TWISTEDWILLOW

Randy i don’t think anyone mentioned pre heating the mold that’s good to know!

That is awfully Strange, there’s been quite a few new posters commenting on forgotten threads

It’s that a 150cc Briggs and Stratton engine you got there on your mower? i agree maples are beautiful but they really are a pain to clean up, also I don’t like that their roots like to surface! They also drop a lot of sticks!

Sorry Randy my seems seal up good, what I mentioned was i didn’t make the cuts super straight like I wanted Here it is done the handle hole is a little wonky I don’t like it but it works Second thing i ordered bullet hinges for this but now looking at it I don’t think they will work on this

Randy my seems look better than they are i used an angle grinder for all the cuts except a chop saw to cut the pipe

Dunno bout 30 gallon drums but you can find the 50 gallon ones everywhere pretty cheap

That’s good information to know! Thanks for the tip Thanks for the tip Randy!

Here’s what I got so far the inner diameter of the pipe was 2” before cutting I took me a bit to grind the hole back out again to fit the 3/4” sucker rod after cutting both sides now I’m trying to decide if i should cut the plate first and weld it separate or weld first and then cut the plate That’s the plan! That’s interesting I’ll have to try it out i haven’t weighed it but the chunk I’ve got is roughly 20-30 pounds but that’s a guess

Jerry Holy Guacamole! that’s a bit more than i thought itd be! I don’t know the ID of the 2-3/8” schedule 40 pipe I plan on using but the OD is about the side of a sound can I was figuring it’d probably weigh around 3 pounds minus the handle but it might be heavier than i thought I’ll get a measurement in the AM I’m back at the house now and my tools are at peavine

Ah man thats a bummer! I imagine so! That’s gotta be what like five or six pounds? That’s good to know, I have no clue what kind it is that I got, If you go back anytime soon lemme know id be interested at that price if you don’t get it for yourself!

Those are the ones I looked at, they are really nice but they cost hundreds of dollars and I’ll never make enough to justify owning a factory made mold the instructables one looks cool though! i was gonna weld a plate on the pipe and split it all in half then weld a bullet hinge on one side so it folds open and stays where it’s supposed to Lee ill pick up some high tin solder next time I’m in town and give it a shot by the time I get done doing all this I’ll have more in making one than I would if I just ordered a hammer lol but it’s gonna be a fun project and I can just melt it down after it gets deformed and recast it!

I planned on melting it down in the lead kettle on one of my forges outdoors, I really like your idea for a mold! Could you post a picture picture so I can see how you did the handle support? I looked in my metal piles and found a small piece of 1/4” plate and a short piece of 2-3/8” schedule 40 pipe, Thanks for the Tip! How do I go about tinning the handle?

Thanks John! That’s a pretty good idea! I just got done looking at fancy hammer molds and they are Super expensive so I’ll definitely be making my own, Soup can is an interesting idea and sounds pretty easy enough, I was thinking about making a reusable mold but that would take a lot more effort lol i had thought about upsetting the sucker rod end a bit to flare and weld a bead around the Sucker rod to hold the hammer head in place but the Pin idea is nice!

I need a lead hammer to help me persuade some Cast iron parts to move without breaking them, I was about to order one from Amazon but i remembered I have a block of lead setting out in one of my metal piles and I have an antique cast iron lead kettle and a lead ladle, I’ve never melted down anything before but I met folks who melted it for fishing sinkers so I figured it can’t be all that hard? Has anyone here ever casted a lead hammer? How did you go about doing the mold? the commercial ones I’ve looked at online have steel handles so I figured I’d just use a short piece of sucker rod for a handle, would it be best to cast the head onto a handle or cast the head first and drill it out and then attach a handle?

Scott lol No sir I have not forgotten! That picture will be burned into my memory forever! if i recall correctly it is made from some sort of deformed corn up there in Nebraska? I had never heard of it before until you told us about it, I’m sure they make it other states too like Kansas and maybe even here in Oklahoma where they grow corn out west, of here

Scott Lol Im not a fan of hominy but I would still take that over that corn Smut you told us about a couple years ago!!!

Jerry I think he was talking about his pink Floyd pottery project that exploded From the videos I’ve watched today I confirmed that they grow sugar Cane down south and Sorghum up here and more northern states I also watched a cool Vintage Machinery video where they torn down one of these mills and did a deep restoration, they machined all new hardware and insted of going back with the original bronze bearings they poured Babbitt and then they had a few parts sent off to have new cast iron parts for the bearings and bearing shields

Do you just crush it and soak it? I just threw all the stuff I had in a bucket of rain water I had beside the shop soaked it for a a day till it got soft I don’t know about actual sugar cane but there’s a dairy that grows sorghum for cattle feed locally, over at Cane Hill Arkansas they grow it to produce sorghum molasses at their harvest festival every year I’ve been there a bunch of times, and over around Tahlequah The Cherokee Nation puts on a big deal every year where they make Sorghum molasses as well but I don’t think it’s the same species of plant as actual Sugar cane, before he died I think my friend had told me years ago that they used something called Dale Sorghum? I know a lady who is involved with the Cane hill Arkansas harvest festival I’ll shoot her a text and see if she can tell me exactly what they use, cane hill puts on a nice little harvest festival, it’s a small community tucked away in the Boston mountains in our part of the Ozarks and they have a sorghum operation as well as they make lye soap and make hominy from scratch over a fire and their historic society has worked for years to restore the cane hill college, I think it was one of the first colleges west of the Mississippi River or something like that, they normally have several artisans like potters and wood carvers and a blacksmith every year as well, we didn’t make it over this year but we normally go every year, last year one of our Boa Blacksmiths was the one who was setup there’s a small museum there that’s pretty cool and a art gallery that changes it’s exhibitions regularly, the local high school students volunteer and do a lot of work to help with parking and traffic control and run different stations, overall it’s a neat and fun fall stop every year for a place that’s out in the middle of nowhere!

Oh No! that would be terrible! It probably isn’t for some people but it’s hard for me to get much farther an away than an or less, I haven’t been out to OKC in 20 year or more, not to mention that would eat me alive in Gasoline in my old truck! Lol but like I said I’m sure there’s a studio or class much closer I’ll just have to sniff around! On a completely different note, An older friend of mine passed away earlier this year, he was a lifelong collector of all things antique farm related and had quite the extensive collection of really cool and hard to find stuff before he died he called me up to let me know he wanted me to have a few things and wanted me to walk the place with him, I came over but he was in such rough shape that I said there’s nothing so important out there that you need to mess with it so we just visited instead, he told me of a few things he wanted to go to certain people we visited for a bit and then he fell asleep so i slipped on out so not to disturb him, that was the last time I seen him alive… he passed two days later, anyways since he has passed all his estate went to his elderly mother and I’ve been helping her with a lot of things and prices to sell stuff to people and get ready for a big farm auction before my friend passed he told me and his mother some stuff that he wanted me to have, i hadn’t moved anything yet because i felt bad, but his mother asked me to go ahead an grab my stuff, so today i helped her move a trailer load of stuff that she wants to keep to her house and i grabbed something of mine and came home it is a Chattahoochee No 13 Sourghum Mill, no clue how much it weighs but it make my 1000 pound Tommy lift groan and took it a minute to life the mill and me up! it’s covered in moss right now so it’s really hard to read anything on it, its complete and all there but it is frozen up from setting for lord only knows how many decades if anyone has an old catalog or sale bill for these I’d love to see it! Or if someone has an idea when they made this model, im to busy with a bunch of other projects at the moment but eventually Id like to tear it down and do a total restoration on it and get this dude back up and running

That’s Stillwater way out there by OKC about four hours West of me, But yes you gotta watch out for those Stilwell Folks! I’ll call the place in Owasso they are out by Tulsa and May know of some people closer to me, I haven’t looked anywhere yet myself but I’m sure there’s got to be a studio close by in Tahlequah or Siloam Springs both are college towns about a 30 minute drive for me

Yes Max loves Mud! And even though he didn’t know what the wheel was we couldn’t get him off of it! Lol I dunno on the Maze thing if not snow maybe firewood maze?!? What do you have a lot of hanging around in wasilla? Randy I couldn’t wait to try it out so I threw some clay I had from lining a rivet forge a couple years back and I made a total mess of everything lol im gonna have to see if there’s a class in a reasonable driving distance if not then I’ll have to resort to reading online and watching beginner videos!

Jerry I don’t know the first thing about throwing clay but I thought it’d be fun to make some coffee cups or come kitchen stuff ! that sounds to tedious for a maze! maybe y’all could make one out of snow with a snow plow or something after yall get a good snow!

I picked up a pottery wheel yesterday, its a duel manual kick wheel with a motor drive option as well, I don’t know how much it weighs but that flywheel is a booger to move! it’s a Randell, I guess they were really popular in their day but they don’t make them anymore it had been sitting for 20 years in a barn, I got it to the shop and plugged it in and and ran it about five minutes and the motor started smoking like a freight train, and got SUPER hot before I could kill the power, It needs new bearings on both the top and bottom, and obviously a new motor lol On another note we went to a cornfield Maze today and Max had a blast, it’s my first time ever going to one too so i enjoyed it,

Oh man that’s sounds cool! too far away for me here in Oklahoma but I look forward to seeing all the pictures!

I don’t know that I know anymore than anyone else, I just operate by the everything is figuroutable lol Ive done some buffalo, champion an Otto’s before but in all honesty this is my first silent 200 so I’m learning on this model it looks like a well built machine I cant wait to to try it out after I get the last few things off the gears are in excellent condition on this one but the shafts and adjusting bushings are in rusty condition and a little boogered up I think where people run into trouble on hand crank blowers is tuning those adjustments in so everything spins freely it’s got a funky offset bushing with a a stationary shaft in it and those pin holes to move it so I can see if you don’t get that dude in there right it could lock up