What did you do in the shop today?

[BillyBones]

We get some good sized white tails around here. For a while the largest deer taken was killed with a bow about 1/4 mile from my grandparents house. The Beatty buck, 39 point scored a 304 6/8 (yes i had to look it up). Huge deer. There have been a couple bigger taken but this part of Ohio is known quite well for big deer. 

[Deimos]

And here I am, all snowed in, with only a Robin, Sparrow and a flock of Western jackdaws in the garden...

[JHCC]

We get a fair number of whitetails traipsing through the yard, but our most exciting wild visitor lately was a pileated woodpecker in the honey locust outside the bedroom window yesterday. 

[Chimaera]

Biggest deer I've ever seen was eating my mesclun out of the garden boxes... He was an absolute beast. Had to be verging on 20 points.

[natkova]

Does this sound familiar to someone?

I heat steel get right temperature than i use tongs turn around to anvil  to forge. And turn around again searching for hammer while metal is loosing heat !

[ThomasPowers]

Oh yes!  I tell my students to leave the workpiece in the fire until all their needed tools are at the anvil.  When I forge alone; I leave the hammer on the anvil face. When I share the anvil it's a dance to grab the tools you need and set them while the other person's workpiece is going back to the fire.

Besides Elk, Mule Deer, mountain lions, antelope, and bears; we also have a ringer out here, though not in my area, down south around White Sands: Oryx.  There is a breeding population of an Africa game animal "on the loose" in New Mexico and legal to hunt under certain restrictions.

When I first moved out here and was wandering the area to get familiar with it; I found an Oryx skull and salvaged the horns.  They are now a "bud vase" held by a couple of hand forged tentacles on the wall of our big room near the woodstove.  (I need to make better tentacles, perhaps when I get power to the shop and can blob steel and then strike it.)

[Frosty]

12 hours ago, George N. M. said:

here in WY we have this guy as a neighbor

s/he's a beauty George. Are they dangerous?

Moose kill and injure more people than all the other animals in Alaska put together. You wouldn't think having a moose within 50 yards us more dangerous than a grizzly bear that close. Maybe it's because they taste so darned good?

11 minutes ago, natkova said:

searching for hammer while metal is loosing heat !

 

Heh, heh, heh. ! Uh . . . No, I've NEVER heard of that happening, you must be really unique Natkova.  

Seriously, it's pretty common until you learn some basic production techniques. While your steel is in the fire is time to plan your next step. Lay your tools where you'll use them in position to grip them properly, set your bottom or top tools or hand tools where your hand will fall to them without thinking. My hot hardy is ALWAYS on the anvil stand facing so when I pick it up the weight of the shank pulls it vertical in my grip, all I have to do is lift it and drop in in the hardy hole, it's all automatic. Other bottom tools have room on the stand if I need one next.

For example if my next step is general forging, say drawing a taper, I lay the hammer I'll be using on the tail of my anvil with the hammer face I'll be using facing away from me and the handle sticking out over the side. This way all I have to do is pick it up I don't have to look or adjust, I did all that before I needed it. 

Same for my tongs I have my ready rack under the forge opening but lay the tongs I'm using next on the helper I keep in view within reach. The helper is an adjustable stand for holding long stock at the forge, anvil drill press cut off saw, etc. it adjusts from about 20" tall to almost 5'. I didn't design them tat tall, it's just how they turned out, I salvaged half a dozen "Wind Master" road work sign stands that were being tossed. 

Anyway, organize your tools for the next step and you won't have to hunt for them when you need them. Look around while you pump your bellows, you can skip a pump to move a tool, it won't matter like having your tools almost in hand when you need them

Frosty The Lucky.

[pnut]

I see does around the house almost every day. They're becoming a nuisance here in town. Ky also has a decent elk herd again. It's not reached the point of having an open season. It's currently a lottery if you want to harvest one. If I'm not mistaken it's the largest herd East of the Rocky Mountains. The KDFWR has done an excellent job maintaining the elk and deer herds here in KY. 

Pnut

[BillyBones]

Pnut, you are not mistaken. My cousin, and me, has been trying to get a tag for a good 5 years now.

Deer are thick as thieves here. 

I was in the shop one day when all of a sudden there was loud knocking noise that scared the bejeebus out of me. So i went to investigate. On the corner of my roof there was a red headed wood pecker pecking away at the eves. We also have a striped (banded (?)) woodpecker that comes and hangs out. 

[ThomasPowers]

When I lived in Columbus Ohio deer were a hazardous nuisance.  People were not allowed to shoot them and herds got so large that starvation was a major problem; along with habitat destruction from over grazing.  I used to count herds of 20 to 40 deer along side the highways I took to work---inside the beltway!   Car/deer interactions were common too.  They were discussing using birth control on the deer at a substantial cost.

Out here I once was coming home from a trip to see some cliff dwellings and it was late at night in the mountains. I came around a curve and the road was full of HUGE elk, looked like I could go under some of them.  The term "Panic Breaking" was in use as well as words not allowed under the TOS here.  I have a Rancher friend out here who told me that some years they make more off of elk hunts on his land than ranching cattle.

[George N. M.]

Frosty:  That is a pronghorn antelope buck.  The females only have little spike horns (2-3").  They are not dangerous unless you hit one in a small car.  They run a bit smaller than mule deer.  They can be curious.  They are the fastest land animal in North America and can hit close to 60 mph flat out.  Speed is a dominance thing with them and I've had young bucks race my car while going down a 2 track road.  I got up to about 40 which was way faster than was wise and they just accelerated past me and showed me their butts which is a dominance display.  Curiously, when they come to a barbed wire fence they will almost always fold up their legs and go under it rather than jumping it.  I have very occasionally seen one jump a fence but that is rare.

They are plains animals and don't like to be places that don't have good sight lines.  I have heard that they can see about as well as a human can using 7 power binoculars.

The herd which sometimes hangs out in our semi rural subdivision is pretty used to vehicles and you can get within about 10-15 feet of them if they are grazing on the shoulder of the road.

Cool critters and very evocative of Wyoming.

Billy:  Re hunting elk:  These are BIG animals (roughly the size of a cow) and once you get one down it is a problem to get it out unless you have horses or can get a 4-wheeler nearby.  Even if you semi-process the carcass on site it is about 5 good man loads to pack the meat out, 4 quarters plus the meat from the body.  If you want the hide that is another man load and if you want the head that is another.  If you get one down in the bottom of a canyon about all you can do is build a fire, get out your frying pan, and start eating.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Frosty]

Oh yeah, pulling the trigger is the easy part all right. A moose can easily run 900lbs, cows don't have a rack.

Calm, friendly run if frightened sounds good.

Moose have a pretty straight forward method of dealing with things that scare them. Stomp it till it's not frightening. You can only scare them off a couple times then they stand there and look at you. They don't even twitch their hide for a 3/4" nut from a wrist rocket, nor my pellet gun. Fortunately the pygmy goats and moose got along just fine. Our fencing couldn't keep them out, fortunately they couldn't fit in the barn door to the pasture. 

We had a cow and yearling calf in the yard yesterday so I didn't go any farther out than the car. Don't mess with momma moose!

Frosty The Lucky.

[natkova]

Frosty  Thomas 

That's why i have one spare hammer so i can use it if i forgot where i put other one

I have small stump  for anvil so i cant just leave it on railroad , it is too small space i leave it on vise bench or on forge where it is out of reach of fire.

The most thing i hate about blacksmithing it you can't just go straight up in work process, it si no like woodworking you pick up tool and work with drawknife hatchet etc.

In smithing you have to wait for material to be ready , than you are limited with time to work on it, and again put it in fire, and repeat process.

Some trades are straight into it.

[ThomasPowers]

"That's why i have one spare hammer so i can use it if i forgot where i put other one" 

The road to perdition!       

[Red Shed Forge]

To add to the wildlife conversation: A couple weeks ago, I read an article in a local newspaper about a territorial Great Horned Owl that was swooping down at passersby from a tree in town about 15 minutes from ours. The week before that, my wife and I saw the silhouette of a large owl looming in one of the maples that surround our house... I like to think it was the same one! 

Lately, I've been trying to keep up with all the snow we have been collecting up here. We have a pretty large driveway and live on a corner; even with the frigid temps (-21f wind chill at one point!) and heaps of snow, people still like to take their daily walks, so I feel it's only right to clear both sections of sidewalk that border our property. 

Well, after a while, manual shoveling gets pretty tiring. I don't have the cash for a blower or truck and plow... sometimes a good neighbor will stop by with a plow and clear it off for me, but it's my responsibility dagnabbit! I had to find a better way lol. I earned some help and some cash the other day after I fixed (multiple welds & replaced the blade) a neighbor's 4-wheeler plow, but again, I can make my life easier myself... right? 

So, I built myself a plow attachment for my ride-on mower. Aside from a couple bolts, everything I used to build it was scrap. The shovel is one half of an old air compressor that had sat for years outside and had a couple holes to begin with. The springs are 3/8?" coil spring from a garage door that I cut and fit; the rest is scrap sheet, tubing and angle iron. The control bar is scrap conduit and yard-tool handle. 

It still needs some tweaking here and there, and the tires definitely need chains, but it works just fine up to about 5 inches of snow... any more and I can't do much without chains. I also think I will cut off the left and right walls of the shovel, tighten the springs and add a blade soon. 

Pay no attention to that mess of a garage lol. I wish I had taken a better picture. If anyone is curious, I can upload more pictures later when I am home.

 

[George N. M.]

Red, is the handle for raising and lowering the blade?  I think you do have to cut the ends of the tank shell off.  Otherwise, the snow will not dump out the end. The leading end one may be OK and needed for rigidity but the trailing end must go, IMO.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Red Shed Forge]

Due to the lift the springs provide, the handle and arm are used to push the shovel down; once it catches a scoop, it pretty much holds itself down. And yeah, when I come to a small curb or wide crack in the pavement, it allows me to lift over the curb in anticipation. I hope to be able to simply pass over a curb or crack after increasing the tension of the springs. A blade might help that a bit, but it's mostly to slow deterioration of the steel of the shovel I think and to provide some more rigidity.  

Yeah, I think I will do both sides because the snow sticks to the belly of the shovel pretty easily too. I think one side cut would be helpful if I fabricate a way for it to pivot at an angle. 

[M.J.Lampert]

red shed:

I would tilt the blade 10-20* left or right depending on you plow area as this will lower resistance and push the snow to the side instead of straight forwards also as you sound fairly decent in mechanics try to make a quick connect it might make it easier to store then 

it helps to be the son of a heavy duty mechanic and help him jerry-rig grader blades for backhoes

M.J.Lampert

 

[Scott NC]

  An adjustable skid (kind of like on a snowblower) on each side of the bucket would help with gliding over pesky cracks and obstacles.  I'd hate to hit uneven concrete with that!  

 

[Red Shed Forge]

M.J. Lampert, 

Thank you. I wish I had the mechanical foresight to rig a quick-connect, but this project is actually among my first mechanical ventures. It is detachable, just not easily haha. I based its design on the 4-wheeler plow I fixed up for a neighbor the day before, only because fixing it and subsequently helping him mount it, gave me good insights of its mechanics. His attaches not only at the very front of the vehicle frame, but near the belly of the frame as well. Mine attaches at the front and only slightly further back, near the front axle. 

I think you are right about a slight angle allowing for less resistance. What I might do is fabricate a two-piece triangular mounting bracket with a few pin holes in it which would allow for the angle. I'm having trouble describing what I mean: The bracket would grasp the square tubing on top and below; the pin holes would be in the center of the triangle, to the left and to the right. If I want a straight forward plow, I put the pin through the center hole, if I want it at either angle, I pivot the shovel and pin it at either the left or right hole. It's a maybe for now as the snow keeps coming! Woke up to about 4 inches and it's not stopping for another 5 hours, apparently. 

Nodebt, 

I am having trouble picturing an adjustable skid. But what I learned from my neighbor's plow is that speed and the strength of the springs allow for easier passing of cracks and bumps. The springs won't let it dip under the front tires, while also pulling it back up into position quickly when it does get pulled down by any impediment.  

[Frosty]

Even cold dry snow sticks to the plow, even the plastic ones. I try to remember to clean and give mine a good coat of Johnson's paste wax before it's decorated with ice. 

I almost NEVER angle my blade to plow. The spill forms a hard frozen berm so next time you can't push it back as far. Angle plowing walks, driveways and such is a good way to narrow the path to the point you can't plow it at all. 

A grader or truck with a wing is a whole different tool, they're designed to angle plow, wings are designed to clean ditches and do push  backs. 

I've always wondered if a riding mower could be modified into a snow blower. Open the front of the mower deck, maybe add gates to pull a wider swath into the blade. Modify the cuttings outflow so it directs the snow upwards to get it out and away. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Scott NC]

16 minutes ago, Red Shed Forge said:

I am having trouble picturing an adjustable skid. 

    How far does your bucket move when it hits a snag?  I was just wondering about the movement of your lever...  Here's what I meant.  There's more than one way to skin a cat.  The one that works best is best

[Red Shed Forge]

Frosty, 

Thanks for that. Makes a lot of sense and saves me the labor of attaching the pivot rig. I thought about maybe spray painting it with some rust resistant stuff and then a finish with something slick. I like the paste wax idea too. And if I truly was mechanically savvy, I would attempt the blower idea for sure. Now to just get those chains!  

Nodebt, 

Ahh I see! Yes, that could be really helpful. Might just do that. Right now the bucket sometimes dips too far... and only once did it pull the lever from my hand. Otherwise, it only dips a few inches and is pulled up immediately. My current thought is that the springs, when tightened, will prevent that completely. Works for my neighbor's plow, anyway. 

[natkova]

How to file a file?

I had some triangle worn out file forgred it in shape I want, but I cant file it.

I tought it is not hard like that.

I didnt quenched it, I tought it.will.soften after.forging process

[Daswulf]

You'll need to anneal it to get it as soft as it will get.