rockstar.esq

In fairness to Latticino, I have done design-build projects where I presented the economic impact of every choice along the way as Cut, Same, or Add. The client's frequently chose the "add" option each time. I kept a running tally of my budget to narrate the clients changes. For projects like office buildings or warehouses, the lighting package will be worth roughly 50% of the electrical budget. That's just to buy the lights. It's incredibly common for the Architect and/or Engineer to specify fixtures from one lighting rep in town. With no competition, these reps over price the package and blow the budget. I routinely present alternate equal packages from competing reps that cut my total bid by 20-50%. I've been on several projects where a competitive lighting package cut the total construction budget by 20%. I know with certainty that every lighting rep has a salesmen who calls on the design professionals involved. These salesmen provide "free" research assistance, spec writing, photometric studies, lighting control schematics, etc. in exchange for no competition on the lighting package. I wouldn't strike such a deal without a binding "not to exceed" quote from the rep. If that was common practice, the design professionals could take bids from the local reps and award the best value. I could provide dozens of examples of nearly identical projects that illustrate the cost of corruption. Nothingburger government offices with the aesthetic appeal of gray bologna routinely come in with lighting packages that are triple the price of identical "white shell" offices built for cheapskate property management firms. Based on the revision dates on the plan legends, it took the government office design teams longer to draw the project than it did to actually build it. In most cases, the office job for the property management firms will be up and running before the government office design team hits 50% complete on their plans. The additional time in plan development doesn't typically translate to construction savings either. I've had projects where change orders exceeded 35% of my original bid on plan sets that were in development for two years. Mostly for completely optional stuff that a high-ranking end-user threw in during construction because they were not communicating their expectations for the project while it was in design. I very much believe that this difference in performance is down to design contract terms like those that George is suggesting. When savvy people demand accountability, prices go down.

I see the designers argument as framed. The design isn't done, so they're working off less information, hence the conceptual estimate isn't going to be accurate. Sure, but the qualified designer isn't doing this for the first, twentieth, or hundredth time either. They got hired in part because they've seen the real costs of their designs for similar past work. There are "test-fit" design firms in my market who pretend that they need a full-blown competitive bids to budget check their 10%, 50% and 90% drawings of an office build out that's basically identical to the last 240 offices they designed. Indeed the whole reason they get hired for test fit stuff is that they're experts who do this all the time. The mechanical engineer isn't tasked with a wide-open design. They are working with the same systems over and over again. We routinely go through three to four rounds of competitive bidding to win a job. That's a ton of feedback for these design professionals, yet every routine project budget is an unknowable mystery for the people requesting this assistance.

George, Wonderful comments as always. Interesting tidbit on your last point, it's virtually unheard of for clients in my market to issue anything other than a Request for Proposal. They include contract's and provisos that any submitted bid is contractually enforceable for some specific number of days. As for Architects underestimating project value, I've participated in forum discussions where design professionals ardently claimed that the public would never vote to approve "real" cost estimates, so they intentionally under estimate it. Some of them presented the huge VA hospital boondoggle in Colorado as a perfectly executed strategy.

As a construction estimator, it's my job to find profitable work for the company. Like most people, my job gets a bit (o.k. a lot) harder when the economy is down. There are a few things that I thought I could share to maybe help people to find work in a down economy. The first thing I would recommend is a shift in perspective. A lot of people will look for leads based on who's got the most stuff out to bid. The thinking is that "chasing everything" increases your odds of winning a job. In a down economy, many, if not most of the "bid opportunities" aren't actually going to get built by anyone. There is a very good reason for this; financing. If the economy is down, there's less chance that the financiers will see a return on their investment. For this reason, I recommend looking for clients who are fully funded. There are a few "tells" to help sort one from the other. Let's say you're looking at the plans for a restaurant that bids a week after the invitation to bid. They're marked "not for construction", or "for bidding" and dated several months ago. The request for proposal implies that the client is ready to proceed with construction immediately. In contrast, let's say you're looking at plans for a bank remodel that bids two weeks after the scheduled job walk. The plans are marked "for construction" with yesterday's date. The request for proposal stipulates a construction start and end date, as well as their required phasing to allow the business to stay open during the remodel. Not only are the plans in for permit, but they've got a date for when the permit is expected to be approved. The restaurant job is a perfect example of a bid to nowhere. The reason they're putting it out to bid, is that their previous bids came in over the budget their financier approved. Now that work is slow, the client is hoping that they'll snag lower pricing by putting it back out to bid. Even if they do get lower bids, the market conditions are such that the restaurant is unlikely to succeed. The bank project is more promising since they are probably self-funded. However, that's only part of the story. Putting in the effort to make the project successful speaks to the clients intent. They can't/won't afford any waste or lost business. Strict timelines and protocols may well make the job harder to perform, but it "connects the dots" on what matters to the client. These are the things you should pay attention to. The goal here is to prioritize on what the client actually cares about. Building on that last point, I think it's important to understand that boom market default behaviors aren't going to make the best impression. Take something like a proposal form. Most businesses will generate a standard form which they use for everything in the hopes that it makes them appear "more professional". During booming markets, I can afford to focus only on highly profitable clients who don't generate a lot of difficulty for me because everyone working there has extensive Construction Management knowledge. My proposals can be very generic without it affecting my ability to win work. In contrast, I might have an entrepreneur client who needs to build an addition to their facility. Such a client might have an incomplete understanding of the work being proposed. "Standard" inclusions and exclusions may come across as menacing lists of worrisome mysteries. A proposal with a bit of narrative referring to attached drawings may convey confidence, competence, and communication skills that your client will prize over lowest possible price. The attached drawings can be simple stuff like a roughed-out phasing plan might illustrate how the work will proceed, or a marked up drawing showing how and where you "filled in the blanks" on their design. The goal here is to "customize" your proposal to address what your client actually cares about using the least amount of effort. Less is more here because you don't want to provide a client with everything they need to hire your competitor. Finally, I'm going to recommend something that a lot of people struggle with. Ask meaningful questions of your client, and be honest with yourself about their reply. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. The maintenance man at a local facility for a national client called my boss because his manager wanted a bunch of work done. He said we're on their approved contractor list so they just need a bid to turn into his facility director before he can authorize us to proceed. I meet with the maintenance guy to what needs doing, put together the pricing, and send it in. Weeks go by, nothing. I call, leave messages, eventually a month or so later, the maintenance guy calls with another project. While we're on the phone I ask about the last thing I bid. "Oh, see any non-essential repairs above a certain value have to be contracted annually by our (out of state) home office." If my boss had asked this guy how they intended to fund this project, we could have told this guy that his project was too big for his maintenance budget right then.

A solid state relay (SSR) is one relatively simple solution to the academic question. DC signal to control AC power. The problem is that most insurance companies will require that all devices connected to the building's electrical system be listed and/or approved for the purpose. It's my understanding that having an unlisted device connected voids your policy with some agencies. Insurance adjustors have been known to deny an unrelated claim when they find proof of an unlisted device connected to the system.

Beef, One thing that doesn't get said too much is that big heavy top tooling will have more inertia to overcome for the hammer strike. It's a goofy thing, but a lot of top tooling for power hammers would also work well for a solo smith swinging their own hammer. The traditional wood handled top tools make a lot of sense if you've got a striker swinging a heavy sledge for you. Not so much if you're working alone.

CB Radio may be a good option as well.

Rotary cone rock crushers come to mind as they take in boulders of granite and kick out pebbles.

The photo doesn't make sense to me in relation to your sequence of events. I think we're looking at the two facing sides after you cut the MIG weld off. If so, the visible oxide colors on the nice and smooth faces look like maybe a shade of bronze which would suggest you were hovering in the 500 degree Fahrenheit range which would be a black heat. Further, the edges of both pieces are really square and crisp. In my experience, white hot is right on the verge of burning. Just taking a piece of mild steel stock to that temperature tends to soften crisp corners a bit. Then again, maybe those edges got squared up when you cut the MIG welds off. This leads me to my last question, did you MIG weld all the way around the perimeter? If so, I wonder if you got something weird stuck inbetween the layers that set up an inclusion for you.

JHCC, I'm glad to hear that your wife narrowly avoided disaster.

Although my work was deemed "essential" by the stay at home orders, there's precious little of it to go around. Whenever the market tanks, we're inundated with pricing requests from clients who seldom build anything. Most of the time it's developers who couldn't get financing when the market supported the business plan. Now they're hoping that a decrease in construction costs will be enough to push their project through. Since most commercial ventures need revenue to start on day of opening, it's too risky for entrepreneurs to start construction before they know the stay at home orders will be over. I'm fairly certain that the finance people are just going to punt on everything until they see evidence of other banks making loans. It's incredibly frustrating because these shutdowns would be a perfect opportunity to safely and cheaply perform a big chuck of the annual public school repair work. Instead, they're sticking to their typical summer schedule which means near zero revenue for 1st and 2nd quarter. We have repair projects for office buildings that are on hold because the clients are staying home! Seriously, these are projects that would have disturbed the client to perform, and they're not letting us get them done while they're at home. All essentially, because decision-makers from top to bottom have all opted to "wait and see". When/if all this comes to an end, it's probable that there won't be enough surviving contractors to attend to the smaller work. The distributed damage done by the constant and systemic uncertainty is far worse than a few weeks of lost work.

Tongs are a pretty significant barrier to entry for beginning blacksmiths. I might get roasted for posting this, but consider looking at youtube videos on "alternate tongs". I've seen some that are like bartenders ice tongs that can be banged out of a single bar of stock. There are also some by GS Tongs where he uses an interesting twist approach with round bar to generate a matched set in way less time. If there's any way you can buy stock large enough to allow using the parent stock as a handle, you'll probably find that's way more secure than tongs are anyway.

As an Electrician, I've spent most of my time with EMT trying very hard not to flatten it! John is right about it being a poor choice for structural uses. I suspect it's a bit like rebar in that there is no specific steel alloy required in it's specification, there are only performance based criteria. The NEC defines the minimum bending radius for every size of conduit so there's absolutely no reason for manufacturers to use steels that would hold up to the strain of tighter bends. That being said, I've never noticed any difference in the bending characteristics of different conduit manufacturers. I will say that freezing cold conduit doesn't like to bend as easily as room temperature conduit.

Hefty, I watched a youtube video of some smiths making an axe in a very different way. They fullered cheeks into the stock before they slit and drifted the eye. They fullered in roughly 1/3 on one side, then they flipped it over and fullered the other side down to match. There are several advantages to this approach. First off, it's a lot easier to fuller the first cheek into rectangular stock because you have the full support of the anvil under it. When they moved to the opposing side, they had a squared off set down section which was bolstered with scrap of the same size. Again, there's full anvil support for the work and you don't need a special bottom fuller. When they went to slit the stock, it retained the rectangular cross section at the end so it held itself upright. The slitting went pretty quickly because there was less stock parallel to the chisel to resist. It was also easier to tell when they had the chisel centered because the long axis is defined by the fullers, and the stock width at the eye is closer to the blade. The drifting went especially quickly because they weren't trying to move 2/3 of the stock thickness with a top tool, drift, and bottom tool. That's a lot of moving parts, each of which has inertia resisting the hammer blow. When these guys did it, their drift width was equal to 2/3 the stocks starting thickness. Once fully drifted, the eye cheeks were pushed parallel to the original stock dimensions. That being said, there's no reason that the proportions couldn't be altered to end up where the eye plus the handle was thinner than the original stock width.

If the intent is to haul all that out and set up a workshop, I'd suggest you include something to cut dead-fall for an anvil stump. You'll also likely need a shovel that's big enough to dig what you need, but small enough to tend your fire. You'll probably need a bucket for water to serve as a quench tank and as your fire extinguisher. You don't wanna start any forest fires. That's a fair bit of kit to haul into timber. You might want to consider some kind of backpack. I knew a guy who took old WW2 stretchers and put two bicycle wheels on an axle in the middle. It made a dandy game hauling cart.

For what it's worth, there's a program on Public Broadcasting Service called "This Old House" where I can typically catch quite a few OSHA violations per episode. The most common ones are trenching related. They never have correct shoring, cut backs, or cave-in protection for workers in trenches. Episodes featuring landscaping can be a safety violation bonanza, especially if there's any sort of tree trimming. I often wonder if there's ever on-site tension with Norm Abrams. His solo show "New Yankee Workshop" always features a part where he recites a safety message about wearing proper protection and using the tools safely. It's clearly important to him because he actually works that message into his script in every episode.

Thank you to everyone who posted photos. That's some big steel! I ran across an interesting approach to punching an eye for a struck tool the other day. The smith fullered opposing flats in the stock parallel to the eye. Each flat was approximately half the narrow dimension of the drift. Then they punched and drifted the narrowed section. Once fully drifted, the eye cheeks were in plane with the original stock. As far as I can tell, there are three advantages to this approach. #1. The parent stock stays at forging temp longer for the fullering which gets things done faster. #2. The drifting is easier because there's half as much stock resisting on either side of the drift. #3. Any sort of rectangular shaped drift hole will likely be kept much more in line with the stock this way because the fullers reduce the resistance in plane with the parent stock.

I don't know much about railroads so I had to google "railroad anchor". What I found doesn't look like it'd be good parent stock for what you have made. Unless you welded a few of them together, it doesn't seem like they'd have enough steel in the right places to work. Most of them are clip/bracket pieces that have bolt holes in them.

The bottom mating side of an individual timber gets the groove cut. When said timber is placed, the groove is over the previously set timber. Prior generations had their share of stupid people, Just as we do in ours. We know that adzes planes, chisels and axes all existed before this thing. Every one of which would be a more expedient and effective tool for your suggested purpose. If it was for cutting chinking grooves, the inherent limitations likely lead most craftspeople to conclude that it was a bad design for that purpose which is why the idea didn't take off. So if we're going to show respect to the intelligence of craftspeople, it seems only reasonable to conclude that it's the wrong tool for the job. Your responses suggest that you think we were dismissing your idea. Moreover, you were "chuckling" at our feeble attempts to explain that which was obvious to you. I responded because I wanted to show you that I respected your input. Please bear that in mind.

So far you've repeatedly offered one possible use for this tool without providing much proof beyond your self confidence. It's entirely possible that you're correct. It's also possible that you're not. It'll make a groove. Neat, it'll also make a corner, a point, a cleft, a matched pair of cuts, and a stress riser. However, to show respect to your suggestion, lets actually consider the application that you're presenting. Chinking is the material jammed in between logs or timbers to seal them from the environment. In the case of timbers, the builders had to square the logs . The most common way of doing this was to snap lines, then chop relief cuts such that hewing blows would cleave a relatively flat surface to minimize the amount of broad ax work to bring everything true. Often, the cleaved chunks were hewn into pegs which were used to peg the joinery. In stacked timber framing, you have to cut a groove in the bottom mating side for chinking. This presumably, is where you believe this ax comes in. To use this tool, you'd be swinging like a baseball bat standing to one side of the timber. Every cut would have to be short otherwise the swing will cut an arc, and the groove depth won't self register. So far so good, it's still technically feasible. However that cut looks to be maybe 1/2" deep. That's a pretty shallow cut for chinking a timber. Most of the ones I've seen run 2" deep. Also, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that people would go to all the work of squaring and hewing a log anywhere but at ground level where they can stand on it. Using an awkward sideways swing to slowly cut a precise square cornered half inch groove just doesn't make much sense. When the timbers are stacked, the chinking groove is hidden. All inconsistencies in the fit up between timbers are filled with the chinking. Making a shallow groove with a fiddly tool that deprives you of momentum seems like it would be a hard sell. Then again, there are all sorts of dubious tools on offer today that are obviously marketed to dullards. After all, it slices and dices! When rustic log homes were made, the chinking groove was often just hacked in with a standard ax. If there's no need for the precision of an adze, a plane, or a chisel, you can get the building put up faster. Roy Underhill had a presentation about how the English settlers in America struggled to get established partly because of their tradition for timber framing. When Scandinavians arrived, they used log framing techniques to get their homes built in a fraction of the time. Even today, most people can't afford to wait for a home to be built slowly. While I'll happily concede that you may still be right, I'd like you to consider just two things. The oldest cutting tools in human history are the ax and the adze. Manual lumber processing has always been hard work that doesn't pay unless you can get the work done quickly.

Matt, From the wikipedia page on plant grafting, they say that larger trees and shrubs may require hatchets, cleavers, etc. to cut. They also say that a precision fit is vital to the success of the graft.

I have a completely different idea. What if it's for grafting rootstock to scions? That joint has to be a clean cut where one part is pointed, the other is part is Vee'd. Seems like it'd make pretty quick work of a fairly precise operation in an agricultural situation where you'd probably have to do this for every plant in the field.

I'm going to suggest a different point of view here. Accuracy is hitting the intended bullseye. That's completely different from precision, the measure of consistency. Sending one arrow into another robin hood style is precision. Landing a lucky bullseye is accuracy. Precision in one domain does not cause accuracy in another. In other words, there's no point in aiming at stuff you can't hit. At this point you might be asking how does any of that answer your question? You are asking how to tell if your work is good enough to sell. That is asking for a consistency (precision) standard based on your past work, to achieve accuracy based on business performance (sales). I feel it's incredibly important to point out that selling a knife has very little to do with the process, or the skill of the maker. Again, precision in one domain does not cause accuracy in another. There are innumerable amazing masters of the craft who can't make a living, just as there are knife making machines banging out unsaleable junk. Both examples have high precision in production, and low accuracy in sales. Crafts-oriented people in business tend to focus on precision because it's process driven, and there are lots of reassuring ways to measure it. Finding a viable market-share capable of profitably supporting the enterprise is how businesses succeed. Some stumble into it via dumb luck, others do market research and target specific opportunities. Most assume that merely existing as a craftsperson will pull in paying customers via the gravitational pull of their individual awesomeness. Not surprisingly, most businesses fail, often ruining the lives of everyone involved. "Build it and they will come" only works in Kevin Costner movies. In strictly business terms, I would suggest that you focus your business energies on defining your paying clients so you can find more of them. Find out what they want, and find a way to supply them profitably. It's very probable that you'll encounter demand for skills you'll need to develop. It's even more probable that those skills will be different from what elders of the craft would recommend. Many of mankind's greatest achievements came when an individual solved a problem from outside of the established discipline. Ask a knifemaker how to be successful and they'll tell you to make better knives. As a businessman how to be successful, and they'll tell you to find more and better paying customers. Ask a successful knife maker how to be successful and they'll probably encourage you to go work for a successful knifemaker to see for yourself.

Latticino is right about the tongs. Wrapped eye axes don't have much to hang onto unless you have tongs that will securely grab the side of the eye. Once welded, grabbing from the tapered bit end to hammer the poll is a bit of a struggle too. Pickup tongs might get it out of the fire, but they won't hold securely enough to let you hammer the work.

I doubt it would be too good for carving a channel because the bottom of the "Vee" is in plane with the face of the hammer. It wouldn't allow a self-registering cut below flush the way an adze would. Based on the bevels, I'm thinking they are arranged to better cut a V than a point. A triangular notch might be useful in making loomed sheet goods tear at the apex. I wonder if it was used for something like sail making?