After way too many years (4, 5 or so) the Hot Shed is officially “done.” That means that the list of changes I want to make is pretty close to zero. Obviously, there will always be a few things but when you’re down to figuring out the lighting arrangement, you’re done.

The new forge works great. It hits welding temperatures (actually comfortably hotter than…) in about 15 minutes, which is perfect. Basically, you light it and have a minute or two to fart around, find your gloves, sweep off the anvil, squirt WD40 on all the things, and put on some good music. I do admit I want to upgrade the sound system pretty badly. In fact, I may just move the speakers from the old shop over, since I don’t run them very often any more. Like I said: done.

Also, the 2/3 burner cutoff with the shorter length for faster heating – that works, too. It’s a little weird: you can have the front half of the forge running 1500C and still reach your hand up into the back so your fingers are almost touching the baffle with the hot stuff on the other side. I have actually only done that once. It was mind-wrenching.

I put extra effort into making the feed lines to the burners pretty. There are also lots of cutoff valves. There are cutoff valves all over everywhere, to be honest. It’s like I have become some kind of control freak who refuses to let propane and oxygen just combine on their ownsome, unconstrained.

Burner 1 and 2 are the default burners; they’re from my old Chili Forge. I could make my own, better, but those are quite good and it seemed like a shame to waste them. Besides, making them better would entail threading inconel on the lathe and things like that. This is all basic off-the-shelf stuff, though it’s a not very off-the-shelf application. This sort of burner is commonly called “a venturi” because it operates by mixing the air and propane with the turbulence produced by the propane jetting out a small aperture. That keeps all the gas moving in the right direction, where it is ignited, expands rapidly, and really hauls ass in the right direction. The sliding sleeve with the set screw is the venturi control – you slide it up and down to control the air inlet. Each burner has its own cut-off, and they all connect off a pressure regulator, which I generally leave set at about (uh, what is the Freedom Unit for pounds per square inch?) I run it about 8 imperial oppressors/square inch. There’s a cool digital read-out (the black thing with the ribbed edges for your pleasure) which doesn’t get much use, because I don’t mess with it. And then there’s another cut-off, and an emergency quick-coupler (which is also a cut-off) and a long hose that goes to the wall, where the propane comes into the building.

You’ll notice that everything is wired down with mechanics’ wire. All of that is because if I throw a welders’ blanket over any of that, I don’t want anything to be flopping around squirting big jets of hot stuff. If you look at the burners you’ll see they’re also strapped down each with 3 separate pieces of mechanics’ wire. There is a blacksmith who turned the pressure up on a burner, which he had recently serviced and forgotten to tighten down the jet. So the jet popped off, releasing a torrent of gas, which naturally caught fire, and kind of thrashed around and set a bunch of things including his shop on fire. The hat was passed because he didn’t have insurance, but he’s back in business and alive and has a new shop, now. I know it’s not done in socially acceptable company but “you’re lucky you’re alive” is my immediate response, so I had to mutter it under my breath.

Since that picture was taken, the circular hole (AKA: the old propane line input) has been plated over. That’s the “Master Off Valve” and I went to some lengths to make it look like a master off valve might. [I just realized I have a tremendous amount of fun and waste a lot of time playing semiotics games with myself.] I’m the only person who uses my shed, but if I’m sitting over here burning and someone else is over there, I want to be able to yell “TURN IT TO THE OFF POSITION” and have them maybe get it right. At the bottom, you can see the input for the quick release that goes to the 30 feet or so of hose that cross the room. It’s nice because if I want to melt some bronze or whatever, I can just disconnect the forge, walk the hose over to the smelter and hook it up, and the smelter has its own (2) venturi burners and cut-offs and set-up. I am hoping to do more work in the sand-casting department this summer and fall.

When the forge was assembled and tested, and the gas piping all showed no leaks, Mark and I spent one last day on electrical stuff that you probably can’t see. That was early February and the cold was pretty nasty, so we set the smelter on the floor with the lid off and had it death-beam heat until the room was bearable. What we did doesn’t look like much – it’s a pair of large rainproof ventilator fans that can turn over all the air in the shed in a few seconds. There’s one big blue switch and a rheostat that controls that. Mark, who lacks my fear of ladders, also finished up the 2 power runs along the main beams, which supported a bunch of boxes of outlets on a switched circuit. Turn on the switch by the door, it powers all the boxes and then I have lights of various sorts plugged into those. Mark is also a great extra pair of hands for doing things like hauling heavy sheets of plywood around and holding them in place while drilling bolts in from the outside of the building. Once that was done, and Mark headed off, I cleaned and swept and put things away, took stuff over to the other shop for storage, labeled stuff, threw it away, organized all the tools into a toolbox (there is no sub-organization in my toolboxes, they are sorted in terms of “inside” and “outside”) Mark and I work the same way, which gets funny sometimes, “Hey, Marcus where’s that wire stripper?”
Me: “Floor!” hey at least it’s not in my pocket.
Also “catch” is understood to mean whatever it is, is flying toward your head.

Various things, each in optimal place. Forge, cabinets, 30ton press, 12ton press, annealing bin, vise, tong holder thing, which serves as a welder cable storage rack, welders’ blanket, anvil, stuff! There’s a lot of stuff. I also now have heavy duty hooks screwed into beams so wires can hang on them instead of being puddled on the floor, etc. You can see the lights, which look dim mostly because there’s a huge amount of ambient light when this was shot. Since this was shot I have added 3 more lights to the overheads, which are LED barndoor’d spotlights that put out a lot of light on a narrow area. So I can turn a very bright light on the anvil, presses, or polishing bench (which is behind me).

Currently the John Wick Wall is not populated, but eventually it will be. You can see the vent fans and fan control. Electrical smelter and burn-out kiln (blue) diesel drip tank, and lawd knows what else. Behind where I was standing is a sandpaper library and a stand with a mini refrigerator, first aid kit, and barn fan on a rolling tripod.

The John Wick Wall was a monster pain in the butt but I think it will look good and help keep the shop from blowing away. I made all the swoopy plywood rack pieces on the Happy Bandsaw, and they’re variously glued and screwed then primed and painted. The center row are classical Japanese dojo-style sword racks. Then, I have the upper left, more. Below that, I will house a terrifying-looking airsoft schmeisser and a bundle of pineapple grenades. The racks on the right side are the part I am pleased about, because I wanted project component shelves that fit visually with the rest. So I cooked up the idea of making shelves that looked like racks, on a rack of shelves.

I know it doesn’t look particularly impressive, bare, but it’s gonna be hanging with a lot of shiny implements of destruction, shovels, rakes, and maybe even my fairly credible fake drone-that-carries-something-that-looks-like-an-81mm-mortar-shell. Now that I’m retired and I’m home much of the time, the locals don’t venture to explore my place uninvited, but when the John Wick Wall is done, there will be a photocell/motion detector (in the empty 4-gang box right under it) that will turn on a tubular LED light bar that goes around the periphery of the wall (hence the side baffles) and (To be determined) may turn on some lights in the beams.

Let the good times roll! I consolidated some 1095 wire rope (AKA “cable”) and then ultra-twisted it. I forged it out into a long thin evil thing, which I proceeded to somehow not get straight. It was a test. I’ll get serious soon.

Also! Yesterday I planted the greenhouse. I know that plants don’t all germinate at the same speed but it’s fun to make it more competitive than life already is. I don’t tell them that the ones that grow best and fastest, I will eat first.