Paul TIKI

I will say Sharkbites and pex are a god send if you have a plumbing project. When we moved in the house had been empty and winterized. When we had the water turned on, the hot water line to the second story ruptured. Fortunately there was a cutoff, but by the time we got it closed, it destroyed a bunch of ceiling drywall in the kitchen. Water pouring out of a ceiling light fixture is a little alarming. Anyway, Some PEX and a hand full of sharbites and we were able to replace the bulk of the water lines, cold and hot, for about $150, as opposed to the quoted 1000 + from the plumbers. I'm debating doing up the whole house with a pex manifold, but everything else is still holding so I'm in no rush.

I have been living with the joys of a 100 year old house, though over the years it has been updated. It has modern wiring, but has a 100 amp box, so adding any new circuits will require upgrades which I'm not qualified to do. Lot of plumbing work, with more to do as well on that front. Thank god for Sharkbite connectors and PEX. And lots of cosmetic stuff. On the other hand, paid for! so I really shouldn't gripe too much. Got a chance to forge with the twins this weekend, but didn't turn out anything neat. The Mk 2 grill forge is just not performing as well as I had hoped. Controlling the airflow is tricky, and I'm not getting a large enough fireball. on this one the tuye is quite a bit larger and I'm using the same fan. I just turn the fan a bit so it is not blowing directly into the pipe and that reduces the air. If I have it pointing directly into the pipe I get way too much air and I burn through fuel at a very high rate. Next time I'm going to move some of the bricks around and see if it works better.

I read about using corn on this forum. I figure I could let it coke up on the sides of of the firepot. It would be a $5 experiment and if it doesn't work I could always feed squirrels.

Natkova, hope the hand stays infection free. I don't imagine that it would be beyond the need of some antibiotic cream and a band-aid. The tuyer I cut so I could sit the fan on the shelf that was already attached to the side of the grill. All I have to do to change airflow is just turn the fan anywhere from pointing directly at the tuye to angling slightly away for no air at all. I think the shape of the firepot is off, but that's easy to change. I really wanted a much larger fire pot so I could heat a larger area, but that didn't work out so well. Maybe I was just too stingy with fuel. On the fuel, thinking about mixing corn with the charcoal and see how that works.

Yep, Charcoal. Into the second half of the bag and lots of charcoal dust in there as well. I tried to make the fire pot larger and that actually created more problems than it solved, so I'll be moving the bricks about for the next fire. I figured out that I can adjust the airflow with the simple expedient of moving the nozzle from the fan slightly away from the other end of the tuye pipe. Just the kind of stupid simple solution I like.

That don't sound good natkova. Although it could be like having a blemish frozen off. same theory, different thermal direction. Yesterday I got my angle grinder finally, so I spent some time making the radius on a small section of my anvil a little more crisp. Then I built up my new grill forge! Just a side blast JABOD, but built into an old bbq grill body. Needs many adjustments to get the air blast just right and the fire pit adjusted. Had too much air going in at first and the fire fleas got kind of fractious.

That is a heck of a blower, should move some air! I'm still powering my forge with a bathroom exhaust fan

Welcome aboard! If you are looking at build vs buy ideas for various things to get started you might want to look at some of these threads: https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/52308-a-collection-of-improvised-anvils/ You don't need a nice pretty anvil that looks like something that was dropped on Wile E. Coyote's head. I'm using a slab of pig iron I'm new here to and these guys are a great source of information.

The area is where a lot of guys have cattle and then there is a lot of regular farmland as well. It would be pretty pricey to get some acreage. There were lots of places dense with really old Osage Orange (bois d'arc, hedge, bodarc, what have you) trees along with some elm and maple out there. A lot of the Osage Orang looked to be started as straight line windbreaks and kind of spread out, which is fairly common in Kansas, as I understand. The wood makes for some beautiful bows, if you have the stamina to harvest it. Not to mention the stuff is awesome to use as firewood in a wood stove.

It's been too cold for outdoor forging here, and the 2 days last week that would have been good for it ended up getting used for other things, like my wife's birthday (much more important!) and helping the second of the twins moved and setup in his house 90 miles from here. The last thing for him to take was his motorcycle and I had to follow in his car. Saw some spots I wouldn't mind retiring to on the way if I could get 10 plus acres, a good indoor workshop, and a place to set up my own personal rifle/archery/knife and axe throwing range.

Yeah, but Scotty canna' break the laws of physics. Data and Jordy are at least open to the idea.

I was only giving them what they ordered. The Russian Roulette was their idea. Also, due to some unfortunate times in Juarez, I avoid tequila as much as humanly possible. And I make some darn good hot wings, thank you very much!

Tequila and Tabasco was a fun one to serve when I was bartending. It was called a West Texas Prairie Fire We could light it on fire by carefully heating a spoonful of the booze with a lighter. then serve to a bunch of cowboys ready for a night on the town. I confess I took a small amount of amusement when one guy singed his glorious moustache. He was a horrible tipper. The other fun part was a sort of russian roulette for them. One guy in the group would get extra tabasco. Hard to spot in the poor light of the bar. Watch 4 cowboys take shots, and one of them ends up spluttering. then they would ask for another round.

Speaking of Tabasco, I now have a desire to cook some buffalo wings tonight (Alton Brown Recipe and method). That would make it a better day.

I'm concerned. I get the espresso, but with tabasco?!?! That sounds like what causes bad days, not a method of coping with them. Espresso and then eggs with tabasco on them, that I get. I have now had coffee. The chances of nearby idiots surviving the day has increased dramatically.

Yay, backordered angle grinder is on it's way from Harbor freight and will be here tomorrow. OTOH, the wind kicked up and managed to pretty much rip my back storm door off of it's hinges. Not a great start to today. Got it removed so it can't do any damage to the house or shatter the glass. Since I work from home it's less of a big deal than it could have been, but now I'm all wrong footed. I even forgot to make coffee....

Very Nice!

That could be cool. I had an old boss who used to turn pens on his lathe. If the clinker is attractive enough, cast it in resin to make a pen blank and then turn it. Or perhaps trim it, cast it in resin and use it as knife scales. The chemical composition of a clinker might not work too well with resin though. I don't have any specific reason in mind, but since a clinker out of your forge may have come from dirt and debris in your coal, and the clinker from someone else's could be the mess from flux, etc. I would be concerned that something in it may react negatively to the resin or the hardener.. I guess there is no way to tell unless you try though.

I confess I'm kind of fascinated by those big ol' clinkers. I'm still figuring out my charcoal forge so they aren't a problem for me. Anyway, I'm trying to think of ways to recycle or otherwise use those things, probably a lost cause or too much work, but still wondering.

three guys jump in, look for the magic blue smoke, one guy yells "Found it". they guy who's motor it was begins a Yosemite Sam tirade of cursing....Yeah, pretty much it.. There is a weird part of my brain that wants to attach a windmill to the front and see what kind of current I could get out of it. Maybe some LED lights or a USB charger

Thanks Twigg, After my initial embarrassment I think it will work out fine for whatever I decide to do with it. I'm just wondering now what I have on hand for testing the bugger. When we were cleaning out Dad's garage, we found all sorts of stuff, but nobody really knew what it all was. I kept a few things for oddity value and to remember dad by, like the Marlboro pack (pre surgeon generals warning) that was holding some vacuum tubes, and a neat 5 position switch. He probably had what I would need, but alas, a lot went to scrap and recycle. I think my brother kept the popular electronics magazines from the mid 60's. there was a whole box of them. Welsh, that looks crispy! Kind of reminds me of the motor shop I worked at when a motor failed during the quality check. We had a room we did testing and "run in" that just had rows of power supplies and 10 guage leads. Hook up the motor, make sure the ground was in place, set the dial according to instructions and flip the switch. come back a specified time later and send to QA. If something arced you could smell the ozone in our final asssembly area and we'd go running because you didn't know whose batch of motors was having a problem.

That's the other thing. Not brushless but the brushes are cleverly hidden behind a ring Times like this I really miss dad. He was an electical engineer He could have built the mods needed in his sleep

I don't know about the maths on that. I do know that to guess by the belts from the motor to the tread there wasn't much in the way of gear reduction, I have a feeling that those numbers are maximums. If you provide the motor 150v and 16 amps you get 3750 rpm at 2.5 hp. Less current, less output. Which would make sense. We ran that thing for a while before we moved and it never tripped the breaker, even at "top" speed. I don't think it was ever meant to run flat out on that much current. It's just that it can if you put the spurs to it. Though it would be fun if the marketing material told people to outrun the grid

Aha! I looked at the motor an discovered something important: I am an Idiot! Ok, the placard is fairly large. When looking for things like volts an amps and horsepower I found them in an easy to read section towards the bottom of the placard. Hp 2.5. RPM 3750 Amps 16 and Volts 150. Here is where I found out the old neurons weren't working together. The top of the placard had, in large letters, VARIABLE SPEE <SMUDGE> MOTOR. I then scraped off the smudge and found DC. So it is not a variable speed ac motor. It does not indicate 150VAC. It does, however, indicate that I am too silly to clear off a smudge of dirt that would have saved much confusion. Sorry about that guys. Still, it would make a good motor for a number of applications just as soon as I undo my cranio-rectal inversion. I just have to figure out how to make a proper DC speed controller

I remember the 150 clearly because it was odd. I need to get a picture of the placard and share it. The VAC part may be one of those Mandela effects where you are sure you saw it, but maybe didn't (like for several years a lot of people were certain that Nelson Mandela was dead but he wasn't). It's a brushless motor, very simply connected to the control board. The control board was toast though. could have been a reference to the capacitor. Could also be a Max voltage sort of thing. "This motor will run up to 150 volts at 3600 rpm...." I had a job doing the final assembly on a variety of electric motors, mostly DC brushed motors, but occasionally some AC and I'm now trying to remember how the difference was listed on the placards there. It was more than 10 years ago though. I really do need to test the thing and look at the placard again.