TWISTEDWILLOW

Howdy from eastern Oklahoma and welcome to the forum!

I didn’t think about that but it makes sense, with hardwood bein heavier, Cause I think a Rick of wood is roughly only around a third of a cord, well I’m glad y’all got stamps readily available in Alaska! I was starting to wonder if you had to take bear pelts to a tradin post somewhere to purchase stamps an then wait for a sled dog team to import your stamps! Of course that’s about as fast as the USPS has been delivering letters I’ve mailed to people so far lol

I think the last forge I lined I used two coffee cans of wood ash out of the stove three crushed an pulverized fire bricks, and 20-25 pounds of red dirt clay outta the driveway,

Thats gonna be a bit, my trailers are loaded down an I’m back up in the shop, but I’ll post some as soon as I have it here, Thomas, I dunno know for sure but I’m guessing it’s maybe around 3-1/2’ thats an interesting idea though! Two for one! I like it lol

Thanks, I made an account over there and started browsing through, haven’t found anything like I’m wanting to do yet, but I’m still looking through, Charles, Ive been using various wood stoves that were built for a house over the years an ain’t none of them really quite been enough to heat the shop, it’s not a big building just 25x30 but it’s old drafty an un insulated, concrete building with a tin roof also I get tired of factory built stoves with their tiny doors, I wanna be able to burn any sized an shape wood without monkeying around with a tiny door, mostly for those hard to split crotch pieces and if I’m just wanting to be lazy and throw some big pieces in without cutting them down lol also I’m not gonna use the whole 500 gallon propane tank for a stove probably a little Less then half, I thought about a charcoal retort for part of it too! I dunno, it was one of those deals that were to good to pass up an I bought that big tank without really thinking everything through, I guess I could use it for a big air volume tank for my steam whistle! Lol but I really just thought it’d make a nice big wood stove!

A month or two ago I bought a 500 gallon propane tank from a guy up the road, No pictures yet…I still need to go pick it up Lol anyways I bought it with the intentions of turning it into a wood stove for the shop, Ive done an image search but I’ve only found a few here an there, I guess most people turn them into smokers instead, (which ain’t a bad idea!) lol I’m lookin for different ideas either vertical or horizontal, I was wondering if any of y’all have ever built a shop stove outta a 500 gallon propane tank? i figured if I don’t use the giant bowl ends for the stove part, they could be giant flower pots, fire pits, quench tub, cat food bowls ect…

Yalls loss my gain! Ain’t Y’all got stamps in the Klondike? That’s a lot of firewood! I burn around 15-20 ricks of oak an hickory here every year, usually start a fire on a cool evening in the middle of October and then stop burning in March when the typhoon season starts an I have to take a boat to get to the wood pile, Scott, Ash bought these stonewear pots and pans last year that nothing sticks to! You can cook whatever you want in those things an just wipe em off with a paper towel an then quick wash em in some soapy water!

Yeah when I was a kid I learned the hard way not to throw chert an flint rock into a big brush fire! They Al an an will explode, just lining rocks around a campfire isn’t dangerous because the temp never gets that hot that fast so the stones have time to release the moisture, lots of old an new forges are masonry, made from brick or stone but you notice the firepot itself is either steel, cast iron or as mentioned it’s lined with something to keep the heat away from the stones or bricks,

That gives new meaning to setting in the spray zone!

Oh come on Jerry don’t everyone use white phosphorus to season their skillets?

Yes concrete will send pieces of hot shrapnel flying when I gets hot the moisture expands an can’t escape fast enough, that’s why even cinder block building collapse and crumble during a fire, but but but!!! Rocks aren’t much safer when it comes to hot chips of shrapnel flying off, I’ve seen solid stone split, crack and explode in a fire an shoot hot pieces of sharp jagged pieces flying, I agree with Thomas an Jerry! stick with steel, cast iron or clay firepots, the rest of the forge can be built out of whatever materials you want but anything in the direct vicinity of the firepot needs dirt or clay lined, unless the whole forge is steel then you don’t really have much to worry about,

Ever seen the film Christine?

I think the coast guard helps out occasionally overseas too! when I was in the navy on one of my deployments I spent some time around ABOT Iraq an I saw a US coast guard cutter patrolling around it,

Thomas, I believe that! Scrap yards I’ve seen are notoriously good at making unwanted materials disappear like gas, oil, antifreeze, an air conditioner fluids, to evade unwanted attention from the epa, I can’t imagine what curious ways they would have to dispose of a thief!

Lol Charles, a pancake forge is a forge idea I came up with several years ago, i built several before I joined the forum an then yall helped me refine my design over building several more! essentially it’s a small portable rivet forge built from the body of a pancake compressor tank, here’s one done an another one started, sizes vary but usually around 15” pan with sucker rod legs, they are handy for traveling cause you can just throw em in a truck or car an they don’t take up much space, they are also pretty durable!

If ya want something cheap, light, an portable, I’d say build a pancake forge! I’ve built several for myself and others, you can forge both small an large stock, ive even forge welded in one I’ve built, You can make one for free if ya are good at scrappin, all ya need is a angle grinder, a drill Ana welder for tools!

That’s easy! Forget the vacuum if ya wanna clean up the yard! just let all the moose pies dry out in the yard then cut em up into little chunks, and put em in little jars an sell em to tourists as Genuine, authentic, all natural, organic, non gmo, 100% Alaskan, domestic, Native moose pie souvenirs! you could sell em for $10 bucks a jar! don’t believe me? There was a dude who sold a million “pet” rocks in 1975 for four bucks a piece an he became a millionaire! after taxes now days you outta make at least $100 bucks! And you’d have a clean yard!

your feet smell like the south end of a north bound moose! Bahahaha! okay I don’t know if that’s really honest or not but it’s the only mean I could think of quick lol

Sweet score! The mounting bracket looks exactly like the ones I’ve seen on other PW vises, triangle with the Circle on the point, an 4 bolt holes,

Stealing bells from a church! Good grief… He lucky a random thunderstorm didn’t ol just happen to pop up an stike him down with a lightning bolt!

That’s funny Scott, Ive had a similar experience at the bank were they took my coffee cans an then called me to come get them later lol On a different note I got another coin machine story “the quarter caper” long story short is, My old boss used to have a coin op laundromat and one night some crackhead hid out in the laundromat in a maintenance tunnel behind the dryers then he broke in the barbershop then broke into the hardware store an stole a couple buckets of quarters outta my bosses office, if I recall it was something like $800 bucks worth… He thought he was pretty slick and drove a whole 20 miles away to Siloam springs to the Walmart up there to use the coinstar machine… apart form being charged a percentage of the coins the guy didn’t have enough sense to think that normally people don’t just happen to have $800 bucks worth quarters hanging around without them bein mixed in with other change, so of course it threw up some red flags, and there was already a police report out looking for someone with a bunch of quarters, the cameras got him nice an clear, an the cops had within a couple days, he went to jail, the get away driver (the guys mother) got away with helping him for some reason, an dodged jail time, an my boss never got his money back cause they had it blown on drugs before they caught them,

Ahh they got counter machines now days you just dump the Bucket into!

Uh oh! He better learn quickly! Cause I was gonna strap your giant fans to an old trailer for you to take home on your way back! Good grief Thomas! I’d think after all these years you’d probably be one of the most qualified people in the US to evaluate an ol mandrel, swage block or post vise,

Yes tens of thousands of pennies! Bahahaha! imagine the look on the bank tellers face when I back up the truck with bucket loads of Pennie’s an say I wanna make a deposit!

Thomas, y’all could always stop by the shop on your up and grab a trailer to haul more stuff! Lol all us here close by in OK,AR,MO could chip in for fuel and you can just drop the trailer off on your way back! Then everyone can come pick up their stuff when they get a chance to, we could call it the blacksmith express! Lol Charles, if ya need a post vise just shoot me a pm with what your price range is, I find them all the time around here, don’t fret to much about the heat! We only got two more month of summer and then it’ll drop from 106 an 90 percent humidity to 30 with nonstop wind and 90 percent humidity in a 24 hr span sometime in October! Fall? What’s that? Lol