Chad J.

They call it stick welding for a reason too

Glad I have good airflow in my shop. I'm not far from Frosty's temperature preferences. The last week has been in the 80's and 90's. Ice been going through more water than beer in the shop.

Who was it that said 90 was a good warm temp? I have a few words for them. I continued to work on my new bench for the grinder and really just trying to get back into the woodwork mindset as well. I would have gotten farther along but I am, apparently, the neighbor you ask when you don't know how to do something or have the tools. And I just got here in December. Anyway here's where I'm at.... not great but I could dance a jig on the frame.

Started in on my work bench for the belt grinder. Making it out of salvaged wood from a fence I took down. My 6 inch delta jointer got a workout last night cleaning up the wood for this. Felt good to really brush off the woodworking skills. I'll post pictures this evening when I'm done with it.

I have ADD so bad I forget

My smoker lives at the entrance to my shop. Saturdays I'll throw a pork shoulder on and let it cook while I work so I have lunch for the week. I have a shelf that fills up with empty brown pop bottles fairly quickly as well. Speaking of, has anyone ever tried cleaning and forge welding a bunch of caps together?

My stick welder is light duty. Unless it retains enough heat from each pass that I don't have to heat it back up the propane use will be a good chunk too. Maybe 2 or 3 tanks. Thomas, He does

With wood 220 is really the highest grit I'll go. You go too high, the finishes and stains don't take as well. It's kinda like with the old leather boots. You're not shining the leather, you're shining the polish. If you want a nice shiny wood handle go heavy on the finish and sand that down.

I agree Goods. Everything between the 2 cuts across has been ground away or came off. The heat treatment is my biggest concern on this. Now I am willing to fire up a smoker and fill a couple coolers with cool liquid refreshments if anyone in Wisconsin wants to try and make an event of this anvil repair. My biggest concern is I never get around to doing anything with this and it sitting in my shop until I too over it one too many times. Only reason I thought of using it as a source of wrought.

I've read the Gunther Schuler method and I've priced the Stoody rods, 88 dollars for 5 pounds. I'm looking at maybe 15 pounds of rods to do this at least but then I also need to find the time. I could do it, and it could be a wonderful center piece for my shop. I think it may just go into a corner in the barn until I take some vacation and try this. What's the worst that can happen?

I have a Peter Wright that my guys grabbed from the scrap when it came in when I was a yard manager. It had a crack in the face, no rebound along the waist, and a severe overhang on the sides. I went to start addressing the problems and found the entire work face had busted free. I still have it, I am considering trying to repair it but that would be a lot of welding as about 8 inches of facing is gone completely. I would hate to do it, the repairs are not beyond my welding skills but the cost and time may be. My final thought, it is a cast wrought and I currently don't have any other wrought iron...

Mail call! 4 of the 5 boxes from my new Ameribrade grinder arrived today! Some assembly required...

It broke my heart but I had a blade that had really bad hammer marks in it, the second to last blade I quenched tonight. Many have recommended this so I did it to check my heat treat. After I nearly knocked my leg vice stand over with the first shot I let it cool a bit more and snapped it. *sniff sniff* seriously, I think this is pretty good.

Let's not forget my shop is a hundred year old timber frame barn. I'm planning on framing out the walls in the hot works area and putting corrugated on the base of the walls.

A friend came and picked up his jetski from the shop. I took the time to rearrange everything since it was in the back. I'm trying to decide how to best set up my shop. Organization is not my strong suit but it seems to me that I'm going to want to build a fairly substantial partition between the hot works side of my shop and the woodworking. My biggest concern is future purchases of toys, I mean equipment.

Now I'm gonna have to pull this up on a music streaming platform or it's going to be stuck in my head all day.

Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople. Why did Constantinople get the works?

The first of anything is never pretty. Thanks for the tips Thomas.

Got in the shop after work for the first time in over a week. Just made some steak flippers, a bottle opener, and started in on a rat tail handeled knife, and a large serving spoon. I don't have high hopes for the spoon but how do you learn new stuff without trying? I don't have a swage block so I'm going to try forming over the hardy hole and a piece of wood. Anyway, I'm having a cookout at the house Sunday and I need to make sure the shop looks good and somewhat organized so probably no more hammering this week.

I actually plan on using mine to make a flattening press, weld on a couple hinges, build a stand and a handle. Throw hot blades that aren't flat in there. Any drawbacks to that idea?

Holy cow, hope I can develope a quarter of that skill

I was lucky, most of the major stuff in the house was done before I bought it. Electrical upgrades, plaster repair, and stuff like that. No one has messed with the barn in several years. I am tempted to turn the upstairs into 2 bedrooms from the 4 or 5 they claimed. The bathroom is tiny, it could stand to be turned into a spa with steam shower and sauna.

Plenty of rodent nests in there. I was annoyed by the shear number of layers to the walls. The tricky part is coming. I need to get the beams supported while opening the area top allow for better use of space.

I'm gonna have to try that, and c yeah I was wearing a dust mask. I keep expecting something to land on me while I clear this stuff out.

My barn has several small rooms in it. Three of them are chicken coops. I started tearing them out today. I pulled wooden crate, followed by particle board with a wall paper pattern, followed by drywall, then tar paper, 1 by furring strips, and cardboard. This area is going to turn into a stock room. I am going to salvage a bunch of the wood for various other projects.