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What did you do in the shop today?


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Had some forging time again for the first time since universities opened again. I forged a wine bottle holder as a gift for my brother's birthday. Originally I planned to use a block of wood as the base, but while working I had the idea to forge the legs as well, and so I did.

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~Jobtiel

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Thanks! While forging I had some other ideas as well, but I'm saving those for other birthdays!

What were you thinking about? I thought about winding stock of say 6-8 mm around the bottle. You can play around a lot with this design too, especially the legs.

~Jobtiel

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Re Navel Guns: I've seen a couple of belt buckle guns; but I'm headed towards suspenders these days.

Saturday I went to the scrapyard and my main find was a great condition Wilton drop forged large C clamp; 20 UScents a pound...

Time in shop: I made another anvils stand to take a 165# anvil up a couple more inches so I have one for heavy work lower and another for fussy work higher. I used 9 pieces of old 2"x12" in fairly poor shape; did quite a bit of gluing before assembly: Stacked then side by side on a piece of I beam and then held them with some bar clamps and  drilled 4 holes and bolted them tight.  Note: still no electricity in the shop so all the cutting was done with a bow saw and all the drilling was done with a brace and bit.  Boy was I happy when I remembered I had a 16" long bit the size I needed!  All the bolts were from the scrapyard and were scrapped electrical stuff, (Thanks CoOp!)  Sunday afternoon I did some cleaning and oiling of tools before I went and pulled weeds for my wife...

John: truly Arcs de Triomphe!

About the Arkansas river; these were stories told me by my Parents who were from  NW AR.  I can even sing a little song about Billie Sol Estes and the fertilizer fraud...  My maternal step-grandfather's family got their  step up after a flood in Fort Smith; they snuck in and got their little corner store cleaned out before they were chased out by the Police. So when they were allowed back in; they finished cleaning, got inspected and were the only place around selling food to all the folks cleaning and rebuilding their houses!  Yes the Arkansas still floods; but have you seen folks in boats on Garrison Avenue in Fort Smith lately?   (Fort Smith is interesting; they have both a Gallows,---Hanging Judge Parker's and an old bordello---Belle Star's daughter's place on the Historic Register.)

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Got to love a nice pair of tongs!20211004_100750.thumb.jpg.f65f7bb79103cbcaa72eeb3b30e85bf7.jpg

Darned jack handles do not always have well-formed valve actuators.  Will reform it in future, but tongs work nice in the interim.  24 foot motor home.  Stripping goodies before scrapper hauls it off...

Robert Taylor

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8 hours ago, Jobtiel1 said:

Had some forging time again for the first time since universities opened again. I forged a wine bottle holder as a gift for my brother's birthday. Originally I planned to use a block of wood as the base, but while working I had the idea to forge the legs as well, and so I did.~Jobtiel

That's a nice bit of work. 

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8 hours ago, Jobtiel1 said:

~Jobtiel

Very cool. I did a couple wine holders a while back too. Really like this concept for it though. I’ll throw the pic in with the other. 
I did my first forge welds this weekend. Ok I cheated a bit with some small tack welds to hold the four bars together but whatever - I’m still really psyched I was able to do it and that my little forge got up to temp which I was unsure of. I probably should have tried something a little easier for my first try but I’m the kind the kind of idiot that’ll try pattern welding for his first knife. The first attempt I guess I twisted and untwisted too many times (I realized I needed to pull back as I untwisted to get the look I wanted on the second one) so one of the four broke so I just left it twisted. Also made this little hardy swage to help keep everything from spreading apart while setting the welds. Plan making a bunch of these as tree ornaments for Christmas gifts. 
 

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Pat; did you see the ones I did with rusty old barbwire and then spray pointed them silver?

barbwireBasketIcicles.jpg.7c7067f536118d6fef7624baaa7a2f30.jpg The rusty barbwire was a pain to forge weld; but living out here, it made it "special".  Using a coal forge and borax/boric acid flux and IIRC I baling wired the ends to hold them together.  Thanks for reminding me it's about time to make another set for the kids

I've seen other people stick a marble in the basket to fancy it up a bit.

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Ya'll are doing some nice work out there.  I like the bottle racks. And the ornaments are looking good as well.

 I fired up the forge for the first time in a while today. And decided to make a cable billet. Learned that welding cable is (for me) a tedious process, and it still may not come out right.  Getting it to welding temp all the way through, without burning up the outside wires is a task not to be taken lightly.    Needless to say I ruined another chunk of cable.  

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3 hours ago, Pat Masterson said:

I did my first forge welds this weekend

I did my first forge welding this weekend to! 

I did two lap welds an a scarf weld, I gotta do some more practice but I plan on doing a basket weave soon as well as a flat bar Christmas tree project I seen, 

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On 2/18/2021 at 3:05 PM, Daswulf said:

Randy I'll try to get pictures and dimensions

Wow, since February, but I Finally found it tonight. Long time coming. I looked up, down and all around thinking I knew where it was. I thought it was lost and gone but it shouldn't have been. 

As usual, I found it in a weird place nowhere near where I thought. It was in a machinist box with my dremel stuff. I was organizing the box tonight and spotted it.

But it exists! My grandfathers or great grandfathers hand carved slingshot. One side is half inch on the carved concave sling area, the other is a 1/16" over half inch. It fits my hand great holding it either direction. 20211004_221632.thumb.jpg.5066020cb7c5bdbfb6910453885ac202.jpg20211004_221639.thumb.jpg.0ac76b31fc13e0861f18936025d919e2.jpg

9 hours ago, Anachronist58 said:

Stripping goodies before scrapper hauls it off

What goodies did you get?

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Rusty Barb Wire---to be sure all the galvanization is off it. Makes it harder to weld; so definitely use flux.  IIRC I tried some after I had soaked them in vinegar and wire brushed them under the hose bib to try to get most of the rust off.  The wire I have been using is an older flat barb wire as that was what was at the scrap yard.  It's pretty thin wire which I thought would make a better "icicle" for the tree.

Nice to see all the variations on a theme to give folks ideas to try ranging from easier to not so easy.   

 

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On 10/4/2021 at 3:08 PM, ThomasPowers said:

I've seen other people stick a marble in the basket to fancy it up a bit.

I saw John Switzer from Black Bear Forge do this. Definitely a cool idea but I don’t like how the marble obviously sits at the bottom  of the twist. I shouldn’t say I don’t like it - I do. But knowing how I am i wouldn’t be happy with it knowing how much cooler i think it would be if the marble stayed in the center like it was suspended. After looking at this twist I did I guess I could pull that off if I size it right and then heat just two of the bars the minimum amount to squeeze the marble in and then pull them back so they trap the marble. Actually this reminds me - while making that globe I did I was trying to peen over the ends of the center rod that it was spinning on where it went through the holes in the half meridian thing - the flared ends are all that’s holding it together. But I tried using a little benzomatic torch to heat them so I could be a little more gentle when hammering them but it would not heat a 1/4 inch long section of 3/16” bar to even a dull red. I couldn’t believe it - I think it was because of the angle I had to hold it at though which maybe made it so the hottest part of flame wasn’t on the spot I needed because I had used it to get the 1/4” spokes to a black heat pretty easily. But for this part I had to keep it away from a piece that was held on with JB Weld so I could only hold it a certain way. Anyway the point of this whole novel I’m writing - I didn’t know there was such a thing as an “air acetylene torch” which is cheaper and from what I understand less dangerous than an oxy acetylene set up. Does anyone know if these get hot enough for the kind of stuff I’d need it for - small localized heats on small stock usually 1/2” being the largest? Anyone ever used one? 

Kind of funny - forge welding has been this hugely daunting idea to me ever since I started smithing. I watch a lot of Black Bear Forge and he always says it’s such an essential skill to have. But now that I actually did it I find myself doing a lot of staring at this basket twist where it’s welded. This simple little thing is becoming one of my favorite pieces just because I pulled off the welds lol. 
 

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Could always do "peas in a pod"  and put several marbles in.  Differing colours might be nice. Stuff one in it for the bottom, one in for the top and then one in the middle depending on sizing.  Of course the heavier it is; the larger the limb on a Christmas tree it hangs from---or the closer to the trunk.

I like welding baskets as they tend to be a nice easy weld to do even with a fairly small fire.

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Pat,regarding air/acety torch,I have one I used for years soldering copper water pipe.  When I built my propane forge burner,I realized I could build a smaller burner for soldering pipe and haven't used the air/acety since.   Take a look at the small propane burners Mikey desighned recently.   I've also been using oxy/propane for several years.  On the rare occasions I need gas welding I still use oxy/acety.  I got away from acety when all the mom and pop welding supplies were bought out by corp companies like Air-Gas that don't want hobbiest business.  If you decide to buy an air/fuel torch,Turbo-Torch is the best but cost near what a small oxy/fuel set up does.  

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