What did you do in the shop today?

[Hefty]

I like that Billy. If you needed to hang two off adjacent sides of one corner, it would lend itself to a stag's head kind of look.

Not today, but I finally finished off my first rounding hammer over the weekend. It's been an on-again-off-again project, but I finally got some good consecutive hours in the shed to finish forging it and got it heat treated, sanded/filed/polished, and handled.

I also experimented with what will be the basis of my future touchmark, with my initials overlapped. Man, it's hard to line up letter punches over the top of each other! I hope it's easier when I remember to do it hot so they can be a little deeper.

By a happy coincidence it is only 20 grams lighter than my first, store-bought cross-peen hammer!

Cheers,

Jono.

[Frosty]

Nice looking hammer Jono, have you used it yet? Nothing beats using tools you made yourself.

If you clamp a guide bar to what you're letter stamping it's much easier to get the characters lined up and you can measure to set spaces or overlap. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Hefty]

Only some light work, cold, on some 6mm round bar.

Need some more time to heat up the forge. Maybe forge some leaf key rings, or something simple like that, just to get a feel for it.

[Shainarue]

Nice looking hammer Jono! 

[Davor]

I have an old CZ motorcycle and I bought a side mirror and didn't like the mount. After trying different ways of making it work I just made a new mount. One screw, one old pice of window hinge, 12mm square and 6mm round stock.

[jlpservicesinc]

That is cool. Great job.   175CC? 

[MacLeod]

Hope you're all well.  Not done as much forging recently due to sad news in the family.  Someone told me about anglerfish lamps so I tried one, used up all the offcuts of propane tanks from making gas forges.  Then trawled the internet to look at millions of better ones, still churning out fireside sets most of the time.  

Very nice hammer Hefty and a very nice penny scroll John.  I find that if you get the start perfectly square everything else falls into place. 

[lary]

Thats different, wonder if filling the body with some type of fluid could turn it into a fly trap. The light being an attractant. Just spit balling.   

[Davor]

4 hours ago, jlpservicesinc said:

That is cool. Great job.   175CC? 

Yes, CZ 175/477 year 1972.

[Frosty]

Great job on the mirror mount Davor!, Well done!

I'm not sure what to say MacLeod, I love it but the possibilities are so thick I'm almost speechless! I'm thinking rubber fingers in it's mouth with the Halloween candy would be a perfect seasonal use.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Shainarue]

Love the anglerfish lamp Macleod. I'm in a group on FB called "Scrap Metal Art" and some of my favorite shared projects on there are the sculptures patched together with sheet metal. 

[gewoon ik]

Nice lamp, really nice.

If i remember i will probably steal your idea in a couple of years as my kids need nightlamps

[Frosty]

Thank you VERY MUCH Shaina! I've just spent a couple hours looking at pics on Scrap Metal Art!

Frosty The Lucky.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

You too huh... some very good stuff there had to bookmark it.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sails. ~ Semper Paratus

[Frosty]

I did too but there's a little glitch from my point of view or maybe it's my comp settings windoz updated a couple days ago and all my settings were reset to default. I don't know though it might be me. If I click on a picture to get a closer look the site sends me back to page one when I close it so I have to sift through a bunch of pages to get to new posts. I even tried bookmarking the page I was on but no joy. <sigh>

I have to be careful not to spend too much time there it makes me want to collect scrap!

Frosty The Lucky.

[MacLeod]

Thanks Guys!  And thanks Shaina for that tip. 

I put it into a shop in Stornoway (The principle town on the island I live on) where I sell fireside sets and just got told it’s sold. Couldn’t have come at a better time either. I’ve said it before though, if it wasn’t for ifi and everyone here’s constant advice and encouragement I’d probably have given up the first time I burned my fingers. 

[alexandr]

Finished 2 projects. Hanger in the hallway and a lantern on the balcony. Unfortunately the photo is bad.

[Frosty]

It's hard to get a good picture with those light conditions. All that light colored stone, the sky reflecting from the glass, the bright sky and the dark lantern right smack in front of the heavily shaded deep eaves.

Is there a time of day the sun is on the balcony? Low on the horizon behind you? We had reflectors for those situations in photography class that would reflect a LOT of light but softly. You could try a large mirror but the shape and sharp edges of the light would detract from the picture. 

An old trick was to spray a mirror with dry deodorant to diffuse the reflection, IIRC more heavily around the edges of the mirror so the reflected light didn't have hard edges. There were commercial products for this too but that was 50 years ago when I took photo classes. 

I'm thinking you'll just have to watch for good light to get good pictures. 

It's all beautiful work, you've shown us pictures of the lamp and the coat rack (hanger) and they're both the level of excellence I've grown to expect. A good picture would be nice though. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[George N. M.]

Alexandr, Madelynn says that it is a good thing that you are close to 10,000 km away or we would be spending much of our income on your work.  Your work is beautiful as installed on this house and really fits and complements the basic architecture.

If you ever wanted to immigrate to the US you could easiy make a living supplying the high end homes in places like Vail, Aspen, or Telluride, Colorado, Park City, Utah, or Jackson , Wyoming where there are lots of folk with lots of money.  The only problem would be finding affordable housing and shop space within a reasonable distance from these places.  But, I am sure that you have your roots very deep in Russian soil and it would be difficult to transplant you.

George

[gewoon ik]

I think he used to has best of both. Before russia invaded ukraine, alexander send a lot of his work to the US. Probably to the homes you mentioned. And I hope for him, for fair prices, his work deserves it.

And he has an affordable living arrangment and workshop and a nice garden.

[Chad J.]

Not going to be in the shop today.   I'm going out and doing a demo at the same Distillery I was at last year.   It'll be fun but it seems like a different style of demonstration because last year everyone came specifically to watch me work and they stayed the whole time.   So playing off of that I have planned several simple projects, starting from leaves for warmup and working up to a cutlery set with a Blacksmith's knife.   I think my next upgrade is going to be an hand cranked blower to replace the ratchet blower on my rivet forge.

[BillyBones]

As always Alexandr, gorgeous work. 

Started making a new shillelagh. Been aging this piece of wood for close to 6 years now. It is honeysuckle and it is hard and strong enough that i smashed an old oak chair with it and only made a couple small dents in the wood.

My wife was digging out some of her summer yard decor the other day and found this bell i made a few years back. I thought i had lefft it at the old house when we moved. So glad she found it. It is made from a CV shaft with an old CV bearing for the clapper. I should have got video of it so you could hear the ring becuase it is quite impressive. Anyway just thought ya'll might like to see it. 

[alexandr]

21 hours ago, Frosty said:

It's hard to get a good picture with those light conditions.

Jer !

I don't know about you, we have a serious problem. They steal photos and post them on their websites, passing them off as their own work. Therefore, I post low-quality photos on the Internet. I've been taking photos with my smartphone for the last few years. I can fight plagiarism, the courts consider such cases. But I don't have the time or the inclination to do it. On my site I post stolen pages http://art-metall.ru/?id=144 (Glenn, I'm sorry, remove the link if I broke the rules.) But about 15 years ago I stopped doing this, a useless thing.

[alexandr]

20 hours ago, George N. M. said:

If you ever wanted to immigrate to the US you could easiy make a living supplying the high end homes in places like Vail, Aspen, or Telluride, Colorado, Park City, Utah, or Jackson , Wyoming

A couple of months before the war, I began to negotiate with a customer from Nevada. It was necessary to make several large chandeliers. Almost agreed. But alas...
Russia is becoming an unsuitable territory for normal, thinking people. I am no longer able to open a new business in another country, but I am ready to go to work in another country. Unfortunately, according to the rules of the forum, I cannot comment on what is happening in our country. It's just a bunch of foul language.

Guys, thanks for the kind words about me.

[jlpservicesinc]

Alex, great work as usual..   Seeing quality work time in and time out is a testament to the maker. 

There are good and bad people in every country.   Just too bad the people who would do the most good don't have the desire to be power-hungry and take office. 

As for the activity. 

I finished the wedge together flat bed yesterday and got some paint on it.   Night and darkness came in way to fast so missed a few spots. 

The holes in the ends are for adjustable stock racks.   1.25" square tube fits in the holes and can be 9ft long. 

The bed itself is about 9ft 6in so technically the extensions could be about 7ft long so a total of 16ft long bars and such could be loaded onto the flat bed and still be supported for transport. 

Learned a lot on building this one.  R&D build.