Knocked out a handful of S-hooks, which will go to the yarn shop for the bag display. 

Knocked them out eh? Appropriate verbiage for a blacksmith.

Frosty The Lucky.

Took a pic of a bench dog in action so as to get a visual.

I'm not clear Billy, is there a reason for a dog that shape? I've seen single points, and bars but that's a new one on me. Not being a wood worker guy my mental and shelf library is sparce. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Speaking of bench dogs, I just ran across an interesting video of a Chinese craftsman making a pair of squares out of rosewood and bone. About a third of the way in, there's a shot of him using a pair of pliers to hold his workpiece on edge for planing. You can see that the handles of the pliers appear to be made specially for this use, with right-angled spikes to hammer into the workbench. 

Here's a closeup from another angle:

Cool, eh?

Yes it is. One point of clarification on the cool thing though. are you referring to the tool itself, or how quickly you had me looking for the link to the video so I could watch it?

Frosty The Lucky.

Frosty, regarding bench dogs, Rex Kreuger has a great video on these specific bench dogs and some general overview. https://youtu.be/tsTZopljNmI?si=vZBSH7ZQASXVpLbs

I only got to watch a couple minutes of his intro and think I'm going to have to watch more of his videos, judging by his use of Dachshunds. 

Thanks for the link, I'll BE BACK to watch it all when I'm done with honey do chores. 

Frosty The Lucky.

4 hours ago, Frosty said:

One point of clarification on the cool thing

Both. 

Here’s a link to the Facebook video:

 https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1ENon8yXkD/?mibextid=wwXIfr

 

Playing me like a fiddle John, like a fiddle. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks for the great video suggestions / links today.

I learned a LOT about dogs and how this type worked watching Rex Kreuger's video. A long time ago one of my friends Father made cabinets and he flipped the top of his bench over, one side was scarred up and got dogs, nails, screws, whatever driven into it, the other side was without blemish. 

, I learned a lot of practical tool use, I'll be checking out more of his excellent videos. Thanks again Airyk.

 

While I clinked on the link to watch the long V dog in action I got completely sucked into the video, John. The beginning where the wood worker was planing the wood and using the dog showed detail of the drive points but held no surprises. The rest of the video was a joy to watch and listen to. I wonder what the boys around here would think of a framing square like that one? I'd have it hanging on my living room wall for visitors to admire.

Thank you once again.

Frosty The Lucky.

Frsoty, i was going to say you are asking the wrong person, i have very limited wood working skills. But after watching that video i know how they are used now. 

I think i know where my neighbor got the idea to use them from now though. 

Mod note: JHCC's comment about making an adjustable stop for his bar cutter has been moved to ITS OWN THREAD.

Hello all.  I hope everyone is having as pleasant weather as the PNW had this weekend after the triple digits last week.  Almost what folks used to think of when thinking of summer in the PNW (mostly cloudy, highs in the low 70's)

Continuing the mirror frames, I decided to revisit underwater scenes similar to what I did years ago (12-15) for the canopy of my little truck, there may be pics on here somewhere....

Started with some kelp-like stuff:

 

Drew a tenon on one piece:

Then decided I needed some fish, so I thought I'd try a seahorse.  Starting stock was 1/4" x 1-1/4" flat bar.  Here is the pre-shape after pinching it off the end of the bar:

Here it is about 1/2 way through:

And here's what I ended up with.  I'm not 100% happy (the head is to big and the tail could be longer, but not bad for a first attempt:

And here's kinda what I'm thinking.  I might use a rivet for the eye to attach the seahorse to a piece of kelp:

Have a good rest of the week all!

 

 

MAN you do some nice work Billy. I did a search for seahorse images and yours is a good enough representation to be a real one. I had no idea how many different ones there are but it was fun looking through the first page of images. 

A seahorse rabbit hole?

Frosty The Lucky.

I like the sea horse. That will be a quite nice mirror frame in my opinion. 

nice looking scene you have billy.

Great work, billyO. Looking forward to seeing more!

10 hours ago, billyO said:

I might use a rivet for the eye to attach the seahorse to a piece of kelp

Maybe brass?

Super nice!  Are you going to paint it in a life like way, or just wax it?

Made tongs this past weekend.  

To correct myself, I attempted to make tong shaped objects. 

Just playing with metal movement at this point.  Finding out that A36 moves like butter, and spills all over everything in the process like butter. 

Every single thing is wrong with these, except I made them, they open and close, and I am ecstatic that I can actually forge metal.  

I ended up cutting off the rest of the length of the reigns I didn't heat and will use them in other projects.  These will live in infamy above my shop door alongside my first deer antlers.  I like to think they'll inspire me to do better and better.

Since this picture I have also sewn a real neck onto my apron,  I was testing this out for the first time as well.

 

3/8" round A36

1/2" single forced air burner

coffee-can forge

3# double square head hammer

3# square head crosspein hammer

2# Round head ballpein

The 3# hammers were just making foil of the metal, but I wanted to test multiple different ones.

Toolshed, don't put them up just yet.   I have my second pair I made next to the forge for when I accidently push the material in too far.   Nice long reigns on them.   Congrats and we'll done.   Is this one of your first projects?

3/8" is pretty small for tongs. I have some that size but they are small and used for nothing over 1/4". The jaws will get hot and deform pretty quick. 

The part of the boss towards the reins is upside down. The step from the half faced blow should be on the opposite side from the one on the jaw end. However the boss like that can be used to make tongs that when the reins are squeezed the jaws open, useful for holding the inside of things like rings.  

But, if they work, are usable, and mostly if you learned anything, good job. 

Chad, this was my VERY first real project.  They deform at the slightest pressure, as Billy says.  Again, just testing if I could make metal move.

Billy, the boss part is SO WRONG as to not even count as tongs.  The thin metal deformed so badly I almost didn't even try a pin, but I forged ahead....Pun intended.

You get credit for making the attempt and even more for the good attitude. Keep up the good work good effort!

Toolshed, keep those around for posterity's sake.  My first pair still make me laugh at myself; they're pretty pathetic (and they were Ken's tong blanks). I didn't have the courage to post them here.