MeltedSocks, that really blows about your gardens. They sure looked great before that. We use rabbit manure and vermicompost from Black Soldier Fly larvae we get from having rabbits and chickens. Then the larvae go to feed the chickens and the pigs.  Symbiotic relationship. Just one of the many things about having critters is the many variations of manure. And old hay that goes to feed the cows and goats and then that goes in my garden and gets spread out in the pasture to feed and cover the grasses. I could go on but I will stop there. 

In other news, no forging for awhile this evening. It's raining! I'll gladly forgo a session for that

I need to correct that. We don't feed the animals old hay lol. We use the waste hay from them in the gardens and spread out. My typing finger got ahead of my thoughts...

22 hours ago, CrazyGoatLady said:

The forum has seemed to have slowed down and I'm not sure why. 

Some if it is the way people manage threads on the net these days I think, some from not having chat anymore - although I get it - that had to have been resource intensive to moderate. Some of it's bloody FIF finally more or less died out and  a lot of the craze along with it, and some is because a lot of the old-timers have either passed or slowed down. I'm not remotely one of the greats, but I do listen, read a lot, and pick up on the theory...eventually. Nowadays I'm glad if I get to forge once or twice a month now and I used to try to get out there every day at least a little.

I'm grateful for the connections I've made on here and all the advice I've got and time I killed. I very much enjoy the people I've met, even the ones that were either grouchy as sin or at each other's throats half the time, and it's not every hobby you can meet your heroes at, even online. Way back when, first one that would talk to me on here was Stan "Trying-it", back before he broke the rules and then dug-in with both heels - he got banned but I kept up with him until he passed. Only guy I ever met that talked more and faster than me in real life. Could talk the legs off the donkey and then keep going 'til it walked off - probably why I annoyed him less than most. Despite everything, most of the older folks on here have always been helpful, generous, and well-meaning, no matter how grouchy they get in the face of stupidity or naivety that would shock a newborn.

A little stake repoussé on the flamingo. 

This is a busy thread today. If there are horse owners around you can almost always talk a free pickup load of manure out of them. It's been a long time since I lived down south but it's hard to believe a company that composts actually buys manure. 

A few old pallets will make a fine composter. one or two pallets laid flat with some 1/4" screen stapled on it to keep manure from falling through the slats and blocking air flow. Nail pallets vertically to around the sides so manure will pile. 

A 2 pallet composter works best if you leave it open along the wide side, that way you don't need to empty it to turn it. Another nice thing about pallet composters is being able to turn them up on edge and knock old matter out every once in a year or so. 

The pallets themselves will compost in a couple years so keep an eye out for replacements. 

Just building one from lumber is easy but do NOT use treated  lumber!

Goat and sheep pellets aren't hot enough to need much if any composting but they are an excellent way to gentle chicken manure in a composter. 

If you develop a largish pile do NOT overwater it! It's better to have the compost too dry than too wet and risk a fire. Steam in the morning good. Smoke B A D!

The issue with buying City compost is they're trying to save money disposing of garbage so really unsuitable garbage finds it's way to the composter. Meat is really bad for the veggies, composted or not. Anchorage started selling compost but was losing money big time until they hired someone who knew his nose from a table leg and they only compost vegetable matter for garden, lawn, etc. use. They have another larger compost bay for other organics like meat, stinky diapers, old clothes and such.

Each section has two nice large bays they can work with a loader. Turning the compost is as simple as moving the pile to the other bay. I THINK they turn it every other day. I do recall a few years ago they doubled the size. 

I used to consider buying a couple old dump beds to make composters but we never built a large enough farm to be worth it. Cleaning the barn with a backhoe-loader would've been SWEET. As long as they have pasture a concrete floor in the barn won't injure them. Like concrete might hurt rock hoppers, the goats preferred jumping on concrete if boulders weren't available.

I miss the livestock but times change. <sigh>

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Nobody, that was about my thoughts is FIF isn't a big deal anymore and some of the greats like Thomas Powers and Glenn are no longer with us. I came into blacksmithing about the time FIF came out, but that was coincidence. I had decided I wanted to be farrier. That didn't pan out, but it led into blacksmithing. I'm glad it did

Although anvil prices aren't coming down. The same anvil I bought new just a few years back is now $200 more than it was then. There's a guy on our local craigslist that is selling his entire outfit for $2500. He said it's over $5000 worth and looking at it all, he's probably right. I wonder if FIF was his inspiration. If i had that much cash, I'd buy him out. He's got assume pretty nice stuff

JHCC, love the flamingos!

CGL, thank you. As well it is mostly thanks to the many here who have inspired me and pushed me to do better. 

We have a lot of black walnut and chestnut trees here. And of course buckeye. 

When i was in Louisiana me and my dad were sitting in the carport watching the storm as hurricane Gustav came through Baton Rouge. There was a loud noise and the whole house kind of shook. My mom comes out and informs us about the tree limb through the roof. A giant pecan tree fell and landed in the breezeway between the main part of the house and the mother-in-law apartment. 

I have tinkered with smithing since i was just a wee lad. I used to heat up nails with a torch and make little knives when i was 8 or 10 years old. But it was FIF that spurred me into really getting into it. Ironically though i never really wanted to make knives i just remember not realizing that i could use other fuel sources than coal or charcoal among other realizations. I actually found this site when i was building my first gasser. I did not join for a long time becuase i did not work iron i worked steel, and the site is I forge Iron not I forge Steel, that is how ignorant i was at the time. 

Question about videos, on my youtube feed i have been getting a lot of videos, AI generated of course, that are titles like "Why life sucked and a medieval blacksmith" or some such nonsense. They, or the couple i actually watched, go on to talk about how horrible it was and make it sound so bad we are lucky we even have metal today. Am i the only one getting those or is this some new theme? 

RE compost:  Many of the large dairies and feed lots in NE Colorado have gone into the composting business as a way to deal with manure disposal.  They have big piles of composting manure which they turn with backhoes.  When it is fully digested it is sold to garden centers along the Colorado Front Range (Denver, Ft. Collins, Colo. Springs, etc.)  It isn't a huge income stream but it saves on having to dispose of it in other ways (field application, burial, etc.) and does generate some money.  Also, a big pile of digesting manure can dissolve about anything organic, such as soiled bedding straw, etc..  I have heard of some places using it to dispose of cattle carcasses.  Anything that will dissolve something that large, including bones is impressive in my mind.

The problem with a lot of municipal compost is that even if they just accept yard waste it may still have various pesticide and herbicide contamination.  Someone may have killed a bunch of weeds with something pretty toxic and then hauled the dead weeds with the chemical residue to the land fill.  Probably not something you want to put on your garden.  Garbage in, garbage out applies to compost as well as computers. 

Billy,I can relate! We had some straight line winds come through when my kids were little. Pretty intense rain with green skies. All of a sudden the house sounded like it was going to explode. A large tree right up in front of the hose had broken off at the base of the trunk and ended up through the roof in the kid's room on the back side. It was one of the scariest things I've ever been through. They had been huddled up with us in the living room because they were scared instead of being in their room. Thank God they were. That could have been so bad. Looking back though, we were a spectacle. People were driving by to see the huge upside down tree sticking up out of our house.

My husband actually found IFI and told me I should check it out. When I was a kid, fantasy movies were huge and you always saw them pulling out the flaming sword from the roaring fire in the icy mountainside lol. Love those movies. But that always attracted me to the idea. I just loved horses and I thought becoming a farrier would be a good way to combine both 

8 hours ago, CrazyGoatLady said:

JHCC, love the flamingos!

Just one flamingo, actually: those are the two halves of a hollow form that hasn't yet been welded up. Thank you, though!

I have a constant supply of chicken manure.  When I replant my garden next spring, I'm going to try this stuff "Garden Like A Viking" on youtube calls "JDAM."  It's manure mixed with leaf mold other organic matter--ideally the vegetable plants themselves after harvest.  He's got some interesting theories.

I have a pickle barrel full of the stuff that's been baking in the sun for a year.  It is supposed to lose that nasty rotten swamp smell after that amount of time.  I'm looking forward to trying it.

I have close to 12000 tons of chicken manure here at work that I need too get moved.  Good stuff, OMRI Certified organic 5-3-2 pellets and crumbles.   I've been working for the chicken farm for 5 years now,  I've learned quite a bit about it and how to compost.  I also threw some on my garden twice a year. 

 Melted, air is the key to good compost.  Watch it's temperature, if it drops below 120 degrees turn it, fluff it up.  You want the aerobic bacteria to flurish instead of the anaerobic.  The second creates the smells.   Also when you get started you want a good mix of carbon source (grass clippings, wood, brown cardboard, shredded plain white paper), nitrogen sources (manure), and water.  You want it to be roughly 60% water by weight.  

Fresh grass clippings are a nitrogen source; dried clippings are a good source of carbon.

Air is what makes compost, without it you have a septic reactor. Anaerobic bacteria, make methane and a way different output product. It CAN be used but requires further processing.

Some places combine septic and composting reactors to good effect. They compost the septic sludge after it's "cooked" in the methane generating septic reactors. Composted material can be introduced into the septic reactors as well.

The end product is excellent fertilizer but there is a huge benefit in tapping the pressurized methane from the septic reactor. Which is piped at low pressure through out the village providing cooking and heating gas. Probably smelly gas but when the choice is sending the kids out to collect sticks and animal manure to cook with and huddling for warmth, a little smelly methane is pretty welcome. Most of the heat stoves are "home made" and some are pretty ingenious. The one I remember was a pipe with multiple outlets with methane piped to it. The flames burned between two pieces of salvaged sheet steel and up to the exhaust, literally auto exhaust pipe. The sheet metal sides were only an inch or two apart and made for lots of surface area for the size of the fire. 

After seeing the pics and article I was sorry our septic system was in and plumbed or I would've built the combination system here. In winter above ground septic systems need to be heavily insulated to maintain proper temperature and compost piles slow way down, only the center staying active. However with the amount of methane generated, especially when I fed barn cleanings to the compost reactor, and then to the methane reactor we'd have a surplus after heating the house, water and range. Meaning I'd add two more loops to the baseboard heating system to prevent the composter and septic reactors from dropping below working temp. Of course with the heat loops installed the excess heat generated by the reactors the house's boiler wouldn't need to fire very often, the reactors would provide heat AND gas for the range. The excess pressurized methane would run a generator nicely. 

Sadly I discovered the septic reactor after I'd suffered the TBI accident and I was no longer up to designing and building the inter-linked reactors so it's been in one of my numerous notebooks since. 

Popularity and marketing killed FIF. The first couple seasons were mostly about forging, grinding and finishing knives with the host's running commentary. About half way through the second season Deb and I could pick the winner pretty reliably, the contestant selection formula became pretty obvious. And it just got worse as seasons progressed. Towards the end the show was mostly about the contestant's "story" and not about bladesmithing. Judges were walking around the stage interviewing contestants during the program! And Oh BOY judging the blades, Weel EET KEEL?

FIF was never anything but a reality show but it turned into a social media marketing thing. Who wants to watch that load of compost, 13 yro boys, glued to a smartphone? I expect programming was dictated by tweets and such from pre-teens.

Who knows though, writers aren't coming up with anything new so maybe a FIF reboot?

Frosty The Lucky.

JHCC, I realized it was one after I typed that 

Fresh greens have a higher nitrogen content than dry. I'm not sure of the mechanism but assume (go ahead say it) there is probably nitrogen locked up in the chlorophyll and sap circuit. Leaves transpire, atmosphere, CO2, moisture nitrogen and whatever other traces in. Then a little photo synthesis and out goes O2, water vapor and various wastes. Our atmosphere is approx 70% nitrogen.

Okay sifted a few search results and holy moly is chlorophyll a complicated bunch of things and surprisingly (to me) closely related to hemoglobin. 

Anyway, every type of chlorophyll listed contains a significant bit of nitrogen.

C₅₅H₇₂O₅N₄Mg

This would be "living" chlorophyll and I didn't see anything about dry vegetation.  

About the carbon. I won't rub that one in John but virtually all life on Earth is carbon based. There are some really interesting archeobacteria that may not be but I don't know. Now's the time I really wish Slag were still posting but life and all that stuff. <sigh>

Frosty The Lucky.

25 minutes ago, Frosty said:

virtually all life on Earth is carbon based.

Not "virtually", Frosty: ALL. Non-carbon-based life has been hypothesized, but not actually observed (outside The Devil in the Dark, of course). 

In this context, though, we're talking about achieving the proper carbon/nitrogen balance in compost (or, less formally, "browns and greens"), not whether or not a particular material contains carbon or how it got there.

That's where I wish Slag were still posting, we used to talk on the side a lot and occasionally on the phone. He was very much into bio research, he was a bio patent researcher and he liked sharing things he found because he couldn't stop looking. 

Seemed there was evidence, physical, fossil and such of non-carbon based archeo-organisms at or near the dawn of Earth life. Pre- plant, animal or?

I think it came up because we got talking about elements with enough bonding sites to be candidates for life, silicon being a speculator's or sci fi author's favorite.

After giving myself a quick headache both carbon and silicon have 4 covalent bonding sites and can form very similar stable and or dynamic compounds. 

Slag and I shared a very similar opinion of "scientists" with hard opinions of what Is and Isn't. 

Who knows Slag may still read IFI and might be tempted to jump into the conversation. BOY would that make my day.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

8 hours ago, Chad J. said:

Melted, air is the key to good compost.

The JDAM isn't compost.  It's a "tea."  Water plus manure plus leaf mold plus lots of organic matter.

I took a leftover section of 30" diameter double-wall corrugated culvert pipe I had after getting rid of the DOT ditch crossing my backyard.  I hooked up water misters and an air pump to it, on timers.  I even rigged up a contraption where I could rotate it daily.  Never really worked.  It wasn't deep enough. Half full it was only 15" deep.  Gave up on that.  I'm now trying the JDAM tea.

I doubled up today and made TWO more succulent leaves for the wife's shelf brackets, plus I took someone's advice and did some fullering to show some rudimentary veining.  I did a quick n dirty fullering deal out of a chisel.  I don't think I had the right shape.  Shows too many dents.  When I had it more curved, it showed up as a dot.  Maybe it needed to be wider?  IDK.  Suggestions welcomed.

Oh well, wife will love these once turned into a shelf bracket and painted.  One more to go and then it's off to the brackets themselves.

For reference, this succulent leaf is what I'm trying to duplicate.

BTW, I measured my stock before starting.  The 3/4" diameter went from 19" to 17".  So, only 2" per leaf and stem.  It surprised me, but the volume calculations would make it less so.

The real leaves look like they have a bit of random texture. After you paint them, they may look more like the real thing. I don't know what I would do otherwise except maybe buff them out somehow? I bet somebody here will have an excellent idea for you

Stake repoussé on the flamingo body halves. 

Looking good!

5 hours ago, CrazyGoatLady said:

The real leaves look like they have a bit of random texture. 

If you look closely, you can see subtle veins.  I intended to push down the metal in between the veins, leaving them proud. But it might have been better to cut-in the veins with a chisel and just ditch the idea of being anatomically correct.

I could try to flap-sand them, but they pleased the wife and they'll look okay when I paint them sage green with those pale yellow highlights.

John, you're on the verge of definitively showing the morass of pink plastic lawn flamingos that they are no match for a creative blacksmith! Am looking foward to seeing your Bada.. Bird showing attitude on the lawn!

--Larry

I own a pink animatronic flamingo that is filled with lights.  That's my go-to Christmas decoration if I don't feel like doing the Clark Griswold thing.