TWISTEDWILLOW

It’s coming for sure but i didn’t think it will be tomorrow I repair equipment here for federal, state, county, and city departments as well as Cherokee nation, fire departments, schools, street depts, utilities, ect… and they are all still buying new gas an diesel fuel powered machines,in the tens of thousands, Charles, my home owner customers with electric are few an far between for now but I am starting to see it with them occasionally, I’m sure they will be the first groups to change over I have yet to see any commercial company bothering with electric machines yet, all the commercial landscape companies, logging companies, farmers, ranchers, welders, ect.. are still buying engine powered machinery I’m not blind though I know that technology is just right around the corner… with the amount of new high dollar machinery im seeing purchased now I think I’ll still be pretty steady for 20 years at the most an 15 at the least, after that I’m thinking there will be a steep an fast slow down, George, it’s fun you mentioned small appliance repair, I haven’t seen a tv repair shop in over 20 years, The problem A lot of small appliances isn’t that I can’t tear them down but there’s no parts supply chain, you call the manufacture an they tell you they don’t carry parts, so I’ve had to do extensive online sleuthing to locate repair parts for stuff, the second problem with small appliances is in a lot of cases I can fix it but it would cost you more to have me repair it then you could just go buy a new one, An even larger home appliance repair has slowed down, I used to repair washers an dryers too, but it became more hassle then the money was worth so I pulled out, I was just talking the other day with an appliance repair guy I know whos worked for a big furniture an appliance store for 20 years and he told me outside of warranty work the calls are getting fewer an farther between, im running the last small engine repair shop in the county the rest of them have all retired, folded up, burned down or passed away, ect… so I stay pretty busy because I’ll take on more then the big shops will, everyone outside the county has turned into big dealerships; there’s not many more mom an pop shops left, essentially the big shops only repair what they sale, or are required to repair by warranty, I dunno what I’ll do yet when the market shifts electric maybe I’ll set on the side of the road and sale authentic creek made trinkets from my blacksmith shop lol From 100% recycled, sustainably sourced, none gmo, organic, gluten free junk metal lol

The more cheap electric junk that gets sold the more I’m bein pestered by customers with electric weed eaters, blowers, chainsaws, pole saws ect… then there’s the folks with the electric mowers, four wheelers, golf carts and golf cart chargers ect.. then I’ve also had people bring stuff that’s not even related to off road machines!!!! like electric ice cream makers, electric meat grinders, and commercial restaurant deli meat slicers!!! my is mid county small engine repair…. not Tesla…. I have no training no diagnosis equipment no specialty tools for that type of work but i figure out an fix what electric stuff I that I can for folks but I gotta wonder what posses people to bring stuff like that to a small engine shop in the first place? i wonder if this is how blacksmiths felt when steam powered machinery first appeared in factory’s and started replacing their handmade work and their jobs… then the electric machines started replacing the steam guys jobs a hundred years ago… then robots started replacing the factory workers that ran the electric machines 40 years ago… I wonder how long I’ve got left before my country small engine shop is like that country blacksmith shop was all those years ago?

Just had a customer show up to drop off a weed eater for repair at my… “SMALL ENGINE REPAIR SHOP” the weed eater is electric battery powered…

My Rural trash service isn’t bad they haul the trash weekly from both the repair shop an the house for $20 a month, so I just pay them a year in advance, if It was just me an ash I’d probably haul it myself but now if waited 3 weeks to haul trash id have to buy a dump truck lol Having a toddler and a repair shop significantly increases the trash flow around here!

That looks purty slick!

Randy started it! Lol sorry BillyBones, I know my big Trenton post vise is dated 1902, it looks to be barely used and in original condition, and it has the nut and bolt on the pivot, but it also has all the fancy looking bevels on the plates and body, The Peter wrights I’ve seen had bevels on the bodies, but I never paid attention to the pivot pins, fisher just went off on their own design lol all The Arthur O Learys, Columbians, keen cutters, iron city’s and Indian chiefs I’ve had or seen aren’t dated but they didn’t put the bevels on the body’s, and they all used nuts an bolts on the pivots, I know Columbian made various vises all the way up till the 1980s? Till they sold out to Wilton, but I’m not sure when they stopped making post vises I’m sure that probably stopped in the 60s or 70s when smithing tool sales disappeared, so I’m guessing that any post vise that has the wedged pivot pen an decorative bevels has got to be mid to late 1800s, but I don’t know what would identify a post vise made in the 1700s to early 1800S

And so it begins! Muahahahaha!

Lol no he didn’t stick around very long, oh wow I haven’t seen a monarch around here in ages, they said that monarchs just went on the endangered list last month

Wow $15 bucks a month? My cheapest monthly bill is for rural trash service an even it’s $20 our fiber optic costs here in Oklahoma are $59 a month for unlimited internet, tv an phone service is more, but we have cell phones and we use the Wi-Fi to steam stuff on the tube so it don’t make sense to pay for tv also,

A new visitor to the smithy today, I’ve noticed the hotter an dryer it gets that quite a few critters are coming by to visit the slack tub

That’s an interesting idea, I might try that with one of the other sides just for fun

That’s odd, they just hung a box on the side of my house and drilled a hole the the wall and ran conduit through, it’s hardly noticeable, I wouldn’t be keen on em drilling through my metal roof either

That’s pretty slick lookin John! I dug around an found a big ball bearing my dad gave me decades ago that came outta a blown up tank, The sucker rod looked like it might be to big for a handle an might get in the way if I’m trying to work the inside of a sleigh bell, so I dug around the scrap pile and found a small old four way lug wrench, I think I’m gonna cut a handle off of it an weld it to the ball bearing and try that out before ordering ball bearings online cause they were pretty steep

Thomas Do they Ofer fiber optic in your area? they started installing it in our area a couple years ago an we finally got it installed and the house last year, it’s super fast Wi-Fi, I thinks it’s 5g an it’s cheaper then the cell phone bill i use my phone for internet out at the shop so I gotta watch the phone data or I go over sometimes

I’ve never tried one of those air jacks before I’ve got overhead hoist inside an outside the shop an then some floor jacks, I’ve wondered if those air jacks would be worth picking up sometime, I met up with Ed an Brian again yesterday an did some swapping, got a pair of box jaw tongs an a nail header from Ed,

That’s why I didn’t tell the joke

Anvil, Those look really handy! Thanks for sharing pictures!

Nope… the mounting bracket…

I had a joke to follow that one Randy, but no matter how I’d word it I’d get a call from Glenn! Lol

Fastenal an a pallet could work wonders!

Thanks BillyBones! I’ll check those out too! Sounds like they might come in handy for some smaller projects!

That was my idea for the bottom tooling on the sleigh bells I wanna make, is use a pipe, I have a beat up ol swage block but I don’t have a lot of different hole sizes on it so I figured pipe would be cheap an easy

I wonder vises like that we’re built for lighter work like tin smiths or possibly leather working,

Ive made some rolled roses but I haven’t played with the stacked ones yet an I thought about ordering some blanks to try em out, I watched some videos on making them an I saw him using a ball end punch to do some shaping, then I started in on watching a jingle bell video and he was using different sizes of ball end punches for that too, so i figured I’d make a set of em in different sizes, I found some ball bearings in the different sizes I wanted online, 2” ,1-1/2” , and 1-1/4” I saw some that were carbon steel, there was also some chrome ones and stainless ones, I figure chrome isn’t a good idea for safety reasons so that’s out, So that leaves stainless an carbon, i was thinking of ordering the carbon ones and planned to weld a piece of 3/4” sucker rod to them for a handle Is there any reason why this wouldn’t work or it’s a bad idea? also I saw were someone was using the round end of a carriage bolt to do the same thing but I can’t imagine that wolf last very long,

The Spring is broken an the handle is bent, both are fixable! the screw an screw box don’t look original but that don’t matter if it works an they are in good shape! i have an oleary vise same size I think I gave around $50 usd for here in eastern Oklahoma less than a year ago,