Shabumi

Thanks, it sure will help. Though ill have to get creative on how to put it back together. There were only 2 ribs that didn't collapse out of 14, but I may be able to piece together 1 or 2 more from the others. With those, hopefully I can make a 30' round house by crossing the ribs and reinforcing with wood beams. I think I would get more space than if I put them in line like they were before (5' between ribs).

I took a glance at what would be allowed by code, and apparently with the pipe anchors this isn't considered a permanent structure, so there is ALOT of leeway on what they will allow before they start to look at it, a 30x60 greenhouse instead of "under 100ft² floor space" for example. A slab would make it permanent, so I'll have to have a dirt or gravel floor. I still need to see what siding I can use, fingers crossed that roofing tin will be allowed, we have a whole bunch of it laying around. I may have to spring for a skin if not.

Oops, I missed that part. As I said, ...a grain of salt

Take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I think to be a super sucker your opening needs to have a smaller area than the area of the diameter of your chimney, so if your using a 12" chimney, you would need less than a 113in² opening towards your forge. A 10"x10" opening would be more "sucky" than the 12.5"x12.5" opening you have.

The temperature, height and diameter of your chimney determines how much air is moved out of the chimney. If the same amount of air leaving the top of your chimney enters though a smaller opening at the base, then the velocity is greater to compensate for the lack of area to pull from.

8 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Set the pressure, tune with the choke for the burn wanted.

Is there a reference here on IFI on how to tune for the burn wanted? Or, how do you know you have the burn you want?

We have one who looks just like Sam. We keep her shaggy and just strip her coat when it gets too rough. We have another that we joke has some shi-zu in her(we've had her lineage for 24 generations), we bred her mother, a wire hair whos great grandmother was long haired, with an outside male who was a smooth but carried the long gene, so she got both long and wire hair genes. She ended up with something closer to hair than fur. She has to get clipped or her hair grows in front of her eyes and she looks like a black and tan Sam the sheep dog. She also rolls onto her back and scoots upside down along the floor to get attention. Goofiest dachshund I've ever seen.

Its hard to tell from the picture, is Mees a red dapple or is he just a shaded red?

I had mentioned this earlier this year, but I finally got it. Over the last few days, I've been helping a friend remove a greenhouse that he inherited when he got his property. It was a 30'x60' qwansat hut(not sure of the spelling, but it was a peaked top, round sided tunnel). It was in disrepair, but whole to start with, but the first winter he was there we had 4' of Sierra cement fall overnight and it collapsed. He had no emotional or monetary attachments to it, so when I asked what he was going to do with it, he responded that he was going to scrap it and that I could have it as long as I helped him tear it down. I told him I'll bring the beer and my tools, which turns out all we needed was a hammer, a ratchet set, a pair of wire cutters and a cordless drill. Oh, and some loppers and rakes to clear the blackberries that had taken over one side.

I came away with ~200' of 1.5" square tubing, ~300' of 1.75"od round tubing, ~120' of 1 1/2" round tubing, 28 4' sections of 2" tubing that was the "foundation"(hammered into the ground, 1.75" ribs slipped inside and were bolted into place), some conduit, a couple 2'x2' vents, a 2ft fan that fits one of the vents, a couple 12" cage fans(not pictured), an industrial propane heater(unknown condition, he said it worked when he bought the place), 3 100# propane tanks(not pictured), 3 330 gallon tanks with cages, a bunch of old large gague extension cords and electrical wire(to be assessed later if its worth messing with for the copper), and all the brickets and brackets that held it all together. The main damage was on the 1.75" tubing, so there's not too many straight pieces longer than 3' of that. I'll have to scrap the kinked sections, but the rest is in pretty decent condition. It is all galvanized so I won't be forging with it, but I could definitely use it to build things with. Maybe I'll start with a way to store it all.

The only thing we had to bring to the land fill was the skin, which was 3 layers. 2 of thick clear plastic, 1 of woven plastic, and it took a whole truck load for each layer.

He also wanted to have the "dirt" removed, but I educated him on the difference between dirt and soil, so he is keeping that for a garden for his wife. Besides, I didn't want to move at least 40 yards of soil, though I would have taken that too if he decided he wanted it gone. You can never have too much good loamy soil here in the land of red clay. 

It amazes me what can come your way when you have a willingness to help and some beer

Ahh, I've always heard them called "teeth" though I can see how some would call them scales, especially when making rasple snakes. I can't talk for Jaeger, though it looks like he ground them down, but kept enough for the pattern.

Jaeger and Das, great looking knives all around.

Good looking Dachshies, I have a fondness for wirehaird ones like Sam. Mees looks like s/hes around 3-4 months old? The perfect age to get into trouble, while still looking cute as they are doing it.

Beautiful work

Whoa, I've never even seen a timeframe closer than hourly. Heres hoping that they stay that accurate.

Our "local" weather reporters are 100 miles away and 3000' lower in elevation. Their temperature for us is never right and we can get the weather +/-4 hours from their forecast for our area, but they are dead on with the snow levels when it does snow which is mostly what I care about. We live on a snow line, so our barn can get barely a dusting of snow where the house will get near a foot deep. 3 miles up the hill there will be 3-5 feet. Its so reliable that the county parks their snow removal equipment in front of the barn when they know snows a commin'

I happen to be one of those in the foothills, though much further south in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  I love the mists and rains, though the coolest weather I've seen would be the cloudless blizzard I was caught in when I was walking home from school as a teen. It was a clear blue sky, but the pressure and temperature changed so quick that all the moisture in the air froze and created a whiteout blizzard for 15 minutes. I had to take refuge under a blackberry thicket and my hands and lips cracked almost immediately from the cold, but afterwards the air was crisp and clean, and there were tiny ice motes floating around. It looked like glitter caught on the wind. Its the only time I've seen that weather phenomenon, and was the talk of the town for a few months.

What about the Polynesians/Maori who made it by raft to South America before the landbridge(supposedly)? I believe the Blackfeet tribe has the current claim to to oldest DNA in the America's. They have a haplogroup that is found nowhere else except in the pacific seafaring peoples.

 https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2019/05/06/blackfeet-man-dna-deemed-oldest-americas-cri-genetics/3145410002/

To help validate this theory, the sweet potato, a new world crop, had naturalized in the Philippines and south east Asia before written history. Now my question is, did they bring marshmallows with them for their Thanksgiving feast?

Weather vanes, pendulums, and kinetic sculptures are what I can think of.

Glenn is right about the wind chimes, its amazing how nice the tuned windchimes sound. If you have a few with different tones, its very soothing.

The piles here grow blackberries and rattlesnakes. You have to hit the pile with a stick to see if it rattles before grabbing anything. I also find "new" piles every time I clear a patch of blackberries. 

Mr. Powers, I'm guessing a blade made that way would be named Gaesakukur.

Frosty, it took me a bit to figure out that they do site their sources, but they use hyperlinks to send you directly to the site/book/article instead of a way that anyone who's older then a cell phone would recognize. One site they linked to was pretty interesting, it showed a slideshow of a "traditional" icelandic sod smelting furnace. 

http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/bog_iron.htm (I'm not sure if this link violates tos. The page doesn't have commercial aspects to it, but the mother site does. Please remove if it is a violation)

And yes, this there wasn't any new info in the initial article, they just rewrapped it like a fruitcake that gets passed along to the next (*cough* sucker *cough) friend each Xmas

I agree that this was a dumbed down version, it smelled of "click-bait" when I found it, but it was interesting enough to share here.

Did a bit of searching both in and out of this article, and the only thing I could find so far was what they linked in one of the hypertexts in the article, an article from the Norwegian archaeological review in 2004 by Terje Gansum. To find it search for "gansum 2004" and it will be the first thing to pop up. It references what appears to be a smithy where they found bones and more specifically bone coal along with charcoal and kilos of iron scale. It goes into potential reasons why they would have the bones there, but there is no concrete evidence as to why it would be there. It has alot of educated guesses based on known rituals of the time, as well as what is known of smithing from the sagas that have survived.

Viking steel may have come from rituals of imbuing a spirit into their swords by using the bones of animals and ancestors to make them stronger. Inadvertently case hardening their iron.

https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/norse-rituals

If your going for a solid staff, you could start with a section of stock with a diameter larger than your design and forge your way down from there. Start with the clouds on both sides, then draw out the middle of the staff, "stretching" the ends away from each other until you have the size you want. It might take a bit of math to find the starting stock size, there are threads on this forum on calculating the right amount of material needed for a project. There will also be some trial and error to keep the balance right. I would imagine a truck axle would be large enough for a couple tries and should be fairly easy to source. You could even engrave more detail into the clouds once the basic form is set.

I think it was "Practical Blacksmithing" that I was talking about too. 

If you paint your anvil a really loud color, like neon lime, you will be more likely to find it if you lend it out or misplace it.

"I swear I saw a mouse hole somewhere along this wall"

I has read in some of the "older" books (pre 1921) about not muting the anvil or securing it to a base so the vibrations would clear the scale off the top.

With all the older books I've read each author had their own unique opinion on the subject of anvil setup, some even saying all other ways are for lesser smiths or are flat out wrong.

The sauv blanc pairs perfectly with a pen knife, where as a sword needs a more robust burgandy. 

Whats one apprentice more or less??

 Back then they weren't too worried about the stuff. The fish in our local river still aren't edible after the gold rush miners had the wonderful idea to dump barrels of mercury in the head waters of the river with the idea that the mercury will dissolve the gold as it flows down river. Then they just had to collect it down river and burn the mercury off to get the gold. Much easier said than done.

I also found this in "Heat treatment of steel. Erik Oberg 1920"

I did a bit more searching and found a few things from one source. "The Techno-Chemical Receipt book, William T. Brandt, 1887". It has a bunch of recipes on things like paint colors, sealing waxes, wagon greases, wool dies, and metal finishes, among other things

Whelp, I've fallen into the rabbit hole of rosin. While there I found a pdf of "NAVAL STORES
HISTORY, PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION
AND CONSUMPTION". Its a good read about the ins and outs of the turpentine(raw pine sap), rosin, tar and pitch industry in the early Carolinas. One thing that stood out as I was reading was that a principal use of rosin was for hardening steel as well as for cores for foundry work, though no more info was given on either subject. Does anyone have any other information on either of these processes in regards to rosin?

Beautiful work.