matto Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 Back to the froe a wood baseball bat makes a great handle and mallet for a froe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles R. Stevens Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 My mother tells of keeping milk in the Icebox to keep it from freezing, and of bringing the class goldfish home only to have it feeze solid over winter. Then again she describes the houses she grew up in as "chicken coops" tells of he mother laying lenolium in the kitchen only to have the wind lift it up. Yep, stick construction sure beats a mud hut... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 DOWNHILL?? through the snow? You got it all wrong NTK if it wasn't uphill BOTH ways it's not worth talking about. SHEESH! Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BIGGUNDOCTOR Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 My Dad made a froe from a leaf spring. All he did was electric weld the existing shackle eye , tapered the eye, straightened the blade out, beveled the edge, and done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles R. Stevens Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 I like it BGD, aplied lazieness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Evans Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 My Dad made a froe from a leaf spring. All he did was electric weld the existing shackle eye , tapered the eye, straightened the blade out, beveled the edge, and done.That is what I done did. Didn't bother to taper the eye though. Tapered the handle a bit and pushed it through with a bit poking out the other side. It was fixed with a saw cut and wedge.Alan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
remist17 Posted September 28, 2015 Author Share Posted September 28, 2015 My Dad made a froe from a leaf spring. All he did was electric weld the existing shackle eye , tapered the eye, straightened the blade out, beveled the edge, and done.This is exactly what I was thinking on doing. The spring I have still has the shackle eye. I would burn out the rubber bushing that still in there and weld it up. I know some say it does not need to welded, but I might as well make it sturdy. Thanks again all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 (edited) Charles; May I commend to your attention:http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/stfagans/buildings/smithy/(and they have been known to smelt iron from ore at St Fagans from time to time...not in the smithy; but out near the round houses IIRC) Edited September 28, 2015 by ThomasPowers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Evans Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 Charles; May I commend to your attention:http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/stfagans/buildings/smithy/(and they have been known to smelt iron from ore at St Fagans from time to time...not in the smithy; but out near the round houses IIRC)I went there on a school trip in the fifties. Especially memorable because despite all the warning signs, I stuck my head out the window of the train and got a lump of grit from the steam loco in my eye. Yes it was a Steam Loco in general service. Don't remember much about the buildings from that trip. White walls and blue slate roofs mainly....The Petersen family did a stint of working the forge for some years.I visited a couple of years ago and it has grown with many much younger buildings....there were even some from only a couple of hundred years ago.Alan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 History starts an instant ago. Kind of neat to see how a typical worker's house changed on the inside over the decades. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Evans Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 History starts an instant ago. Kind of neat to see how a typical worker's house changed on the inside over the decades.Very true…though some else said it is all bunk!Being able to relate directly to people from a bygone time is very valuable I agree.I have always loved studying dry stone field walls…They are like time recorders. Especially the ones that have been repaired with old bedsteads and bits of junk kicking around. You just know the guy had managed to get the animals back in through the breach and his kid was keeping them in the field while he rushed off to find something to fill the gap….fully intending to rebuild the wall one day!I had a powerful experience of this not far from you Thomas (relatively). Lesley and I were travelling around after the Saint Louis Obispo ABANA conference and were on route to visit Tom Joyce in Sante Fe. We flew to Flagstaff and hired a car with the idea of seeing the Grand Canyon and then driving over to Tom's. When we picked up the car the new-fangled automatic seat belt system caught us out and knocked Lesley's glasses off! Bit of a disaster to have smashed glasses on the eve of a sightseeing trip….Next morning we found a friendly optical guy in yellow pages who said bring the broken bits over, leave them with me and come back midday! Brilliant service on a Saturday!We went off to look at Walnut Canyon. We spent the morning clambering along the rock ledges of the Sinagua tribe dwellings. Which, as I am sure you know, were made by piling up river stones between the eroded layers of the canyon walls and filling in the gaps with mud. As I crawled into one of these out of the bright sunlight, I was feeling my way along the wall when my hand slid into the hand print left in the mud by the guy parging the wall a few hundred years before…talk about frisson of emotions and tingle of times past!Alan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benton Frisse Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 I'm glad this is a topic here on the good ol information super highway that is the internet! I was thinking about making one as well, I have some spring steel that is about 1/4 in thickness. I thought about wraping a short eye around a tomahawk mandrel, forgewelding it, and just shoving one of my tomahawk handles in it since they're tapered, right? Do a single flat grind, not too sharp, harden and temper to like 475-485 (talking 5160). I checked out the one from Neeman Tools... are most of your froe's 12-14 inches, typically? I was thinking of doing one around 8 for the test run. But heck... there's some folks that are saying mild works... I've got my fair share of mild flatbar to use for it then! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 Well what kind of wood will you be working? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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