Shabumi

We never suped up any of our rally cars, we just ran them stock. My favorite was a vw rabbit cabriole convertible I learned to drive in at 13. I don't remember what year it was, 80 somthing, but man did that bunny fly. I had it for 4 years. I bought it for $25 at the local junk yard, my dad helped me fix it up to "won't get you stranded" and I was responsible for the rest. I don't think it ever got registered due to some paperwork snafu, but that just solidified it as a banger. I learned all the back dirt roads at 50mph, how (not) to jump a car and how to not drift into big rocks in the road, also how to put a tire back on the rim in the middle of nowhere with nothing more than a lug wrench, a rock, a stick and a bicycle pump(and ALOT of cursing). Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't total it on multiple occasions. I even took it rock crawling, and did decent against a lifted 87 Toyota pickup on 30s. He only went further when he went over a log that I couldn't get around. I had a slight advantage though as he was a city slicker, while my driveway was what he considered "gnarly" off road. He didn't understand that rock crawling is only partly about getting over the rock, it's mostly about knowing your vehicle and how to place your tires properly. Oh and lots of scouting out the route so you know what to do before you get in a hairy situation, and so you know your way out before you head in. That car ended in the simplest way. I wasn't even rallying it. I was just heading home in the snow, slowly going down the last hill right before my house, called dead man's grade, lost traction and went straight into a tree. Was lucky the tree was there though as there was a 30 ft drop on either side of it.

I guess I could have looked at the wood to answer my question. Here's a piece I was talking about. Yellow inside on the "fresh" cut, but a nice chocolate brown color on the end exposed to the elements.

Now that you mention it, Locust would make good handles. I have a few nice pieces in the firewood pile a can pull aside to try. I wonder if the yellow color in the middle of the pieces will stay after it's worked into a handle.

I thought the world ended in 2012? This weather must be part of the twitching that happens after death. I'm going off of the old family records. My family has been on this property for almost as long as a non indigenous person could be. We have the family diaries from the beginning to reference off of too. 1851 is the earliest diary we have, 1850 is the earliest known occupation of non-native peoples. The Spanish may have passed through earlier, but no known records exist. The diaries weren't personal diaries, most of the entries say something along the lines of "Feb 12, 1920. Overcast, butchered 2 pigs" or "May 13, 1911. Frost, killed all tomatoes. Remember don't plant until memorial day"(this still holds true today).

Darn, I shoulda left the thorns on. Oh well, at least this way my hand won't burn every time I pick up the tool. Pyracantha litteraly translates to fire(pyr) thorn(akantha) in Greek, and it is aptly named. After getting stuck by it the wound aches for a couple hours with an almost burning feeling, I know from personal experience. Makes an excellent hedge though, no one tries to get through it, especially if there are blackberries growing in it. I figured a handle for a smithing tool from a plant with fire in it's name would be appropriate.

If it wasn't a leap year this year we would have had the only February on record without any rain, but last night on the 29th at 9pm it started raining. Not much, but enough to cut back the dust. Now if we get record breaking months for the rest of the rain season we might make it to an average rainfall year.

Decided to make the bird head into a eye punch. It had a bit of a fish mouth, so I used it to "center" the drill bit as I drilled the pupil, then ground down to flat and shaped the sides. Added a pyrocantha stick for a handle as I'm just holding it instead of swinging it, and did a quick test.

Thanks for the pointers everyone, I'll keep them in mind next time. I was semi aware of the no water rule with alloys, but I thought I could get away with it as I wasn't quenching till cool to the touch. What I did was cool just the outside of the thin section with water and let it pull the heat from the inside of the eye until it was 1 shade lower than the fat side, from yellow-orange to orange-yellow. Didn't have any obvious problems this time, but I will avoid the water in the future. Great work as always JLP, and that's a nice tp holder DSW, I really like the brass coating look. Virusds, that sure looks more functional than the only knife I've tried to make. Good work

#12 is a bird head handled punch.

Made my first handled tool from 4 inches of a coil spring I found on the road. The eye is a little off center but the plug was clean, which made me smile. I was able to center it better when drifting by cooling the thin side. Drifted round then hammered back to oval... Err rectangle with round ends. Still deciding on final end geometry, either an eye punch or an flat oval for sculpting

Found some roadkill that wanted to follow me home. Cut a 4" piece off to make a handled punch.

Got the chimes mock hung to hear them while hanging. The 1/8 inch hole was too large even drilled in hot metal, so I went with 7/64 holes which were the perfect size to hammer the bar in cold and peen the ends down, a nice tight fit. I went with a bar little longer than the chime is wide so as I peened it tight there was a bend in the middle to help keep the lines they are hanging on centered, still need to center the bend though as you can see that they don't all hang straight. I tried to get a picture of the inside, but my phone won't focus in those conditions. The next step is to finish the keeper, striker and sail, re-clean everything and put it all together. Here's how they sound. VID_20200224_111639242.mp4

I like the flowyness of the pendant rojo, and that's a great bulldog Conrad. That punch looks like a good one to hang on the wall as a conversation piece

Thanks it was alot of fun. There were ~20 student and 4 instructors, with Mark as lead instructor. He had ~8 students and the others were split between the other 3. I was with 2 others with Victoria Ritter teaching. The 1000 welds might have been an arbitrary high number. His point when saying this was that it was a basic skill just like tapering, and how many tapers did it take you before you felt comfortable with making consistent tapers? I had just enough time to twist 1.5 rotations 1 way for the basket before time ran out, but I will be opening the basket later as well as finishing the point to make it a fire poker. Here's the pictures of the welds. they aren't pretty, but they held

Not fuel related, but something that was taught at the class I was at was how to tell when you lost welding heat. When scale starts forming on the piece your below welding heat. So hit it while it's clean and wet looking and stop and reheat when you see ANY dryness or crud forming on the piece

Just got done with a forge welding workshop with Mark Aspery a half hour ago. I'm grabbing a Chili burger to replace some of my hard worked calories. Pictures of the basket handle with faggot, coller and "drop tong" welds when I get home. "It take 1000 welds, including the failures, to master the skill of forge welding"-Mark Aspery

I just got done with a forge welding workshop with Mark Aspery and we used coke for the class, and everyone in the class managed each weld type. Faggot, coller and "drop tong" welds. They didn't go into fuel type, but I've heard that certain coals aren't as good as they have impurities in them that could effect to weld. I'm sure someone with more experience and expertise will be along shortly.

Thanks, I really liking the totem pole idea too, the idea came from the first owl I did. After i had it finished I kept seeing the negative space between the wings as a hat and the owls feet as eyebrows, so I figured I'd try a wizard. I've only been loosely introduced to the fabulous furry freak Bros. My dad had a book with most of the Fat Freddy's Cat comics, they were hilarious. Maybe that influenced me subconsciously

Nice looking leaves jungle. The answer to your first question would be Yes. All of those are viable options to put serrations on the edges of a leaf, though I think forging them in with just a hammer would be the most difficult. I personally would do either stock removal with a file like you did, or hot cut them in. You can round the corners of your peen slightly so the marks it makes flow into each other instead of leaving the abrupt corner marks.

Don't push yourself, you only get one back so take care of it. It's not like your nostrils, where if you lose one you still have the other one to smell. Heck, you can smell even stronger if you had no nostrils.

I believe it was made by my grandfather's uncle who died 60 years ago(unconfirmable, but highly suspected by the elders of the family). If it was, then it was made with the anvil and hammers im currently using in my shop. I too like the deeper tone this gives off. I have a free audible spectrum analyzer app on my phone and the "loudest" frequency is 59hz, though the sound you hear is the 3rd loudest frequency of 357hz, which is also what my free instrument tuning app reads the sound as. Roughly an F4 note. I like the idea of a triangle from pipe. Id love to see and hear it if you do make one.

Heres the triangle in action. The video doesn't do it justice though, it's way louder and deeper sounding in person. VID_20200221_094438164.mp4

It don't follow me home, in fact it's been here longer at least twice as long as I've been alive, and I've walked past it a hundred times without seeing it on the wall of one of our barns. It's the biggest dinner triangle I've ever seen. 1 inch hex stock, 2 foot long sides, and sounds like a church bell when it rings. Here it is in situ Looking for a new place for it where we can use it

Finally got my forge going today. Managed to split and finish the scrolling forks from a couple weeks ago. Picture on my animal heads thread

#6-#11 are freehand embeleshments on the handles of my scrolling forks. Got to try out the new rock chisel fuller from above for the wings and wizards beards. Im liking it's marks so I don't think I will change the head, yet. I do need to shorten the handle on the fuller though, I was striking the tool around bicep height. Much too high. Also need to figure out a better way to do mustaches, it didn't come out as well as I thought it would