Good Morning No Special,

That would be an awesome build.

A father and son, here in Victoria, built a 'Rat Rod' using a huge box of different 'Crescent Wrenches' yes, adjustable Spanners. Every handle, support, mirror bracket, retainers for headlight pots, etc. were all different appropriately sized 'adjustable Spanners.  After the first glance, it looks completely presentable, even the wing at the back was supported by Spanners!! LOL

Gotta take yur Hat off, for certain 'Acts of Creativity'

Neil

We've been working on this little mini trailer house project for about a week now, its being sponsored by one of our local construction company's  
5th period double block did the floor & my class did the first walls & silts 
Pardon our goofy smiles the entire class was hilarious - something about building & making jokes warms my soul

Great stories, everybody!

The Prowler was called the "double ugly" and another not-so-nice name that begins with a 'Q.'  Yeah, we were ugly, but we were also the loudest.  Our two turbojet engines (not turbofan) at military thrust were louder than an F-14 in afterburner, so we were told.

On deployment in the Philippines, we used to do "low altitude tactics training," which was a holdover from when Soviet fighters had no look down-shoot down capabilities.  Our tactic was to get as low and as fast as the pilot was comfortable  doing.

The first part of the course was yanking and banking low to the ground with another Prowler pretending to be an aggressor.  When we reached the river valley, we'd do MAC--minimum altitude capable.  My pilot got us down to 80' AGL doing .86 Mach.  In the distance, I could see a man wearing one of those wide, flat, cone shaped straw hats standing up in his bangka boat in the middle of the river.

You know how startling it can be when a Blue Angel does a "surprise attack" when you know it's coming at some point in the airshow.  Imagine you're an unsuspecting old man minding his own business out on the water, and a jet that is louder than an F-14 in afterburner goes over you at treetop level doing 670 mph.  I'm pretty we gave him a heart attack, or at least made him fall into the water. 

In the shop today, I did a start up and test of my 12 ton hydraulic forge press.  No leaks.  Everything seems to work fine, except the angle irons with the wear plates get knocked out of whack sometimes.  I'm going to get some grade-8 bolts so I can really crank down on them.  Hopefully, that will keep them aligned.  Otherwise, I may have to add some grade-8 through-pins.

 

Reading about the different aircraft brought back a lot of memories. 58/62 USN. First ship USS Saratoga. Lots of warbird time. Fast forward to late 70's and most of 80's. Was on  crash rescue team at Madison, Wi. for 10 tears. Air National Guard had a varied group of aircraft during that time. Favorite was the A/10 Warthog.   was able to go to the range several times and it was awesome.

They had an airshow with the Thunderbirds of course but the day prior the Blue Angels finished a show in Milwaukee. Suddenly over the radio we hear blue angel request permission for a flyby. And boy did they do it. when he got about to the half way point of the runway he pulled the stick into his belly and kicked it in the butt. It made this old navy guy feel pretty good.         

We do have some impressive aircraft, but when i was in Germany i had to pull border duty. We was sitting in overwatch when a Russian Mi-24 HIND helicopter came over the tree line. That was pretty impressive.

Here's what the final product looks like:

Have a good week all!

Cool.

Wonder how long it stays like this on a dog collar

6 hours ago, gewoon ik said:

Cool.

Wonder how long it stays like this on a dog collar

Hahaha...Well, I use GunKote on pretty much all my damascus pieces with the exception of kitchen knives so it should look good for a while. 

However, this is just a hook going on the wall and the leash goes on this, not the other way around.

"Scotty!  We need more GunKote!"

One last airplane related story, when stationed in Germany we had an airfield on post. We were out one night and had to charge the batteries. A minute or 2 after starting the tank a couple medics came up lost on a night land nav course. They had heard the turbine on the tank wind up and thought they were near the airfield. 

So, on to smithing.

Heartbreak. My daughter got me this butcher she found in an antique store about 10 years ago.

Made a candle holder for a customer request. Worked on necking down pipe, i could do something with it but it seems to be way to time consuming to be practical or profitable. 

Worked on a couple finials i have had floating around in my noggin. The one is just a scrolled welded spike, pretty common, just never really did one. The other was supposed to be a pineapple. Rough and ugly but with some refinement i may be able to use. 

 

 

Necking pipe calls for either a spring tool or butcher with fullering dies, then it foes pretty quickly even by hand.

Frosty The Lucky.

I didn't make these in the shop today; these were Christmas gifts. I am proud of how they turned out so I wanted to share with the group.

My wife wanted some sort of display/holder for jewelry for Christmas. I used 16x16 copper wire mesh as the screen. The flower is made from some 1/8" copper plate I salvaged from a scrap industrial switchgear. I mulled over how to attach the screen for a while. I ended up using pennies as large washers on the back side to distribute the strain on the mesh. I did not punch holes in the mesh, rather I used a tapered rod to open up the mesh to accommodate the rivets so the wire wouldn't unravel.

The trivet was for my Mother-in-Law. I took a slice of 8" Schedule 40 pipe, cut it into thirds, flipped the pieces around and inserted small pieces of bar to act as feet.

Everybody seemed pretty happy with their gifts, so I'll call it a win.

Got a little forge time in today. And during a welding process I got distracted for a second. three of the four pieces went away.

I cut it off, and welded together what remains. But I wanted a longer piece. Oh, and I need more baling wire. Did a little more to the dragon as well.

I may start over on the dragon, I'd like his forehead to be more pronounced.

 

Mothman,  That jewelry rack is the bees knees!

Love the jewelry racks Mothman, those are going to equal years worth of brownie points!

Blue, It's been so many years since I forged a dragon's head I'd have to go look at one to remember how I did it. BUT I remember a couple tricks.

Determine how long you want the snout and just break the upper edges to the eyes. Just ease the edges for the nostrils and mouth. Do you have an eye punch? I made one by welding a short piece of angle iron perpendicular to a piece of thickish steel, maybe 1/2" for the base. So long as it isn't sheet steel it'll be fine. Select a sacrificial center punch and holding it in the angle iron "Guide" put a healthy punch mark in the base. Drop a BB in the punch mark and grind the point off the center punch till it's SLIGHTLY larger around than the BB.

Heat the end of the punch to mid-high orange hold it into the angle iron guide and give it a stout smack with a moderately heavy hammer. Oil quench it while it's still red and see what kind of eye it punches in a practice coupon. Rinse and repeat the above till you get one you like. Yes?

Now heat the dragon's (or wizard, or?) head, drive a center punch it straight into the nose of the dragon. (don't make me have to SAY one for each nostril) Unless of course you're making a uni-nostril dragon. Use a chisel to slit the mouth, no need to open it up, just a snarly looking line looks well.

Now the eyes. The top of the snout has a bridge and sort of curve represented by the break you forged into the edges, yes? Where it stops will be the forehead and you do this by driving the eye punch into each facet. It will spread the steal, raising the brows and causing the space between them to sharpen into a bit of a ridge in the brow.

It's faster and easier to make than reading or writing the description, Honest.

Frosty The Lucky.

Got to really swing the hammer this evening.   Yesterday I was fiddling with a collar on a plant hanger.  Still not happy with it.  Tonight I did 3 railroad spike cleavers and another freidrich's cross hummingbird.  

On 1/26/2025 at 2:30 PM, Mothman_c3w said:

I didn't make these in the shop today; these were Christmas gifts. I am proud of how they turned out so I wanted to share with the group.

 

Really like the jewelry stand, but LOVE the simple design on the trivet.  I might have to do a version (probably with upset square... well, 120 degree... corners) and turn it into an advanced smithing workshop...
Thanks for sharinfg

I made my first set of dies for my nominal 12 ton.  These were easy.  Drawing dies will be pretty straightforward.  Squaring dies will be a challenge unless I make them from angle iron.  Might just buy those from Coal Iron Works since I used their die blanks for my setup.

Added a pocket on my apron for my new folding ruler. 

Went to the doctor who informed me i was 2 years past due for my tetanus shot, now my arm is sore. Figure being a balcksmith and a machinist that may be one i want to stay up on.

Today the wife was doing dishes and told me one of our pans needed tossed. Not sure where this one came from and i am sure in is just a cheap pan but i like it very much. The bottom fell off. 

So, i was wondering does anyone know what kind of solder this is? Can it be salvaged? And how would i do it? I am thinking maybe clean it up, a little flux and heat both the pan and the bottom until the solder runs. Like i said it is provably a cheap pan but i like it alot, if i can not do it no big loss though. Maybe just fun to experiment...

 

Is that Aluminum?

I got curious and went down this rabbit hole once, not initially about fixing them, wanted to know how they attached the two metals. The different metal bottoms are either for better heat transfer (not steel on aluminum, that would make it worse), acting as a heat sink to even heat out, aesthetics, or so that aluminum can be heated more easily on an induction stove.

The bottoms are press fitted on, sometimes with perforations, then they're either brazed, or friction welded. But...coefficients of expansion being different, sometimes it fails and the bottom pops off. I'm guessing that friction welding is gonna be prohibitively difficult at home, so the way to go would be clean the heck out of the aluminum oxides, then braze it.

Obviously, you can't use brass or brass powder for that, since the melting temperature of brass is something like 600 degrees hotter than aluminum. I've heard of soldering aluminum to aluminum, but you have to clean and tin the aluminum first, and even then, the melting temp of anything but some silver solders is going to be not much higher than cooking temps so you'd be risking failure, and you're going to have a crazy amount of finish work to clean up the pan afterwards, and again, that kind of silver solder would be approaching the aluminum melty point.

7 hours ago, BillyBones said:

And how would i do it?

If none of the above works, I'd be tempted to try JB weld?  Don't they claim it works on exhaust manifolds?  

I think you're out of luck. The problem with any non-factory repair is that you're going to have either air pockets that create cold spots and will serve as nucleation sites for the next failure or an adhesive that is going to interfere with the heat transfer. I think your best bet if you want to keep using the pot is to ditch the disc, clean off the bottom of the pot, and remember whenever you use it that the thin metal isn't going to behave as well as the original pot did.

4 hours ago, LeeJustice said:

Is that Aluminum?

The pan is stainless. Guess i should have included that bit of info.

Thanks for the replies. I was figuring it to be a lost cause anyhow. Gives me an excuse to buy more cast iron. I may try sometime though just to try and see what happens. I am in no rush so i will put it on the back burner for a while. (pun intended)

Stainless to steel silver solders well and you can use enough for a solid join. You need to know what you're working with metal wise and heating the thin section without warping it can be tricky. I believe they're soldered in an oven at the factory. Probably have to use a large torch with a soft, even bushy flame

It'd be fun to play with but I wouldn't expect success.

Frosty The Lucky.