Donal Harris

Someday. For that to happen though I will need to get my blower out of the garage where I stored it after buying it and use it. The latest hairdryer (liberated from my wife) will have to die first. I am lazy and just leave it running the entire time. Maintaining a small fire is not something a constant supply of air is useful for.

We have OG&E here as well. People do a much better job of keeping limbs away from the lines. In Purcell proper they do not. In the area we lived in when in Norman, all the lines were below ground. That helped quite a bit. OEC. Forgot OG&E was when in Norman.

What did I do today? I learned I don’t like carbon steel tongs. All my other tongs are old and made from wrought iron and mild steel. I can be pretty rough with them and not have to worry about them breaking. I bought a new pair of bolt tongs a few months ago, but never used them. Today I wanted to try them out. They were a bit bigger than I wanted, so I heated them up and whacked on them to close up the jaws a bit. That left one side of the jaws about a quarter inch longer than the other. I hit it to knock it back. It worked, but I learned I should have heated it again. A piece broke off. I am used to being able to adjust my tongs if the aren’t the right size and if they get hot, I can just dump them in the slack tub. Carbon steel tongs may be lighter, but I don’t think I want more of them. I believe I will stick to making my own from mild steel.

Who provides the electricity in your area. We use to regularly have short outages in Norman. Purcell has them all the time except those on the north side where we live now. Rarely experience them here.

Makes sense. There is a big difference between respecting something and being fearful. Fear makes it difficult to think. Part of your brain wants to stay, part wants to run, and the rest wants to just freeze in place. I do love waffles, but the closest I ever get to them are Eggos which is not really even all that close.

When I worked in a hospital lab in Gilmer, Texas, we would have a health fair for the community during the town’s annual Yamboree. One of the members of the community was a guy who had worked for Lone Star Steel. Both of his forearms were horribly scarred. I asked him how it happened. He said a mold exploded early one morning and he was showered with molten steel. Molten steel and condensation are not compatible. I want to cry like a baby when I have picked up a piece of steel at a black heat. My brain is just incapable of thinking what it must have been like for him. I seriously recommend you go learn from people who know what they are doing. If accidents like this can happen even with professionals, imagine how much more likely they are for someone trying to learn as they go.

Thanks for the earworm. Fired up the forge for the first time this evening. Too wide. It takes an awful lot of fuel to fill it up. Coal is fairly cheap, but hauling my barrels up to Norman to get more and then muscling them down out of the trailer isn’t fun. I will probably buy a third or fourth barrel. I may also make another pot at some point and just use this one for the times I work on thicker stock. That is one of the pluses of having a pot that just drops into the table. After almost a year without forging, I seem to have forgotten everything I had learned about how to move metal. That I hadn’t expected.

If you mount it right, hammering doesn’t make nearly as much noise as you might think. Now the angle grinder you will undoubtedly buy later if you don’t have one already, that will sure let your wife and anyone near by know you are there. There are several posts on how to mount an anvil and lessen its ring. You seriously did get lucky with that thing.

Except for the complaining part, I was thinking the same thing as Swede. But if the fingerless golf glove helps, just go with it. When golfing I usually don’t wear a glove, but have to wrap tape around my middle finger on my right hand and left ring finger. I get blisters there if I don’t. Two reasons to leave the handle alone are: you may not like the balance after putting a new handle in it and I’ve heard that sort of handle material transmits less shock to your wrist. No clue if that is actually true though.

This one looks like it was made from one of the bolts they used on fish plates to link tracks together. Was it?

My previous fire pot began life with a grate made of welded sucker rod. It took a long time, maybe two years, but eventually it burnt to the point it wasn’t usable. Rather than weld up another I began to just take bits of failed practice pieces and lay them over the hole as you can see below. I could get several sessions out of them before they needed to be replaced. In the photo, one piece is a terrible bottle opener I never wanted to see again and the other a chain link I had attempted to make.

That is very cool, Frazer.

What steel did you use? If you have any bois d’arc near your home, I like that better than hickory. It starts out bright yellow, but with use it darkens into a very nice, golden brown. But, being a woodworker, I expect you already know that. Of course, even if you do have them near you, you wouldn’t be able to use what you cut for a year or so. They are best cut in Winter after the sap is gone. I cut it, split it, and then put it away till at least the next Winter. Wax on the ends keeps it from checking badly. It is one of the wood types that some people are allergic to, but it doesn’t bother me much. You can, assuming your wife is not watching, use a kitchen oven at a very, very low heat to speed up the drying. It will crack badly, but you should be able to get a crack-free section large enough for a handle. I have broken ash, oak, and hickory handles, but have yet to break any bois d’arc handles.

My two-wheeled dolly has pneumatic tires as well. Total pain. Every time I need to use it I have to air up the tires first. Years ago I had one with solid rubber wheels, but I loaned it out one too many times. I replaced it with one with pneumatic tires. It is sort of nice having the extra cushion when going over bumps, but that doesn’t negate the irritation I get when seeing one of the tires is flat. I have something else I’ve always called a moving dolly. It looks like a small pallet with 4 small wheels. Anytime I ask my wife to “Go get the dolly,” she always asks me, “Which one?” even though >99% of the time it is not the moving dolly. I think now I will start asking her to go get the “two-wheeler”. Might help.

Bubba, is it heavy? I made one from copper a while back. Looked cool, but the surface was too smooth and the entire thing was too heavy. My wife was never able to wear it because it would quickly slide off.

Why do you want a square hole? If you are having it plasma cut, they could cut a perfect circle of any size you ask them to. If cutting it with an angle grinder, square would be easier than a circle. As for how you connect the tuyere to the pot, I will leave that for someone who actually knows what they are talking about. I think you are going to like the pot.

Not technically the shop, but changed out a GFI outlet by the pool. The reset button had broken and popped out. Found the original owner had not understood the power in must go to the LINE side and the power out to other outlets on the circuit must be wired to the LOAD side. Now I am wondering what else he wired wrong.

And if we do, let’s pray they are not using a powered wire brush.

What are you doing? Building a bike from scratch?

Pretty safe gamble. Worst case you have usable flat bar.

So I did, but as with drinking bleach to prevent COVID, not something I expected someone to take literally.

I can’t see the video or the last pics you posted. Is the problem on my end. Bolts in a pot, how do they not get permanently fused?

Wire brush to the face? Although sometimes my beard itches enough to make me wish I could take a wire brush to it, not something I would recommend.

Wire brushing the face is fine.

Frosty, it is quite obvious you interpreted your vision wrong. Chris, once you punch the eye, holding the head is easy with a set of hammer tongs. I have been working on a raven’s head war hammer off and on for the past several months. When I asked Korney how to hold it, he gave me a very simple set of hammer tongs. It was really amazing how securely you can hold the head while not squeezing much at all.