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What did you do in the shop today?


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Yesterday I was working with the tractor grading the driveway. I needed a pry bar to adjust something, but didn't have one with me because all my bars are too long to fit in the tractor tool box. So today I spent about an hour at the forge & anvil making one from an old rock chisel.

The chisel/punch that is like the one I used but longer, is on the right and the new pry bar the left in the picture. The chisel I used was 9in. long and I drew it out to 15in and tapered both ends so it just fits the tractor tool box. I shouldn't have to drive all the way up to the garage to make a simple adjustment anymore.

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I picked up a whole box of old punches and chisels at a yard sale a long time ago for a dollar U.S.  there are 2 of them laying on the stump next to the anvil.

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4 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

"Refrigerator Stew"...

In Wisconsin there's this dish called Friday Night Casserole which is just Monday through Thursday's leftovers layered in a pyrex with cheese and crushed up ritz and baked until the cheese melts. My favorite art of Lent was not having Friday Night Casserole because we weren't allowed to eat meat on Fridays.

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We didn't have a special name for leftovers, it smelled like dinner and we ate what was put on the table. Some things like roast beef would finally end up in home made TV dinners in left over aluminum foil TV dinner trays, of course. Mother and I loved Mexican TV dinners and Dad was fussy so we only got them when he wasn't home for dinner.

He almost always worked late, especially after opening his own spinning shop so we'd put a TV dinner in the electric skillet and he could have a hot dinner at work. He finally broke down and got a refrigerator for the shop and put the skillet on a wall timer so it'd turn on at a set time. Drop a frozen homemade TV dinner in the skillet, set the timer and he could have a hot dinner when the bell rang. Yeah Mother usually had to call and remind him to break for dinner. The employees would remind him to put one in the skillet and set the timer when they were done for the day. Mother asked them to you know.;)

A good friend's family called it, Kitchen Surprise, night. I think  most everybody had a clear the leftovers dish night name.  It was almost always THE night to be invited to dinner! It was a win win, we'd get good grub and they didn't have to worry about ANY left overs. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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I took some advice from a little up the page and this is how my stump looks now. I had to chisel out a spot on the lower "shelf" since it's not flat and the rail was sitting a little proud of the top. And then of course I thought to myself "Hey if I pull my bench vice off my workbench and bolt it to this here log like suggested that gives me a good excuse to buy another bench vice" so I did that thing too. 

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My shop colors would end up being pink and white because some genius in Fleet Farm's marketing department keeps convincing them to pump out tools in white and pink to sell to "single girls" and they don't sell so they get put on clearance and I snatch 'em up. I've got a full set of Barbie pink sockets somewhere around here, SAE and metric up to 1/2 inch, that I got for like $6.99. 

When I get a color choice for tools though I usually go with red. The red ones go faster, after all.

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There was a 5" Central Forge(?)  HF vise at the scrapyard last Saturday, looked brand new except the front jaw was broken off...

SB you need an excuse to buy another vise?  I thought all that was required was cash in your pocket  or a place that buys plasma!

I freely admit that I use my post vises a lot more than my benchvises nowadays; don't have to "baby" the postvises!  (Used to be that bench vises cost a lot more than postvises back in the '90's in central Ohio; now it seems like prices have flipped.)

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While I was making the pry bar on Monday, I was using a long pair of box tongs with reign clip to hold the stock. I noticed two things, the tongs were so long that I could have used a stock rest to keep from having to hold them while heating the stock. I have two tripod stock rests but to use them I would have to rearrange some stuff and for such a short job I didn't do that. The other thing was the hood was not pulling a good draft because over the decades the opening had gotten larger because of rusting and the breeze was putting some smoke into the shop.

So today I made a stock support/tong rack out of a piece of scrap (one can never have too many tong racks) and fixed the hood opening with a piece of stove pipe. It pulls a very good draft now, no smoke in the shop. Look Ma no cigarette butts.:lol:

Before:

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After:

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I used the old Lincoln Tombstone stick welder because I was too lazy to set up the MIG welder and when I went to shut it off the switch wouldn't flip to off.:angry: I wound up taking it apart to fix the switch (WD-40) worked and oil the fan motor which was making some noise. It's running like new now even though it's over 50 years old.

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Finally finished the siabashi I was making for a Japanese coworker who returning to Japan Saturday. (Yah, cutting it close.) 16” long, tapered from 3/8” to 1/16” from Grade 2 Ti. Finished with wire wheel, chiseled decoration, then polished around the chisel work. Initially, I started draw filing them, but my files really didn’t like the Ti... Wanted a good gift box for them, but couldn’t find anything to buy that was appropriately sized and I don’t trust my would working, so I went with a leather holder/sheath.

David

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10 hours ago, JHCC said:

Threw together a quick pair of bed rail tongs to hold some hefty leaf spring 

I need to make a set of these!  How did you handle it?  Did you fold the angle over for the length of the reigns or did you cut it off?  Is there a tutorial, or should I just get in there and start swinging?

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If they'd been mild steel, I would have had no compunction about quenching them and drilling the rivet holes. However, knowing that they're high carbon, I knew both that quenching would risk cracking and that it would take quite a while to anneal them before drilling. That's why I chose to hot-punch them, even though punching through a double layer of thin steel is a pain in the patella.

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