TommyVee

Another day, another bottle opener. Tried to come up with something I hadn't done a million times, and came up with this eight note idea. And got some quality control testing done with it, too.

I should point out that Robb Gunter's original recipe for superquench calls for 32 ounces of *original* blue Dawn dish soap, but nowadays all the Dawn you can get is concentrated, and this makes a difference to the formula (this was pointed out by Robb himself at a recent NMABA meeting where he did the same little demo that George mentioned). So you might have to experiment a bit. I made mine with about 24 ounces of concentrated Dawn Ultra and it works well. At our NMABA meeting, Robb gave the recipe with the original Dawn amount listed, but stating that one should use 10 ounces of JetDry and that one should modify it if all one can find is the concentrated Dawn: 5 gal water 5 pounds table salt 32 ounces original blue Dawn dish soap 10 ounces JetDry

While the news stories related to the accident have not been updated since the day of the accident (investigations of the cause are ongoing), and do indeed claim only one person was killed on site, NMABA did email all of the membership on Sunday to inform us of this tragedy, and an obituary is online confirming what GhostTownForge posted (I hesitate to post a link as I'm not sure if that violates IFI policies).

Thanks for the charcoal-in-a-pipe suggestion, Frosty. I might not try that on this piece lest I screw it up, but will probably try it out on something simple to see it in action.

Nah, strictly propane. For the nonce, whatever hardness I can get with superquench will have to do. I don't expect to need it it to be very tough, as mostly I expect to use it for measuring, not scribing.

Today's attempt was a simple set of dividers. Not fancy like some of the others I've seen here, just a pair of mostly identical forgings intended to be riveted together and held in position by friction (saw a video on Christ Centered Ironworks' Youtube channel that did it this way). Starting stock was 12 inches of 1"x0.25" flat bar. Forged down the pointed parts out of the 3" on either end, cut the thing to make two identical parts, and drilled a hole for the rivet rather than punching one. In this picture I haven't riveted yet, just temporarily assembled it with a bolt and nut. They took a little cleaning up on the grinder, but not a whole lot. The scribe ends were roughly sharpened on the grinder and then cleaned up with a file. I'll rivet and try to harden the pointed ends with superquench tomorrow so they can withstand a little use as scribes before needing resharpening.

That amount of tool steel, irrespective of alloy, at that price is a xxxxxxx score.

Is it "WI" or "W-1"?

No work in the shop today, but I did head back over to the state fairgrounds to help NMABA break down their portable smithy and pack it all back up. Since there was interest in it, I took a few pictures of the breakdown process. The first picture is from during the fair showing the thing in operation, then a few of what it looked like as it came apart and just before it was hooked up to the truck for towing. During setup, we jack the thing up a bit and place a steel frame under the trailer frame where the wheels are in the pictures, then cover up the wheels with a wood panel. This keeps them out of sight and safe from stray hot steel, and keeps them off the ground so the trailer can't roll. All the extra panels, signs, supports, lighting, etc. pack up into the trailer's back room ready for next year. Anvils get secured to the floor to the left of the forge in the third picture (which then blocks the door to the back room you can see in that picture), post vises go where they can be pulled out easily for use at club meetings. Sigh, all those pictures got scrambled in order after posting, but you can sort of see the progression if you visit your magic nation a bit.

+1 on the iFixit discussion. I just bought their "essentials" toolkit to get the fine torx and other bits needed to repair an old Playstation 2. And this followed me home today: a pair of wrought iron horseshoes. A member of NMABA had picked up the twisting wrench I forgot at the state fair on Wednesday and I met him at his shop to retrieve it. He had a pile of these, and they were just the remains of a much larger pile he'd gotten hold of. Since he had more than he could use he just handed me a couple to take away. Not sure what I'll try to make out of them, and it may be some time before I try, having never worked with WI before.

Das: The booth is actually a small trailer that opens up into that whole thing. Two forging stations with coal forges, post vises, and 200 lb. anvils *and* space to display items for sale. I was really impressed by how much smithy they'd packed into such a small trailer (you can see how big the trailer actually is by looking at the distance between the two chimneys. Everything comes apart and gets stuffed back into that package, including the coal bin (which is assembled around and hides the trailer tongue).

I worked a few days at the New Mexico state fair this weekend and churned out my very first steak flipper, a meat fork to match it (also a first), a handful of hooks, and a couple of leaf keychain fobs as live demos --- hard enough to work on stuff normally, harder with an audience and fielding questions. Sold most of them, too, on top of some of the things I'd made in advance (hooks, leaves, bottle opener). The steak flipper sold while I was trying to make its mate, and the meat fork sold before I was even finished with it, so no pictures to share. Instead, here's a picture of the NMABA's portable smithy at the fair. I'm the one in the yellow apron. The fair goes on until the 17th, but I probably won't go back to work the booth more until Wednesday.

Very, very cool, Tyler, to be starting up your blacksmithing shop with your great grandfather's gear.

There was a signup for the fair at the last NMABA meeting, I put myself down for helping with setup and at least a few days during the fair itself. I do not recall who it was who was collecting names and phone numbers, and I am assuming they'll call me when the time comes to help with setup. Or at least I hope so, because I didn't take anyone else's number down to hunt down info. If you weren't at the last NMABA meeting and didn't sign up already, you might just drop a line to a board member or two and let them know you're interested.

The hairpins are a bit large for anyone with fine hair, so I will be making smaller ones, too. The figure-8s are made of 3/16" round bar and there's not actually a lot of material there. The pins are a lot chunkier than I wanted to make, and I might make some finer ones. I made a similar pin for my wife (with much more delicate pin) but with about an inch less of starting bar, and it works well in her fine hair. My daughter, who has really thick hair --- and a lot of it --- uses one even bigger than these.