Great hammer & tong rack. Mine is a Hodgepodge of Army surplus M16 racks and wall hooks and buckets that still don't hold all of the hammers & tongs. I'm jealous.

9 hours ago, Mudman said:

Finally finished my tong and hammer rack.

Did you weld that with your "HF" welder?  They are looking pretty good.

Robert Taylor

Nice hammer rack Mudman. Shouldn't the tongs have their own that rests near the forge? It'd give you another row for hammers and an excuse to build something else you just HAVE to have. Hmmmm?

Originally I planned on making a rack against the wall that held the tong and hammer racks I use to wedge my anvils to their stands. That way I could keep specific hammers together for those jobs needing something special. Turned out about 90% of what I do used the same 4-5 pair of tongs and same 3-4 hammers and top tools.

I'd have another 150 hammers if they hadn't grown legs with a good 60 pairs of tongs. I might've needed special racks but now? Not so much. Keep your stuff well marked and locked up but more so learn who you can trust. 

Sorry, seeing a nice hammer/tong/ hand tool rack brings back a bitter memory. 

Frosty The Lucky.

On 2/3/2019 at 10:33 PM, HojPoj said:

Wife and I took a workshop on making a copper rose. 

Hey HojPoj. How many layers and how many petals on each layer. I did mine with 3 layers with 4 petals on each but yours has more petals

Did another section of hard refractory in the new forge before running out of Kast-o-lite. 

I’d swathed the block of the ribbon burner in plastic wrap before mortaring around it, which left a nice lip around the edge of the opening. Here it is from the back, with the block removed:

Continued prepping the work area. Installed some LED work lights, replacing the old fluorescent one and installing a second one on the opposite side of the garage. Now I can see after the garage door opener light goes off, or when I'm in there tinkering. I'll probably run one of those heavy duty power strips in there, so I can add a second one later once I get the position of everything laid out.

Sorry, nothing exciting. But still progress towards a goal.

I also replaced a couple of fluorescent lights with LED's. One in the Smithy with a pull chain so I can turn it off when looking at the steel color and the other over my work bench in the garage, wow what a difference. I plan to eventually replace all the lamps in both shops.

5 hours ago, Kevin Olson said:

Hey HojPoj. How many layers and how many petals on each layer. I did mine with 3 layers with 4 petals on each but yours has more petals

Mine was 4 layers, 4 petals/layer.

IFC, I found some at Walmart. $22 for 4' fixtures. Couldn't pass up the deal. The old fluorescent fixture was almost dead. It wouldn't be really turn on properly, had to jiggle the plug. This new one fires right up, 5000 lumens, nice and bright. Definitely know what I'm going to be putting up in the rest of the area when it's ready. And they're LED, so you're not running up the electric bill.

I'm an idiot though. I left my drill at work today, so the plan to get started on the anvil stand today gets put off until tomorrow afternoon after my typical Sunday Morning Stuffs.

A day late in posting but my shop session yesterday yielded my very first pair of tongs. 

Irondragon: Thank you, I put more effort than anticipated into the project. I see nothing wrong with yours. =)

Mines was a project that sat in pieces in a 5 gallon bucket for the better part of a year. This time, I was really annoyed with having to move so much stuff around to get to my grinder. So I took the time to finish it.

JHCC: I'm seeing a lot of truth to this. Time to start on a 50 foot, 10 tier rack. 

jlpservicesinc: Thank you, I'm quite pleased with my hammer collection. The is the culmination of 5+ years of buying hammers from my favorite makers. Old style hammers work just as good as the new ones. It's not the tools anyway, I've got plenty of nice tooling, but 90% of the folks out there could kick my butt with a $2 ball pein and a hand file. 

Color was random, but I like it also. The photos don't show it much, but I used a hologram sprinkle topcoat from Montana paints. It has a very cool rainbow reflection at various angles on top of the teal(ish) color. 

The cross bars haven't been notched, but it was on the list. However I want to maybe try a different method. Notching would probably be the fastest though. The tie in on the middle was something I didn't think about, very good advice, I will do that. There are multiple hammers over 4lbs on there, heaviest being 7lbs. 

 

Thanks Frosty, it's been a long waited project. I've had the materials to build for a year. Although it makes more sense to have tongs and hammers next to the forge, unfortunately my smithing shop is outside in the elements, and I'd prefer not to leave them exposed. I only have time to work on one or two projects at a time. So really I only have to grab maybe 2 hammers and tongs to start my day. I feel safer having them in the garage anyhow. 

A separate rack just for tongs is tempting, but right now I've only got a handful of them.

Sorry to hear about your tooling growing legs. It's things like this, that keep me from inviting people over. Only person allowed around my shop is 2 or 3 people, all of which I trust dearly. 

Today i made 2 roses in copper, first a test piece to get the hang and than one i will give to my wife for valentine's say 

ADHD that's superb, what did you use to texture the petals? It looks much finer than a crosspein

ADHD, That is stunningly beautiful. 

I used a chipping hammer 

Brilliant, I was going to say hand chisel. That would have been quite time consuming. 

I know know where my elbow and wrist are located  from all that light and fast texturing 

Try putting a little crinkle into the pedals and then adding come heat coloring - I use copper flashing.

Looks realy nice Jeremy k!

Here's a picture of the rose as I unfold the pedals and shape them.

I use a very small cross pein to texture the pedals before assembly.

Pedals are shaped with small scrolling tongs.

Made my first set of tongs yesterday. Had a bit of time before the class ended so I added a little scrolling on the ends of the reins. It makes it look like I meant to make the ends uneven

Love those scrolls. Reminds me of the one trick or treater from nightmare before christmas.

No forging today, but I did knock out a part needed by my son’s robotics team. 

When I heard someone say “What we really need is X. If only we had someone with metalworking experience!”, I knew where that was going. 

Finished the design and construction of a prototype equatorial sundial. Mild steel with copper inlay and a brass gnomon. I fixed it to a temporary mount (hence the ugly screws) on a fence post to check the accuracy (if the sun ever re-appears that is!)  Also checking how well a lacquered finish stands up to the weather. I've now got some stainless steel strip to try out too.

I need to find a better way of putting the numbers on, at the moment they are stamped in with letter punches and are a little too crude for my taste.