Finished up a key hook board today. Walnut & resin with horseshoe nail hooks.

Looks pretty slick to me! I like the blue part!

Nice, it looks pretty darned sharp!

Frosty The Lucky.

Looks very sharp. Nice work. No shop time kids birthday weekend but got some work out of it need to make her uncle some roasting rods for bonfire and was going to figure out a stand for them maybe so dont need to hold. Keep up excellent work everyone.

 

I tried out a new (to me) bottle opener design using some links off a section of Size 200 roller chain I rescued from the scrap bin at work. Both 100% tested and ready for opening several lifetimes worth of frosty-cold, refreshing beverages.

I also made a couple tiny cats and a tortoise based on Thunder Bear's videos.

That is some big chain Mothman. Awesome work.  Absolutely Love the cats and tortise!

You have a Lot of potential bottle openers there. Should be Great salable items. Hope your liver is up to testing them all haha. 

Thanks Daswulf. I actually set out to make the openers out of flat bar, but I had an epiphany while digging through the scrap pile. The best part? No need to punch a hole, just drift what's already there. I have a bit over ten feet of the chain and there looks to be about ten links per foot, so I have plenty of material. Not yet sure what I want to do with the pins and rollers though. I turned one of the pin links into a hardy-tool bending fork a while back; it works ok but could be better.

Regarding your last point; I may need to enlist some help with testing, I can't throw 'em back like I used to.

Maxwell that walnut & resin is beautiful! 

Mothman, genius with the bottle openers. That tortoise came out adorable. I watched the Thunder Bear video last week, a lot of work went into that! 

I got some more practice in today. Did better than Thursday. I redid the can top opener and I'm much more pleased with this go around. Then I tried a leaf while yesterday's lesson was fresh in my brain. Oof. It's rough. I already know I need to work on hammer control but this leaf makes it painfully obvious, lol. I think I need a lighter cross peen. 

I worked too cold where the base met the stem and created a crack. I tried to rescue it by tapering the stem more and I thought I'd done it, but when I went to flatten the twists against the leaf it just snapped right off. Welp, saw that coming. I think my lesson today was that the leaf shoTuld have been smaller since I was using smaller stock, and of course don't work cold, haha

I have been lining up the completed projects in the garage so I can see my progress every time I grab my tool bag. I plan to keep making leaves until I feel good about it 3 times in a row. Then I'll move on to something else. 

Maxwell that walnut & resin is beautiful! 

Mothman, genius with the bottle openers. That tortoise came out adorable. I watched the Thunder Bear video last week, a lot of work went into that! 

I got some more practice in today. Did better than Thursday. I redid the can top opener and I'm much more pleased with this go around. Then I tried a leaf while yesterday's lesson was fresh in my brain. Oof. It's rough. I already know I need to work on hammer control but this leaf makes it painfully obvious, lol. I think I need a lighter cross peen. 

I worked too cold where the base met the stem and created a crack. I tried to rescue it by tapering the stem more and I thought I'd done it, but when I went to flatten the twists against the leaf it just snapped right off. Welp, saw that coming. I think my lesson today was that the leaf should have been smaller since I was using smaller stock, and of course don't work cold, haha

I have been lining up the completed projects in the garage so I can see my progress every time I grab my forging bag. I plan to keep making leaves until I feel good about it 3 times in a row. Then I'll move on to something else. 

Love the tortoise if dont mind can you send me the link for the video on it. That chain is enormous cant imagine the gear it was driving. Be nice for hold down chain with its wieght. Cant wait to get fuel and make few things.

Made a new tool holder for the fly press, to receive tools made from air hammer chisels.

The starting stock was the threaded section of a TCB with a nut welded on the end.

I used another nut to hold the first one firmly square for the welding, and then removed the second nut after cutting off the top of the bolt.

The bolt was thicker than expected (an M30 rather than a 1”), so I had to grind the threads down somewhat. The hole that  takes the tool shanks is contoured to match the rounded fillets on their shoulders. 

Gandalfgreen, I'm pretty certain links are frowned upon, but if you go to YouTube and search "Torbjörn åhman tortoise", it should be the first video to come up.

The roller chain was used to drive the head shaft of a large steel beaded-pan apron-style conveyor. Each individual "link" in the conveyor is about 7" long and 56" wide, with "wings" at the edges to keep material from spilling. Each link in the conveyor is fastened to the next by means of piano-style hinges. The conveyor is used to feed scrap aluminum into a hammer breaker. Unfortunately I did not get the chance to rescue the sprocket when we swapped it out.

Links are fine, so long as they’re not to commercial sites like Amazon or eBay. 

https://youtu.be/sVt5T2sIsHI

Wow thats an impressive conveyor.  Thanks for the info.  Thankyou

Thanks john and nice work. Have to figure something out one these weekends.

Shainarue, Make the leaf stem last.

Finished hammer.

I did make the leaf stem last

That hammer is gorgoues makes me want to use it. Well done

That's a sweet dogs head hammer.

I have broken countless leaves. Keep at it.

I made a smaller version of yesterdays hooks. This time 1/2” x 1/4” and 1/4” round. Lots of fun and took 2 hours total.

my favorite sucker rod punch and my improvised anvil used for cutting and punching mostly. 

Holland cone. I use it quite a bit. 

honey smoked steel. 

good weekend of stress relief at the forge. 

thanks for looking

Looks good Pedro!

Everybody breaks leaf stems when they're starting out. Keep at it it'll come and you'll wonder what the bid deal was. Honest I know. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks for the encouragement everyone. 

Rojo, what is honey smoked steel? Is it exactly what it sounds like or just another way of saying beeswax was used? 

JLP, that's a beautiful hammer 

Very nice Rojo Pedro..   Trammels are a lot of fun.. 

Curious as to why you would switch to the little round for punching?   Does it have a hole in it? 

Thanks guys on the hammer..   I have a Cutlers hammer in mind next go I think.. 

Already have hammer demo/lesson scheduled at the NEB fall meet friday night. 

Shainaru, yes just beeswax 

Jennifer, habit mostly from not wanting to mar my new anvil. Found it easier than using a cutting plate and I dont worry about missing or cutting through. Love the hammer

Nice pics, nice job!

Shainarue, i got a copy of that same book. Has some good ideas but as far as instructional i find it lacking. The author leaves out some steps when describing the process it seems. 

Spent some time making corkscrews. Never made one before, well i have tried but these are the first to get completed. 2 are punched hole with a tennon. The scrolled one has a square tenon while the other has a round tenon. I made the round one first then it kind of hit me that when twisting it may come loose an just spin on the tenon. Lesson learned. i also managed to only get 1 twisted the "wrong" direction. Will also need to make the screw a bit skinnier. 

Also tried a bit different style letter opener. I got the scroll a bit wonky, i told myself to stop messing with it but no just had to try and tweak it a bit more. i also could not find my round file for the life of me to sharpen it with so i did the best i could with a dremmel. These are just some practice pieces. My mom's quilt guild has a fundraiser coming up in November and i will donate some of these and a couple other items. 

Corkscrews are 3/8" round mild, the letter opener is a piece of 1/4" garage door spring.