arkie

This is not exactly the same as fitting a steel band on a stump, but shows the application of heat shrinking steel tires on wagon wheels and hubs. Check out "Engels Coach Shop" on YT. He does some fantastic fitting of steel bands on wheels and hubs. You might pick up some tips there. I love to watch him work with the wagons and coaches, but then I digress...sorry.

Thomas, you are going to love the LED shop lights. Aside from low electricity usage, they come on to full brightness in cold weather unlike the fluorescents......but then again, cold weather is not one of your concerns where you are, is it? LOL

Cast iron does need a high nickel electrode for welding, but a 7018 electrode is NOT a nickel electrode. You might be thinking of the Stoodys, etc. The 7018 contains C, Mn, S, P and S plus the steel in the rod proper but no nickel (per Lincoln Electric stats).

Joey van der Steeg (Technicus Joe member here) posted a new video...seems that he is not "gone". He was demo'ing forging a coat hook using a small 45# anvil with a face just over 2 1/2" wide, as I recall. His point being that an aspiring smith does not need the biggest anvil he/she can find. Beautiful anvil...would be nice to have one like that in the shop.

I always wear my IR glasses when forging; I have two shades. One is not real strong and sort of an amber tint. The only problem I have with the tint on glasses is that they mess with telling the colors on tempering. First time I noticed it was when I was tempering a chisel to straw or thereabouts, and I went past it all the way to purple or blue! I only noticed the darker shade on the steel and when I dropped the glasses I noticed the real color. Had to start over!

X2 on Thomas' comments. In addition to not looking at hot metal, more importantly many folks like to stare at the fire...sort of mezmerizing. Not good. Get some IR glasses, not welding glasses (they are for UV). There are many posts here on IFI regarding infrared glasses and also IR causing cataracts...you have only one pair of eyes.

At one of my former residences, we lived well out in the county which was also a county including a large metro area. We were some 20 miles from that metro and the nearest house to us was about 5 miles away. There was also a shooting range and gun shop about that same distance away, nestled in the forest. We could not hear a shot fired anytime. Fast forward some 20+ years and that whole part of the county was solid subdivisions of homes, many of which completely surrounded the shooting range. Every now and again, you would read about a lawsuit being filed against the owner of the shooting range for a myriad of "offenses". Not one was successful. On the flip side, many home builders were also sued for not disclosing to prospective buyers of the proximity of the shooting range! Now, some 57 years later, the range is still open.

X2 on the air ambulance programs. In our rural area here in AR, it's called "AirEvac" by AirMedCare. About the same price as I recall. Had it for some 17 yrs. Everyone I know out here carries it...worth the cost by a LONG shot. $65/yr. for the wife and I. Some air ambulance rides can be as much as $25,000.

When we lived in TX, one of my favorite honeys was mesquite honey. Unique and usually found in the Hill Country and W. TX. We could only get it for about 2-3 weeks in the spring because it sold out so fast from the beekeepers who processed it. Friends would buy up several quarts and save them for us when we couldn't get to the Hill Country,.

Excellent video! Thanks for posting.

Or...."fossilized geologist".

Smiths are always fixing their mistakes...just heat the middle, clamp it in the vise and twist one end 180*....now you have an S-hook!

Frosty and SHC, I "could" change it to something more appropriate, but I would be immediately banned!

Les, Thomas needs to buy one of those "day of the week" clocks. It has the days of the week on the face instead of numbers. It has been the best thing I have bought since retiring....

I hope the mods don't censor this... When I was somewhere around 4 or 5 yrs. old, my dad had a cow lot out behind the house. He had a Jersey milk cow and her fairly large calf. I had watched him milk the mother cow on many occasions, so I decided it was time for me to learn to milk as well. I got my small toy bucket and milk stool, tied the calf to the fence and commenced to start milking. The calf immediately kicked the living _____ out of me and I went rolling across the lot. I yelled at the calf and my dad responded quietly, "Son, you can't milk that calf; it's a bull calf...." OH! Screen name...self explanatory.

Thomas, you have worked your whole life for this moment....relish and enjoy it!! One of the best things is that you aren't cooped up in an office and commuting to work each day. An interesting sidelight to retirement...our blacksmith organization is made up of a large percentage, I'd say, of the retired segment of society. It's hard to get the younger members to volunteer for club duties, step up and assume officer and board positions and regularly attend meetings. We have to stop and think that they are still working and have responsibilities of work and family activities in their "spare" time.

Once the wife and I were travelling in the TX hill country. Got up in the morning and looked out the hotel window...3"-4" of snow on the roads and lots of ice. Left the hotel without stopping for breakfast since we heard that the bad weather had not affected the roads a few miles south. We were driving slowly, about 20-30 MPH, as were all the other folks on the 4 lane divided highway. When we came to a bridge about 50 yards long, we slowed down considerably more for icing on the bridge. A redneck in a PU had been tailgating us, impatient to pass. You guessed it...when we slowed down for the iced over bridge he saw his chance to take off! He gunned it, went around us and immediately went into an uncontrolled side to side spin, bouncing off the concrete bumpers. As he finished his wild race across the bridge, he went into a slide off the right side, down a steep embankment, and about 100 yds. later crashed head on into a big tree....karma. We honked and waved as we went by.

Chief, welders I have spoken with regarding use of hardfacing rods first put down a "buttering" layer of 7018 (various thicknesses) followed by a cap of hardfacing rods. Has something to do with the bonding sequence...kind like chrome is laid down over a butter layer of nickel or other bonding layer.

I use vermiculite...works fine for me.

That bandsaw is probably not much different than the porta-bands like DeWalt, Milwaukee, HF, etc. Should work for smaller stuff like plate, 1/4" or 3/8" stock, round stuff, sheet metal...give it a chance.

Twisted, I've seen videos where they hand-spin or twist the chuck on a corded drill, but wondered if that really worked. If you chuck a corded with a cordless like you describe, does it make any difference which way the cordless spins?

Yes, the GPS will get you lost faster, and further. Our blacksmith organization president was coming from Little Rock to a chapter meeting in far NW Arkansas. He neglected to tell his GPS receiver to "avoid gravel/dirt roads". He was about an hour late arriving and when he did, he was some kind of frazzled. Seems the GPS took him off the interstate and through a maze of back country dirt roads. He would pass an old house with a dude sitting in a rocker on the porch, giving him an evil stare as he passed by, and thought he was hearing "Dueling Banjos"!!

Randy, good to point that out to folks. I do the same, particularly in the fall so that if there is a problem, there is time to fix it before one REALLY needs it. I am not a generator expert by any means, but folks who are recommend "flashing" the generator often. Apparently, there is a residual magnetic field in it that will degrade over an extended time. When periodically running the generator, they recommend plugging in a load such as an electric heater or other high wattage appliance to help "refresh" the magnetic field. Each time I run mine, I plug in a heater to do just that. Anyone have any other info on flashing generators? It's good to have Steve Sells, being a master electrician, on line to help keep folks straight and safe with electricity.

I think that would be a bowline road, not a double knot, or double not.....oh, well, move on, nothing to see here

Anvil, I'm not familiar with the Cedar Mesa area, but there is a place in the Moab area, Shafer Trail, that is unbelievable! There is a YT'er who goes by the handle of "trail mater". He does recoveries in the Moab area and one of his videos was of a motorcycle recovery on Shafer Trail. He "films" going up and then down the road cut into the side of the mesa. The video is worth the time to watch, the scenery is phenomenal and in places it made my stomach queasy a little. On some of the turns, one can see forever and the road edge is straight down for thousands of feet. I highly recommend the video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig7i_NBWwFY