Don’t worry, if you are inclined to.
To be completely frank, I have been depressed into near immobility by the utter failure of the US Justice System, which has demonstrated fairly conclusively that it is designed to protect wealthy white people, while tossing poor people or people of color into an oubliette. As I watch Donald Turnip run through his endless obviously stupid appeals, of which he has an infinite supply, I am minded of Leonard Peltier who somehow has been imprisoned since 1975 in spite of the fact that his crimes were wimpy compared to some of the Jan 6 defendants [wik] If he had Donald Trump’s lawyers, he’d probably still not be imprisoned because of some appeal or other. Note: I am not trying to imply that Trump’s lawyers are good, but rather am implying that the Justice System is bad. Or, as per the internet legend, has hit rock bottom and started to dig. [penn]
My sister is an attorney (our fencing coach once said, “she has always been an attorney”) and we used to spar over the question of whether lawyers bear any responsibility for defending people they know are corrupt, or cannibals, or whatever. They are not, I was assured, simply in it for the money – it is their duty to serve as a necessary component so that Justice may happen. Now, we all can see plainly that is bullshit – the lawyers who are defending Trump’s literally indefensible actions have been reduced to conspiring with activist judges on the supreme court to make sure that Justice never happens. Travesties are offended by the comparison.
My work often reflects my mood, so I was not surprised when I took a pair of bars of low layer twist and sandwiched some W-2 between them, and it started getting longer, and longer, and narrower and meaner. Basically, an Edo period version of a rondel dagger, so I called it the “Tokyo Toothpick” in honor of the state of Arkansas, which offends Tokyo by comparison.
I usually don’t shoot “in progress” pictures because it means taking one of my furnace gloves off and shooting one-handed, risking dropping my phone or a 1200F piece of metal on my foot or the floor. Anyhow, this is a somewhat interesting picture to the extent that I am now forging my blades almost to final form on the anvil and press. I came up with a trick last fall, which is to put an allen wrench or whatever under one of my press dies so the whole die now presses at an angle. I am able to make the taper to the blade’s edge almost on the press.
Usually, there is a fair amount of work to be done in blade profiling but this went from forge (to cool down) to angle grinder, mill file, and ready to quench in less than an hour. So the total time I had getting the blade to this stage was about three hours including assembling the block of steel it was made from. Not bad.
Then, I did some fancy stuff with clay so it would make a beautiful temper line, quenched it, dropped it, and it broke in half. Oh, well. It was an experiment. Next time I try one of these I will be armed for bear. Usually, differentially tempered blades take on a curvature (Sori) from the expansion of the martensite on the edge versus the pearlite on the back. This one did not do that, which made me wonder if maybe the whole thing hardened. The fact that it broke in half also supports that. So I think my problem was not in the forging but in the post-forging quench process.
Then we had a windy thunderstorm and an oak tree came down across the road about a mile from my house. The road crew sawed it up and dragged the big pieces to the side of the road. Then, people who wanted big pieces of oak log came and took them, leaving the “little” 6 inch branches. I let them sit a few days to dry a little bit then tossed 4 of them into the truck, wired them into a pyramid on the edge of my yard, and innoculated them with shiitake mushroom plugs. (not shown). I painted the holes over with molten wax (bucket, brush, beeswax, blowtorch) to keep them from drying out and I guess I’ll see if anything comes along next summer. Given that I have tons of space, this seemed like a pretty fair gamble.
Other than the Tokyo Toothpick I also got stuck into making a rondel dagger. My version is probably not anything a medieval knight would recognize, though, since theirs weren’t made of flashy twist damascus with evil edges of tool steel sticking out. I mean the basic point (badum-tschh!) is clear. So I now have this huge evil thing (a term I do not use lightly) that is a bit sharper than a needle and a whole lot bigger, with a single cutting edge of the aforementioned tool steel – and then I needed, you know, rondels. I wanted flashy, so I made a short stack, drew it out, cut it up, cleaned it, rotated it around a center, tack welded it, and forge welded it into a mass, sawed off some chunks, flattened them out, and dished them in a dapping block. From there it was basic steel grinding and polishing:
Here’s a problem: now the blade is flashy, the guards are flashy, what do I do with the handle? My plans (in progress) are a Holbein-style handle made of synthetic ivory and ebony. I think I have come up with a build process for that, I just need to wait for my fine kerf 1/8″ bandsaw blades to show up. If it works, I’ll probably do a post on it but if it doesn’t, we’ll forget all about this comment.
An ongoing project has been building the heating system and body for a steel smelter. Smelters are no problem at all, so long as you are melting stuff that has a lower melting temperature than steel. When you start getting to steel temperatures you have the problem that your cheapest and easiest materials are the same stuff you are trying to melt. That can get awkward. I know a guy who solved all this by buying a pure platinum crucible, which can survive basically anything short of a solar corona, an oxy/acetylene torch, or nuclear weapons. At $3500 for a 50ml crucible, I’m going to have to go with low-survivability fireclay and graphite and stuff like that. There’s also the problem that your burner, which has to generate 3000F or so, should have a melting temperature that is higher than that. Or, is otherwise cooled, e.g.: like rocket scientists do, with liquid oxygen running through critical parts to keep them from melting under the heat they generate.* I’m using some of those tricks, using cold propane to atomize diesel fuel and cool the combustion chamber; the oxygen drip is on the downside of the combustion chamber, which is directed into the smelter with a tube of inconel. I am in love with inconel. It is some insanely tough stuff. It is, also, why the X-15 and SR-71 were expensive. Actually, everything on the SR-71 was expensive, but you get the idea. My hope is to fire the burner and smelter system sometime in November.
Also: November. In case you give a shit, my birthday is November 5th. It was not my idea to have the great big performance election on my birthday, but since they will, perhaps you can all spare a thought for me getting my birthday wish, which is for MAGA to be conclusively crushed. One final note on that, I have a theory which is that the Supreme Court and in fact most of the right wing, have decided to take a “wait and see” attitude toward Trump. If he wins, they will use him as a puppet for a while and put in someone they like better. (Perhaps JD Vance, who has been said “is as Appalachian as olive garden is Italian) It is impossible for Trump’s disability not to be obvious, and less than Reagan’s was. But it can be hidden if he turns out to be a useful idiot. The reason the Supreme Court came up with the novel immunity theory they did was to muddy the waters until after the election. If he wins, I won’t matter. If he loses, they’ll throw him to the wolves. The entire right wing with throw him to the wolves. It’ll be like Lavrenti Beria when Stalin died, all over again. Beria, who?
* Unrelated: if you are inclined, SpaceX has done some big “reveals” on the Raptor-3 engine. To say that it is a masterpiece of engineering may be an understatement. The crucial aspect of it is that the SpaceX engineers took free rein to attempt certifiably crazy shit(tm). For example, the housing of the engine is 3D printed, so it can contain tiny routing tubes that carry small amounts of liquid methane around parts that need to be cool. Some sub-assemblies are 3D printed directly into the housing. The way the engine is maintained is to cut it apart with a CNC machine then examine it and weld it back together with a CNC welder. We’ll see if it works but a comparison between the Raptor-1 and Raptor-3, or even the Rocketdyne F-1, will make your head hurt. Go search and be amazed.
jimmf says
Good to see you’re still making sharp things. Your birthday wish matches my election day desires and I indend to be the first in line with a vote against the MAGAts and the republicans who have made this mess possible.
kestrel says
Hooray for more shop photos. Those rondels are really lovely. Here is a vote for your birthday wish to come true. I think it would cure an awful lot of depression world-wide.
chigau (違う) says
Good to see you.
Tethys says
I am happy to hear you’re alive and well, since I am one of those people who is inclined to worry.
Sorry that the toothpick broke. I don’t know how you would differentiate between work hardened and quenching.
The rondels are gorgeous and a simple black handle sounds perfect. I’m assuming a Holbein handle is similar to those found on high-end palette knives?
Ebony and ergonomic so it fits nicely in hand.
snarkhuntr says
Glad you’re still around and spending time making beautiful objects.
I have a similar theory. The American right-wing elites, for the most part, genuinely hate Trump. You can see that if you look into Tucker Carlson’s emails/messages that were revealed during the Dominion lawsuit. They know exactly what he is, and they abhor his crassness, lack of dignity and demented babbling. They must cringe to see him out there daily showing his ass to the rest of the world. They want an actual strongman, not a clown, and they know that he’s the latter.
Unfortunately, they’re stuck with him. For whatever fascinating reason, Donald Trump has captured his base’s attention. They’d sooner not vote than vote for anyone but him. If Trump was anything other than the self-serving vanglorious narcissist that he is, he’d have been able to accomplish much more evil than he did in his last term. This is one of the main things that the Right-Wing elites hate about him, they have a really hard time using him, turning him towards their goals and getting him to accomplish them. Ironically, his very worst qualities make him a liabilty for the very people who would want to use him. He cannot focus his attention on anything, he refuses to listen to or take advice from people in a consistent or predicable way. He’s been nothing but a man playing a role (the “boss” character from his TV show, most recently) for so long that he has confused it with reality. He hires and fires on whim, whimsy and whoever flattered him most recently.
The circle of people -almost entirely composed of grifters and moon-bat lunatics – surrounding trump must have some absolutely fascinating dynamics, the constant fight to be close enough to the man to influence him, the back-stabbing and inter-group rivalries. People rising and falling in his attention, outcasts clamouring to get back into the circle (looking at you Guiliani), the endless parade of discarded allies littering his meandering path. Nobody ever secure in their position, since one negative tweet or news article, and even his closest ‘friend’ could be come a ‘never talked to him’ coffee-boy in his mind.
This must have been quite a bit similar to how things operated around historical monarchs, when a nation was burdened with a similarly moronic leader. The never-told-no child of privilege without the skills and talents that his ancestors used to build their role simply playing with whatever toys happen to catch his fancy. The scrambling army of courtiers all dancing in the hopes of catching his lordship’s momentary favour, and to avoid his displeasure.
So back to Trump’s seeming immunity from consequence:
This is a predictable intersection of several forces – the entirely unreflective and unashamable nature of the man himself, right-wing-elites hoping to preserve his public life long enough to figure out how to ride him while appeasing his base, and the actions of classic liberal institutionalists trying to balance the system’s need to avoid ever punishing a rich or powerful person with his absolute refusal to play the usual ‘big-man-caught-criming’ role and shut up/go away quietly to retirement.
Tucker was right – Trump destroys everything he touches, and his contact with the facade of the US ‘Justice’ system is likely to break it. How it gets mended or what gets built up in its place is still open. I think progressives should be capitalizing on this moment – the system laying its fundamental two-tiered nature bare at the feet of this orange wannabe-tyrant. Use this to make positive and permanent changes, it might be the last time that’s possible.
captainjack says
I alternate between a paralytic depression and the nearly irresistible impulse to climb up on the roof and howl until I fall off.
Reginald Selkirk says
Isn’t graphite basically the same as coal? Don’t know if I would use that for high-temp object.
Reginald Selkirk says
A Safety Assessment of the Use of Graphite in Nuclear Reactors Licensed by the U.S. NRC
avalus says
Welcome back, Marcus!
@ 7 Reginald Selkirk: No, solid graphite is not just coal. It is highly ordered and dense on the atomic/molecular level and can take a very harsh beating. That is because it has a really high thermal conductivitiy, so the heat will not accumulate inside but will be moved to another medium, usually the melt. Your linked article says that on page 2. It is also very pure with few other elements inside the structure that could catalyze the oxidation. That is stated on page 4. Page 5 illustrates the difficulty to actually burn graphite. But it will burn away slowly even when used with oxygen under high temperatures. But that is slow and a graphite crucible can last many castings. One should hoever always do a thourough inspection before use, splashing molten steel around does sound not funny for the spasher. Also they are much cheaper than platinum, which will last basically forever. I used graphit tubes in atomes emission spectroscopy that were heated from RT to 3000°C in fractions of a second to vaporize and atomize certain solid samples. Always scary to see them flash to glow through the window. They unsually lasted for about a hundred or so firings, according to my superviser at the time.
Very cool article by the way, thank you for linking it!
Reginald Selkirk says
Radiation Ansers: Chernobyl
avalus says
These things work fine in the right furnace. Although for a fuel burning furnace SiC or SiC coated graphite is probably better due to the oxidizing atmosphere. But I am sure Marcus will carefully read the use-cases before ordering an appropriate set of crucibles. (What a strange and fun word. Crucibles!)
Anyway, I completly forgot to say how amazing these pretty rond rondels look. Swaggerig amazing!
And good luck with the shiitake. They took over two years to fruit for me, so you may be in for the long haul.
Dunc says
Good to see you’re still with us!