What did you do in the shop today?

[DennisCA]

Working outside the shop, to build a shop. 2nd row almost done. Plan is three rows, maybe four.

 

Had some help (!?) with putting up the strings, from an expert in strings

 

Also did this earlier, finished my hewing axe and tried some hewing on a smaller log:

That's how I'll make the roof beams for the shed/smithy/shop above

[Daswulf]

Certainly a string expert Dennis, but perhaps not at leveling them in a plumb manner. More leveling them as in destroyed. 

Nice work and best of luck on the shop build.

 

[Frosty]

Looking good Dennis, I like your expert, what's his/er name? By rows do you mean layers of block? The term would be "courses".  It's hard work but makes excellent walls. I like Concrete in it's many forms, it'll be a shop for the ages.

Frosty The Lucky.

[DennisCA]

Thanks, the expert's name is Oskar (english spelling Oscar), also has an all black littermate that was also around to do the same kind of "helping" with the string.

I did mean layers of blocks, they are LECA blocks or  light expanded clay aggregate. I won't make the walls from these just the foundations to get the wooden walls up from the ground. Though with the cost of wood nowadays, ones wonders if it would not be as cheap to make the walls entirely from leca.

[Frosty]

I'm not familiar with LECA blocks, I'll do some web searching tomorrow, it's getting late right now. 

I know what you mean, wood prices have tripled here and look to be going up. We have some repair work that needs to be done this summer and I'm afraid to see what it does to the quote.

Keep us in the loop as you build please. We LOVE to see people putting up shops. The world NEEDS more blacksmith shops!

Frosty The Lucky.

[SinDoc]

I have a crawl space and I am the same. I avoid going into it at all cost until winter when there are less things moving around down there. Old houses are a pain. Our has consist of 3 parts. The main/original structure, the kitchen/bathroom addition and the utility/mechanical rooms. The last one is just a concrete slab (which had a drain collapse under it a few months ago which is what brought on the remodel), and the other two are over a crawl space.

The way the crawl space is, you cannot get to the other side of the house due to the HVAC trunk line blocking all means of getting through. Due to that, when we bought the house the inspector was not able to see the other side. The first thing I noticed walking the house was the sag on one side in the original part of the house but didn't think of it. Fast forward a few years later and I am ripping up floors in that part of the house to put down nice new subflooring (rather than having multiple layers stacked on top of each other) and put down new laminate only to find the cause of the sagging. The ding dong that owned the house before us disclosed they cut a hole in the dinning room (original side) to get under the kitchen addition to add supports to undo sagging but what they did not mention was that they cut ~3' sections out of 5 joist to make room to get in and out and did not bother to sister them back together which caused the house to start caving in on itself.

I have yet to full on fix it, but the joist are put back together and I managed to crank about an inch and a half out of a 3 inch sag before the jacks were forced into the dirt. Installed some cinderblock pylons to support the giant log spine of the house and sealed it back up for another day. Since then I am terrified of opening anything up in the house as I am afraid of what I will find.

[JHCC]

6 hours ago, Frosty said:

I'm not familiar with LECA blocks, I'll do some web searching tomorrow, it's getting late right now.

Oh, what surprises await! Who'd have thought such a plain-seeming material would have played a role in the attempt to build ships out of concrete!

[ThomasPowers]

I went out and saw the painted line that will be trenched for the electric line, from near the front edge of the property to the back corner.

We once owned a 100+ year old house: structural brick with a slate roof, on a brick street.  Extremely well built originally; but I think during WWII it was carved up into several apartments and then perhaps in the 1960's converted back into a single family home---but they didn't go in and clean up the electrical and plumbing on it so it was a hideous mess: For electricity we had knob and tube, BX and Romex in almost Lovecraftian interconnection!  Plumbing had things like a hot water line from the water heater go 20' across the basement, over 2 feet and then back to about 2' from where it started and up to the bathroom on the second floor. Also the previous owner had cut out a load bearing wall and put in a beautiful header; but didn't tie the uprights to the brick wall crossing the basement.  Turns out that plaster and lath does NOT like sagging!

We lived there 15 years and survived not rewiring the place; we did have to redo the kitchen when the ceiling came down---see "does NOT like sagging" above.

On the other hand we sold the house for 3 times what we owed on it and a couple of days before it was to go on the market.  Sold to a fellow who grew up across the street from it and remembered it as the Best house on the street!

[Paul TIKI]

cool shop build.  

I find it odd that you have to really look to find LECA blocks here.

Went out and was building the deck yesterday.  Still got a ways to go.

 

[Nathan Kraft]

I’ve done absolutely nothing in the shop recently, what with finals coming up and school being crazy trying to wrap up for the year. However, I am very excited because in a couple weeks I’ll be able to get out and do some stuff during the day! 

[SinDoc]

Its finally a nice day with no wind so I am hoping to go home and try my hand at making a set of tongs.

[alexandr]

A customer from London sent a photo. I made a chandelier in winter.

Next week I will finish the cornices in the same room.

[Hefty]

Alexandr, may I ask what type of forge you use and how big it is? Those long twists are so even and consistent! Are they each a one-heat-twist?

[Old Crew]

I don't know how Alexandr does it but I am in the process of rebuilding and recreating some 100 year old handrail for a building.  It has 1/2 square solid which is twisted in the center. I built a fixture and  twisted it cold.

I post some pictures later.

 

[Frosty]

LECA. Puffed rice, puffed wheat, popped corn. Why not puffed clay. I always thought the concrete ships of WWI made more sense than the picrete (ice and paper pulp) aircraft carrier idea of WWII. 

I wonder if LECA is available locally. Not that I'm building anything but someone I know might be. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

Reshaped the hook on my gas saver.

Much more secure. 

Unfortunately, I snapped the pilot light off, so now I need to get a replacement. Grrr. 

[Goods]

Picrete ships seem like an outlandish idea, but have you seen any of the impact and explosion test on that stuff? It’s amazingly resilient, self healing (if you don’t loose you refrigerant capabilities in a battle), and          it floats! Not to mention cheap. If you can’t tell, I’ve always loved that idea. (North Atlantic fleet, not Pacific...)

David

[Cannon Cocker]

Finished the chef knife for my wife tonight!

 

[Frosty]

Cheap? The expense of making one aircraft carrier move under it's own power was more than building a carrier task group. Keeping it chilled with something like 30 battleship sized boilers running required I forget how many more boilers and steam generation plants. It would've been really slow as well.

The test model didn't melt and finally sink for years after they abandoned the idea and model. That was after they tried like the dickens to damage it with bombs, torpedoes, batteries of artillery, whatever they thought it might encounter in war. Then later they couldn't drill and shoot it with strategically placed explosives. The finally had to give up and let it melt. 

The first time I heard of an ice aircraft carrier I envisioned someone chopping part of an ice sheet loose in Antarctica and cruising it to war. It's a fascinating subject though I've only skimmed and watched a couple pretty good programs about it.

Picrete is amazing stuff. I'm thinking it was ahead of it's time. Picture mining a comet for ice and transporting it to a location with a large, inflated, Mylar balloon and spraying it with picrete. The pulp prevents it from freezing instantly so it sticks to the balloon and freezes in place. 

You could build deep space habitats, large freight ships and heck sub light generation star ships. 

Hmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Donal Harris]

Put a lite more work on my flatter. Do I normalize it prior to punching SNF drifting the hole?  I still need to clean up the struck end and tweak it a bit straighter. 
 

The face is flat and reasonably square. I believe it will work. As it sits now, it is 3.12 lbs.I forget what JLC’s weighed when finished. 

[Frosty]

You'll be heating it to well past critical to punch it won't you? Normalizing it first seems redundant but I'm not sure so don't quote me.

I got a PM regarding ice Aircraft carriers. The material was Pycrete, the proposed carrier would have been the Habakuk or Habbakuk. There's a pretty good Wiki article. Please disregard most or all the details I thought I knew about the thing, I was way off. Let me tell you about the dents in my head and my scrambled memory files. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

The project would have been awesome, but they put the whole thing on ice. 

[ThomasPowers]

Today I was about 1/2 way to work when I get a call from my electrician; The marking service didn't finish marking where the underground stuff is located so he's going to work inside the shop today and needed the door unlocked.  So I bombed back to the house, unlocked the shop, apologized as I was going to move a few more items before they started work in there and headed back to work---only 5 minutes late.  Gotta haul the trash to the transfer station over lunch so I can check up on progress.  He says he's allocated 3 days for the work so I may have POWER IN THE SHOP this weekend!

[Daswulf]

Power in Powers previously unpowered shop. Goodluck. Hope you'll be powered on scedule. 

[ThomasPowers]

Schedule would be about 1.5 decades ago; now  I'm trying for positively powered powers before retirement!