A Tribute

This is pretty much a continuation of the previous post. I intended to attack the mushroomed wedges with an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel. I didn't have a cutoff wheel and the wife had our one and only car. I wasn't going to walk 4 miles to a hardware store.

Well I wanted it done. I had two teachers who both passed away too young. Ray Bishop my science teacher and George Schaefer my shop teacher. This post is a tribute to both men.  Both believed in keeping the old ways as common knowledge. This afternoon I spent 45 minutes remembering George Schaefer. I recalled the day he taught me to properly use a hacksaw and file. The prepper side of me decided to use the old way rather than let the skill atrophy.

You can see the crack in the piece I cut from the large wedge. To be honest I was pretty skeptical myself when I started. It is a 1.5x2" piece of metal afterall. It made me glad I took the time to aneal them. Another 15 minutes chamfering the edges with a mill file and it will be done. Just think no noise , no electricity also no sparks or grinding dust all over the place. I did one side of the small wedge with a grinder. It took as long as doing two sides with a hacksaw.

Thank You George and Ray. You may not have known it when you were still here, those old skills are apreciated. Thanks for teaching me the proper use of hand tools. They really aren't that much work when you know what you're doing.

Woods

Opening the shop

It's that time of year again. Sometime around the start of hunting season in the fall. My workshop begins to acumulate stuff. Good stuff, junk, stuff that could go either way. It's too cold to work out there with no heat. The days are short and there is no electric for lights. You want something out of the way, put it in the shop.

I've spent an hour or two a day for the past couple weeks just sorting through stuff and making things as neat as I can. That tends to be a loosing battle as I have more stuff than can be neatly organised in a 12x16 foot space. The ten box challenge is well underway in attempt to solve this. I've made the decision to just put much of it in consignment shops. Much less hassle that way. It gets things out of the way quickly and I only have to handle things once.

At this point the shop is cleared out enough to start projects. In my efforts to clean and neaten I found a project started several years ago. Sometimes I tend to over think things. This Stanley #78 plane was relatively clean when aquired 4 years ago. In spite of having around 90% of it's japan finish intact I intended to have it bead blasted and redone. When I came accross it sunday afternoon I could only ask myself why. I ordered a set of replacement parts from Stanley and they had arrived exactly 3 years and 3 days before sunday. So I spent some time sunday chasing out rusted threads with a set of taps. Then installed the new fence and depth stop. I spent the yesterday evening cleaning rust and putting an edge on the iron. The pictures were taken midway through the project. It's now a working plane again.

I also managed to fire up the forge yesterday. Earlier this month at the Rochester gun show I ran into an old coworker. He has a business selling survival stuff. He also does primitive skills workshops on the side. He expressed an interest in aquiring some flint and steel sets to sell and give out in his workshops. So I spent part of the afternoon straightening a couple old coil car springs out. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have turned them into steels. I also intend to dig out my little retort and make some char cloth up to go with each set.

A couple years ago I aquired a couple splitting wedges from the local Habitat for Humanity store. I think I paid a quarter each for them. I've been playing russian roulette with those mushroomed heads and know it.

They had become pretty work hardened too. The larger one has actually begun to crack lengthwise though it doesn't show in the picture. I decided while I had a fire I would aneal them before grinding the mushroom off.

Here is the small one in the fire. I'll bring it to a dark cherry heat then let it cool slowly. Quenching it would just make it hard again.

Shortly after this I put the fire out. The wind put an end to my nice day. Even if the nieghbor's house is in forclosure, I wouldn't want to burn it down with a stray spark. It gave me a chance to finish up that Stanley plane.

Woods

It's about time! Maybe someday I can make a living at it.

In my late teens I aquired a blacksmiths outfit cheap at auction. Sold that stuff years ago. It's hard to explain such things being used as living room furniture to girlfriends and landlords. Back in may Pelenaka and I attended a local auction in an attempt to aquire an anvil. I ended up walking out with a bunch of old woodworking planes and a phone number in my pocket. The phone number led to this late 1800's vintage Peter Wright anvil. She weighs in at a near perfect 124lbs. I promptly built a stand from a couple old treated 2x10's I had kicking around. Someday I'll replace the stand with a more stable one built fron a 6x6. I didn't have any 6x6's in the scrap pile though. When I went shopping for a forge and blower, it was serious sticker shock time. Back in 1980 I bought an anvil, leg vise, forge and blower for under $100.00. The blower alone brings that much now. I used my money to buy the best quality anvil I could find. Any real blacksmith should be able to build the rest. I had an old all metal typewriter stand in my shop. A friend had an old GM truck brake rotor in his scrap pile. $3.00 for a hair dryer from the thrift store. $6.00 for a foot switch from Radio Shack. Had some pipe fittings in my supplies as well as the angle irons. Total with the fire cement and fire bricks came to less than $60.00 I've gotten 3/8" square stock to white heat, surely hot enough to weld at. The only real disadvantage is the steep sides of the brake rotor makes taking the fire apart difficult. Not impossible, just difficult. It will do for now. Hopefully what I have here will allow me to earn enough smithing to upgrade as I go. With luck this will eventually turn into a homestead business.