TechnoPrimitive

A Low Impact Woodland Home

I think I have posted about this house before but it was on a different site so here it is again. I wanna build one something along these lines!

Brick Oven Plans | Build an Italian Brick Oven

Not that I am planing on giving up on cob/clay ovens. Just found this site and it looks to have a fair amount of info on brick ovens.

The Pan Page - the Steel Pan Instrument

Interesting site. Full instructions on making your own. Good stuff!

Made a couple of Cloak pins the other day. Here are the pix.

Celtic Cloak Pin Small

Celtic Cloak Pin Large

And no I have no idea why I faced one one way and the other one the other way for the picture. But thats the way it is…

Got some pix of some of the stuff I have been doing. The following are pix of my old leg vise and the new pieces I made for it. The strap and spring are 1/4 inch thick lawnmower blade. The slotting tool, wedge and keeper are pieces of 1/4 inch plate I have had laying around for years. Got a piece of red oak tree trunk about 4 feet long and 30 inches in diameter, dug a hole about a foot deep and put it on end in said hole. Tamped the dirt back around it and mounted the vise on it with 3 lag bolts. Will get pix of it mounted soon.

Leg Vise with new mounting hardware.

New leg vise pieces. Left to right - Slot opening tool I made. Front leg opening spring. Wedge. Slotted strap. Keeper. Mount, which I didn’t make but heated, beat out and repunched the end hole.

Prior to bending the strap the punch was used to punch holes on both ends of each slot to keep them from splitting when cut open with the chisel. Punched hot. Punch 3/4s of the way through turn over and punch back through and out. Took me 2 heats on each hole. Hope to get quicker…

Again prior to bending the strap the chisel was used to punch through the slots between the punched holes. Done hot. Punch almost through and then turn over and back through. Punched into an aluminum billet I made from some old pistons a couple of years ago.

After the slots were punched through I made this tool to open the slots and allow me to beat on the edges of the strap to open the slot. Just heated one end of the piece of metal and beat the sides in till it would fit across the corners of the hardie hole. Heated the other end and beat it to a wedge shape then ground it to about a 45 degree angle. And yes hitting it on the sides does bend it a bit but if the strap is red hot it does the job it was made to do. A couple of taps with the hammer on the other side and it’s back straight. Good enough to do the job is fine at times…

Modified the forge this morning to allow for longer pieces to be in the fire. Cut a 10 inch or so piece of drive shaft and then split it lengh wise, making two half round pieces 10 inches long. Used the cuting torch and cut half rounds of the approate size out of each side to the right and left of the blower. Fired up the Zena welder and after clamping them into place welded them to the sides of the brake drum.

Started a fire and loaded the coal in and started heating the tongs to add additional notches down the handle. Did two more and then heated the pivot or hinge plate and punched a hole for the rivet. That was cool! Never punched a hole in red hot steel before. Drilled a bunch but this was as fast or faster. And didn’t weaken the structure as it displaces most of the metal to the sides. Only a thin piece punches out.

Put the piece back in the fire and started heating it again. Took a minute to get a piece of metal to put around the fire so the north wind wasn’t blowing the smoke in my face. Cranked the handle again a few times and took out the rod to the second notch. Had burned it in to or is that in two? So spent an hour trying to forge weld the two pieces back together. No go. Arc welded them and then started beating it down after reheating. Still got to do some more but am gonna wait for a day that isn’t so cold with the north wind blowing right on the anvil.

Had a bunch of copper wire that needed to have the insulation stripped off so got to looking at it. Took a hammer and chisel and cut it off of one piece but that was a lot of work. So looked at the forge and decided to make a cold cut hardy with side guides to hold the wire centered on the chisel edge.

Found a piece of 3/4 inch water pipe, cut it to about 4 inches long and then cut it from one end down the middle about an inch and a half. Put it in the fire and heated it to a cherry red then flattened it on 4 sides about 2 inches from the uncut end. Heated it again and put it in the vice and opened the cut end up enough to get the edge over the fuller. Reheated it and hammered it down on the top edge of the fuller till it bottomed out in the cut on each side. Hammered the sides flat and then reheated it and shaped it to the biggest wire over the end of the anvil.

Got a piece of mild steel about 3/4 inch in diameter that had been the front roller axles on the pallet jack that I converted to three point hitch lift on the tractor. Heated it to a nice cherry and beat hell out of it. Heat and repeat about 5 times till I got a nice chisel point about an inch and a half long and wide. Took it still glowing to the grinder and ground a chisel edge on it then cooled the edge in water. Cut the end off just under where the flattening started and ground 4 sides on it. Drove it in the hole in the pipe from the previous paragraph and clamped it and arc welded it in place. Put it in the hardy hole and fitted the sides to the wire with a hammer and then split the insulation with a couple of blows of a hammer. Move an inch and a half and repeat. Got the job done in a very short time on the largest size of wire. Will reshape the sides to the next smallest size wire and repeat till it’s all stripped. Then plan to cut the sides off and weld all the way around and use as a hot cut hardy.

Insulation Cutter Hardy Edge View

Insulation Cutter Hardy Bottom View

Insulation Cutter Hardy Side View

Insulation Cutter Hardy Top View

I made the fuller first so I could use it to make these tongs. I am making these tongs along the lines of the ones shown in the tutorial at anvilfire about the Dempsey Twist. Started with a 25 inch piece of 3/8 x 3/4 steel. Got one end turned and shaped a bit. If you look close you may note that with the 3 fuller slots and the twist and a bit of beating on the jaw that the bar has already grown length wise to 26 inches. Below are the pictures. Click on the thumbnail to view a larger version, back button on browser to return here.

Tongs full length view

Tongs inside side view - This side will be the inside of the hinge joint. Will punch a hole in the flat area just to the right of the jaws, which are on the left side of the picture. The 2 dimples in the bottom center are the shape the fuller makes. Will make more of these on toward the right and then hammer the humps out between them. It’s a lot easier to move the metal this way with the fuller than just by hammering the hot metal.

Tongs outside side view - The other side.

Tongs back view - Both pieces are the same shape. Just got to remember to turn the jaws in the same direction when twisting them into shape.

That’s all for now. Will try to get some pix of the forge, anvil and other stuff in the near future. Tis all real high tech stuff…

Found the camera so here are some pix of the bottom fuller. Or that’s it’s primary purpose. Will also be used to form different shapes in metal so guess it has another name too but no idea what it would be right now. Started life as a piece cut off a rail road rail. This is the top rail portion. The curved side was the really worn inside part of the rail. Took up to a yellow heat quite a few times to get it beat into this shape. Pix taken on a piece of pegboard. Holes are 1/4 inch in diameter and spaced on a 1 inch grid to give a feel of the size. Click on the thumbnails to see larger versions of the pictures and use your back button to return here.

Fuller side view 1

Fuller side view 2

Fuller top view - Took quite a few heatings and beatings to get it this narrow on top. Ground it smooth on the bench grinder and then used the belt sander to finish it off.

Fuller Bottom View - My hardy hole is 7/8 inch square. Had to upset (heat and hammer back into it’s self) the hardy end of this a bit to get it to fit the hole. It started out about 3/4 inch square. I think the hardy fitting is about 3/8s of an inch shorter now than before I started beating on it.

Appalachian Blacksmiths Association

Lot of good info on powerhammers and blacksmithing. Several different designs that lead to new ideas of doing it on the cheap…

The Artful Bodger’s Home Foundry - Home

If he can do it so can I. Would like to have the book but I think I have figured out how he injects the oil into the airstream and am gonna try it out soon.

melt metal, home metalcasting, backyard metalcasting

Bunch of interesting and dangerous stuff here. Wish he had more detailed writeups but there is a lot of info nonetheless… Good Stuff!

THE HILSCH VORTEX TUBE

Cool!

plowshareforge.com

This guy makes some nice looking stuff. Love his homemade power hammer! More ideas and angles than before. Note on his hammer the slide is made from an old vice body. Neat stuff!

anvilfire NEWS Vol. 1

Check out this junkyard hammer challange! I like both kinds but the east coast design is mighty cool. On the 4th page (I think) you have to go to the suppliments link to get to the 7 pages about the east coast hammer. Wish they had finished and posted the plans and such about this one… Please note that I had to break this out of the frames on the host site to link to these pages. The AnvilFire main site url is http://www.anvilfire.com/index.htm. Below is a pix of the unfinished east coast hammer. Love the rear end and motor block.

Jesus Hernandez

Go, look/read, marvel! Wonderful knives and swords. Love the patterns he gets in the metal.

Zoeller Forge

I especially like the Colonial toaster and bent iron rocking chair. If you are into forges, he also has some specialty stuff like the stainless steel flairs for burners. Neat stuff and LOTS of good info!

instructables : Handbound Book

Good article on book binding.

The Temas Blog » More Construction with PET Bottles

Good idea!  Fill the bottles with sand and use as bricks or blocks using cement as the binding agent.

Good blog too.  Now on my feedreader.

Treehugger: Seen in (Cold Spring) New York: Hockey Stick Chair

Cool chair!  Cooler stuff about it in the comments on the site.

Tom’s Project Notebook

Quite a broad range of projects that fit into the SCA world.  Cool stuff.