David R. Posted May 28, 2017 Share Posted May 28, 2017 Here is the progress on my new shop. I already wish it was larger, but an improvement over the shade tree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted May 28, 2017 Share Posted May 28, 2017 Wish it was bigger?! Oh gasp Noooooo! Hah, I built a 30' x 40' red iron steel shop building and it was getting crowded before I got the roof on it. No such thing as big enough for a blacksmith shop, nor enough power outlets, lights, windows or doors. It's in our DNA to fill more space than we have available. Nothing less will do. Frosty The Lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David R. Posted June 4, 2017 Author Share Posted June 4, 2017 Brickwork done on the forge. Have not had a fire yet but lit a couple empty mortar sacks and looks like it will draw pretty good. Now to rebuild the bellows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tubalcain2 Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 On 5/27/2017 at 8:39 PM, Frosty said: Wish it was bigger?! Oh gasp Noooooo! Hah, I built a 30' x 40' red iron steel shop building and it was getting crowded before I got the roof on it. No such thing as big enough for a blacksmith shop, nor enough power outlets, lights, windows or doors. It's in our DNA to fill more space than we have available. Nothing less will do. Frosty The Lucky. i have the opposite problem. my new shop is 25x40, which is 6x the size of my last one, and i don't have the money to fill it. i've got some bikes and 2 lawnmowers stored in part of it for the time being, but it still feels empty. i couldn't have afforded such a big shop myself (i'm only 17), but it was on the property my parent's just bought. i guess what i'm trying to say is, if anyone has tools they don't have space for, you know were too send 'um. David, that is one of the purtyest brick forges i have seen yet. good work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasent Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 Nice setup. Tagging along. I just moved and have no shop at the new place. Got my smithy kind of set up at my dads about 20 min away but it's just not the same as having it at home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 3 minutes ago, Tubalcain2 said: i have the opposite problem. my new shop is 25x40, which is 6x the size of my last one, and i don't have the money to fill it. i've got some bikes and 2 lawnmowers stored in part of it for the time being, but it still feels empty. i couldn't have afforded such a big shop myself (i'm only 17), but it was on the property my parent's just bought. i guess what i'm trying to say is, if anyone has tools they don't have space for, you know were too send 'um. David, that is one of the purtyest brick forges i have seen yet. good work. Now you have something to aspire to don't you? Try to keep as much floor space open as you can. I assume it has a garage door, yes? Keep the floor inside the door clear. This will let your offload supplies and move it to wall racks with minimum effort. It also allows you to load more easily. Best clear open floor space lets you do large projects. Things like railings, gates, grills, etc. seem difficult but that's only the handling. They're awkward and take up space. Doing the work on the other hand is middlin beginner level work. For instance, someone at a demo asks if you can make her trellises. "Oh yes Maam I certainly can." While you're exerting your perky young professional charm you pull out your (ALWAYS present!) tablet of graph paper. YOU step around the table bringing a stool for her to sit on and you start brainstorming the design, how it'll fit in her garden, lawn, dungeon torture chamber, etc. . Using graph paper to make her concept sketches on lets HER scale the product to her area. It doesn't have to be exact scale she's drawing what she likes and the graph makes scaling it to her area automatic. This way all you need to do is maybe run by with a tape measure and those sketches and get a couple hard numbers. From there you can scale her sketches up or down with a bare bones coordinate system. Eg. each square = 1' When you start laying it out to assemble in your shop you run a tape measure along one wall and mark every foot. Do it again on the opposite wall starting at the same wall! Use a snap line to mark the horizontal OR vertical lines in the sketch on the shop floor. Using a tape measure from one wall and mark the lines running at 90* to the first lines. You're remaking the graph paper on the floor but ONLY drawing in the penciled in lines on the customer's sketch. Trellises, garden gates, simple railings are all easy assembly and joinery if you can keep everything aligned, square and in order. Hmmm? You enjoy all that open floor space for the short time you have it little Brother it isn't going to last long. Frosty The Lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tubalcain2 Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 No, it's actually a 25 foot long sliding door... the entire front wall of the shop is a door. Pretty much, if I can fit it in the shop it will fit through the door. I plan to leave plenty of open floor space for big welding projects, etc. I want to leave enough room to say, pull a Corvette in to put a brush guard on it; or any other crazy projects that strike my fancy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 Corvettes are too low to the ground to get much off dead flat roads Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tubalcain2 Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 well that's why ya lift um, and add 4x4. yeah, i'm a nerd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 Amatures, they removed the spook. That'll just ruin the ground effect. Some people! Drive faster Thomas a vette will go quite a ways across virtually any terraine. Frosty The Lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 I used to work in the oil patch and my boss once called me up and asked if I could run an errand of mercy. We had a mudlogging unit out at a well and the new young mudloggers had driven a Corvette out to the job to show off their new car. So of course a blizzard hit and they could not drive out and they had opened both propane tanks for the heater at the same time and so when it ran out they were without heat. And they were short on food. So I took my old 1968 Phone Company Van, loaded it up with propane and food and headed out. As I recall I skidded off the road 4 times but I had a couple of come alongs, 40' of wire rope with loops on each end and 25' of log chain and I was able to pull my van back onto the road using a fencepost as a belay point. They were airdropping hay for the cattle and I have never seen as many ring necked pheasants in my life as they clustered around the exploded bales. Got out to rig which was bit up and circulating as they couldn't get a crew out there. I was so not impressed by their fancy new sports car. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 There you go, the Vette wasn't moving of course it got stuck. REAL survivor types eh? No fuel, pheasants everywhere and they were running out of food. Give the Vette a break, it wasn't the the car's fault it was purchased by a numb skull. Then again I sold my Vette when I decided I was going to stay in Alaska. I was pretty sure I could get around okay but other people had a bad habit of hitting things and Vettes are fiberglass. I bought a Jeep Wagoneer. Frosty The Lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted June 4, 2017 Share Posted June 4, 2017 The Vette's front air dam was only a couple of inches from the road surface and rig roads are pretty rough even without ice and snow ridges on them. It was during an oil boom and so the quality of new mudloggers had gone down a bit IMNSHO! I was only in my mid 20's but felt curmudgeonly already. (My old van was insulated and had a bed in it and stuff for camping so I was OK even if I got stuck for a week, standard transmission, *small* engine and clutch.) Another example of their cluelessness was they had a TV with them but were having difficulties getting reception so they took the grill out of the unit's oven and broke out the spokes to make an antenna (For young folks: then length and orientation of a TV antenna sections are pretty precise---or the old rabbit ears which were adjustable till you got the right setup for the signal!) Totally without gorm! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted June 5, 2017 Share Posted June 5, 2017 Now you're having us on Thomas like any of us believe any car had an air dam when you were in your 20s! Had me for a second till I remembered the first time I saw a spook on a race car and that was a couple years before marketing decided it was something to help sell fast cars. Heck I remember when spoilers first showed up. I'm pretty sure we're not that far apart in age. You were prepared? Pretty unusual for an oil field guy. I was working for a pipe inspection outfit, "AMF Tuboscope" two weeks on two off in Prudhoe bay. It was probably -10 in Anchorage when we boarded the plane, the weather screen at the gate said -50f with 30-50mph wind. A rather Loud individual in a seat ahead of me kept expounding on how he was going to show us how it was done in the oilpatch. On and on for about a 90 minute flight. We deplaned via the rear air stair on the 727. He was wearing cowboy boots, Levis and a cotton shirt under his cowboy hat. He wouldn't have made it to the bottom of the air stair if the guys behind him would have let him run past. They hurried to get out of the way though, he wouldn't have made it to the bus and those rides were none too warm. Tuboscope picked us up in a pickup. How out of touch can you be to fly to the North Slope of Alaska in February and expect Anything BUT deadly frostbite in seconds weather? Not even a windbreaker. Frosty The Lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gote Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 On 2017-06-05 at 3:30 AM, Frosty said: How out of touch can you be to fly to the North Slope of Alaska in February and expect Anything BUT deadly frostbite in seconds weather? Not even a windbreaker. Frosty The Lucky. I have met a gentlman in suit and city shoes on a Swedish mountain trail above tree limit. We used to call these misplaced nature lovers 'pelicans' I do not know why. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mutant Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 Your shop is looking fantastic! Don't feel bad about the size, mine is only 33 square feet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 5 hours ago, gote said: I have met a gentlman in suit and city shoes on a Swedish mountain trail above tree limit. We used to call these misplaced nature lovers 'pelicans' I do not know why. Some of us call them selected naturally. Bears are coming out of hibernation and there are public service announcements on the quarter on the radio every TV news cast and TV spots in between warning people to NOT pet the moose, do NOT touch the babies, bears are dangerous back away slowly. etc. etc. We still have tourists stomped to paste monthly and occasionally mauled. There was a TV program years ago, "Grizzly Adams" In which the main character tamed a grizzly bear name of Ben. A spin off program was "Gentle Ben." There are STILL people who believe if you show respect you can talk sense to wild animals. We lost some of those pretty regularly I was calling it evolution in action a long time before the Darwin Award was thought up. We used to call them tourists until the number of resident Alaskans double daring their position in the food chain became to obvious to ignore. There've even been movies made. <sigh> Frosty The Lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John in Oly, WA Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 I remember one story of a young guy who apparently thought he was making very good progress communing with the bears in Alaska, up until he was killed by one. Must have watched too many Disney movies as a kid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted June 8, 2017 Share Posted June 8, 2017 5 hours ago, John in Oly, WA said: I remember one story of a young guy who apparently thought he was making very good progress communing with the bears in Alaska, up until he was killed by one. Must have watched too many Disney movies as a kid. Worse he got his girlfriend killed and eaten too. That one is on Fish and Game's shoulders, they kept letting him back in spite of his willful gross violations of State and Federal law not to mention basic survival. F&G KNEW he'd set up his camp on the main trail bears used to access the good fishing. Frosty The Lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted June 8, 2017 Share Posted June 8, 2017 Evolution in Action. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLAG Posted June 8, 2017 Share Posted June 8, 2017 Frosty, I remember years ago up north, when a day was brisk enough that when a cup of boiling coffee was thrown into the air it hit the ground as ice crystals. Folks who did not heed such serious conditions very quickly ended, in the infirmary, in serious conditions. Up north, the environment did not have to wait for Charles Darwin to do the job. Arctic safety sessions were strongly encouraged or compulsory. Yet: I miss those days, dearly. SLAG. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sodakmack Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 Wow that's a beautiful shop you got there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 Heh, heh, heh. Funny you should mention throwing hot coffee on a COLD day. Throwing pans of boiling water hit the news this winter though they didn't mention it freezing before hitting the ground. Though the videos clearly showed all the water turning into ice fog and drifting away, not much if anything made it to the ground. If you get your position in the sun and camera angles right you can get some REALLY cool effects, even ice fog rainbows. It was a past time when I was new to the country. Oh yeah, COLD weather can punch your ticket in so many ways. There was a legend (sort of) about a new chef hired for a North Slope camp. Day two after several cold weather safety classes he took a sauna, stepped out the door into -60f weather. That's nothing new, we all did it, almost as good as a cold dip in a tub. Anyway, he was one step out the door and took a big DEEP breath through his mouth. He was dead of shock before he hit the ground, frost biting your lungs that severely is almost instantly fatal. NOT inhaling through your mouth is all but beaten into you with sticks in EVERY SINGLE safety film, lecture, dispatch and by your companions. I just hope he hadn't already passed the stupid gene along. Frosty The Lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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