What did you do in the shop today?

[tjdaggett]

Dennis, that looks a heck of a lot like a pair of tongs. 

Alexandr, that is magnificent. 

Yesterday I got out in the back yard with my father-in-law and fired up the forge. I straightened a piece of 1/2" round (it came with bent pieces on the ends from its previous life) and drew out one end into a square point. In a couple more afternoons it will hopefully be a fire poker for my dad. This is my first project. 

Biggest thing I learned: if you leave the ash dump open on a Buffalo rivet forge, your blower can't do its job. Wasted forty-five minutes on that, but I'll never forget it again. Once we closed that thing the roar of the fire became much more satisfying... oh, and effective too. 

[DennisCA]

13 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

I don't know if I would use harder steel for the rivets.  If I had to replace something, replacing the rivet is a whole lot easier than forging the tongs!  If you are shearing your rivets, then the tongs need to be redesigned.

If you mean what I said about tool steel I meant I should probably make a rivet set from tool steel rather than mild steel so it'l hold up to shape all those rivets.

Been meaning to get myself to some auto mechanics and see if they want to give some old car springs away. 

[JHCC]

Take a bottle opener made from a recognizable car part as a thank-you. 

[Red Shed Forge]

I am currently in the process of re-organizing/updating my smithy and this is one of my latest additions: a drafting table. I have a couple large projects in the works that will require me to have a sketch near by, so this was the first of the tools I will need to make for them. Before he passed, my grandfather gave me an old architect's drafting table when I was a teenager when I showed interest in the study. Wish I had kept it, but here is my homage!

It is collapsible to make space in the 9'x'12 smithy. It is a piece of 31"x48" plywood that a local business was throwing out, with a 1/16" sheet steel attached to the top with carriage bolts. It is mounted to the studs with a 2"x4", lag bolts, screws and some hinges I had on hand. The stand in the picture is temporary; I will make one soon that is attached and collapsible as well.  I will probably blunt those corners too, I wouldn't want to get jabbed in the ribs while moving quickly from forge to anvil!

[ThomasPowers]

Perhaps it's just that so many of us tend to be amateur engineers that we tend to not consider what we would prefer to fail in a system we build.   In electronics we use fuses; hoping they will fail rather than expensive components. For things like tractor driven equipment we use shear pins, cheap and easy to replace rather than bending a shaft and needing a complete rebuild.  Traditionally in clothing you wanted the thread to be weaker than the cloth so when something gave way all you needed to do was restitch the seam. (Not common nowadays when speed of sewing in the factory selects toward stronger threads and clothing is a throw away item rather than expensive hand made stuff that was repaired and handed down for generations!  Actually a plus for some items made from fibers that got softer over time: First generation: outer wear, second generation: regular clothing, third generation: underwear!)

[JHCC]

Suggestion on the drafting table: make it fold UP, so that the top goes against the wall and the underside is showing. Then paint the underside with blackboard paint and use it for chalk sketches while you're working.

[ThomasPowers]

Start collecting speaker magnets and storing them in ziplock bags so they are easier to clean. Blacksmith shops tend toward "furry" magnets.

[Glenn]

Put the ziplocked speaker in a thin plastic bag so you can simply open and reverse the thin plastic bag, capture and dispose of the bag and the stuff it collected.  Add another thin plastic bag and go collect some more.

[Red Shed Forge]

JHCC, 

See... that's why I post here. Great idea! Just need to get a latch for the top and some paint. Might even forge a latch! Thanks. 

Thomas & Glenn, 

I thought about magnets, for sure. Did not know they were called speaker magnets though, that helps with finding the right ones. Definitely going with the bag in a bag idea too, thanks! I learned the other day that some people who practice and collect Hoodoo are often looking for anvil dust for their "Goofer Dust" and other concoctions. What an interesting biproduct to monetize! 

[ThomasPowers]

IIRC blacksmith scale was also used in traditional Chinese medicine.

I use speaker magnets as they were easily sourced as all the "gotta make the windows rattle" stereo systems would go through them at a pretty good clip and I could find them discarded in dumpsters or at the scrapyard.  I got pretty good removing them with out breaking them and have a collection to hold tarps down when we're sleeping in the van, Used for curie temp detection at the forge, cleanup of the dirt floor, etc and so on.

The bag in bag is a great way to do it!

[Goods]

Speaker magnets will most likely be too strong just to hold you drawings down. Whatever generic magnets you can get cheap would be better. 

[Red Shed Forge]

Goods,

I actually plan to write with soap stone or chalk on the steel-face and chalkboard sides. The magnets would be to hold miscellaneous small tools, paper sketches, yes, but I thought I might also use them to prop-up the hot steel I am working with if I need to compare its size and shape to that which I drafted; the drafting table will be at an angle and some pieces will require some momentary support.

[ThomasPowers]

Speaker magnets are not that hard to cut in smaller pieces for less strong magnets and should be a free resource for scroungers.  Do not get the scary strong rare earth magnets!  (Like were used on disk drives.)

I was able to source chalk boards for my shop and wife's studio.  Hers is an ex-classroom one 12' long!

 

[JHCC]

If you can't scrounge any speakers, Harbor Freight sells pairs of "Craft Magnet Blocks"  (3/8" x 7/8" x 1-7/8") for about a buck.

[BillyBones]

Sometimes you use what ya got.

Yesterday i had to make 4 identical bends that were of a larger radius. First i used my swage block, to small. So i went scrounging about in the barn in hopes of finding something i could use. And low and behold i found it. 

However, after kicking back for a smoke after bending the shapes i needed, something caught my eye. Sometimes thinking outside the box needs to be a little closer to home. The perfect swage right at my finger tips the whole time.

 

[ThomasPowers]

I remember surprising some students once by flipping an anvil over to use the caplet depression in the base for dishing. (91# Arm and Hammer rather than a Trenton, the 410# Trenton is a bit difficult to flip over casually.)

I've used the wrought iron tyre from a wagon wheel as a swage when shaping a shovel to fit the curve of a large cast iron pot for cooking chicharrones.  Couldn't hammer it against the fragile cast iron of the pot itself.

[Frosty]

For sticking working sketches to a steel chalk board you can buy rolls of strip magnets at Fredy's, Wally world, etc. for not much. 

I was gifted with a chalk board about the time of my accident so I haven't gotten around to making a stand but it has a graph grid painted on. Making transferring my graph paper sketches to large easy to see across the shop scale easy. Also there will be occasions where the overall project drawing may contain details that need clarification so being able to stick single sheets of drawing paper to the large drawing is REALLY handy.

Were I making a chalk board I'd be putting a grid on it. A sheetrock square and paint stick would make it easy peasy. By paint stick I'm referring to the squeeze tube of paint with a ball point end, they make neat small width lines. They do come in different widths IIRC. I don't use them a lot in the shop but for some uses they're worth spending a few bucks. I've used one to make semi permanent marks on my anvil for production type runs where I had to make multiple measurements per part and on many parts.

Frosty The Lucky.

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

A source of free strip magnets are refrigerators. Just slice the end of the door seals and pull them out

[TastefullyPeenedIronWorks]

Got some things done 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Finished up making the scarifier for the old box blade that I started by forging down the end and forge welding the hole, a couple days ago. No forging today, but I had to trim down the width, cut in the locating slots and weld the tooth on. It was interesting cutting the 5/8 in thick stock with the plasma cutter rated for 1/2 inch.

It's an old box blade and new scarifies are not available and used ones go for $50-#100 US so I guess about three hours was worth it. Only thing left is to make a locking wedge for it.

 

[alexandr]

I make 5 chandeliers at the same time.

[ThomasPowers]

All for the same customer?

[alexandr]

3 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

All for the same customer?

No, three different.

[ThomasPowers]

Nice that you were able to group their construction together.

[Jaegers Forge and Foundry]

I finished making this old school Bowie knife from a pry bar with a coffin handle (the photo doesn’t show it to well though) I’m going to make a YouTube channel and it’s gonna be my first video

Don’t know if you can see the video it’s just a 4 second video of the knife