Last Wednesday, knowing the milling machine move was coming up, I assembled a load of stuff-moving gear in the back of my truck: engine crane, crank cargo straps, tow straps, chains, variety of wrenches, 2×4 pieces, pipe pieces, and a first aid kit.
We humans can move very heavy things, using just our brains and simple tools. Or hydraulics. For everything else, there are hydraulics.
I’ve been very busy doing stuff that has to do with the forge, but none of which is forging.
Mokume Gane is a Japanese metallurgical technique for creating a decorative pattern-welded material from precious or semi-precious metals. I made some.
Speaking of Sheffield steel…
Cutting and stacking and welding pieces of steel – it’s hard work. Who’d’a thunk?
For me, projects proceed in fits and spurts – you clear one obstacle and that reveals the next obstacle. But when it’s a creative project the process is a bit different: you clear the obstacles and suddenly, you’ve got what you wanted and there’s clear roadway ahead. Now it’s all up to you.
My first grinder was a dual-wheel 1/16hp bench grinder I got at a yard sale for $5 in 1976. It turned on and off with a little switch that was between the wheels – perfectly set up so you could catch the sleeve of your hoodie in the spinning wheels and make a great mess. Luckily it was only 1/16hp.
Welding has always seemed like a big scary thing to me. I really have no idea why. My favorite theory is that I’ve seen a lot of bad welding and I don’t like to be bad at anything, so I’ve just avoided it, coward that I am.
Sometimes when I’m working on a project, I just can’t seem to get the right parts at the right time. I got all the Kee clamps [sb] to build the first (welding) table, but I kept ordering the wrong size connectors for the grinder/assembly table.