What did you do in the shop today?

[BillyBones]

Thomas, I read a while back that people used to use clinkers as filler in walkways, kind of like gravel. I have a low spot next to my driveway that is slowly filling with clinker. Got to sort it though do not want any big hunks of metal puncturing one of these "should be made of gold for the price" tires on my truck. 

CGL, i made a couple of those for my daughter. She was having some problems with her X so i made the pins square and about 6" long. They were made from spring so i hardened and tempered them. So if he gave her any physical problems she could do a number on him. Made the ring big enough to put your ring finger through to get a good grip. 

[CrazyGoatLady]

Billy, that's good thinking. Dual purpose. The pin came out to 8" on this one. I bet I could do some damage with that. Hope she's not still having problems with him. I've been through that. Hope she stays safe. I can get my ring finger through this one

[SLAG]

Mr. B. B.,

A sturdy comb is less suspicious and is very effective.

You use it to rake soft body features, such as eyes neck, etc.

Some of them have sharp ends that can be latterly used to stab.

A tightly rolled up newspaper is surprisingly effective.  Actually very dangerous is used correctly.

But the best self defense is avoidance  and noise.  (loud commotion).

Just my two cents,

SLAG.

[ThomasPowers]

Cinders from coal stoves/house furnaces were a traditional path surface and were used on athletic tracks for a long long time. Some of the schools I went to had cinder tracks. Of course it helps to have a good door mat to clean your shoes on before going into the house.  Out here goatheads are so prevalent I have steel catwalk mesh door mats to try to leave them out of the house. 

The coal used makes a big difference in clinker.  I've used some where there were about 2 table spoons of light ashy clinker after 4 hours of work, and others where you were pulling huge glassy ones every 15 minutes.  (Guess which I preferred!)

[jlpservicesinc]

CGL that is a really nice piece. Well done. 

 

[CrazyGoatLady]

Thanks Jennifer. Thought of making some of these for the ladies for Christmas. But I need to make them lighter. 

[Glenn]

May want to knock the flux off some old welding rod for smaller stock.

[Eventlessbox]

Found an old rusty masons sledge today for dirt cheap. Decided to change it to a French style crosspein with a rounding face. Would love feedback. Is the rounded face geometry ok?

[Dan Bance]

Today in the shop I had my first successful forge weld. (and there was much rejoicing).  No, it's not photo worthy.  Just some badsaw blades that I got cheap (my steel supplier sells their waste blades for $0.75/pound).  Stacked together, bound with some wire, and a mild steel rod welded on for good measure as a handle.  Not pretty, the far end of it has some delamination issues, but it is ultimately a single piece of steel.

[CrazyGoatLady]

Glenn, thank you for that tip. I will remember that  

[Goods]

Keep an eye out for small diameter garage door spring. You could make hundreds of hair pins out of one of those and they’re  often free.

To the comment of hardening the pin, be wary, there are still some areas with old laws still on the books from when women would use hat pins for self defense and male leadership at the time frowned upon the number of men with puncture wounds... and women defending themselves. (Can’t give concrete details on this, my son is the well of knowledge here)

[CrazyGoatLady]

I seriously need to go scrounging. You guys are expanding my view on what to look for for forging material.  Hmm if it's not against the law in an area, I bet those barrettes also advertised as self defense would sell well at a gun show. Not that I'm thinking about doing a gun show. But Billy's idea is heck of a good one. Thanks Goods

[pnut]

5 hours ago, Goods said:

 there are still some areas with old laws still on the books from when women would use hat pins for self defense

This is true. Hat pins were used for protection. Myself grandmother had a large collection from when she was younger. Her father encouraged her to carry them and use them. He was an ethnic Greek man and any physical contact between unmarried people in public or married people for that matter was a no no where he came from. 

As to the laws you'd be surprised at all the laws that haven't been cleaned off the books after becoming obsolete. A hat pin assault law would not be the strangest law left over from the past. I think now it would be looked at like a knife and whatever laws covering the carrying of knives would probably apply.

Pnut

[Glenn]

CGL Scrounging is just keeping your eyes open. Taking a different route to and from helps.  GTTS, go to the source, works. Need old auto parts, go to the auto mechanics. Need metal drops, go to the fabricators or machinist. Need horse shoes, go to the farrier or horse barns, and etc. 

A notebook helps record what was found where and who you talked to. This is important when you want to go back, thank the fellow, and ask to revisit his stack of throw-a-ways.  Wear gloves, eye protection, heavy boots, and ppe so he knows you are serious about safety.  Gifts that you have made always help.

[pnut]

When it comes to scrounging, I seem to have better luck when I'm walking or the passenger in a vehicle versus driving. I have the best luck on foot though I guess because you have time to "see" what's there. Looking off the side of the road  I find stuff pretty frequently, and I find smalls almost every day like weird brackets and bolts or pins, all types of little things. Just never stop looking and you're bound to see something eventually. 

Pnut

[ThomasPowers]

Tis the season to harvest election signs abandoned in the public rightaway for small stock!  I foresee a bumper crop of them next year and If you are lazy; just call up the local party of your choice and have them place them in your yard and wait till after the election!  I prefer to wait till a month after the election and then harvest the ones with no sign, just the wire frame left to destroy the mowers.

However, once I found an unopened box of the wire frames at the scrapyard and once I found 20 in the dumpster behind the local party's office. They were happy to let me have them. I like the Square C ones that are NON-PLATED!

[JHCC]

Yeah, a lot of signs these days seem to be made of galvanized wire.

[ThomasPowers]

The smaller H frame out here are galvanized the larger square C generally are not---as of the last time I scrounged some. 

They make good marshmallow toasting forks: heat and straighten the corners, Then bend in half and twist leaving a few inches at the bend to make the open handle. Stop a few inches from the open end and make the tines.

I also like to make baskets from them: take 4 pieces the same length and forge weld the ends. Heat, Twist fairly tightly then reheat and untwist. Adjust the basket with a flat bladed screwdriver.  Gas forges are great for the basket twisting and untwisting. I've done some long baskets to use as handles on pots for my camp cooking set. (Old Revere Ware pots have a nice handle attachment place to rivet the basket to.)

[CrazyGoatLady]

As far as I know, horse theft is still a hangable offense in the state of Texas. My ex sister in law and her friend stole a couple of horses once. She's lucky they didn't make an example out of her. She did some time for it. 

We have neighbors who buy eggs from us that are on the local election board. I've thought about asking them about election signs. I've walked down our road here and found a few little things. Found some stuff right here in front of my house that fell off someone's vehicle, including a Milwaukee impact drill. It was in the tall grass on the curve and I just happened to see it. Nobody came looking for it or I would have given it back to them. 

[ThomasPowers]

Cattle law had some rather draconian aspects to it here in NM. I hope they have been modified; (Like hanging rustlers without a trial...)

SO far it looks like we had a 3 inch rain---3 inches between the drops in the dust.

[BillyBones]

In Ohio it is illegal to go whaling. 

If 2 trains come to an intersection both must stop and wait for one to clear the tracks, but nothing about who goes first. 

In Dayton it is a $0.25 fine if your horse gets loose. 

It is fun to look up stupid laws. We have a whole bunch of them that will make you laugh. There is actually a web site devoted to them. 

[ThomasPowers]

Actually a lot of common law was made for good reason---at the time/place.  Like the one that it was illegal to bring a whale into Oklahoma.  Turns out that way back; a whale washed up on the East Coast and a guy got the idea to haul it around  on a bed of ice on a train car and charge folks to look at it. (WAY pre-TV!) He ran out of ice in OK and abandoned it in some small town which had no way of dealing with TONS of rotting whale.  So the law was made.  I heard about it when they were doing an aquarium in OK in the 1980's and suddenly found that they were breaking the law!

Or the reconstruction law in AR where it was illegal to sell or barter a sword or bowie knife. (Lile got the bowie knife part struct...). There was also one about you being allowed to carry a blade of over some length if you were going at least 16 miles out of your daily way to protect yourself from the dangers of the road.

(Looked up AR Blade law about 40 years ago; so all this may (hopefully!) have changed by now.)

[CrazyGoatLady]

In the town I used to live in, there were still brick roads in certain areas and it was technically illegal to drive an automobile on them. They have paved them over in the last few years though. And in the older part of town, there are a lot of huge Victorian style homes that have fancy hitching posts in front of them. Look like concrete blocks with a steel ring protruding from them in most cases

[ThomasPowers]

Any mounting blocks?

[Frosty]

Watched a Vietnamese fisherman in a cafe in Cordova Ak. do some humiliating damage to a drunken American fisherman. The Vietamese fisherman and his crew were eating and reading comic books to help learn to read English. The drunk got louder and louder about "THEM" stealing fish. It's not like the Vietnamese, Cambodian, etc. fishing boats worked 7/24 crews working shift to keep the boat working constantly. Oh no, they were stealing work from honest fishermen who spent evenings drinking.

Anyway the captain and crew ignored the drunk while the drunk's crewmates tried to get him to sit down and shut up but nope. He finally pushed it to the point of assaulting the captain, a pretty hard slap to the head. His crewmates started to get up as the captain rolled up his comic book. I told the guys I worked with, "Just watch this." The captain stood up and said, "Please, no trouble." The drunk took a swing and missed in reply.

Poke. Swing and a miss, poke, lather rinse repeat till the drunk's laughing crewmates finally tackled him and drug him to their table to applause from the restaurant bar. When his crewmates got a better look they started howling in near hysterical laughter.

The Vietnamese captain, who'd gone back to dinner and reading his comic book, had drawn bleeding red eyebrows and a happy face on each cheek. 3 paper cuts for each eyebrow and 6 per happy face. He was blinding fast, didn't move his feet, sat straight back down in his chair.

A sensei of mine had shown us a number of tricks with rolled up paper including the little twist on contact that left a circular paper cut. I think he would've been impressed. A piece of rolled notebook paper is easily a crippling or lethal weapon and takes a lot more skill to just neutralize an opponent. Decorating him was masterful.

It was just awesome, the restaurant refused to give the captain's crew a bill for dinner and quite a few of us stood when they did. Some saluted others of us bowed.

Frosty The Lucky.