As folding knives go, it's simple. As forged knives go, it's on the complex side.
Click to see it and read the story.
April 2009 Archives
As folding knives go, it's simple. As forged knives go, it's on the complex side.
Click to see it and read the story.
Thirteen hundred pounds of blacksmithing coal, shoveled, bagged, loaded, unloaded, and stored.
Just in time too.
Sunday night we got down to the last five or ten pounds of coal, and that wasn't gonna get us through Monday night's class. "Ah, that's ok," I thought, "I can pop down to Williams Coal and Oil and get more during the day on Monday."
Then it hit me like the math test at the end of a bad dream: Monday is Patriot's Day. Places are gonna be closed.
I immediately started to think of where I might find coal on a holiday Monday. I toyed with stealing some from Doug while he was running in the marathon. It's not like he's gonna be using it any time soon, but messing with his stuff the day before the insurance adjuster comes by seemed a bad idea.
Williams was open but they had no bagged blacksmith coal, so it was off to the smithy to gather up containers and re-learn the millers' knot, then down to Braintree (passing under the marathon runners). I got the truck weighed, bagged coal, loaded up, weighed in again, paid the difference, and headed home.
Just in time too.
Sunday night we got down to the last five or ten pounds of coal, and that wasn't gonna get us through Monday night's class. "Ah, that's ok," I thought, "I can pop down to Williams Coal and Oil and get more during the day on Monday."
Then it hit me like the math test at the end of a bad dream: Monday is Patriot's Day. Places are gonna be closed.
I immediately started to think of where I might find coal on a holiday Monday. I toyed with stealing some from Doug while he was running in the marathon. It's not like he's gonna be using it any time soon, but messing with his stuff the day before the insurance adjuster comes by seemed a bad idea.
Williams was open but they had no bagged blacksmith coal, so it was off to the smithy to gather up containers and re-learn the millers' knot, then down to Braintree (passing under the marathon runners). I got the truck weighed, bagged coal, loaded up, weighed in again, paid the difference, and headed home.
When I first started smithing back in... um... oh, a few years ago, most of the material I found was reinforcing rod, so that's what I used. And some of it was crap. Apparently it had too much sulfur in it and that made it red-short. And that got pretty disappointing on occasion.
Tonight I played with some re-bar I picked up the other day. I was inspired by an article in the ABANA publication: The Hammer's Blow, wherein the author wrote of the different grades of re-bar and how it isn't necessarily crap and people oughta give it a try.
I made an S-hook, and left the re-bar texture untouched in the middle, 'cause I wondered what it would look like with a good twist on it. It's... interesting.
It has markings on it, I can't read the first one, it's very blocky though, the second character is a '4' and the third is either an 'S' or a '5'. I worked it at all ranges of temperature and it behaved rather like mild steel. I even managed a simple forge weld in it (once I got the clinker out of the fire). It's on its way to being a very big spoon.
Tonight I played with some re-bar I picked up the other day. I was inspired by an article in the ABANA publication: The Hammer's Blow, wherein the author wrote of the different grades of re-bar and how it isn't necessarily crap and people oughta give it a try.
I made an S-hook, and left the re-bar texture untouched in the middle, 'cause I wondered what it would look like with a good twist on it. It's... interesting.
It has markings on it, I can't read the first one, it's very blocky though, the second character is a '4' and the third is either an 'S' or a '5'. I worked it at all ranges of temperature and it behaved rather like mild steel. I even managed a simple forge weld in it (once I got the clinker out of the fire). It's on its way to being a very big spoon.
I tried a new (to me anyway) bottle opener design. Instead of the hook-and-push-down design I've been making, it's a more typical hook-and-lift-up style.It needed some tight, precise bends. It works but I'm going to have to play with the starting form and the order of operations to get it to be a straightforward piece to do, 'cause there was some weird hammering and angles to get the gripper to happen.
After goofing up forge 3 with the aluminum, I had to drill a new tuyeure-plate and since I had the thing apart, I decided to replace the ash-gate too. What it had was a quickie slapped out of a piece of sheet metal when we were just getting started, and it was time for something nicer.
On a bar of 1/2x1/2 I isolated the last 2 " with half-face blows on the far edge then cross-peined that part out to be wide enough to cover the end of the 2" pipe that is the ash-trap. It looked like a small spatula. I made some bends and an ornament on the end, and voila! an ash-gate that isn't embarrassing.
On a bar of 1/2x1/2 I isolated the last 2 " with half-face blows on the far edge then cross-peined that part out to be wide enough to cover the end of the 2" pipe that is the ash-trap. It looked like a small spatula. I made some bends and an ornament on the end, and voila! an ash-gate that isn't embarrassing.
It's been an interesting week.
Practicing two-piece welds. I've been haveing a bear of a time with the lap weld. been using Mark Aspery's scarf with some success, but almost never getting it on the first try. I tried a split lap weld and it worked much better, but it's a bunch of prep, and it leaves a thin spot. at least the way I tried it. Then I tried a cleft weld. Oh man. The first one not only took on the first try, I finished it in one heat. It had a little bit of lip at the ends of the cleft piece, but that just tells me that I have to work on the scarf a little more. The next two tries worked on the first or second heat. Well within reason. The failed first heats were when the alignment failed even before the hammer came down, so there wasn't much deformation, just lost flux.
Melting aluminum on forge 3, I burned through two, count 'em two, crucibles and drooled aluminum down the tuyuere all the way to the hair-dryer. It was an expedition getting that out.
Practicing two-piece welds. I've been haveing a bear of a time with the lap weld. been using Mark Aspery's scarf with some success, but almost never getting it on the first try. I tried a split lap weld and it worked much better, but it's a bunch of prep, and it leaves a thin spot. at least the way I tried it. Then I tried a cleft weld. Oh man. The first one not only took on the first try, I finished it in one heat. It had a little bit of lip at the ends of the cleft piece, but that just tells me that I have to work on the scarf a little more. The next two tries worked on the first or second heat. Well within reason. The failed first heats were when the alignment failed even before the hammer came down, so there wasn't much deformation, just lost flux.
Melting aluminum on forge 3, I burned through two, count 'em two, crucibles and drooled aluminum down the tuyuere all the way to the hair-dryer. It was an expedition getting that out.
Prospect Hill Forge is looking into using Moveable Type as a blogging platform. Some of the important issues are: does it look good, is it easy to use, will Carl like it, and what about Naomi? Does it bring significantly greater ease of use to the table, as compared to Carl's home-rolled php-based blogging tool? What other benefits might it have? Well, here goes. We're about to find out.
