JHCC

Made a rivet header: and used it to finish the twist tongs I started yesterday: which are on the short side, but hold 1/2" round beautifully. (Also scrubbed 50-year-old wallpaper paste off the walls in the hallway in preparation for painting, but that was in the house, not in the shop.)

Cream soda?

Certainly would be easier to build: just drill holes all the way through, and hammer in spikes a couple of inches longer than the ball's diameter.

Of course, a much simpler option (and I think this may be what Frosty is suggesting) is looping the strings between two hooks: one fixed (e.g., in a vise) and the other rotating (I'd chuck it in a hand brace, rather than a power drill). This way, you could get the entire billet twisted up in one operation, like this: If you take a 35" string and fold it in three, that will give you an untwisted length of just under a foot. If you take 114 of them, that will give you about the same thickness as the 343 of my previous suggestion, and should (I imagine) still give you a decent length after twisting. You might need to put a temporary wrap around the outside of the bundle before twisting, to make sure all the loose ends get captured in the twist.

You can make your own wool felt if you have something made of wool (an old sweater or sock) run through a hot wash-and dry a few times. You can get something from Goodwill for a couple of bucks. If you know a knitter who has some extra wool, you can ball it up, tie it tightly in a stocking, and do the same felting in the laundry as described.

Have the customer sign a release acknowledging that this is for decoration only, and that you are not responsible for any injury or property damage that may result from any other use.

I like the idea of twisting up a cable from the strings, and you could probably make a simple hand-cranked jig to do the twisting. If you anneal the wires first (and as needed during the process), their prior hardness won't be an issue, and you'll be burning off any polymer coating that may be on the strings. If I were doing this (and had the requisite skill, which I probably don't), I'd twist up seven strings into a thin cable, repeat six times, and then twist those seven cables into a thicker cable. Repeated six times and with the resulting cables twisted into a single cable, that should give you a cable about 1-1/2" thick, assuming you started with 0.059" strings*. Proceed as for regular cable Damascus. Decarb could be an issue, but if spark and quench testing doesn't show hardenability, you can always use it for the outside layers of a san mai blade. *Three hundred and forty-three of them, to be precise.

True, but more likely than rebar to be of consistent quality throughout.

Knives are ambitious as a first project. Get used to moving steel first: there are lots of threads on how to get started. REBAR IS NOT GOOD MATERIAL FOR TONGS. REBAR IS NOT GOOD MATERIAL FOR TONGS. REBAR IS NOT GOOD MATERIAL FOR TONGS. REBAR IS NOT GOOD MATERIAL FOR TONGS. REBAR IS NOT GOOD MATERIAL FOR TONGS. REBAR IS NOT GOOD MATERIAL FOR TONGS. Tongs are also not good newbie projects. If you really want to save some money and make something yourself, check out the twist tong blanks from Ken's Custom Iron (findable with any decent search engine). All that said, Welcome aboard!

Unless it's Patsy Cline's "Eye Fall To Pieces".

By the way, @littleblacksmith, that hammer-eye punch in my photo? No striker. Just me and The Beast. I'm just sayin'....

This, absolutely. "I said to Hank Williams, 'How lonely does it get?' Hank Williams hasn't answered yet, But I hear him coughing all night long, Oh, one hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song."

A Jeep-themed bottle opener for my Jeep-obsessed mechanic who keeps me in coil springs and torsion bars:

Rather productive afternoon. Brazeal-style hammer-eye punch with rodded handle and a bunch of nails (most of them one-heat): A Jeep-themed bottle opener for my Jeep-obsessed mechanic who keeps me in coil springs and torsion bars: The blanks for a pair of twist tongs (a bit short, but that's what I could draw out of the bit of scrap I'd used): And listened to a lot of Leonard Cohen.

Hmm...that's true that hot glue has those properties, but I think it's more a matter of it *continuing* to be used on that account rather than having been *chosen* on that account. After all, it was the primary adhesive for most woodworking for centuries before it was used for violins.

When I first built my own JABOD, I also built a homemade gate valve out of pallet wood. There's a pic-heavy thread documenting its construction; check it out.

True, but if it is not played, it loses value: not only because it is not being used for its true purpose, but because violins actually deteriorate if they are not played.

Permanently submerge it in a bath of liquid nitrogen. Oh, did you want a practical solution? Well, you'll have to tell us how big a piece, what it's to be used for, what kind of stress and wear it will be subjected to, and so on.

According to NASA's website, the answer is YES (pace @Glenn) but with a minimum of shade 14.

Any painting or sculpture is art for the sake of art; any Stradivarius (however beautiful) is a tool to create art.

Very impressive.

I would love to date your Hay Budden, but it's not my type and my wife might object.

That looks a LOT better. Nicely done.

Good relations with the neighbors are very important, so anything you can do to minimize noise, fumes, etc is to the good.

Magnifique!