Scott NC Posted August 2, 2020 Share Posted August 2, 2020 Not to detract from the blade, but is that a stained glass something in the reflection on it? Just curious. Nice work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welshj Posted August 2, 2020 Share Posted August 2, 2020 Lol... it's a Tiffany style lamp setting on an end table beside my chair. I thought it was kind of cool to be able to see it that clearly in the blade. The first photo I took caught the wife's stained glass coca cola ceiling fan in it... so I had to try catching the brighter lamp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluerooster Posted August 2, 2020 Share Posted August 2, 2020 Caution, full of pictures, may be slow to load. What did I do in the shop today? Not a doggone thing. Th' Ol' Lady has had me on a project for over a month now. Today I told her that tomorrow morning, as soon as it's light enough to see. I'll be at the forge, and don't want to be disturbed. I've not been at the forge for over a month now, there's cobwebs in the fire pot, my hammers and tongs are all joined with webs. Rust has started on the anvil. All because of a "wild hair" project. (but I have to admit, once completed, it will be nice to have) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GolFisHunt Posted August 2, 2020 Share Posted August 2, 2020 Wow! Ambitious project for her. I hope you didn't skimp on the liner. Have fun at the anvil tomorrow! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott NC Posted August 2, 2020 Share Posted August 2, 2020 46 minutes ago, Welshj said: I thought it was kind of cool to be able to see it that clearly in the blade. Very cool indeed. I almost thought the blade was somehow inlaid for pete's sake! Again, nice work. Scott Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluerooster Posted August 2, 2020 Share Posted August 2, 2020 GolFisHunt- I did skimp on the liner. But My other pond has done well for many years with the same liner. Main thing is to use a good thick underlayment, I used old carpet, and carpet pad. Had free from a floorcovering place. And protect from UV. I expect it to take forever for it to clear up after the bog introduced all it's sediment. Also, I found that anywhere Firestone EPDM "burns dirt" , or contacts pressure treated lumber, it will develop pinholes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted August 3, 2020 Share Posted August 3, 2020 Saturday Morning: trash to transfer station, several hours at the scrapyard. Turnover is very slow to nonexistant so I work on things that need a lot of "pulling" and look for wrought iron buried in the piles; only spent a couple of dollars. Saturday afternoon. Had a close friend come down from Albuquerque and spend a lot of time talking. Also some shop cleanup. Too hot and humid to run forge. Sunday Morning: Monthly swamp cooler oiling & draining & check. Looking good save for a lot of CaSO4 & lime build up. No breeze so no forging but I burned off a good sized brushpile in the yard! Also took photos of some tools I am selling locally. Saturday afternoon: worked on electric blower and hauled it to the house and tried it out. 1905 patent on the motor with OPEN TERMINALS for the power wires. Started nicely but I saw smoke after a while and pulled the plug. Will try replacing the motor with one of the nice new ones I've been pulling from the scrapyard. Had to shut everything down as a strong thunder storm came over. Sure getting a lot of reading done lately in the "cooler" indoors. (3 books from 5:30 pm Friday till 10pm on Sunday. 0 hours TV of course.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 3, 2020 Share Posted August 3, 2020 20 hours ago, bluerooster said: Caution, full of pictures, MAN, that is the most over the top slack tub I've ever seen! Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted August 3, 2020 Share Posted August 3, 2020 No real time for anything in the shop today, but I did a bit of cleanup on the new vise. Lovely clean jaws, and a very good screw mechanism. Looks like the old stand will do quite well for this vise, with only minimal modification. I’m very happy with this purchase. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluerooster Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 After doing all my Monday morning running around, I took the rest of the day to work at the forge. Threw a match to it at about 10:30, and by 11:30 I had half the jaws for a set of tongs to hold flat stock. Forged from an old lug wrench. Grabbed the second lug wrench, and set about the task of making the other half. It was a bit smaller diameter than the first, so I had to upset some to get to the same size. Then made the jaw, and when complete, held it up with the other, and had one of those "you big dummy" moments. I'd twisted it the wrong direction. Instead of starting over, I re-heated, and twisted the other direction, It looked ok, so I set it aside while I forged out a punch to make the rivet holes. Got the punch fabricated, and set it aside to cool. Adjusted the fire, and put the first half in the forge to heat up for punching. With the blower off, I set about screening some coal dust for punch lube. Turned the blower on low, and was ready to punch in a minnit or two. Got the hole punched, and sized, then put the two halves together to mark location for hole on the half yet to be punched. Put the latter in the fire, punched, and sized the hole, then put both back in the forge to draw out the reins, before assembly. Got them good and hot, shut off the blower, pulled one out and started drawing, at dull red, it went back, blower on low, and the other came out for drawing, and that's how it went until the one that I'd re-twisted, had it's business end pop off, right where it was twisted. I've a good idea what happened, but too disgusted to even take a pic of the mess. So I set them both aside. and decided to try some welding. I have an old timing chain that would make a nice pattern welded billet. What prompted me to do this I've no clue, but I fastened it to an old file. Got it all wired together, good and tight. Got it nice and warm, sprinkled it with borax, and brought it up to welding temp. Rather than try to heat, and weld the whole 10 inches at once, I did about 4". Ya know? There are gaps in a timing chain that don't get welded. Also, the file didn't seem to like the high temp. The chain didn't mind it at all. I guess the file should have been annealed first. It just cracked, and acted a fool. The chain, on the otherhand seemed to behave it's self. So I determined that the file had become a sacraficial hard plate to keep the chain from flopping around. Got about 6" of chain welded, then the wheels came off. I managed to make a mess of that as well. But didn't waste the whole chain, so I'll try again at a later date. So, by now rain had started, and a thunder storm was going. I decided to use the rest of the coke in the forge to finish up a leaf bottle opener. Got the leaf shaped, veins done, just need to draw out the stem a bit more then cut and scroll. I set about the task of drawing out the stem, and had just pulled it from the fire when BOOM a bright flash, and pop, and boom all at the same time. Lightening hit the flue from the forge. needless to say, I was a little shaken at that point. Well, after calming down, I put it back in the fire, (it had cooled to black by that time), and turned on the blower, and nuttin' . The GFCI had tripped, I re-set it, and turned the blower on low. It came on High!, no low. I opened up the wastegate, and turned to check the time. It was 2:30. When I turned back, Oh No! sparks from the forge. I grabbed the handle, and pulled back a sparking nub. As luck would have it, I'd re-sized the fire, and was only heating the stem, which I'd burned off that quickly. I fished the leaf out, and shut down the forge for the day. After all that all I have to show is a burned up leaf. Oh well, a bad day at the hobby forge beats a good day at work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 A pretty ambitious day for a hobbyist not bad at all. You turned a tong half backwards?! GASP! Join the club. You're one of the cool kids now. Have you thought about why the file crumbled and the chain was just at working temp? That's a good one to think on. I'm glad I read your post before commenting on getting the leaf stem too hot. There's nothing like coal to burn something in a couple unwatched seconds. Sounds like a good day to me. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 Yah; not annealing had NOTHING to do with the problems with the file. Temperature does! So going to name it the Lightening Struck Forge? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 Oooh, good name Thomas, how about a lightning bolt arm and hand holding a hammer for the logo? Hmmm, "Franklin's Key Smithy"? Probably too obscure to provide a good hook. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 Well better than "Perhaps someone is trying to tell me something Forge" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluerooster Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 Thomas, That's not a bad name. Back in my early days folks on the job would call me "lightening" (never strikes twice in the same place). had I been a second later, I would have had a hold on the steel in the forge when it was hit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 I'll bet coming that close leaves you thunder struck every time you think about it. It's funny, lightning used to be rare, once every few years, rare. I the last 5 years it's becoming more common, we've had a couple 3 day long storms this summer a couple strikes so close you could feel the air displaced by the bolt and every hair raised so fast it was like a special effect. I've been thinking maybe a lightning rod wouldn't be a bad idea. One on the house and another on the shop. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted August 5, 2020 Share Posted August 5, 2020 What about one for the Laboratory? Or are you still flying box kites? We get wonderful lightning storms out here in the desert, sometimes dry, sometimes wet ones. Being down in the river valley makes it a lot less worrisome when you see the storms roll over the Langmuir Lab, (http://langmuir.nmt.edu/), which has done a LOT of lightning research and so was built in a heavy hitter zone up on the mountain! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 5, 2020 Share Posted August 5, 2020 I'm afraid I've never flown a box kite. How about a lightning rod for the guest lavatory? Wired up right and they wouldn't overstay their welcome. There was a large butte or peak within sight of my folks place that got so much lightning it was bare rock. You could sit in their upstairs bedroom and watch the lightning storms, it looked like it had a full head of lightning bolt hair. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted August 7, 2020 Share Posted August 7, 2020 Attached the new vise to the old vise stand. This necessitated welding a plate on top, drilled and tapped for bolting on the mounting bracket. And what do we do when we don’t have a decent tap wrench of the proper size? We use our twisting wrench! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 7, 2020 Share Posted August 7, 2020 Looks good John though the paint could use freshening up. How much of that wide flange steel did you bring home? Don't you have a drill press? You could've tapped the plate by chucking the tap in the drill chuck without moving the plate. You didn't think I thought that up just for the T burner build did you? Well done I like it. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted August 7, 2020 Share Posted August 7, 2020 I suppose that could have worked, but this came out just fine. 9 minutes ago, Frosty said: the paint could use freshening up Do those words even go together? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted August 7, 2020 Share Posted August 7, 2020 I put them together didn't I? Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted August 7, 2020 Share Posted August 7, 2020 Fair enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheWanderingLlama Posted August 7, 2020 Share Posted August 7, 2020 Blacksmithing adjacent, but my daughter and I got the salvaged wood lathe up and running. It was just two spindles - so we had to make a frame, tool holder, hold downs for the spindles, etc. She is in middle-school and has really taken to doing things like this. We are currently making file handles for all of the files I have scrounged up. Four down, several more to go... The wood is just some sugar maple branches I had drying in the shed for random things The ferrules are scrap tubing from the scrap bin at work. They were quite tough - given what is was from I think it was likely 4140. It will be nice to not have to swap handles on files for so many reasons! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillyBones Posted August 7, 2020 Share Posted August 7, 2020 Started doing a little grinding, noticed a strange smell. I shut the belt sander down to investigate. Did not take long to figure out what it was. And just to let yall know, there is usually a metal plate behind it to keep sparks off the wall. I moved it before the photo. What i thought may have been just wood dust inside it burning turned out that it was a bearing that went. The magnet also helps to catch a lot of metal particles, as you can see here after about 15 mins of use. Guess i got an excuse to get that 2x72 now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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