SinDoc

I am saddened by the fact I will never got to meet him. However my interactions with Thomas on here and what I have heard through Adlai and others made quite an impression and while I didnt know him well, I will still miss him.

Seeing Adlais post that he had passed was quite heartbreaking.

This was most certainly a learning experience. If anyone was to ever live with us in our house again, there would be a written contract with laid out terms and conditions they would have to adhere to, essentially a lease agreement so when/if it goes south, the process of removal is much smoother.

In other news, got my 40# filled yesterday (man propane got expensive) and my machinist friend sent me new bearings for my contact wheel so it doesnt fly off again so I can use my other grinder! No need to buy another one at the moment. Next step is to upgrade it with a beefier motor (currently has a 1/2 hp motor).

JHCC, I have two grill size tanks as well but they were also dry 

This next refill trip is going to be pricey lol.

George, the problem we ran into was "squatters rights". Since she had lived there for several months and was receiving mail there, she was for all intents and purposes considered a legal resident and since I didn't have a written agreement with her, I could really only strongly ask her to leave as I couldn't technically evict her. Squatters rights are a royal pain. Thankfully she realized that I would go down that route if she didnt go peacefully and left, but left her junked car which I promptly had removed which further kicked the hornets nest on that side of the family. Personally, I dont care and am glad its all over and am back to being left alone like always wanted lol.

I ran out of patience with her before the wife did, but I waited to do anything until the wifes patience also ran out and was fully on board with giving the SIL the boot. You would think you would bend over backwards for someone who was letting you live in their home rent free but she very much did not unfortunately.

Thankfully that is all in the past now. Now I just have to worry about getting my 40# tank filled as it ran out over the weekend 

Yeah it was a short clip, didn't want a long one sucking up everyone's bandwidth although it doesn't seem to matter since no one can get it to play anyways lol. I can try to load a few pictures of it later, but pictures don't do all the glowing RGB goodies justice.

On 4/1/2023 at 9:57 AM, BillyBones said:

Hey doc, welcome back. Was wondering what ever became of you, and a few others, the other day. 

Yeah in July of '21, my darling wife let her older sister come live with us in what was supposed to be a short ~3 month stint while she found her own place to live. What was supposed to just be a stop gap, turned into her living with us for nearly a year and half. The whole time she slowly kept taking over a larger and larger space, essentially shoving us out of our own house and filled my shed will all her things which is my work space. The whole thing unfortunately ended ugly as I essentially evicted her and had her car which had sat broken down in my drive way for several long months towed and removed from my property. Past having her removed, I was civil the entire time but she unfortunately threatened lawsuits and everything else even though I was the one dealing with the damage she had done to the room she was in due to being more or less a hoarder and never cleaning. The entire room needed remediating it was so bad.

But thankfully that is all over and the rest of her family has realized we werent in the wrong and have gone back to leaving us alone. Also finally got the last of her things removed from my shed about a month ago, so I was able to finally start working on hammering stuff again.

Long story short, I learned to never EVER let someone live in your house without more or less a lease agreement with very defined terms as without it, it is very hard to get them removed without them leaving on their own if things go south.

Here is what I managed to hammer out the other day. Had just a like 2-1/2" long piece of that 15n20 bar stock laying around, so I tossed it in with no intention of actually trying to make something and just wanted to try and slim it down and stretch it out. When it started to work out, I said screw it and tried another swing at making a knife. I think it still looks totally awful but not too bad considering I didnt set out to even make anything.

I have just about given up on trying to make knives as I either cant get the profile right, mess up the heat treat or everything in between. I might use the last two bars of 15n20 and 1084 messing around and try to see if I can forge weld them together and make a damascus billet.

I was looking at the Grizzly but had not heard anything great about it. I will go back to considering it.

I came to the realization a few moments ago that the amount of money I spent on just that graphics card would have bought me a nice 2x72 

Hide your hammers, hide your forges cause I have returned! Took a hiatus due to in law issues that prevented me from even touching a hammer last year, let alone forge something.

Ill have to try and upload a few pictures of what I have managed to hammer out since I finally got to forge for the first time in forever this week and am happy with the progress I have made.

I did manage to get a new anvil with much better rebound than my previous as well. Sadly, I spent the majority of my excess funds replacing my computer that died in December but the new one is quite the beauty. With what I spent on it, I could have bought a nice 2x72 grinder, a Chili forge and a slew of other blacksmithing goodies but alas, I am still a computer geek first.

Currently the only 2x72 I found within my price range was the Grizzly but I haven't heard the best things about it. I have had several people recommend Ameribrade and while they look awesome, I sadly can't shell out $1700 for it.

I will say that while I plan on making knives here and there, I doubt they are the main/only thing I will make. I have found I enjoy making "artsy" stuff more then I do knives, but that could currently be due to the fact I am not yet good enough to consistently making one as I still ruin most attempts somewhere along the line.

I might be able to swing the one from Vevor, but it is a 2x82. I am sure I could probably make it work with 2x72 belts however.

Does anyone happen to own this belt sander/grinder? I have seen it recommend in a few different places for starter smiths and it is within my price range as well as would fit in my work space. I know the 1/3 HP motor would be considered small and would bog down with enough pressure applied but anything beats an angle grinder.

That is what I was pushing them more towards, going to someone who knows what they are doing and can assist/supervise or do it for them but they are very intent on doing it themselves at home.

I will ask if there is a karat stamp on them.

I had a coworker approach me this morning and ask me about taking old jewelry (supposedly gold, but unconfirmed) and melting it down and recasting it into another piece of jewelry. First thing I did when asked was check the melting point of gold, which according to Google is over 1900 degrees F, which DOES NOT sound like something a first timer who has zero idea what they are doing should attempt. However, I highly doubt said jewelry is straight gold and likely some alloy which would make its melting point harder to determine.

Anyways, could some of you experts perhaps provide advice/resources I could provide to them? I have already explicitly stated that casting any metal is dangerous and really should not be attempted/done without guidance and knowing what you are doing. I am already on the fence about trying to guide them as they did not know some of the basics like preheating the mold. I will likely push them to go to a local smith who does casting and have it done under supervision or just be done by said smith.

Has Alexandr been around lately? Ive been away myself and I always enjoy seeing pictures of his area and his work. Just curious due to the current situation on his side of the pond.

I know the danger when dealing with chrome and I figured due to that and the overall small amount of metal it wouldn't be worth it but was curious none the less lol.

I am really tempted by that large paper cutter though. I will have to pop the blade off the table and give it a glance over.

My work is throwing away a bunch of scissors as we are moving to a new building and just buying a whole bunch of new supplies. I am curious if the blades on those are usable material for anything useful. I tried to google it and all I really got was that most are a carbon steel (not super helpful) and typically have a coating to prevent rust (google states nickel/chrome but I am sure its on a per item basis).

We also have one or two of those old paper cutters with the giant blade. Think that is worth messing with as well? I hate to see so much metal getting tossed if it is something I can tinker with 

Chimaera I feel the wiring woes. I had a short due to a nicked wire. I should have known better than to use Romex for it as it was in danger of being hit by something. I ended up finally getting around to replacing it with MC cable. Shouldn't have to worry about it now.

I watched a couple videos on lunch on how to forge a hammer with no power tools (power hammer/press) and it doesn't look *terribly* difficult. I just need to get/make a large enough drift, make a punch large enough and possibly buy a guillotine tool lol.

Got the shed cleaned out a bit and made room to start forging again as I can finally get more gas. I have really been wanting to make a rose for the lady retiring at work who has been probably one of my biggest supporters since I started as well as a hammer. No idea where I am going to get a chunk of metal big enough for a hammer though.

Mikey, as you are effectively the God Father of burners *insert cheesy movie pun here*, I always enjoy reading your stuff as it is super informative (even if I dont understand all of it).

You say outside of Chile Forges, you would recommend Diamondback. Without straying too far from the main topic, why? I have been looking at picking up another forge to work with other than my Majestic. While I like my Majestic, it does seem to be a bit of a gas hog.

I like the look of that Latticino. I still think 100% the main problem will be I myself have never made something like that so wont be of much help lol.

On the positive side, I get to refill my propane tank tomorrow! Will be the first time I have gotten to work on something in nearly 2 months.

Banana blade sounds cool...

Since the only thing I have down pat and to a science is hooks, I was going to have him make a couple to show how much of a pain it can be stretching and tapering material and then imagine working on metal that doesn't move anywhere near as easily and is much thicker. I don't want to completely discourage him but also want to make sure I get the idea across that he is aiming way too high for a first project and trust me, I have told him several times already that I can't make one myself so can't offer any sort of guidance on making one.

I invited him to come over this weekend and let him bang on some metal to get an idea of what he is getting himself into.

Thankfully as I am a beginner as well, I dont have super nice hammers or anything else. Worse case is he misses a swing and dings my already somewhat soft anvil. Poor thing needs retired.

I think that was my problem when the weld broke, I let it get too cool and kept hammering.

My buddy is coming over after the holidays so I will have to report back how he does! If I turn out to be a total failure of a teacher, I send him to Adlai here in Columbus lol.

I feel that Frazer. I also wanted to make Damascus stuff and very quickly realized that was a much, much more advanced thing to do then I thought it would be.

My last few ventures have simply been trying to successfully forge weld. Ironically the closest I came to a successful one was with a chainsaw chain stack on top of each other.