not the origional title but as safari did a tits up on me after several pages of typing that is the best I can come up with.
spent the day working harder than I had to.
or according to some of the folks that I know. They just don’t understand the freedom that not having to use electricity gives.
Got a new auger yesterday. this one is about 2 feet long and an inch and three quarters in diameter. I now have 3 true augers. One is an inch and a quarter and about 20 inches long. Another is an inch and a half and is about 14 inches long. And now the new one.
Spent part of the day making a chair makers aze. Started out with a piece of lawnmower blade. This is a thick blade that is super hard that came off of Mark H’s folks riding mower.
Used the torch to cut the basic shape out. Then took the torch and put it in a vice and using vice grips to hold the metal aze blade blank heated it to a nice yellow heat. Then beat the hell out of it with a ball peen hammer on the ASO (anvil shaped object) that I use as a poor excuse for an anvil. Soon I hope…
More heating and beating.
Rinse and repeat. Several times.
And then after cooling a bit I used the hand grinder to shape the cutting edge a bit more and clean the torch splatter off. Back into the vice grips and to the bench grinder for some more clean up and shaping. Then a session with several files.
Cut an inch and a half piece of 1 inch black pipe and welded it to the blade to hold the handle. Then the final pre temper sharpening with files.
Lit the torch again and after heating the front half of the blade to a low red heat quinched it in 30 weight motor oil. A bit more clean up with the files and then heated just the edge to a blue tint and quinched. Super hard and sharp!
Used the shaving horse and cut a piece of privit to length and then peeled it for use as a handle. Drove it into place and then tried it out by making a bowl out of a cedar board that I split out of a round I cut out of a 8 to 10 year dead standing stump last week. Did a fine job. Will take me a while to figure the best way to use it but from what I have used so far it works great!
Will try to get some pix up soon on the shaving horse and some stools that I have made (and NO not that kind, Steve).
Later