deliberately introducing impurities and skimming off the lead oxides. Lots of fun.

Another solution is to counterweight a board on a fulcrum with something that can be removed in parts. When it balances, remove the counterweight a bit at a time, then add up the bits. An alternate to my alternate? Use a BIG board and the counterweight is a water container, or something else you know the weight of. If you measure as you add, you know how much weight you've added. Water is a bit light for big weights, at "a pint a lb", (well, 1.04 lbs), a 400 lb anvil would require 50ish gallons of water to even out. What an enviable problem to have. It's like havi

Funny looking thing, isn't it? Definitely looks like a "real" anvil, but maybe one that was heavily modified. Honestly, looks like somebody took a Trenton, chopped the bottom inch or so off, welded a couple of feet on either side at the bottom, and drilled the hardy out, stopping only to flap disc the heck out of the horn. I'd take it, but I'm a sucker for abused and mangled anvils.

Also the wild emotional swings, loss of impulse control, easy distraction, aphasia in areas that use to be easy...it's the gift that keeps on giving. My wife is a TBI survivor (kicked in the head by a horse), and goes into a blind rage about five times a week or so. Can be for good reasons or lousy ones, may last 5 minutes or 50 until the circuit breaker resets, thinks it's perfectly logical until it's over, then sometimes doesn't even know remember it. I can't count all the times she threatened divorce, and she actually got to the courthouse and filed papers twice before she came back to h

I thought about playing with bone meal as a flux or to play with old style case hardening...and then I remembered what it smelled like whenever I heated up bone or antler for burn ins, to drill pin holes, or to cut it down for handles. Smelled like burnt hair run through a full litter box in a crowded chicken coop in August.