Frosty

But I LIKE mules. Treat them well and they're wonderful animals. How about this instead, Beat them like a rented politician? Now there's a worthless animal for you. Heck even mosquitoes are useful, trout and swallows need to eat you know. Frosty The Lucky.

​I'm not familiar with the term "screed" as you use it but if it's good to 1,200C it's more than refractory enough for lining a solid fuel forge. Frosty The Lucky.

Yeah, it's good stuff whatever it turns out to really be. If you find out the manufacturer you should be able to Google it and find out what they're using for an alloy. Sooner or later you'll run into something that knowing the actual alloy will matter. I doubt you'll need a dozen a week though. On the other hand you might come up with the golden gizmo. That thing you can make easily and quickly but everybody else just HAS to have. Golden Gizmos allow the craft to pay it's own way for you. Find out what else they toss in the dumpster, you never know what good scrounge is going to the scrapper. Frosty The Lucky.

Lovely lady, lucky guy. Now you've redeemed yourself I feel I can offer my CONGRATULATIONS!!! Frosty The Lucky.

Do you have a URL ID? That's perfectly acceptable here if included in your signature and not a commercial plug. I'm not a solid fuel guy but like looking at tools and equipment. Frosty The Lucky.

Looking good Ethan. You're going to be teaching classes in no time. Frosty The Lucky.

The subject line really got my attention, at first I read it as a steel plate cake. Nice piece of work it looks outstanding with the cake on it. I do have one complaint though, were are the pictures of the BRIDE!? Must I berate you savagely for such a breach of IFI protocol!? Frosty The Lucky.

That's pretty high fallutin clay for us blacksmith types but it should work. Like Charles says though you want to add plenty of sand to it or it'll shrink check as it dries. Ideally it should be just damp enough to make a clump in your hand if squeezed hard and break cleanly without leaving muddy streaks. If it crumbles it's too dry if it leaves streaks it's too wet. I like Steve's sometimes sign off, "I'm OCD and ADD everything has to be perfect but not for long." Frosty The Lucky.

That makes for a nice effect. I'll bet it'd be a good way to . . . blend the results of my uneven engraving skill level into something acceptable. I think I'll just tuck into my mental tool kit for an ambitious day. Frosty The Lucky.

Don't quote me but I believe most are 4140 chrome molly steel. Good for many basic hammers, top and bottom tools, hardies, fullers, swages, etc. Frosty The Lucky.

I had to look thixotropic up and you betcha that certainly describes bentonite. But it's not the characteristic I was referring to. One may be a function of the other but I don't know and I don't have access to the books. If you put say 100lbs. of clay in a container and pour 25lbs. of water in with it, close it up and leave it long enough, (different clays take a different length of time,) no matter where you sample the clay it will have exactly the same % of moisture. This was one test we used in the lab to determine if a sample was true clay or just met some of the criteria. Okay, I've just spent enough time researching clay on the web my eyes are aching. Clay of which bentonites are the most strongly active are colloidal in solution. Individual particles distribute themselves in water as widely separated as possible from each other, making the distribution perfectly even. This sounds like it might be the mechanism, makes logical sense. I wish I remembered what it was called, that'd be easy to look up. Frosty The Lucky.

I just looked at the replacement parts section of the NC forge page and that looks like your run of the mill Propane regulator. Last I looked the 0-30psi were about $35.00 and on the shelf at the local pro. Hardware store shipping included. I haven't looked at Suburban Propane's or Petrolane's show room so I don't know what they're charging. Frosty The Lucky.

No you're not alone on that one Charles. It's a little weird how much some of us have in common isn't it? Then again it makes us feel at home. I have many notebooks and stacks of graph paper tablets of sketches and drawings. You were rude Ken!? And I missed it. DRATS! Don't sweat kicking me off a side track, I tend to hijack threads being silly and really don't mind folk telling me so. Just don't try being too polite. We TBI survivors do better if you're direct with us, no need to be mean but just tell us if we're getting off track. Hinting around, trying to be kind just distracts us from your point. We'll get lost trying to follow everything you say and lose or miss the point. It's a TBI / Stroke issue. It ISN'T rude, it's the best way to get us on track. Frosty The Lucky.

Another thing Detroits were famous for was blubbering oil when idling. Used to be up here a diesel wouldn't get shut off all winter unless it was being serviced. It can be pretty hard cold starting a diesel when it's double digit sub zero COLD. Detroits weren't popular with EPA for that reason. Most guys tried to team drive so they could make runs without stopping except to eat and swap drivers. Ayup, drive them like they owe you money. Whip them till they scream. Weren't called "screaming Jimmies" for nothing. Frosty The Lucky.

Maybe so but the folk at Wally world get all excited if I do any scrounging there. I'll give a look see next time I'm there. I'm building a new forge and it'll be a good place for one. Frosty The Lucky.

Jim: You keep showing us these blades and they cause the dark side to call me more strongly. I like everything about them, good contrast in the patterns, fine lamina without being blurred tiny. The profile of both is elegantly clean and graceful. I'm sure the bovine is resting happy to know his/er ivory is being put to such high use. Not that the dogs wouldn't appreciate it but . . . <grin> I know I asked about your hand trouble a while ago and never got back. I had a computer glitch with IFI's new platform and couldn't post except rarely, even PMs wouldn't go through. Best of the best having the tumor removed. Going to make the scalpels? Or maybe you'd like one of us flakey types to knapp a few? Heck, we could hold a special meeting, feed you a couple pints and . . . Nevermind. A fellow, long passed now and I used to talk about his service in the Korean war. He was assigned to a Mash unit motor pool and being a blacksmith made tools for the surgeons. Some blades but mostly special clamps, wedges plates, etc. I don't know how much I should've believed him though, he said it was nothing like the TV show. Oh yeah the point of the little sidetrack. He said the surgeons loved his blades though he had to teach them how to care for them they weren't stainless. They took and held far better edges so surgeries went faster and with less damage. Frosty The Lucky.

Nice piece of work there. Is chief Pontiac etched? Well done Chris. Frosty The Lucky.

I dunno. Frosty The Lucky.

​Just like Judge Marian Millian on People's Court says in Cuban. "The cheap comes out expensive." Never maxing something out is a good thing. When was the last time you floored your car for any length of time? More regulator than you need . . . now eh? It's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it is an old philosophy of mine. Frosty The Lucky.

ITC-100 is zirconium silicate and kaolin clay about a 70:30 ratio. Nothing in it to set up it just dries out. Treat it like wetting clay. Put it in a sealed container with water and let it sit. Clay is hydrophilic and a hydro(something else) that makes it distribute water evenly throughout given time. You're going to want it like thin slip anyway so put at least twice as much water as hard lumpage by weight and give it a day or two without messing with it. We used to have to turn hard dry lumps of clay into mud then liquid to do hydrometer tests in the materials lab. We'd just drop say 50 grams in a plastic bottle with 100 grams of water and come back in a day or two. It's easy but it takes patience. If you try mixing it it'll be a PITA. You should see the looks on the faces of guys who thought you could mix bentonite with a spoon or paddle. Frosty The Lucky.

Could that be why I have so many different and odd tools? Well, there are piles of strange shaped metal of various kinds, and such. Oh heck I'm a pack rat and all of it is good for . . . something. Frosty The Lucky.

No, that isn't what I was talking about but a guy could sure turn it into one. What I was thinking of had a cap that fit over the can snuffing the flame. It wouldn't be too much trouble to come up with something that'd do. One of these days I'd like to pick up a piezo electric igniter, I just have to find a BBQ with one at the dump. It IS the modern way to light things. Frosty The Lucky.

I only mentioned period forges because I thought of them and who knows what might be useful info. You don't think I read up on concrete and portland cement for fun do you? You know Charles when I think about I don't know how they make their ash but it has to mimic volcanic ash which is basically vitrified glassy bubbles. Like clinker. They roast the lime in a large rotating drum with a big torch like flame firing down the center. They blow the crushed limestone into it and it burns almost instantly making quick lime. If they fired crushed clay into the torch in the same manner it'd fire like pottery one particle at a time almost instantly. Ash. The balls in the mill would blend it like a muller does casting sand. I wonder if I know any of the guys in the State lab anymore or I might just call one of the concrete plants. The plant manager of the one close has Akbash guardian dogs and we had Great Pyrenees Mountain dogs. We have good talks, very cool dogs. Now my curiosity is all wound up if I only don't forget. I'll write a note. Frosty The Lucky.

Hex shaft isn't low carbon though that isn't much help. The main use I had for it on the drill crew was for auger pin ends and extensions. The male or pin end was a 2" hex shaft that slid into the female or box coupler on the bottom end of the auger. Depending on what we were drilling it wasn't uncommon to stall a 453 Detroit diesel rapping on the pipes in low gear. The drill would twist the entire string sometimes a couple turns then the engine would stall and the string would rebound sometimes starting the engine in reverse. For folk who don't know Detroit Diesel engines used to be 2 cycle and darned powerful for the displacement. They'd run just fine either direction unfortunately the oil pump didn't circulate oil in reverse so you shut it off quick if it reversed on you. Later models were safetied to stop electronically if they reversed. If you've ever heard a 2 cycle dirt bike turning fast and hard enough to be up on the pipe you have an idea what a Detroit sounds like when it's at the top end of it's power curve and under load. It'll make your ears ring with plugs in and muffs on. Anyway the coupler that took the most stress was the one on the extension between the turn table on the head and the first auger and we used the same extensions for years. I don't know what that hex bar is but it's tough as it gets. I'd like to have a few feet I bet it'd make the Caddillac of hammers. Frosty The Lucky.

This is a sheet metal hammer used in deep areas. Think forming the base of a metal vase by reaching down through the mouth and working around the base. This would form a rounded corner between the foot and the stem. That's just a "could do that with it" example. I have a few similar if different shaped hammers in the Connex and keep them around because I just never know one might come in handy some day. IIRC there are good examples of this type hammer in use in silver smithing videos. One I seem to recall is a Japanese silversmith making a one piece tea pot. He uses a lot of different hammers some kind of similar to this one. Frosty The Lucky.