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I Forge Iron

What did you do in the shop today?


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On 2/17/2021 at 2:48 PM, George N. M. said:

If you HAVE to put an edge on during the fabrication process cover it with tape while you are doing the rest of the work.

I'm a bit late to this, but yeah. My latest knife I ended up putting on a handle after I thought I wasn't going to (a whole fiasco).  The clamp slipped on the drill press and I had a freshly sharpened kiridashi spinning on the drill press with my hand stupidly close to it. It's healed up now, but the scar is about 2-1/2" long and the deepest part of the cut was at least half an inch. I did not enjoy that.

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Spinning stuff is continually plotting how to maim you!  Congratulate yourself anytime you figure out how to prevent that ahead of time!  Never good to see how fatty your tissues are by direct examination.  Being able to use Þormóðr's line about how well the king fed him as there was fat even around his heart is just not worth the final result!

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Also, in the conversation on slingshots- You could get scrap lead (~$3/lb), melt it, and drip it into a bucket of water. Of course, these won't be as accurate as a perfect metal ball, but I shot pieces of gravel, so... You could just sort through it, whatever is roundish you keep, the rest gets thrown right back in and melted.

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2 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Spinning stuff is continually plotting how to maim you!  Congratulate yourself anytime you figure out how to prevent that ahead of time! 

Every time I clamp something down on the drill press table, I ask myself, "What happens if this clamp fails?" If the answer is "I bleed", I try to figure out a better arrangement.

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Yep. I now have a machininist vise to help with that. Keeps it from being able to spin

Thankfully, (to the best of my knowledge) that cut did not permanently damage any tendons or muscles. How, I'm not sure, but that freshly sharpened blade did far less permanent damage than a duller one, as this has healed up beautifully. No infection, no permanent damage, just a thick pink line running down the side of my hand. And a new realization on how much damage every part of this trade can do to you.

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Pnut, on the inner tubes, the red stripe tubes contained natural rubber and were much more lively and shot further than the strips cut from blue stripe inner tubes which were made from butyl rubber. Even the red stripe tubes didn’t shoot near as far as the surgical tubing on the slingshots. I also had one of the wrist rocket slingshots after I got older. 

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JHCC- I really want to make that whale with a piece of the WI you sent me, but we're getting highs of 40 (I know, not that cold) and my forge is in the driveway. Where a huge patch of ice is now. Not sure it's safe for me to put my forge and anvil on ice. Or myself when I have yellow metal.

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They are getting much harder to find but i used to get wheel weights to melt down to make shot. Tire shops usually have a bucket or 2 full of old ones they take off, but many are now made of iron. I have also broke down an old battery or 2 to get the lead out. Not worth the hassle really. 

If you do decide to make your own shot make sure to throw in a piece of plumbers tin. I do not know the exact ratio other than yup that's about enough. Handfull of bits and peices of lead, a hands length of tin. 

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Just waiting for the world to thaw out enough to do anything. I have so many projects I want to do: Chisels, drift, punch, tongs, knives, whale, elephants, mokume mokume mokume, fire poker, leaves, so many things... I've really gotten bit by the mokume bug. I carry this ugly piece of metal everywhere. I need a better one to replace this as my pocket piece. Looking to do a double pattern, raindrop on one side, ladder on the other. We'll see.

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Back in the early 1980's when I was working for a swordmaker and attended the Knifemakers Guild Show back when it was in KC; I once got to see a bunch of professional knife makers sitting around and shooting the bull---it was a lot like that scene in JAWS where they are comparing their shark bite scars...

My most recent one is going to be ugly because it wasn't a nice clean cut.  There will be a noticeable lump from the tear that was the dog bite. Luckily there are a lot of lines on my palm anyway so it will hide from most folks and it's on my left hand so people won't feel it when they shake hands.

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Oof. Tears are so much worse than slices. My worst tear is from when I was 11-12 and was messing around in a friend's pond. I took a step and the inside edge of my ankle ended up right next to a sharp rock, just tearing a three inch line from the sole of my foot to the top of my ankle. That wasn't too fun, but probably better than your dog bite.

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4 hours ago, Randy Griffin said:

good replacement bands

I have found the bands used when you have blood drawn to be excellent for slingshots. When I was having chemo, they would take blood once a week and the technician would save all the bands she used the previous week for me. I'm all set for the near future with blue bands.

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We dosed it good with Hydrogen Peroxide right when it happened. Wrapped it in my dirty bandana for the rest of the scrapyard visit and when I got home washed it with soap and water, more HP and then gunked it good with triple antibiotic ointment and  gauze and wound tape. Kept it out of the water a couple of days and then started removing the bandage for showers and reapplying  triple antibiotic ointment and band aides across  it after.  Never had any infection which was absolutely amazing to me!

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My mother used H2O2 regularly on my brother and I when we came home bleeding. Somewhere along the line I was advised not to use it as a disinfectant on skin.???? Don't remember who told me not to use it though.

After watching Dr. Pol DVM and his regular use of liberal amounts of it on injured animals, I have once again started using it, best disinfectant I have ever used. If it's good enough for dogs and horses, it's good enough for me.:)

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9 hours ago, Chimaera said:

Also, in the conversation on slingshots- You could get scrap lead (~$3/lb), melt it, and drip it into a bucket of water. Of course, these won't be as accurate as a perfect metal ball, but I shot pieces of gravel, so...

In this time of environmental awareness, I would be horrified to randomly disperse lead into the environment. The rare and endangered blue tufted pilated broad footed guppy minnow may be harmed...

Actually I have a bag of glass marbles that work for what I use a sling shot for anymore. The afore mentioned blue tufted... is not apparently affected by lead with a copper wash or a bonded copper jacket...WHEW! 

I do appreciate the scrap lead suggestions though.  As much as I use the sling shot It would be cheaper to buy a bunch of steel balls or sinkers than use the propane to melt my own lead for sinkers or ammo. Still have a tackle box of sinkers from when I left FL in 2004.

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H2O2 will kill the first couple few layers of skin and can cause rough spots and IIRC other problems till deeper layers grow out to replace it. 

I think it's more a dermatology / cosmetic thing. 

Mother used to just wash our injuries with soap and water if they weren't bad enough to see the doctor. 

Working for Dot road maintenance often had us out picking up random debris from wrecks. One of my better scores was from a road tire service truck roll over, I packed at least 300lbs of wheel weights home. The first night, I had to stop the next because 300lbs. was enough to make my Eagle Talon a little unhappy on the road. I picked up another couple buckets worth not to mention quite a few hand tools. 

Picking up wheel weights off the shoulder was good for a pound or two a week without taking a step off the shoulder. 

The tubing for sling shots isn't as live as old school surgical tubing ad it weathers a lot faster. My wrist Rocket is from when they were new on the market. I LOVE my Wrist Rocket even though I was never a terribly good shot with it. I could hit a paper late at about 50' but that's no great shakes and I haven't hardly fired it in quite a while. Marbles are my go to ammo, they're cheap in the home decor section though 3/4" nut is brutally effective ammo. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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"Peroxide cures all ills", at least according to my mother. I still use it on occasion, usually soap and water or some dirt and grime if I'm feeling edgy...

If I was hunting with a wrist rocket, I would look for some 000 buck sized lead (copper plated of course!) or a little larger steel ball, and some much better tubing. Marbles and wimpy tube work just fine now. As a kid, I launched nuts, bolts, rocks, small fruit, sinkers, bearings, whatever was handy. It was simpler when you didn't have to worry about caliber, case length, bullet type and weight, etc.

 

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Rusty: You might want to read that first paragraph again, it sounds like you clean wounds with dirt and grime if you're feeling edgy. 

I'd work it into a snappy remark it's a good straight line but I feel it stands on it's own humorous merits.

Hopefully my reply isn't in time for you to edit. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Well I keep telling folks that my dirt is often nice, clean and sterile dirt having been heated to 1600 degF. Probably fewer germs than is in the water and on the soap!

(One of my "pranks" is teaching SCA folks how to forge and eating knife and only after forging mention that the stock was used sewer snake!  After all even prions can't survive *glowing*...)

BB, OUCH, I remember being on a Scout trip in the late 60's in the Shenandoah valley and getting my thigh gouged by a sharp edge on the scoutmaster's station wagon's tailgate.  He had a Korean War surplus medkit with mercurochrome in it, *old* far past it's use by date.   I'd never even would have had a scar from the gouge; but the burn from the merc was large and visible for decades.

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No one else ever zinged pennies with their slingshot? :o

Spent explody seatbelts have a bunch of ball bearings in them. I use them for eyes and stuff with scrap art but they would be a goodish size. Half inch maybe? All seatbelts pretty much have the easier ball bearing to get. The spent explody ones have a bunch more kinda like wheel bearings. Dont mess with unexploded seatbelts. They have a Powerful charge that is Very dangerous alone let alone with them taken apart. I blew one up in a garbage can once and it was a heck of a bang. That was as an assembly not messed with.  

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