What did you do in the shop today?

[Ted Ewert]

Thanks Dax.

JHCC, what's the jig for?

[BillyBones]

Found a lump o' bees's wax straight from the hive. This stuff is almost impossible to find in any sort of quantity locally. Go to the box hardware store and they look at you like you got 3 heads when you ask about. The smaller places have small "disks" about 1/2" thick and maybe 1 1/2" wide. 

So i set out with nothing hard or strenuous, good day in the shop. Made these 2 pendants for a friend and his better half. Celtic style, or my take on it at least. The one is supposed to be a dragon. 

The split one as i was opening up the split and fullering the bottom, the fuller slipped and i ended up with a cut from the rag that was red hot so it also burned. Did not quite cauterize so just a little blood. A first of what will be many i suppose.

Friday i learned why blacksmithing can be a not so glamorous job. Production work, the same thing over and over and over. Made a few scrolls for my railings.

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

Billy B, I had been looking for beeswax for a few different things , but didn't want to pay the asking price for dirty nonrefined wax.  Well as things turned out I now have a bunch of wax from where I work. We use food grade beeswax blocks on some conveyors, and they no longer keep the small bits, and just toss them. I probably have around 50# now. We get it in 50# boxes made up of four 12.5# slabs each, and we get a pallet load at a time.

When I worked at Jelly Belly we used beeswax for polishing the beans. They had an old fiber drum that probably had 40# of pellets in it, and it got tossed before I could ask about getting it.  

[JHCC]

2 hours ago, BillyBones said:

Production work, the same thing over and over and over.

Repetition is the mother of skill!

4 hours ago, Ted Ewert said:

JHCC, what's the jig for?

Custom job: a 7’ diameter x 7’ high arch x 8” deep archway. It will be part of the decorations for a wedding, then will move to the client’s garden as a permanent installation. 

[alexandr]

The week was productive, installed 2 ceiling chandeliers.

[JHCC]

1 hour ago, BIGGUNDOCTOR said:

didn't want to pay the asking price for dirty nonrefined wax.

If there’s an Orthodox Christian church near you, you might be able to get some beeswax candle stubs. Easy enough to clean by melting in a  pot of boiling water. 

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

It’s finally cooled off a little so I Fired up the forge and Finished a hot dog, marshmallow roasting fork I started on a few weeks ago,

[BsnNFrnt]

Got the competition axe ready for action - 6 days early. 

[bluerooster]

Ya'll are doing some nice work out there.

Beeswax is unobtanium around these parts. Even though bee hives are about 50 feet apart. I'd thought about robbing a super, but then thought better of it.  I'll just get some from my sister in TX when she harvests some honey in a few weeks.   I use beeswax for ball lube. I mix it with peanut oil, and soak patches in it to lube my black powder, muzzleloader balls.

As promised earlier, pics of the latest blade, et,al.

Cold shut. Not good.

And another cold shut.

Hall of shame. Various items that didn't make the cut.

 

And another thing; forge welding cable is not for the feint of heart.  I tried again today. And just couldn't get it to work out.  No worries though, I have 4 more pieces of cable to ruin.   I really liked the looks of the cable blade, except for all the cold shuts. I may go ahead and finish it out and test it to destruction. But I'd hate to waste the time fitting out a blade that is sub par. 

[Rojo Pedro]

I finally finished a door knocker I have been working on and a bunch of other things

[ThomasPowers]

Twisting is controlled by cross sectional area and temperature so you can use both of those to get an even twist.  A torch---even a propane torch can be used to help a section heat up and twist tighter, or a bottle of water can help to slow down a section that is twisting too tight. 

Twisting is a technique that having a propane forge the length of the area to be twisted can help to get it to all the same temp.

Twisting also shows us how large the forges of the Viking era were as using real wrought iron you must work it HOT and by variations in the twist you can "read" how long a section they could work each go.  (Twisted items like the Oseberg Tripod or Lund Spit or the twisted areas in pattern welded blades.)

[SinDoc]

Went out to forge yesterday only to run out of gas as the forge was heating up . So sadly, no forging was had as I just lost motivation at that point.

Also to update on my OTHER gas problem, had another contractor out Friday who thinks they can get me up and running again for a fraction of the cost from the other guy at just $3500. At this rate, I should look into a forge that can run on natural gas and just run the pipe out to it  (are natural gas forges even a thing? )

[ThomasPowers]

Yes my middle school had a Johnson natural gas forge back in the 1970's.  Of course you may need a higher pressure gas service to run an "industrial" on like that!

I've just got the "redesign" estimate for my shop power:  If it's instead of the original I'm due some cash back. If it's in addition then it just about doubles the total and would almost match what I've already have sunk into the electrical work on the shop proper.

[Les L]

Sindoc, I’ve seen posts and videos of ribbon burners running on natural gas, most were running on pounds, but some were running on regular house pressure

[JHCC]

38 minutes ago, SinDoc said:

(are natural gas forges even a thing? )

Talk with IFI member Latticino. He's an HVAC engineer and runs his forge on residential natural gas.

[SinDoc]

I did find a post from I believe around '16 I was reading and one of the major hurdles of such a forge is one I figured would be, which is the low pressure of a homes NA system. Would require a blower setup and such. Much more advance than anything I would be willing to attempt. Ill stick to the annoyance of the occasional empty bottle lol.

[JHCC]

Latticino's forge does have a blown burner. 

My own solution to the empty bottle problem is to have two bottles daisy-chained into the forge and a full spare bottle* in reserve. When the main bottles run out, I can switch in the spare to get me through until I can get the main bottles refilled.

* I used to have two spares, but one of them migrated over to my oxypropane torch setup. Now I need to get a backup oxygen bottle, since the torch goes through O₂ a lot faster than it goes through C₃H₈. 

[BillyBones]

Sindoc, dont know if this helps but like JHCC said have 3 bottles. When i was running gas 3 20# bottles would last just a little more than 1 week. I would guess 20 - 25 hours maybe, i got them filled on Sundays every week, empty or not. Find a place that fills by amount they put in and not a per bottle charge. Make it like grocery shopping every week. That way you do not have to worry as much about running out half way through a project. 

The local Tractor Supply here sells propane by gallon (?) (pound (?) cant remember which it is)

 

[JHCC]

By the gallon, I believe. It's definitely nice to be able to top off a partially full bottle rather than having to wait until it's empty to exchange. it

[ThomasPowers]

My local propane dealer will just move the fill tube from bottle to bottle and charge me for the total gallons used when I bring in 4 or 5 bottles to fill up.  MUCH cheaper than exchange places that historically shorted the gas too!  (Was a class action suit about that IIRC).

[Frosty]

I get mine filled, way cheaper and I can stand there and watch to make sure they don't over tighten the tank valve. 

The only guys in the club who complained about a 3/4" burner going through gas too fast were using exchanged tanks. I get about 1 1/2 days out of a 20lb tank. I usually take one of the 40s, they don't slush up as quickly and I picked up several at a shop liquidation sale. Got two weed burners with hoses too, it was a GOOOOOD day.

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

A few class action suits, actually. AmeriGas and Blue Rhino have been sued multiple times for price fixing by underfilling tanks (with 15 pounds of propane rather than 17) and by dividing markets and customers between them. In all these cases, underfilling tanks and charging the same as for a full tank increased the effective price-per-gallon and thus the profitability of each sale. 

Considering that two pounds of propane is about half a gallon and that pre-filled tanks come to about $5-$6/gallon, that's about $2.50-$3.00 of pure profit on each and every tank exchange. I don't know how many tank exchanges there are in the average year, but according to this report from the Propane Education and Research Council, 2017 saw 345 million gallons of sales in the container market or the equivalent of 73.4 million 20# tanks. If even half of those were seeing an additional $2.50 in profit, that's a cool $91,750,000 extra in just one year. 

[BillyBones]

The last time i was getting propane i asked the guy how he could tell if the bottle was full or not. He did not put it on a scale or anything obvious. He pointed at his foot, which was next to the hose, and said you can feel the hose move a bit when it gets full. Kind of a water hammer effect i suppose. But he then went onto explain why the exchange places are allowed to short the bottles. Something to do with space for expansion during shipment. But his point was i was getting a full, if not a little more, bottle. 

Anyway came back in to get ready for work. Was out just piddlin around in the shop and barn. While in the barn something caught my attention sticking up out of the dirt. Just an old piece of wood, so i picked it up and low and behold this followed it. Keep in mind only about 2 inches of one corner of the wood was sticking out. I am assuming it is some sort of old pipe vice. The guy that owned the property before me was a well digger. Now to figure out how to repurpose it.

[ThomasPowers]

I picked up a weedburner at the scrapyard last visit.  I remember we used them to preheat large anvils before repair.  That scrap run would have cost me more but I could do the math in my head and pointed out that he had charged me 30 UScents a pound and not 20!  Only 12 pounds but it adds up!  The other good find was a pipe clamp for woodworking/welding.  A size smaller than my others but a 5' pipe on it.

I think the real problem with the refills was that they didn't tell folks they were not getting a full fill so the "Full exchange tank"  wasn't.

When I get my tanks filled they go by the bleeder valve or by weight. (Depending on dealer).  The cost goes by exact amount of propane used. I ran across one dealer that had a "set price" for a refill.  Wouldn't use their service as I was often topping off tanks.  Tanks sure go farther in the summer out here!

[JHCC]

3 minutes ago, BillyBones said:

 he then went onto explain why the exchange places are allowed to short the bottles. Something to do with space for expansion during shipment.

Yes, that's why the exchange places (are supposed to) fill to 17 pounds rather than to 20. The issue with the class action suits was that they weren't even filling that much.

The advantage of getting your tank refilled isn't necessarily that you're getting more; it's that you're paying for exactly what you get. It doesn't matter if they completely fill the tank or if there was some propane left over from the previous customer.