olfart

If I had a woolly mammoth I might not need the rake.

I've been on hiatus here for a while, but not altogether inactive with the forge. Some truck leaf springs followed me home from a neighbor's house, so I put them to good use as rake tines for my mini excavator.

Excellent photo! The shutter speed had to be a second or more unless that was some really FAST water.

I used to go to SMU at the end of the spring semester and cart off the 8' 2 X 12 lumber and cinder blocks that were used as dorm bookshelves. The dorm supervisor was thrilled to get rid of them. I've built furniture, goat sheds, barn stalls and lots of other stuff with them. Still have quite a few in the barn loft.

In operation, it looks more like a pneumatic press than a power hammer. I can't help wondering if the bands holding the upper frame to the anvil may allow the upper frame to slide up the anvil if it develops into a 100 bpm machine.

Thanks, CGL. I'm looking forward to meeting you as well. Jonquil 2.0 is on the drawing board. I hope to correct some of 1.0's inadequacies.

I was given one of those tools by The Dallas Times Herald when I got my first newspaper delivery route. It was used to cut the wires holding the bundles of papers together. If yours has loosened up to the point it won't cut wire, a couple of good taps on the hinge rivet might be in order.

This month's project for our club is to make a Jonquil since our meeting this month will be at Old Washington State Park, AR, at the Jonquil Festival. Here's my first attempt. Needless to say it's 30 - 40 times the size of an actual Jonquil, but my arthritic hands don't let me do micro work anymore. The material was from an old satellite dish. The blossom was cold-formed, the cup in the center was heated and driven into a 3/4" nut, then heated again and driven into the Pritchel hole. I had to grind off some of the uneven edge of the cup to make it relatively symmetrical. The pistol was made by making a 3-way split in the end of the 3/16 rod and bending the ends out 90 degrees.

Congrats, Das! Those look like keepers!

I got lucky yesterday at our club's stuff-in-the-hat drawing, and I came away with this linear bearing. The cylindrical race is 2" diameter and 6" long. The whole thing weighs 6.5 lbs.

My wife gave me a hot cut chisel and a new pair of welding gloves, and a friend (not a blacksmith) gave me a 25 lbs. box of very expensive coal that he bought online.

I made out like a bandit at our club Christmas party today. The flatter weighs 9 lbs., and I watched the guy make it at our last meeting. The tongs were made by a farrier, and he threw in a rasp as part of the package. Heckuva deal all the way around!

I made these to give friends this year. Just hung them by the tree for the paint to finish drying. I may add clearcoat and glitter tomorrow.

Thanks for the demo, Aus! Great video for a first effort. Congrats to you and Brasso on a job well-done!

Just been in a deep love affair with aircraft for 78 years.

I'm going with P2V Neptune on the fuselage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-2_Neptune

To prove my screen name is earned, we had M47s and M48s when I served in the 15th Cav. The M60 was the new kid on the block, but we only saw them occasionally.

Magnificent work, as always! That's a beautiful knife!

I've always heard, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." After teaching for 16 years, I added, "Those who can't teach, teach teachers."

We had a couple of kids in the house in a large wire crate, but that was only for a couple of weeks while we got them bottle trained and healthy after mama turned them away. No poop/pee on the floor that way, but it was a pain to change out the newspaper in the crate a couple of times a day.

It'll be a while before our buckling and the two doelings are old enough to breed, but yes, we do plan to milk them. We enjoyed the milk from our Nubians, having plenty to drink and make soap and cheese as well. The older does have had kids, and one was supposed to be in milk when we bought them, but she had mastitis. I doubt her milk will be good for a while after the ToDay treatments. We're still milking her out daily to get the medicine and the rest of the infection out. When the oil disappears from the milk I'll give it a try and see if it's worthwhile. Otherwise it will be about 13 months minimum before we have any more milk.

A friend gave us a Nubian mother and kid many years ago. They used to delight in jumping on the car. I asked the friend how to stop that, and he replied, "Don't park in the goat pen, dummy!" So that's when I built a pen. We're starting on our third herd now after selling our second Nubian herd last September. This time around we're going with Nigerian Dwarf to save a little on the feed bills. This is BillyBob, the new buck (8 weeks old). And Boots and Brandy (3 and 2 years old) Finally, the twin does we picked up yesterday, Snow White and Cinderella (6 weeks old)

I'm planning to twist the next one before cutting, which will produce more of a random pattern in vertical and horizontal components. It would be interesting to see if I could isolate a twist to just the part that will be the arms, leaving the original straight lines in the vertical and twist in the horizontal. Thanks for the ideas!

I'm thinking that forging the arms octagonal and twisting may mess up the hole in the cross. It's pretty easy to get the arms out of alignment and distort the hole even without twisting. Thanks for the comments!

As Doug Marcaida might say, "It will weld!" My first damascus billet is 11 layers, alternating mild steel and bandsaw blade. Had a couple of small delaminations at the outer end of the billet, probably where it was cooled by the anvil before I got to that point with the hammer. After working it down in thickness by about 1/3, I cut a slab off to make this cross. Next project will be to beat the remainder of the billet round so I can twist it without having the corners make cold shuts.