tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64761093665090738482024-03-05T08:09:41.462-08:00Extremely Loud and Incredibly HotBenjohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11325981225032487487noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6476109366509073848.post-4290713500576291862015-05-19T19:08:00.001-07:002015-05-20T09:02:51.263-07:00A Song of Fire and Fire<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Are you offering to teach me something?"</i><i><br /></i><i>"Teach? No. Ain't got the patience for teaching. But I might let you learn."</i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">- Maskerade by Terry Pratchett</span></blockquote>
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Jon Snow was wrong about winter this year and frankly I barely noticed spring either. This I suspect had more to do with our interminable and suspiciously good weather and less to do with time flying by. Indeed time ground by like a millstone being worked by a team of kittens - slow, but ultimately better then a sweaty donkey. Working with the guys at Orion has been really great. I've learned a lot just by being around them, but I understand now why they said they were offering an internship, not an apprenticeship. They're too busy to teach, but they've been kind enough to let me learn around them. Not that I'm complaining, in fact I prefer to flail about in the deep end most especially when there are no life guards on duty, but it sure can be a devil on the ol' biceps.</div>
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I also had a chance to help out on a job with Joe over at Dry Canyon Forge, and he loaned me a few books to learn from. And of course I've learned a lot from the internet and the library books, and the COMAG (Central Oregon Metal Arts Guild) meetings every month. I want to say that being autodidactic isn't as wonderful as it sounds, but that sounds like a thinly veiled humblebrag way of saying that I'm inventing blacksmithing which - to your great surprise I'm sure - I am not. More like polydidact (not to be confused with a polydactyl, which would be way cooler, but probably not nearly as cool as being an autodactyl, which, in my mind, is a category that includes Wolverine and Inspector Gadget) - trying to learn from everyone and everything except myself because I certainly have very little helpful advice to offer myself. </div>
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Anyways, the good news is that at this point nothing is particularly holding me back in my shop! I've got the forge tuned pretty well (it's at least not oxidizing too terribly now), the anvil has a sexy stump to rest upon, the post vice is pretty well rooted, I've got the welder just about figured out so as to be useful, the floor is mostly level and satisfactorily covered in dirt but not made of it, and I've made a healthy array of tongs, bending forks, twisters, chisels, punches, drifts, slitters, etc. I don't mind saying that I've come a hell of a long way from where I started, and in fact it puts a smile on my face every time I see the place and how much it's filled out since the beginning. Plus look at all this stock material I've got lying about now!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIHDOgJcx6_oyvlHX8eEiNWizS6idALgH2lz9DAMMPE0aif-KxItlXQopDKDrybpELJ9UMsoDW5chddQcxPBXwC2jhF-YPMx7lpuKsJoj0PLixvKSJB0oN9iGvYZ_CP0_rUUE3vBYAgW8J/s1600/IMG_20150518_154727.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIHDOgJcx6_oyvlHX8eEiNWizS6idALgH2lz9DAMMPE0aif-KxItlXQopDKDrybpELJ9UMsoDW5chddQcxPBXwC2jhF-YPMx7lpuKsJoj0PLixvKSJB0oN9iGvYZ_CP0_rUUE3vBYAgW8J/s320/IMG_20150518_154727.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ok, it's not that impressive compared to some of the blacksmith's shops I've seen, but most blacksmiths have piles of metal that screw with airplane compasses and would make the most dedicated of hoarders blush and I will <i>never</i> be like that. Nope. Never.</td></tr>
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Finishing the "build a forge" project and beginning the "make a living using your new forge" has been a challenging experience. This definitely didn't come as a surprise like, "Woah, what?! I thought starting a small business with no prior experience was supposed to be as easy as finding my belly button! Thanks <i>Obama."</i> It isn't as if I'm going into cobbling where as soon as your shop is set up the elves move in and start cranking out shoes (I'm pretty sure). Even still, I guess I had hoped I'd have more sooty, muscular shoulders to lean on by the time I reached this leg of the journey. Not that the COMAG crew et al aren't supremely helpful, but I feel like I can lean on them to the same degree that one might lean on one's proverbial neighbor for a hypothetical cup of sugar (but of course would never <i>actually, </i>I mean really metaphorical Safeway is just down the road). </div>
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Being your own task master and teacher can be really frustrating sometimes. How do you gauge whether you're doing well for your skill level or if you're just not cut out for the job? How do you judge your technique and give tips to yourself? How do you give rousing motivational speeches to yourself when you're looking at the product of a whole day's labor and it's redefining ineptitude? Where do you draw the discipline to go back to work every day when you feel like you haven't been successful at anything for weeks? How can you tell if the pain you're in is normal or doctor-worthy? How do you discern when an expense is worth the investment and when you're trying to paper-mâché over your lack of experience with dollars?</div>
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Sometimes I think I wax a little too dramatical-like about the hardships of this admittedly self-inflicted project here, but then again the whole point of this blog is kind of a spillway for catharsis when Bucket is already working at capacity; yes, despite what I may have led you to believe with all my insightful and informative posts on such thrilling topics as charcoal and Papers I Have Made. </div>
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Despite my struggle for objective clarity, I can tell just by looking at what I've made that I've made at least a little progress in the past few months. Hindsight is a better optometrist than the present for putting things in perspective.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgVNoQe8Fb6zkF1s9ifkuAbLC9EcChBytFlThFDfv8jkreWCUmDbO7RLtvlqtDbLe28YFTZNBUrSeopxVU6JDycYA4gbYaaAX3Si8lmhyphenhyphenpcglotft23B1PuM5qR_jcgI87zXP6pv9bw9VM/w979-h410-no/IMG_20150519_172336.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgVNoQe8Fb6zkF1s9ifkuAbLC9EcChBytFlThFDfv8jkreWCUmDbO7RLtvlqtDbLe28YFTZNBUrSeopxVU6JDycYA4gbYaaAX3Si8lmhyphenhyphenpcglotft23B1PuM5qR_jcgI87zXP6pv9bw9VM/w979-h410-no/IMG_20150519_172336.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Left - February sadness; Right - May gladness</td></tr>
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I've gotten a lot better at planning, drawing, and measuring before acting, knowing what tools I'll need and how to use them, and knowing how to make the metal look like what I see in my head. I've also become a lot more realistic about my capabilities so early on in the game. I am not ready to forge very complicated things, and it has been really humbling to realize that the hard way. I've started to set much smaller goals for my days that end with products that might not be super exciting (e.g. Make Five Wall Hooks Today!) but that I can do successfully. When you don't have anyone around to give you feedback on your work, your work itself becomes a primary source of feedback. By tackling projects that are too difficult for me now, I'm making things that say, "You majorly suck at this. Probably you should be making sandwiches for people instead of this," all day long.<br />
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Making piles of basket hangers all day may not be as intellectually stimulating or challenging as pattern welded candelabras might be, but I've had to be more respectful of my emotional limitations when it comes to accepting abject failures as Valuable Learning Experiences.<br />
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A major motivator for me recently has been talking to a manager at a local garden center who said he'd buy such things as basket hangers and trellises from me if I brought them, so I have at least one market besides Etsy to lean on now! Which is great news as I am also celebrating my two-thousandth dollar spent on blacksmithing! Hooray!? Does it count as a business if it spends more money than it makes? Probably. For example, take my bank...PLEASE! *mic drop*<br />
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BLB</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037255673341804620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6476109366509073848.post-84974416468687591022015-03-14T13:46:00.000-07:002015-05-20T09:22:27.415-07:00Ta da! Ta da! Ta da forever!I made sort of an ultimatum with myself that I wasn't going to indulge in blorging about side-projects and distractions until I had glowing hot twisted metal to report too. So it gives me great pleasure to cut the official/proverbial red ribbon on SHF (or as I like to pronounce it, "Shuff") with two milestones passed: First "real" forge built and fired, and first sale to a complete stranger. Here's a condensed list of what I've been up to for the past month or two:<br />
<ul>
<li>New floor! - I picked up and moved just about everything out, hacked the floor up with a pickaxe, and (along with the surprise help from one D-Millz) covered the ground with some pavers.</li>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOHkW-H_5oRKbbiyokh3a5Jwt8qJbnuJNtNuCk7RLzdXWnfazO3zn33DlalHmc00VKXQFK1Ig0_2JQ-Lcb5RA9ZYtOdZfaJr8J5rP9xcyScc99pdKRkxg8sIhRJ__ISBjV5MOpRQa8vZoG/s1600/Floorlaying.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOHkW-H_5oRKbbiyokh3a5Jwt8qJbnuJNtNuCk7RLzdXWnfazO3zn33DlalHmc00VKXQFK1Ig0_2JQ-Lcb5RA9ZYtOdZfaJr8J5rP9xcyScc99pdKRkxg8sIhRJ__ISBjV5MOpRQa8vZoG/s1600/Floorlaying.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit to D-Millz for the photo. If anyone has a Fuji X-Pro1 lying around, I'll buy it from you.</td></tr>
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<li>Made an anvil stand! - From cinderblocks to Cinderella story, the anvil has come a long way up the social ladder. I traded a favor to a local sawmill in exchange for a beautiful, rough-sawn block of black locust. Add a bunch of scrap metal from Swift & Mcormick, and ta da!</li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2a06GbsHEEqaxu_324-8lsbumCzYD_qg8bu28z9WY78VuaPG1qLu2wVU5pykTGj97LdFd0B8Qm6b4P13BCI4X0L8aZxzi6mAzjtX0OTV7OW1bvvtByn1obH2j9scETLiEF11RXhe-jaGt/s1600/DSCN1074.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2a06GbsHEEqaxu_324-8lsbumCzYD_qg8bu28z9WY78VuaPG1qLu2wVU5pykTGj97LdFd0B8Qm6b4P13BCI4X0L8aZxzi6mAzjtX0OTV7OW1bvvtByn1obH2j9scETLiEF11RXhe-jaGt/s1600/DSCN1074.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<li>Restored a post vice and built a work stand for it! - I picked this vice up for a song on Craigslist, and after a little love and tenderness it has come back to life and helped tremendously with many of these projects. Big thanks to J-Loo for help with the welding and the pipe. Getting this 7/8"x4' thick plate into and out of Greg's truck by myself sure was a fun treat for my body.</li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJWGftocubVRexdfDHyIU5q6MH9-OEWLuEakQj8oWqq3qlaf1BtpTfcuIpRsaC8QHSr66d7LHHiPhngPYXO0-rdRllbt-0Li8OkC81K9LfA_PvJh9C32freLDxbGMjfbK8pbOCuES5tAg-/s1600/DSCN1083.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJWGftocubVRexdfDHyIU5q6MH9-OEWLuEakQj8oWqq3qlaf1BtpTfcuIpRsaC8QHSr66d7LHHiPhngPYXO0-rdRllbt-0Li8OkC81K9LfA_PvJh9C32freLDxbGMjfbK8pbOCuES5tAg-/s1600/DSCN1083.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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<li>Bought a stick welder! - For years now, I've been trying to work around the problem of welders being balls expensive by making one. While in principle, this project isn't complicated (at least in terms of moving parts, wiring diagrams, raw materials, etc.) it is extremely dangerous, and I didn't trust myself enough to actually use the damn thing. It wasn't too hard to salvage some transformers, rewire them to my purposes, and hook them together, but without a way to control the welder's output it would have been a really limited tool, and adding a variac would have brought it in line with the cost of buying a new welder (and if you think using home-wound transformers sounds dangerous, then don't even google homemade variacs). Anyway, the point is that suddenly I came across this beast of a beauty and snapped it up.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisR-EfsXx746EoYSwpr0siPTLnPFCfzNU0I-qfmLFPLxgBYj58UhuAcrRLriitm3_zh70fXMdjbcxB0e8TFnNW45NyTDyoNfoph5rwf_3KhPAN__K-MMATGlzhXpjsUCwuqx7dqhhbWe77/s1600/DSCN1075.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisR-EfsXx746EoYSwpr0siPTLnPFCfzNU0I-qfmLFPLxgBYj58UhuAcrRLriitm3_zh70fXMdjbcxB0e8TFnNW45NyTDyoNfoph5rwf_3KhPAN__K-MMATGlzhXpjsUCwuqx7dqhhbWe77/s1600/DSCN1075.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This monster weighs more than twice what I do, and sucks up 220/440 volts at 84/42 amps, and J-Loo (my senior welder advisor) tells me it could handle 1/4" rod, which, I mean, I've never even seen welding rod that large for sale, though it's very possible I didn't understand what he was saying (I often don't).</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxrpmUlm-F8KQeDF4iSpEtqmu2tvhE5Kv0sTGoVzVodfPptPlRJ5dtUgFcMWe87bj6zqBBtyYYv03FtLu5LJQbogiX_5aUjN4_2uiwSId-PoFW1Wha-3vF1L5yIR8Cu1I90gCMKbbDG7yg/s1600/DSCN1079.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxrpmUlm-F8KQeDF4iSpEtqmu2tvhE5Kv0sTGoVzVodfPptPlRJ5dtUgFcMWe87bj6zqBBtyYYv03FtLu5LJQbogiX_5aUjN4_2uiwSId-PoFW1Wha-3vF1L5yIR8Cu1I90gCMKbbDG7yg/s1600/DSCN1079.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Also if moving that plate for the vice stand sounded like fun, imagine me trying to get THIS out of the back of an F250. Thank the gods my neighbor, O-F'sho, came along to help me belay it off the barn's overhang. </td></tr>
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</li>
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<li style="text-align: left;">Made a(nother) forge! - I've gone through about ten or fifteen different forge bodies and about half that in burner designs, and I finally made one that WORKS. I had some really grand plans for sourcing all the material from scratch and making this badass, bronze age looking temple of fire, and I haven't given up on that dream, but I did frankly get sick of not forging and had to throw some real money at the situation. WORTH IT.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie_ct7QdrYXGLB6ia3U2lPthjpU9WfLdqmeZPKx7ZTczNj7t7YYxensNFgAC_mM-nAM5JC9D2VAIEyxpgnFGIdwxtgXsuOrkjJa7MsOpDYFNPrhpT7mHT3CNqyRLySh_Zky4riJvZCpIQc/s1600/DSCN1080.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie_ct7QdrYXGLB6ia3U2lPthjpU9WfLdqmeZPKx7ZTczNj7t7YYxensNFgAC_mM-nAM5JC9D2VAIEyxpgnFGIdwxtgXsuOrkjJa7MsOpDYFNPrhpT7mHT3CNqyRLySh_Zky4riJvZCpIQc/s1600/DSCN1080.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For this edition, I went with a pretty standard ABANA approved Ron Reil design, and though it will eventually plug into a lovely C-shaped pipe forge that I'm still working out how to put a hole in the top of, for now it's shoved right into a hole I drilled into the top of a firebrick.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5d7nUTvWnVMdNpKTjVJSOHERaSJSryhecPmVzzP_B0QYUq0n0CnfmM8C4IXjzn1qFard180Mtx68jfQ2zK2-NQlyVFLafBsSrhxPd9-fIQrwDdUje8NAyTj41rbclTiz0dRT6RTx7orbF/s1600/DSCN1082.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5d7nUTvWnVMdNpKTjVJSOHERaSJSryhecPmVzzP_B0QYUq0n0CnfmM8C4IXjzn1qFard180Mtx68jfQ2zK2-NQlyVFLafBsSrhxPd9-fIQrwDdUje8NAyTj41rbclTiz0dRT6RTx7orbF/s1600/DSCN1082.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<li style="text-align: left;">Worked for some actual blacksmiths! - The guys at Orion Forge in town gave me the wonderful opportunity to help them out with some work for this year's Winterfest here in Bend, and besides getting to work with them on some of the larger pieces they were making/bringing to the festival, I got to prep for and lead a bunch of hands-on blacksmithing demos during the whole weekend. We made wall hooks! I'm hoping to continue "interning" with Orion in the future, but we'll see.</li>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz3m0FmBKaDmgfblaqse9Gv4IryW2-ncADopMRsa80tpsWmGk2KkT4OqsvK3bKbROB7ti0OPmdvG1XtMGjpAnjJ-aqm9OOrsK71o1l0TISdM5VoTnA1pKAHivNrwiJT4DBfS_zQTkRvSs4/s1600/Orion+winterfest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz3m0FmBKaDmgfblaqse9Gv4IryW2-ncADopMRsa80tpsWmGk2KkT4OqsvK3bKbROB7ti0OPmdvG1XtMGjpAnjJ-aqm9OOrsK71o1l0TISdM5VoTnA1pKAHivNrwiJT4DBfS_zQTkRvSs4/s1600/Orion+winterfest.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">Here's the booth where we set up shop - that's me in the grey apron in the back. It started to get really busy once people were drunk. Fun fact - <span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">when it comes to how drunk you are, </span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">there's an inverse relationship between one's confidence in blacksmithing and the ability to do blacksmithing. Also you will begin to find the phrase "quench the tip" increasingly hilarious and your eyebrow wagging and elbow throwing will reflect this.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWuwI9lnDQF4tET2rPmwe06djaT8RPAEM79MAxjm44s6QRSQPTy3_Sf_pFwO3pwoV60TyTKiRyXvDv_zISP1lp0jZBQ4xEbGLPdG7q9lx8v-qjPBXAHh8mwyr_hsTtGEQ2S3D4OTFLIdl3/s1600/Fire+throne.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWuwI9lnDQF4tET2rPmwe06djaT8RPAEM79MAxjm44s6QRSQPTy3_Sf_pFwO3pwoV60TyTKiRyXvDv_zISP1lp0jZBQ4xEbGLPdG7q9lx8v-qjPBXAHh8mwyr_hsTtGEQ2S3D4OTFLIdl3/s1600/Fire+throne.png" width="319" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">I got to cut a lot of the square pipes and plate covers for this guy! Once we finished building it, we took the whole thing over to a powder coating company where they have RV garage sized ovens where we heated it up to 300-400ºF and then painted wax all over it. </td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk03jECrsZMMyGgcdeN8ve3ro_T8mmn3Ya0WcxSPsGfQxrg0x-Y2TygxCxmKxRJSSbPMahJIMaX6nbJ1tzXG0AuvcyLU6KIKf5RTv9zYpg4hfumst18ugIIxP1a1xgc7Bi1ZdbxsZjjfvg/s1600/Fire+throne+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk03jECrsZMMyGgcdeN8ve3ro_T8mmn3Ya0WcxSPsGfQxrg0x-Y2TygxCxmKxRJSSbPMahJIMaX6nbJ1tzXG0AuvcyLU6KIKf5RTv9zYpg4hfumst18ugIIxP1a1xgc7Bi1ZdbxsZjjfvg/s1600/Fire+throne+2.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">For the coronation ceremony I got to light the propane flames that shoot out the top, which didn't seem to impress the awkward dude they hired to be the Fire King this year too much. Super weird moment.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<ul>
<li>Sold a cocktail sword on Etsy! - Some dude in GA bought the sword I listed on Etsy! I was really surprised because I totally didn't put my heart into the listing and it was kind of a joke/experiment. In fact I originally intended it to just be the first little sword I made in the Nail Forge, but I totally I forgot about that when he asked me how many I have, so I told him I'd make them to order. Then he went and ordered the sharpened and blood-runnelled options I listed, which grossed me $8, but meant I had to go and make a new one. Anyways, I spent a day massaging the process a little more and worked out some manufacturing kinks that were holding me up from making more of them and got one in the mail to him. After hugely miscalculating postage, I netted a little less than $2 out of the sale, but I had fun and it felt good to have a legit customer. Expect to see a lot more stuff showing up on my Etsy page now that I'm starting to understand how it works. Speaking of...</li>
<li>Started making more Etsy-able items! - Starting with dice! Also now that I'm practically a master hook maker post-Winterfest, I'm going to be listing a few different hookish things.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdFMyln_Hi2sIKUCbn5rIiRadCoJ5ZFTBfwR1ahZlowDC69I9uW2_tPDRlVwqnNU8KPFQUfLK3CyPOU6WvsYuEEetm5yPkc_-vTnsh_dwpKvp-VEMzlYiZ9T0Phy0j6P4Ahh7wdbP7Re_N/s1600/DSCN1064.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdFMyln_Hi2sIKUCbn5rIiRadCoJ5ZFTBfwR1ahZlowDC69I9uW2_tPDRlVwqnNU8KPFQUfLK3CyPOU6WvsYuEEetm5yPkc_-vTnsh_dwpKvp-VEMzlYiZ9T0Phy0j6P4Ahh7wdbP7Re_N/s1600/DSCN1064.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of my first tool projects is making more/better punches so the pips aren't quite so wild. I did these ones with a drill press (crazy generously donated to me by Hunter over at Orion Forge).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFHvlvt__4dcF_rS6LkrXwtgabLMidYkgSYrf3tZniaTg0Ipi-etdX4rObQv7X4gNXgBUvd4y4_g5W-o5dEAbkH8RT_vPCbQwCjd4habvJnK1cQpaiP0xEBKOz_6yhP-rMoUmxy_oeAo1Y/s1600/DSCN1066.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFHvlvt__4dcF_rS6LkrXwtgabLMidYkgSYrf3tZniaTg0Ipi-etdX4rObQv7X4gNXgBUvd4y4_g5W-o5dEAbkH8RT_vPCbQwCjd4habvJnK1cQpaiP0xEBKOz_6yhP-rMoUmxy_oeAo1Y/s1600/DSCN1066.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A very early hook in my hook-making career. It lacks the spit and polish of many of the later ones, but I like its shape more than most of them.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQjeuxbrW5X91NngMvL_nRgcTW3kUfSARl8TEhZAjiYjnGk-tswquwNxu5phB4jT_QQoOqUIFdiEPTKa2mIAryf5qkyLIo16fR-dauQyUsP_Bhn18avqOfNtdJPywe6Cyz_NM4N1MmGC77/s1600/DSCN1067.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQjeuxbrW5X91NngMvL_nRgcTW3kUfSARl8TEhZAjiYjnGk-tswquwNxu5phB4jT_QQoOqUIFdiEPTKa2mIAryf5qkyLIo16fR-dauQyUsP_Bhn18avqOfNtdJPywe6Cyz_NM4N1MmGC77/s1600/DSCN1067.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of my most recent hooks. I made it for some dude who showed up at Winterfest about ten minutes before the whole festival ended and asked if I'd make a hanging garden basket hook type thing, and though he was exceedingly drunk and wanted to trade me a "yoga" swing in exchange for it, I figured why not? </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqF6WmpdgEjz2rB0RvFkmsAa3v_Bd9kHfWCfJwky1HM-M-WMP14rxdcixBcDK638aoL8rNGopT4JoXqLWPYWSMEdbu6zyvKhNuqRpCLkdsEb5Z4abxhXcKi1Q8mP2HlfmPUvNFAKT9F5bS/s1600/DSCN1068.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqF6WmpdgEjz2rB0RvFkmsAa3v_Bd9kHfWCfJwky1HM-M-WMP14rxdcixBcDK638aoL8rNGopT4JoXqLWPYWSMEdbu6zyvKhNuqRpCLkdsEb5Z4abxhXcKi1Q8mP2HlfmPUvNFAKT9F5bS/s1600/DSCN1068.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">He vanished into the night, but the hook does a great job of holding up my 5 gallon bucket-o-tools.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: left;">Made a solar forge! - This was a quick little side project that ate up a day. I picked up a free 55" projection screen TV and used the enormous fresnel lens on it to make a giant death-ray contraption! I haven't tested it again since early January when I built it (and back then it couldn't really do more than get your hand really uncomfortable and smoke wood since the sun wouldn't get much higher than like 65º), but hopefully by summertime this thing will be up to forging temperatures.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi28WB4l5IJ51mB8_g3biWjmTbmzdvvMRXUqgb3y1TzXlSwy39Ocgg_AqJx0CRJLoCof1kUfSPCPmOcIPp4Oc9J-CSSbiv491X-09F0-sFvfEAEngNBNbEgvDdcbfqKgt78cXdHjDud5gYI/s1600/DSCN1058.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi28WB4l5IJ51mB8_g3biWjmTbmzdvvMRXUqgb3y1TzXlSwy39Ocgg_AqJx0CRJLoCof1kUfSPCPmOcIPp4Oc9J-CSSbiv491X-09F0-sFvfEAEngNBNbEgvDdcbfqKgt78cXdHjDud5gYI/s1600/DSCN1058.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">One thing I do wish I was still in the south for; this guy would melt steel if it were in Georgia. I'll be interested to learn how powerful it will get up here in Oregon.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7395IILuD9wWkOCdNdlCbTZRiNrIbO7cJm_dJQv-UHLJkUk917HxjO-meIgs1g9qK82XErAWG5cJ48Gp5-OhN4bClQgyakXqI3ObD2JSUTvpXlFXu7c33CcVGI8eM_uH71z7FfzxH4Mcy/s1600/DSCN1059.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7395IILuD9wWkOCdNdlCbTZRiNrIbO7cJm_dJQv-UHLJkUk917HxjO-meIgs1g9qK82XErAWG5cJ48Gp5-OhN4bClQgyakXqI3ObD2JSUTvpXlFXu7c33CcVGI8eM_uH71z7FfzxH4Mcy/s1600/DSCN1059.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Note the strange brick sculpture I made for one of the many forge bodies I tested and rejected. Thankfully this has been replaced by a much more sturdy metal table thanks to my welder.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Anyhow, things are shaping up nicely, and I'd like to think that by the end of next week I'll have figured out some way to attach my new burner to something a little better than a pile of firebricks. For now, here are a few more pictures of where I'm at today.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT5NZh9glJ7rf_gVg4rhamUebIyjVZv7odY_9fxyJUshzXGR17PiE7N4UpeARb6ArJTjOB7gr1HKVqJ-LZlzabIrFC2sk7l3bHTsnl8NIti_hGXhPkYFTCFLBS3gv1Yp7J6Hngd2MN1edR/s1600/DSCN1069.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT5NZh9glJ7rf_gVg4rhamUebIyjVZv7odY_9fxyJUshzXGR17PiE7N4UpeARb6ArJTjOB7gr1HKVqJ-LZlzabIrFC2sk7l3bHTsnl8NIti_hGXhPkYFTCFLBS3gv1Yp7J6Hngd2MN1edR/s1600/DSCN1069.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1m0ngj4_ibvBhkg-VR2_3MZhVBCuW7MPSSFblOdhyphenhyphencX6_5nKXKWN1PfrFN_EagU6Mc_h9ZYB9MPFLHSsh2VLtaRokwb668D7d4CuM7hVCS-HOKqf59wSk36o1h5cJkGXrfVW4MQ2hy8gs/s1600/IMG_20141110_151917.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1m0ngj4_ibvBhkg-VR2_3MZhVBCuW7MPSSFblOdhyphenhyphencX6_5nKXKWN1PfrFN_EagU6Mc_h9ZYB9MPFLHSsh2VLtaRokwb668D7d4CuM7hVCS-HOKqf59wSk36o1h5cJkGXrfVW4MQ2hy8gs/s1600/IMG_20141110_151917.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Before.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_e236_lZX0ax9rONZD55jmmUJkGZcLkzrzlSdBLKHvjtlc1OXE6AXMEP1396ATPWa_qlqu_TKinHDStLQu0mIeNwormKVbzPt7uc2oVLCw3sWK-CT9drqz52NDdsNU3OVX2aexJOqSju2/s1600/DSCN1071.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_e236_lZX0ax9rONZD55jmmUJkGZcLkzrzlSdBLKHvjtlc1OXE6AXMEP1396ATPWa_qlqu_TKinHDStLQu0mIeNwormKVbzPt7uc2oVLCw3sWK-CT9drqz52NDdsNU3OVX2aexJOqSju2/s1600/DSCN1071.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqRUwuV2S_Ui8tsz7rK2Xyu4eAiF-PrGTcOnyPpNQ8-tZ-KuaM7Nrzsz4tKiU8B-uNq3q1yMIGuDnN0F8axrRu7L5PUJykt3VeX1myW_BLHMG2MIYuxIxoqIiZpmpJahXqGdi-HLvfKUmV/s1600/DSCN1072.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqRUwuV2S_Ui8tsz7rK2Xyu4eAiF-PrGTcOnyPpNQ8-tZ-KuaM7Nrzsz4tKiU8B-uNq3q1yMIGuDnN0F8axrRu7L5PUJykt3VeX1myW_BLHMG2MIYuxIxoqIiZpmpJahXqGdi-HLvfKUmV/s1600/DSCN1072.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Thanks so much to all of you for your support! It's such a relief after half a year of work now to be actually DOING the thing I set out to do a couple years ago, even if it's just little stuff like dice. I can't wait to dig in and start cranking stuff out!</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
-BLB</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037255673341804620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6476109366509073848.post-82159395623444693362015-01-11T07:54:00.000-08:002015-01-11T08:32:25.923-08:00The Long DarkLawdy lawdy, it's amazing what a two months of traveling, two feet of snow, and two weeks of being sick can do to hamper your aspirations as a blacksmith; anvils aren't famous for being easy to move, snow isn't a lot of help with getting metal blazing hot, and it's hard to swing a hammer when your bod feels like it's made of candy canes. But, as episode two of The Wire reminds us all, You Cannot Lose If You Do Not Play. So for the past little bit I've been directing my energy into side projects.<br />
<br />
I wanted to send my friends and family some handmade (admittedly late) Christmas cards, and my usual <i>modus operandi</i> is to rummage through the recycling bin for papers without too much junk on them, draw some pictures on them, slap the ol' John Doe on there and then wait until the next time I see the person (because postage is expensive y'all). But last year mi padre reminded me of that Douglas Adams quote: "He had been extremely chastened to realize that although he originally came from a world which had cars and computers and ballet and Armagnac, he didn't, by himself, know how any of it worked. He couldn't do it. Left to his own devices he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it."<br />
<br />
A good reminder to us that standing on the shoulders of giants isn't all about enjoying the view - sometimes you gotta get right back down to bedrock. Taking a <i>page</i> (HAH) out of m'grammy's playbook, I decided to start with making paper. Full disclosure, I may have started like 10 meters up from bedrock (and if you know anything about Minecraft, you'll know this is where the most diamonds are found) and skipped trying to gather yard clippings from under the snow. Instead I turned to our mysteriously enormous collection of paper bags.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5qVt9I_Lu5hBm2-Dz0Axtv3fSJSYeOre8Yozib1GGEG8OY9jy-dhu92-tQqtwfBEz8ddL-NQpi7eCBFJnlfr-T3t3ij2D4ktzuQ6FXlpxOdqLT7ES_Jrc2cy6D003lKG-9m89CXDY7R3/s1600/_MG_6236.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5qVt9I_Lu5hBm2-Dz0Axtv3fSJSYeOre8Yozib1GGEG8OY9jy-dhu92-tQqtwfBEz8ddL-NQpi7eCBFJnlfr-T3t3ij2D4ktzuQ6FXlpxOdqLT7ES_Jrc2cy6D003lKG-9m89CXDY7R3/s1600/_MG_6236.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is <i>post</i> (HAH) paper making project too.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My suspicion that they may come in handy might have been a self-fulfilling prophecy, nevertheless it was proved correct. The steps in making paper are actually super simple. You make a pulp, you strain the pulp, you dry the pulp.<br />
<br />
You don't need paper to make paper (unless it has some very specific combination of numbers, symbols, and dead people printed on it, in which case you need quite a lot of paper to do anything at all, it seems) - you can use grass, leaves, or just about any plant material - but I chose the paper bags because I already had a ton of it inside and because I wanted my paper to be brown. Since my project list was already a few arms long, I needed my coffee inside me, not dyeing paper.<br />
<br />
I quickly eviscerated several of the bags with some scissors and left them to soak in a bowl of warm water for a few hours. While they soaked, I checked around all our windows to see which was the smallest one, and then popped the screen off of it. I spent the rest of the soak time trying to find a container big enough for our smallest screen. Unsurprisingly the bathtub was the only suitable vessel.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpLuVj-DyubtQj1KmIUsAFiT9QKTFUH_CagBqMsNSMGyxB-v49frNa8LugLxXUwaxsswYVzWtqpTedVmsFiJgdkoVC1UgktDKsM3LUJNKsvwztYclfQF826M3NuyoU88KdAnEul1PzUPX-/s1600/_MG_6244.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpLuVj-DyubtQj1KmIUsAFiT9QKTFUH_CagBqMsNSMGyxB-v49frNa8LugLxXUwaxsswYVzWtqpTedVmsFiJgdkoVC1UgktDKsM3LUJNKsvwztYclfQF826M3NuyoU88KdAnEul1PzUPX-/s1600/_MG_6244.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Knock knock. Who's there? Dwaine. Dwaine who? Dwaine the tub before your landlord finds out you're making paper in his bathtub using his window screens.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I didn't take any other pictures of this because though it worked just fine, it was a little impractical. The next day I went out and got a smaller screen for a couple bucks from the ReStore. Once the paper was good and soaked, I ground it into a pulp with a mortar and pestle. Just kidding, I used an immersion blender because time is money, people. My new screen fit almost exactly into the kitchen sink, so I dumped the pulpy goodness in there with a dash of cold water and corn starch (to keep the ink from running). Next I swished it around and sloshed the screen in, trying to get as even a distribution of pulp as I could on the screen without getting big bare patches.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigfO4dW0mVDObYkQICJK6txrWWC1eaATu4Nwh3iSw1eiAAQwXbCxeOAiSDpgW9siboWAt4oF_0xb0728T-KoiV6SRRhN7W3VOJdXgrUsx01OULUMmJue_CxSO3ym1dIAS3vnUQhyphenhyphenA-gGDV/s1600/DSCN0942.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigfO4dW0mVDObYkQICJK6txrWWC1eaATu4Nwh3iSw1eiAAQwXbCxeOAiSDpgW9siboWAt4oF_0xb0728T-KoiV6SRRhN7W3VOJdXgrUsx01OULUMmJue_CxSO3ym1dIAS3vnUQhyphenhyphenA-gGDV/s1600/DSCN0942.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sorry so many of these next ones are blurry. I foolishly assumed that blinding florescent lighting would produce crisp, if hideous, pictures.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjchMW8hwutQsprB8H4cndEYoCCIYKRHkyHcx9PK_T-qgSZFgz0N63hAD2wviHZuWYyhKnyf63r9yeq7TkzYbmTgzHZfWDE7QLmnnijp6JLgMs4Pun-_hlUw4dqUycm8rEisuOlSPk659nq/s1600/DSCN0936.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjchMW8hwutQsprB8H4cndEYoCCIYKRHkyHcx9PK_T-qgSZFgz0N63hAD2wviHZuWYyhKnyf63r9yeq7TkzYbmTgzHZfWDE7QLmnnijp6JLgMs4Pun-_hlUw4dqUycm8rEisuOlSPk659nq/s1600/DSCN0936.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If our butts were printer shaped, this is absolutely what our poop would look like.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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At this stage, it's got a TON of water in it still, so I gently pressed out as much as I could over the sink with a washcloth before transferring it to a towel on the ground for some heavy petting. It's really easy to accidentally rip a chunk off at this step, so it's kind of time consuming.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbO_2WP6m-_HXY4CjGWUOew1Pb1MOzCYsiCFOxCFeL-GAoy1kD_BZ2ZKf68xVUUBsGgWjOv8BPdbTgHbQ-KmE8z9Z32C_bTjVNgq-BgW_BJXe4cSe66nRUoVTYkF0NhxwNRTTIcNxh4k7U/s1600/DSCN0939.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbO_2WP6m-_HXY4CjGWUOew1Pb1MOzCYsiCFOxCFeL-GAoy1kD_BZ2ZKf68xVUUBsGgWjOv8BPdbTgHbQ-KmE8z9Z32C_bTjVNgq-BgW_BJXe4cSe66nRUoVTYkF0NhxwNRTTIcNxh4k7U/s1600/DSCN0939.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mmmmmmmmm...</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfUDBfmkWLj-58fQmufxGPa43O-Yq182H5vI6Z9czJlzHEyDnz58frPMAztDFaTlp2hnW5VUHAkiwdvQPhkuyf9w10fVa1o4vR7jDSX3iYSZq1OForsZCP0Sw94P539YR8kqQWm3FhRHt5/s1600/DSCN0940.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfUDBfmkWLj-58fQmufxGPa43O-Yq182H5vI6Z9czJlzHEyDnz58frPMAztDFaTlp2hnW5VUHAkiwdvQPhkuyf9w10fVa1o4vR7jDSX3iYSZq1OForsZCP0Sw94P539YR8kqQWm3FhRHt5/s1600/DSCN0940.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pat pat pat pat pat pat pat pat pat pat pat.</td></tr>
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Now it's ready to get off the screen. I chose to liberate the paper straight onto our bathroom floor since we have a heater fan in there already for the booch.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh99z1zjkH91H-sH5JqBDpP-8FxPqfjfbZaIBUhWX9SmWV2oSS5ctc4zwLgs3-Mi6BCOZrKn7j89Bg6RjJpd6J64HYMWFigUge2ZcAktrPdwjFL8RaKLGtnk0nWOeB0bUucaC8ehoknS__7/s1600/DSCN0937.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh99z1zjkH91H-sH5JqBDpP-8FxPqfjfbZaIBUhWX9SmWV2oSS5ctc4zwLgs3-Mi6BCOZrKn7j89Bg6RjJpd6J64HYMWFigUge2ZcAktrPdwjFL8RaKLGtnk0nWOeB0bUucaC8ehoknS__7/s1600/DSCN0937.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Once it's dry enough to hold together, I hung them up on the clothesline I made for the cyanotypes to dry a bit straighter.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibf0qCjy-dgq3jZhm0l_UBoTYvaET3x8BM7rsmWW0LdxrpPmlbzBjPMobobbZYQIAgtowcdVys11VhP9IPULlEc8g_9Nwuhcpp6tKyuPRn2ZCmEAPdDQ7a11JlDNYkAM7yWoIBsOOpH-uN/s1600/DSCN0938.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibf0qCjy-dgq3jZhm0l_UBoTYvaET3x8BM7rsmWW0LdxrpPmlbzBjPMobobbZYQIAgtowcdVys11VhP9IPULlEc8g_9Nwuhcpp6tKyuPRn2ZCmEAPdDQ7a11JlDNYkAM7yWoIBsOOpH-uN/s1600/DSCN0938.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Paper accomplished. This paper went on to be cut up, folded, and glued into envelopes designed to protect the letters inside. Now, the purpose of the letters was to let people know that their Christmas present from me (whether they like it or not) is for me to make them something out of metal. I decided since I have so much equipment for cyanotypes [see <a href="http://sweethollowforge.blogspot.com/2014/09/i-digress.html">here</a> for more on that project] that I should try making the cards that way to save time.<br />
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I opted to make post-card style letters with a photo print on one side and the letter on the back, so I started by whipping up some sensitizer and painting it on both sides of some watercolor paper. Once they were hung up to dry with the envelope paper in the darkroom, it was time to hit the Photoshop. I picked photos out for everyone and then overlaid a B&W gradient on them, fiddled with the curves to make them super contrasty, gave them a high pass filter to really make the edges pop, applied a second overlay of salmony orange (which seems to help control the exposure rate a bit better than plain B&W does), and then inverted them to make them negatives. The negatives were printed onto 8.5x11 transparency paper and with that it was time to start sun printing!<br />
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Now, a problem I ran into a few months ago when I was last making a lot of sun prints was that it was really hard for me to hold the negatives flat against the paper without moving it at all and still be able to check for exposure. I figured with the number of prints I'd be doing, it was time to buckle down and make a contact printer. For another two bucks at the ReStore I picked up a nasty picture frame, which, Frankensteined together with a creased wood ply panel I had leftover from a computer cabinet held on with some spring steel canvas clips, made a pretty decent printer.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9mroVCvRA_imP6vttEKDMYvusBa_4o6gmSHI_zZc5IVCp9imRHKxk_w8qnqYBwktn59ZaFY0Ba1lJJuhQbuEiTuYOQoTFl8tCfFVdGD4mHV-oWYdIsYkmQxxR32x8BtVZr4JiQme0DIxj/s1600/_MG_6245.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9mroVCvRA_imP6vttEKDMYvusBa_4o6gmSHI_zZc5IVCp9imRHKxk_w8qnqYBwktn59ZaFY0Ba1lJJuhQbuEiTuYOQoTFl8tCfFVdGD4mHV-oWYdIsYkmQxxR32x8BtVZr4JiQme0DIxj/s1600/_MG_6245.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some negatives next to the printer.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipbgCqAbB7VYh8ZUmjqD7tYTPFONjpT0UDQ-mJbygYm2tBG-NzDz8l-vJmHLu_Qe3j4aJeV7X1hkAFPXPjgyyV9spNi5TyMVy_8tP89mGFWkWf1PxtWbZ78n6yc49QvrCJ5iWmGnOzkB0E/s1600/_MG_6246.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipbgCqAbB7VYh8ZUmjqD7tYTPFONjpT0UDQ-mJbygYm2tBG-NzDz8l-vJmHLu_Qe3j4aJeV7X1hkAFPXPjgyyV9spNi5TyMVy_8tP89mGFWkWf1PxtWbZ78n6yc49QvrCJ5iWmGnOzkB0E/s1600/_MG_6246.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The canvas clips don't add that much pressure, but it's enough that with my hand on the back of the top half of the panel, the prints are firmly held in place. Here you can see the letter and one of the prints I used.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFIfQlmOGgeGn5TVgzTpYZGibgQEKAKwsr5XGUx428LLtDYkWEvwm3Ez2a2McCed0u3GskqHq-l2pbxQqH84Dbmrr5wG9XsCw3YSalzSFfEIpx-0wwZXVc6ltfn7VNgTU1m4sEuY8pjofJ/s1600/_MG_6247.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFIfQlmOGgeGn5TVgzTpYZGibgQEKAKwsr5XGUx428LLtDYkWEvwm3Ez2a2McCed0u3GskqHq-l2pbxQqH84Dbmrr5wG9XsCw3YSalzSFfEIpx-0wwZXVc6ltfn7VNgTU1m4sEuY8pjofJ/s1600/_MG_6247.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The fold in the center of the panel makes it easy to check on the print and see how it's doing quickly without losing the alignment on the negative.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On the day that I had everything ready to print, I checked the forecast and saw about eight days of cloudy weather ahead of me. Of course I should have waited it out, but then I didn't. The first round of prints I made spent a whopping three minutes per-side out in the "sun" (which is a <i>long</i> time in sun printing), and I'm happy to report that the contact printer worked great, none of the images were blurry at all! Sadly, they were also invisible because three minutes in the shade is as useful for exposing cyanotypes as fly fishing is without any line - a lot of running back and forth waving your arms and standing with your body in unnatural positions, but no dinner.<br />
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So back to painting sensitizer in the darkroom. I tried again in a few days when the sun popped out for a couple hours, but this time I learned to make extra sensitized papers so I have room to dial in on the right exposure depending on what the sun is up to (since its strength varies depending on relative humidity, time of day/year, temperature, mood, etc.), and this saved me some labor pains.<br />
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I wanted to include a hand written letter too, so I experimentally stenciled a little tree onto some card stock with the leftover sensitizer I had. I didn't expose them, so the cards were green upon mailing, but should turn blue once they're opened - I'm excited to hear if this worked. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ZEl3Ss7HTf75GGFQpROBJvU6B8aHOmZ5JJjlFSkHOv1ExeSxu__IwRHFwr8h2nZHFqn4NabYX3_FfMGG4dMcC49gIzxeO55QqirS4HFgxhBfPxRh29Smsbvr8tJRnxRz7Uth3Fafz4h4/s1600/DSCN0952.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ZEl3Ss7HTf75GGFQpROBJvU6B8aHOmZ5JJjlFSkHOv1ExeSxu__IwRHFwr8h2nZHFqn4NabYX3_FfMGG4dMcC49gIzxeO55QqirS4HFgxhBfPxRh29Smsbvr8tJRnxRz7Uth3Fafz4h4/s1600/DSCN0952.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I had a lot of leftover botched prints, but they'll come in handy for future projects</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Now, I know what you're thinking - you went through all this and you're just going to glue the envelopes shut like a peasant?! That would be so <i>déclassé</i>, no of course not. I decided to make a wax seal because wax seals are so damn classy there should be a class action lawsuit against them.<br />
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The first hurdle in making a wax seal is that they're fantastically useless without any wax. Sealing wax is unique among waxes because among its laundry list of qualifications are that it shouldn't evaporate when melted, should dry fast, needs to be hard but not brittle, must stick to paper without being so oily that it is absorbed and looks ugly or stains the letter inside, and can't be so sticky that it gloms onto the seal when it's pressed.<br />
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You can buy it at Michael's or online if you're a CHUMP who wants to spend hard-earned cash on WAX which your ears make for FREE. I personally didn't produce enough from my ears to make a substantial contribution to the project in the timeframe I had, so I toyed around with some different candles around the house, but they were all made of disappointment, not sealing wax. I had tried this before in high school, and I remember thinking crayons were practically designed for this, but I found they smoked too much and dried way too brittle. In an act of providence, Bucket had just bought a hot glue gun over the holidays, and I felt that what I want is a wax that is almost like hot glue, so I figured...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKQhoZrZGSZJMCgBaYZpty1XQhZax_jeWEX6_aHJgREVpzikQRqVo1N2ABqE9omSKZ2e9o_UXK6ueTfv_IxzIBJ-t3yu_kXITPFsTAyTDtCp5KCgrtMwYT7oiIIT0eUgHRtPPcUijTZb4E/s1600/DSCN0953.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKQhoZrZGSZJMCgBaYZpty1XQhZax_jeWEX6_aHJgREVpzikQRqVo1N2ABqE9omSKZ2e9o_UXK6ueTfv_IxzIBJ-t3yu_kXITPFsTAyTDtCp5KCgrtMwYT7oiIIT0eUgHRtPPcUijTZb4E/s1600/DSCN0953.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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They melt around the same temperature, right? The glue actually melts a little slower, but it, amazingly, worked perfectly. Approximately two crayons to half a glue stick over the stove for a couple minutes and poured into a little aluminum foil mold makes a stick of sealing wax you'd pay good money for like a CHUMP.<br />
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On to the fun part - Some of y'all may have noticed the logo I whipped up a couple months back when I was gathering internet real estate where which to flog m'blog, and I thought it would make a great seal, so I got to I test carving a few different materials. A handy lump of silly putty (delivered to me in another providential move by my other grammy) worked ideally for testing the seal periodically to see what the positive impression would look like. Once I had a design I liked in wood, I decided that the end of a bolt had the aesthetic I was going for. My trusty Dremel Stylus once again girded itself for battle, and together we gnawed away at the bolt in half-hour increments until we had a decent approximation of what I was going for. I put a little heat on it with a torch and added some accents with a little star punch I had on hand, cleaned up the center lines with a flathead drill bit, and that was that!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlQdRiBwH-vod93AwRMaJJ3ccT0m8ck_F8AJrIGmfiVpGTUUPY-DcbPQztQnjjLzu9HOm0nj7zPD3Cl_KVChHqyI3uI7WE0Uee6U2t5Ark5yS_iPminj_2fSeGTRl8nSJkcq4ph8YdLNb5/s1600/DSCN0954.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlQdRiBwH-vod93AwRMaJJ3ccT0m8ck_F8AJrIGmfiVpGTUUPY-DcbPQztQnjjLzu9HOm0nj7zPD3Cl_KVChHqyI3uI7WE0Uee6U2t5Ark5yS_iPminj_2fSeGTRl8nSJkcq4ph8YdLNb5/s1600/DSCN0954.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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I did a few test seals on some scraps leftover from making the envelopes and then got to packing and sealing letters.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMDyKAj8KyL_cRI0N86XHYbj1UQ8dW9-TEAmAhwNuQkLXbSwwyjCha6ctAEoFr5PnHSVo0yqOY7nbJUpMQQMjD1euUKyhsXlgG5Iv7DbLbtcXo-sH6X8UBMrqrNNdttyv2YxwFM900RjIM/s1600/_MG_6242.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMDyKAj8KyL_cRI0N86XHYbj1UQ8dW9-TEAmAhwNuQkLXbSwwyjCha6ctAEoFr5PnHSVo0yqOY7nbJUpMQQMjD1euUKyhsXlgG5Iv7DbLbtcXo-sH6X8UBMrqrNNdttyv2YxwFM900RjIM/s1600/_MG_6242.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXrE6z_x0RTbIYrPtEZVRbcCVuetb44Q71Lq1diP9fKp-C3lZ3U6PwiatwicF2FY4gTn3qLaILMSyhd_tc0XyCMsr34rhR_-v5v10B03e9zv2RRiNAVQph4m-lEu1XGzsreGbEqV5zVtX6/s1600/DSCN0947.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXrE6z_x0RTbIYrPtEZVRbcCVuetb44Q71Lq1diP9fKp-C3lZ3U6PwiatwicF2FY4gTn3qLaILMSyhd_tc0XyCMsr34rhR_-v5v10B03e9zv2RRiNAVQph4m-lEu1XGzsreGbEqV5zVtX6/s1600/DSCN0947.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8C9eh8s_695hhvzyorZiaQmsxmAczGiL4nWQr_qW5_kI2shn3pKa1T3FZbqhJJPVNHyAliy-ZunPHK01HVyWPex1tQBiFXli2y7oJ804ohR7SNDShxIz-YcMw80sRg6MB_qYwZIl_Zocd/s1600/DSCN0948.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8C9eh8s_695hhvzyorZiaQmsxmAczGiL4nWQr_qW5_kI2shn3pKa1T3FZbqhJJPVNHyAliy-ZunPHK01HVyWPex1tQBiFXli2y7oJ804ohR7SNDShxIz-YcMw80sRg6MB_qYwZIl_Zocd/s1600/DSCN0948.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It seals really nicely, but I glued most of them before putting the wax on because I don't trust me or the USPS.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMvzxXCbPGj1Iat9uW8CeKlqRyuYZjaNd6yv3v_QWYZ_EX61G26T3n6Qqip_I-ZqUfhzG6fuDyJaH_tZmJ-Y31X8egszB0rdjKJhtzgqgWsq-qC2EpEnT_ls6QqGkFG0eFi6I6DUeZU4_v/s1600/DSCN0949.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMvzxXCbPGj1Iat9uW8CeKlqRyuYZjaNd6yv3v_QWYZ_EX61G26T3n6Qqip_I-ZqUfhzG6fuDyJaH_tZmJ-Y31X8egszB0rdjKJhtzgqgWsq-qC2EpEnT_ls6QqGkFG0eFi6I6DUeZU4_v/s1600/DSCN0949.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcZFdaLnJZ8-v1qyOSdWjT3mnQSwceieXdBKWgI8QMROatXP9Q1QwsCLoEE2EY-dWGMqzA0zGXFDDZ_NhO2dg7Uu8NO4JszXMBj1OkNczwMXRX3rm4KgfXe0PINnh_xGHO2xQl61HI75xy/s1600/DSCN0950.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcZFdaLnJZ8-v1qyOSdWjT3mnQSwceieXdBKWgI8QMROatXP9Q1QwsCLoEE2EY-dWGMqzA0zGXFDDZ_NhO2dg7Uu8NO4JszXMBj1OkNczwMXRX3rm4KgfXe0PINnh_xGHO2xQl61HI75xy/s1600/DSCN0950.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Do a lyric search for I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred and then do a find and replace for "sexy" with "Etsy".</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRKNOPAu33Mga1fykoKNZZkevo-t_yQ4zr427D0npyUIuHlqfVVcj9U1SHmAemJbJoL-qewrV824LRGroDArQSvdXg3sACSQ1aa0KPQuW8LWjTFVMn0g2KQZaRl4MgZTiWzIl-m0FQL4Eb/s1600/DSCN0951.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRKNOPAu33Mga1fykoKNZZkevo-t_yQ4zr427D0npyUIuHlqfVVcj9U1SHmAemJbJoL-qewrV824LRGroDArQSvdXg3sACSQ1aa0KPQuW8LWjTFVMn0g2KQZaRl4MgZTiWzIl-m0FQL4Eb/s1600/DSCN0951.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I used the ice pack (bottom right) to keep the seal cold between impressions, which keeps the wax from sticking to it and also sort of flash-hardens the wax in place.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Thus they were ready for mailing and the saga of The Letters Wot I Made From Scratch comes to a close.<br />
<br />
This might seem like a lot of work <i>not </i>forging, and that's absolutely true. I'm really excited to get back to the forge - in the week I had home between traveling to St. Louis for Thanksgiving and Atlanta for Christmas, I picked up a whole bevy of new tools and resources, chief among them is a beautiful post vice I picked up for a song and a "How'd'y'do", which I'm eager to write about later. For now though, I'll close with a bit of more off-topic news - some of you know that I've been tossing around an idea for a pirate/Master & Commander-themed board game for a few years now, and while I was home for Christmas I experienced another one of those huge surges in enthusiasm for working on it. This time it has made it all the way to prototyping!<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLiss8LKxRZE2kOLtYoWlruP4GkEM1daBBK6LkqJ6lWlIQylo3iwHIST5Ut3hItHhTj-cKRu3jW5f6qy1IJzl_trZNaKad7p3sO3JtWALLizrvb2CQJye6dJJ-z9eEx2ugQe5rqYFSB4Xh/s1600/DSCN0958.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLiss8LKxRZE2kOLtYoWlruP4GkEM1daBBK6LkqJ6lWlIQylo3iwHIST5Ut3hItHhTj-cKRu3jW5f6qy1IJzl_trZNaKad7p3sO3JtWALLizrvb2CQJye6dJJ-z9eEx2ugQe5rqYFSB4Xh/s1600/DSCN0958.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Most of the pieces are bits of foam or borrowed from other games for now. Instead of printing and cutting out the hex tiles I drew, I just traced a Catan hex and made 3d hex parts to set on top of the map.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-azRy14eF8mkxvBOz90_tGFtss3Y4bzC348vQF5NPYRLfFOPTiCwoWY8pTxsQN50T9J58shgalnYsBtmNISLoBREOHAVIN67zrEKTVe-p6QLLfH771ZEUJNW668RLRO7XifIGAphu7l7-/s1600/DSCN0957.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-azRy14eF8mkxvBOz90_tGFtss3Y4bzC348vQF5NPYRLfFOPTiCwoWY8pTxsQN50T9J58shgalnYsBtmNISLoBREOHAVIN67zrEKTVe-p6QLLfH771ZEUJNW668RLRO7XifIGAphu7l7-/s1600/DSCN0957.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I've been using ProCreate on my iPad to do most of the design work, which has been a lot of fun. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3mZdaVAklVDl_mV2tprohesJ0T2ut4p3z_hzcCGRJAHeHM0Mc8aI0X6bDbTy5dGwzfazGLz2Du0UHEZbOgPLNdYQCbYL-MNi0D7DEWkQPAmu_q-u3IafMnGouP_8rZGA1Vhpmkf297M0P/s1600/DSCN0959.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3mZdaVAklVDl_mV2tprohesJ0T2ut4p3z_hzcCGRJAHeHM0Mc8aI0X6bDbTy5dGwzfazGLz2Du0UHEZbOgPLNdYQCbYL-MNi0D7DEWkQPAmu_q-u3IafMnGouP_8rZGA1Vhpmkf297M0P/s1600/DSCN0959.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The ships and islands are made out of a sort of salt dough baked hard in the oven. I got the idea from my Aunt who made tree ornaments from the stuff. My dad ate one thinking it was a cookie - a mistake he will not likely repeat. I patterned the ships using a cookie cutter I made out of strips of soda can.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Bucket and I have been playing around with it for a few days, and I'm excited to say that maybe by the end of the year I'll have it for sale on thegamecrafter.com!<br />
<br />
More on the forge soon. Here's a sneak peak.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihFPcyvTEE7CNJ36xdjh7863uKiT2FgnuCrJCHx1yym4b9JtmYjsyYbrWikb-KAGGBHXVUb7520BITh45xQsCu7piK8hCTxbXUvoKY01t7427nbqrv3fVywEYlE8wf4yazIWqA_IF48SvK/s1600/DSCN0925.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihFPcyvTEE7CNJ36xdjh7863uKiT2FgnuCrJCHx1yym4b9JtmYjsyYbrWikb-KAGGBHXVUb7520BITh45xQsCu7piK8hCTxbXUvoKY01t7427nbqrv3fVywEYlE8wf4yazIWqA_IF48SvK/s1600/DSCN0925.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2015 Sweet Hollow Forge calendars forthcoming.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
BLBBenjohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11325981225032487487noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6476109366509073848.post-21775129660755567412014-11-21T07:51:00.000-08:002015-01-10T17:04:14.600-08:00Firsts and FuturesTime was, so I'm told, when a body could open up a shop with naught but brow sweat and boot strap exercises and still come out with enough change to pop down to the barber shop for a mustache trim. Times they are a changin', my friends. Yesterday was a day of many firsts, one of which was the forking over of my first thousand bucks of "skin in the game". I feel safe declaring myself officially "in the game".<br />
<br />
Of course, $1k is small fish on the grander scale of business investments and I'm sure that those my senior are having many a knowing chuckle and head wag at my childlike innocence, but considering I'm both living off and investing from my savings, scant to begin with and rapidly becoming scanter-er, perhaps I may be forgiven.<br />
<br />
However for all my hyperventilating in the Lowes plumbing isle over $2 pipe fittings, yesterday was a day of many auspicious firsts as well. BEHOLD!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM5d5JnrogQ1lBQQa9AkJtaU1vYgC97_BHL_eaSbQAv6Xyr2zQiIg39pvCiW3n61bNGbh8kVKDSkWreSI4BVw9sOIFexegDYfYv0Fx0xDHurrhRMaYKAKA4FkhQa1Abt6KY0s0rpYoIOY7/s1600/DSCN0902.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM5d5JnrogQ1lBQQa9AkJtaU1vYgC97_BHL_eaSbQAv6Xyr2zQiIg39pvCiW3n61bNGbh8kVKDSkWreSI4BVw9sOIFexegDYfYv0Fx0xDHurrhRMaYKAKA4FkhQa1Abt6KY0s0rpYoIOY7/s1600/DSCN0902.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
Wait, that's not the right one...<br />
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BEHOLD!<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6xgTFLutUmmY39nu8QTX8ulY7mUGL7ar0EO9CZCblplnjmCbPvGbjRXYOCN-zihFgehRUm5LPVEjYmlTzcgakvFzInqjmB1B81OSaEYMyvh78Zkx5TuxdVpFNxahbfjRw3DUsa1QX5Iyv/s1600/DSCN0910.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6xgTFLutUmmY39nu8QTX8ulY7mUGL7ar0EO9CZCblplnjmCbPvGbjRXYOCN-zihFgehRUm5LPVEjYmlTzcgakvFzInqjmB1B81OSaEYMyvh78Zkx5TuxdVpFNxahbfjRw3DUsa1QX5Iyv/s1600/DSCN0910.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tada! Tada! Tada! Tada forever!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The fruits of Nail Forge 1.0.2, a pair that only a mother could love. Nevertheless at least one of them is not so ugly that it didn't prevent me from canvasing the internet with my new business. The astute and/or slightly creepy of you may have noticed that since yesterday, you can now find me on <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/SweetHollowForge">Etsy</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SweetHollowForge">Facebook</a>, for some reason <a href="https://twitter.com/SweetHollowFrge">Twitter</a>, as well as, I'm sure your favorite, here. Which brings me to the part where you may have noticed that the forge proper has got a proper forge name now! If you're curious as to why Sweet Hollow Forge rather than a different combination of letters and sounds, it doesn't have a huge story. You may recall that it took a while to get the details in order and paperwork drawn up for the space, but I did get a "contract" eventually. In there, G&J (the owners) agreed to rent me space in "The Hollow". And I was like cool, the barn has a name I guess, but The Hollow is a little forbidding and dirge-like, and initially I was going to go with Fox Hollow (on account of my home turf in Georgia) but I'm not positive there are even foxes around here, and if there are they probably aren't very good blacksmiths. Anyway, Sweet Hollow has a nice kind of faintly southern ring to it, and so do I sometimes*, so there it is.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*I seem to have a southern accent in direct proportion to the southern accented-ness of the people I'm talking to.</span><br />
<br />
But before I get too far ahead, let's get back to that first picture.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIJCnRUn7CypJwVtHpooNLJsbCll7mKofn4M-_hlhU5J-AxhHNcmoiap1tZ09TxCfyGQ3DvB3DOQwb3uWVwSBFuy8bGOlZwll1C7Xiad1hOTsa8COMPKlZXUnY4jPhAfjLuyd6h4ezI8oq/s1600/DSCN0903.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIJCnRUn7CypJwVtHpooNLJsbCll7mKofn4M-_hlhU5J-AxhHNcmoiap1tZ09TxCfyGQ3DvB3DOQwb3uWVwSBFuy8bGOlZwll1C7Xiad1hOTsa8COMPKlZXUnY4jPhAfjLuyd6h4ezI8oq/s1600/DSCN0903.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The worst meringue.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Pretty wild, huh? So I mixed up some of my freshly cooked water glass...<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjtaawS76eIPwYkUoAyzolTp17vMwiqlspmDWl83ahkmxS5KQGB-eGXkuEvDO5sQ1Qyx7i5ongn7RjApqwOKkyW5qn9cDnIsryQT_agrwbOx-yoDiTH5I6HDbIEyFKyoeTGXhQUxk5MAXz/s1600/DSCN0907.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjtaawS76eIPwYkUoAyzolTp17vMwiqlspmDWl83ahkmxS5KQGB-eGXkuEvDO5sQ1Qyx7i5ongn7RjApqwOKkyW5qn9cDnIsryQT_agrwbOx-yoDiTH5I6HDbIEyFKyoeTGXhQUxk5MAXz/s1600/DSCN0907.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Almost the exact same consistency as those <a href="http://www.wellpromo.com/upload/upimg60/Ooze-Tube-Timer-264960.jpg">corn syrup hourglasses</a>. Notice the deformation in the plastic - fun fact: peanut butter jars exhibit fascinating behaviors when you fill them with scalding hot liquids and then panic and dump them out again really fast.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...with ~100ml water and a quart of rough pumice to make a sort of cement. However, lacking aluminum oxide (which apparently nobody in Bend possesses or has heard of - there are a lot of fun "standing in a store being stared at blankly" stories behind that sentence), it thus lacked quite a lot in terms of refractory properties. But heat resistance be damned, I was going to whack flat some nails come hell or high water, so I crammed it in a tomato sauce can with a bit of pipe and a drill bit.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFPmEN_wlQ9Kkc_S_hpthhcOakUPOVaLT86AWz4enTmDtf_QjQYW5Swuay1RBm_bxOznEStUMaxzg0iHfpF1ox28b_wNghyphenhypheno4zaAl6PdehqFL9FC6R4qJUJIeeG7Lkoh2t77M0NhY97wJ1/s1600/DSCN0904.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFPmEN_wlQ9Kkc_S_hpthhcOakUPOVaLT86AWz4enTmDtf_QjQYW5Swuay1RBm_bxOznEStUMaxzg0iHfpF1ox28b_wNghyphenhypheno4zaAl6PdehqFL9FC6R4qJUJIeeG7Lkoh2t77M0NhY97wJ1/s1600/DSCN0904.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The drill bit was the only 1/2" thing I could find that I could put in the oven. I'm not crazy.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Now water glass cures by simple gas exchange so at that point I had three options to set it up: let it sit and dry for a week, inject it with compressed CO2 or heat the everlovin' jessy out of it. Lacking patience or a Soda Stream, I opted for the oven.<br />
<br />
Nail Forge 1.0.1 was a real beauty. I wish I had pictures to show you, but in my enthusiasm to make progress, I forwent documentation. Suffice to say that after an hour of as-close-to-broil-as-possible treatment, the cement cemented. It cemented hard. Too hard. It fused to the center form and burner tube form like something out of The African Queen, and no amount of hammering, cajoling, sweating, or desperate scrabbling was going to persuade it out. At one point I literally tied a rope to the center form, tied the other end of the rope to Big Bgog's trailer hitch, and spent ten minutes yanking on it stubborn-loose-tooth-when-you-were-a-kid-style. Eventually though, I did get it free at the expense of cutting a hole in the bottom of the can and hammering it back and forth until it pulverized 50% of the rock and came out. There was about a 1/4" of cement stuck to the form that I could only get off by flattening the pipe with a hammer. <i>C'est la vie</i>, but at least it wasn't much work to whip up another batch and try again.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, being the disenfranchised, Recession Era, twenty-somethings that we are, Bucket and I only have one tomato sauce can to our names, so I had to repack the same can for Nail Forge 1.0.2 (as I said previously, taking the precaution of greasing up the forms this time around). The unforeseen complication introduced was, to quote Dear Henry, there was a hole in it. A quite alarming amount of that hard-earned water glass percolated out the bottom, oozing and boiling into that fantastic goo you saw earlier.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgQ4euzz2rU-vG-b5w32qhIG1wOjpL80_yyJ7jaTRIDSpEmLcK0uU9H5vun7pD_m3gK5W4Kzro9CX4kvu2zkf38OM2OrB5qvd-VSy3uBjC3MgvIY7h76EQfs9KwFneGlShHnaQhrXd_w6O/s1600/DSCN0908.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgQ4euzz2rU-vG-b5w32qhIG1wOjpL80_yyJ7jaTRIDSpEmLcK0uU9H5vun7pD_m3gK5W4Kzro9CX4kvu2zkf38OM2OrB5qvd-VSy3uBjC3MgvIY7h76EQfs9KwFneGlShHnaQhrXd_w6O/s1600/DSCN0908.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
Undeterred, I cleared Nail Forge 1.0.2 for duty and got to forging.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDNa4S_L2Dw8F5KWl4Sr1PCjkW0ejfjtOg_WE6UBpmwA9VhOsLAXA1ZZnN-QweIWbyPJFt_Q9A_fuMzOdNBYv-qtmybSZTdUfSCfdPDrD9sSQfix49Nj1Xa8WigbbTlM_wUhmh6XaIDMC_/s1600/DSCN0909.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDNa4S_L2Dw8F5KWl4Sr1PCjkW0ejfjtOg_WE6UBpmwA9VhOsLAXA1ZZnN-QweIWbyPJFt_Q9A_fuMzOdNBYv-qtmybSZTdUfSCfdPDrD9sSQfix49Nj1Xa8WigbbTlM_wUhmh6XaIDMC_/s1600/DSCN0909.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">During operation, the propane torch is lovingly crammed into the side of the forge. </td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzjrMQ4i0KUDV-92OGGL76Q71GmXFCxAvy986tMyK3_nHcXXJpVWgAOLG7h36tWjKvv5rwABREiAhAucszc37Nyk7h4PEeUNYMfZNaUrS0DTwhZuAVLILSsZ8_YdU8GLXtT95AI2B0bdhi/s1600/DSCN0911.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzjrMQ4i0KUDV-92OGGL76Q71GmXFCxAvy986tMyK3_nHcXXJpVWgAOLG7h36tWjKvv5rwABREiAhAucszc37Nyk7h4PEeUNYMfZNaUrS0DTwhZuAVLILSsZ8_YdU8GLXtT95AI2B0bdhi/s1600/DSCN0911.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Soaring new heights for the non-literal use of the phrase "baby steps".</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It took a lot longer than I expected to preheat the little sucker (close to 15 minutes), but once it was up to temp, I had fun experimenting with the duplex nails, seeing what kind of swords I could turn them into. I opted to start with the traditional Flat Duplex Nail style, and then moved on to a more conventional Sword An Extra Might Be Given to Hold in a Period Piece style. After that my mind started simmering with ideas of how to do this better (a simmer which, lucky me, boiled over at around 3am today with dreams of katanas, sabers, and epees), but before I could play around too much, I started to get worried about how much the forge was melting and smoking. Though ventilation was good and every measure to make this safe was observed, the forge started degassing some sort of tomato/pumice miasma after about an hour of duty, so I decided to shut things down until the snow clears enough for me to move into... <i>The Hollow</i>†.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">† <i>sotto Batman voce</i></span><br />
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Speaking of which, here's a quick peep tour of the space. I went over on Monday and did a little work clearing it of petrifying horse poop and forklift pallets, and doing my best to level out the ground a bit.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_pmPRSlmAnsw9RAg4dOjmq_n_EUDdAZudeGfCpfUiqOpsvev3o9PgGANd-2uhpff6usOIat_ZUuoTGwACnjs1KP6daoI5DoIwd5U3QTkaR41Wzhroj3Qqiv41oF1kVs8dFht95eRTax9f/s1600/IMG_20141110_151506.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_pmPRSlmAnsw9RAg4dOjmq_n_EUDdAZudeGfCpfUiqOpsvev3o9PgGANd-2uhpff6usOIat_ZUuoTGwACnjs1KP6daoI5DoIwd5U3QTkaR41Wzhroj3Qqiv41oF1kVs8dFht95eRTax9f/s1600/IMG_20141110_151506.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's hard to tell how much like standing on a 1:1000 scale model of the Himalayas this is, but I promise it was Not Good before I shoveled my little heart out on it.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZpRieAo_0l1gqyP1CDvmYkgNJGD7jttUuOx6OHkabIBDKz8TC8OteLcyNe2MnEatHluWCgAW_SD64n-C_fpcHoOvbFxybp3-w_e-i7ic-PxQ4rXS4BR5KwAtXI1QB69dij3-xdPVwflfL/s1600/IMG_20141110_151738.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZpRieAo_0l1gqyP1CDvmYkgNJGD7jttUuOx6OHkabIBDKz8TC8OteLcyNe2MnEatHluWCgAW_SD64n-C_fpcHoOvbFxybp3-w_e-i7ic-PxQ4rXS4BR5KwAtXI1QB69dij3-xdPVwflfL/s1600/IMG_20141110_151738.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An arial view of my brilliant dirt layout of the space. Labeling to follow. </td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4v_m64NmWnJjQCVbFHOwWz_hbspaDsqDHoLsOBYFJW-9e3-Hit4z-DG6wFVmxsV7cq83GE0EhLgH_lovFF-FNsMx1A-PhCkdfE6twHIotWENeqqTOKNxqBgR_DxaW18UyJTA6Sb750qs3/s1600/IMG_20141110_152108.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4v_m64NmWnJjQCVbFHOwWz_hbspaDsqDHoLsOBYFJW-9e3-Hit4z-DG6wFVmxsV7cq83GE0EhLgH_lovFF-FNsMx1A-PhCkdfE6twHIotWENeqqTOKNxqBgR_DxaW18UyJTA6Sb750qs3/s1600/IMG_20141110_152108.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm colonizing the right side to start, but theoretically I'm allowed to expand anywhere under the eave... </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQNq0iV1Pis-S8AZeuoTgnooaJ5KaFD_LfSEcj3Yzg66gbMQVeibLiwf1NikQEgq311EDAOk_qH9bapye-ci5x_MuZVpzE_A28YOgIsYP-QHX4ouLUoXyfGCSBR2Hopvx5cWBbjyNh7yBx/s1600/IMG_20141110_152130.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQNq0iV1Pis-S8AZeuoTgnooaJ5KaFD_LfSEcj3Yzg66gbMQVeibLiwf1NikQEgq311EDAOk_qH9bapye-ci5x_MuZVpzE_A28YOgIsYP-QHX4ouLUoXyfGCSBR2Hopvx5cWBbjyNh7yBx/s1600/IMG_20141110_152130.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...Or, as I said under my breath when I thought G couldn't hear me, "Everything the eave touches...is our kingdom."</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-pDoUpkbLYGyPXjnFZIwtJTdO60rt-h3vfTqbJHq4G79IPsE379ajwStrLcQzsOhO1UcRx_PTSTJ3In1of_UCZmLwEGRkkj2cn-HY9wMU9yJgMhgbt9HimQtDMb-q_2ppvi_i_yaEou0X/s1600/Untitled_Artwork+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-pDoUpkbLYGyPXjnFZIwtJTdO60rt-h3vfTqbJHq4G79IPsE379ajwStrLcQzsOhO1UcRx_PTSTJ3In1of_UCZmLwEGRkkj2cn-HY9wMU9yJgMhgbt9HimQtDMb-q_2ppvi_i_yaEou0X/s1600/Untitled_Artwork+(1).jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tentative layout labeled for your convenience.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
That's it that's all for now. Bucket and I are off to St. Louis for Thanksgiving today, so enjoy your weeklong reprieve from my prolixity.<br />
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BLBBenjohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11325981225032487487noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6476109366509073848.post-38934378769166959502014-11-19T17:34:00.000-08:002015-01-10T17:03:04.575-08:00Nail Forge...ASSEMBLEThey say you can't make a cake without breaking a few eggs, and if that's true then I'm absolutely doing it right. I'm crackin' eggs like the rapture's hot on my tail. There's certainly something to be said for taking the scenic route on your way to a goal. You can learn a lot by asking yourself, "Can I figure out how to make this?" Unfortunately, it's easy to forget what you were doing in the first place while you agonize over a specific component.<br />
<br />
Things have been a little up and down the past few days. I've finally successfully produced a batch of (EXTREMELY) concentrated water glass, which was a major confidence boost, and a big step forwards to getting a forge in place. In case you're curious, my efforts to make it from some local silicate didn't work out. At the last COMAG meeting, I talked to a lovely geologist and she told me I should hunt down some diatomite, which is a more rock-like form of diatomaceous earth and similarly composed of trillions of bitty critters of yesteryear. I then left town for a week and then it promptly dumped a foot and a half of snow on all my hopes and dreams. So I conceded to buying some flower drying silica from Michaels just so I could move forward with the project.<br />
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I've been throwing a lot of money at some of these miscellaneous projects like that, and it's become a little frustrating. Lots of DIY sites/YouTubers like to brag about how cheap it was for them to throw together something that would have cost them a pretty penny at a box store, but a lot of times they sidestep the cost of not being established and networked. They throw out things like, "I have these 5 lb sacks of silica gel lying around so I used them as..." or "I borrowed my buddy's welder to..." What starts as a $10 forge burner quadruples in price when you realize you don't have the tap you need to thread that one vital piece. It'd be nice if Bend had a tool library like Portland's.<br />
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Anyway, now that I have the water glass made up, I've spent about the whole day experimenting with it and the pumice I collected back in the fall. My goal today has been to make a nail forge. My Paw told me about this guy he met who was taking duplex nails and flattening them out into little swords. I thought that'd be a swell reason to make a forge in miniature to test some of the components I've been assembling.<br />
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So as I write this, I've got a tomato sauce can full of home-brewed refractory speed-curing in the oven. I made one earlier today which set up beautifully. A little too beautifully in fact - it practically melded to the tube form, and I ended up destroying it just trying to get it out. I took the advice of ye venerable internet and coated the form pieces with vegetable oil this time around, but so far this seems to be having the effect of making the water glass bubble into a sort of glass meringue. Probably I will not eat it.<br />
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Lord almighty, if our landlord could see what's going on in here right now, his head would probably explode. Anyhow, we'll see how this all shakes down (or at least I will - I realize that I may be the only one reading this anymore). Fingers crossed. Big money, no whammies.<br />
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BLBBenjohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11325981225032487487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6476109366509073848.post-57243498229082780872014-11-07T13:24:00.000-08:002014-11-07T13:24:25.951-08:00Storm's a Brewin'Well it's definitely been longer than I expected since I last updated ya'll on things. Let me set that aright.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY-GFBZ1zlZSovpH0Rmh-AON8cxYdQvt6N4NZkF1wEnUzwtVg7q8153dSnUWSblFCwPtl3iJbAUmS8SOrTSwKH670kdalivqPzqlKKeO6qS2Z4v0sGbo967BaYRaqWN4qH3Fby_NT2fwJF/s1600/DSCN0894.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY-GFBZ1zlZSovpH0Rmh-AON8cxYdQvt6N4NZkF1wEnUzwtVg7q8153dSnUWSblFCwPtl3iJbAUmS8SOrTSwKH670kdalivqPzqlKKeO6qS2Z4v0sGbo967BaYRaqWN4qH3Fby_NT2fwJF/s1600/DSCN0894.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Things were slow for a while, I spent a lot of time reading through some new books: New Edge of the Anvil by Jack Andrews and Metal Techniques for Craftsmen by Oppi Untracht, as well as every book on blacksmithing that the library has available (which is three). So my head is fairly swimming with terminology, metallurgical data, and techniques, and I'm super pumped to start putting some of it all to use.<br />
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Which will be SOON. A couple nights ago, I went back over to the meet with the folks with some barn space they might be willing to rent out, and we fleshed out all the necessaries and <i>quid pro quo</i>'s, etc., and I got a brief look at the specific area they've got in mind for me. I head over again on Monday to, I think, sign a rough agreement and get working.<br />
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The past couple months I've been lurking at the Central Oregon Metal Artist Guild (<a href="http://cometalarts.dreamhosters.com/">COMAG</a>) meetings and getting to know some of the peeps in this neck of the woods that are working metal. There are a lot of incredibly talented people here, and they've been incredibly generous with their knowledge and advice. To that end, I've been talking more with Hunter and Kellen (who I met back in April, but never had much opportunity to get to know) - two unbelievably talented, hilarious, and gregarious smiths who own/operate at the <a href="http://www.orionforge.com/">Orion</a> and <a href="http://drycanyonforge.com/">Dry Canyon</a> Forges.<br />
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I had a chance to go over to Dry Canyon yesterday and meet up with Kellen for a day of tool making. He was mega patient with me and let me work at my own pace, which I was soooo grateful for. His style of teaching really strongly reminded me of climbing with El Jefé. Jefé is a way better climber than me, and I always feel really intimidated and self-conscious of how annoying it must be to have to belay for someone so agonizingly slow and ignorant. But that embarrassment and intimidation is entirely self-imposed - Jefé manages to be effortlessly patient and forgiving of my childish flailing and screaming, and seems to enjoy hanging out with me regardless of the vast difference in our ability levels, which makes it way easier to learn at my own pace. Kellen has a lot of those same qualities, and it was great to be able to make mistakes and ask questions without feeling worried about asking something stupid or not getting it perfect on the first try and I flailed and screamed a pair of tongs into the world.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA56hZfhB8aI6UqfVTJmvlNRDPXnzPGgz0lEnCmBGasUXC_fxqyK_YVk7Jhg78mBUDqOUW13OA0Be87o8YS3PoL0tCiY3_oU6WiBvS0DZlpuUz_tZ1qNX2Aoizf4R420HTL2H8TIEhBIi1/s1600/DSCN0896.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA56hZfhB8aI6UqfVTJmvlNRDPXnzPGgz0lEnCmBGasUXC_fxqyK_YVk7Jhg78mBUDqOUW13OA0Be87o8YS3PoL0tCiY3_oU6WiBvS0DZlpuUz_tZ1qNX2Aoizf4R420HTL2H8TIEhBIi1/s1600/DSCN0896.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For grasping square stock in the 5/8"- 1 1/4" range.</td></tr>
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Especially in contrast to my first* tong making experience in Michigan, which involved being crowded into a very small garage with a great number of hot objects with an especially grumpy old man, who would frequently become flustered and pry the metal from my hands and try to reshape my mess to match his increasingly terse instructions.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">* First <i>actual - </i>as proud as I am of what I accomplished in Oz, the products of my work there are as close to tongs as Atlanta is to Tokyo.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT7IwT_vjjkg7xkMDChpWBClx-k27LyUPvBBN6yHGaGyW7-qBFZ1_bjpd98UOCo7uIVbMW5Cf4-6NCT525Jxx9xNU0BYUFb9cjpqNwoHyT9l3yCEXMXKynPVbBOVR50boa-5hFFkT8yCMm/s1600/DSCN0901.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT7IwT_vjjkg7xkMDChpWBClx-k27LyUPvBBN6yHGaGyW7-qBFZ1_bjpd98UOCo7uIVbMW5Cf4-6NCT525Jxx9xNU0BYUFb9cjpqNwoHyT9l3yCEXMXKynPVbBOVR50boa-5hFFkT8yCMm/s1600/DSCN0901.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Exhibit A: Tongs<br />
Exhibit B: Panic Tongs</td></tr>
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While to be fair, I did spend about an hour and a half on the Michigan tongs and the better part of an entire day on this pair, I think Kellen's attitude and willingness to let me do it for myself is the biggest difference between them.<br />
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As an aside, let's get just...balls to the wall, high school drama up here for a minute or two. Now most of you will not be shocked to know that I'm a huge dork. I have Serious Thoughts about freshwater macro-invertebrates. I am easily enraged by poor board game box design. I know more words to camp songs than [musician you think is cool][/musician you think is cool]'s. I make jokes that have a passing knowledge of HTML coding as a prereq. I do pretty convincing pigeon and eagle impressions. I run a Minecraft server.<br />
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I'm not particularly worried that anybody know this about me, because I am a generally confident person. I take pride in many of my personal accomplishments. Maybe I should be embarrassed that I've spent days constructing making a 1:1 scale model of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water in a video game populated these days mostly by 8 year olds, but I'll happily brag about it if you ask (it took forever to get the fireplaces right). However, I am often <i>very</i> worried that knowing this will stop someone from considering getting to know me any further. In the same way that I'm worried that someday Bucket's parents might find out someday that I've donated money to NPR, I find myself moving through a lot of social interactions like I'm made entirely of knees to avoid revealing things about myself that I think might cause someone to narrow their eyes and think, "We are not alike."<br />
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Yesterday was a great example. Kellen and Hunter have talked a little bit about possibly extending an "internship" type deal to me - work here and there in exchange for valuable experience and "literally dozens of dollars" - which would be an actual dream come true for me. Now, I don't know a lot about Kellen and Hunter, but they're cool dudes - I'd like to work with them and I'd really like to be friends with them, and the part of me that I'm talking about is worried that if they knew how much money I have spent on virtual space ships, they might decide not to talk to me anymore. Inconveniently, my strategy for concealing this information is torn out of the playbooks of Behaving Like a Marionette-Person, and How to Maintain a Mistrustful Awareness of Your Hands and What They are Doing, and Talking Like You're a Big Fancy Grownup. Especially having spent the past several months interacting almost exclusively with large groups of 2nd-7th graders, I have to be extremely careful to modulate my voice so it doesn't get too loud and/or start doing Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions.<br />
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I think probably a lot of introverted people tend to mirror the personality that is expected of them in a social situation and, if it leads to a connection, sort of side-door their actual personality into the relationship as it evolves, but the flaw in this strategy for me is that the personality that I front <i>isn't actually super good</i> at making friends.<br />
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Also, jeezy chreezy, I'm so flip flappin' exhausted with being the person in a social situation at a disadvantage. Trying to make friends and network is so hard when you're the only one in the conversation that really <i>needs</i> a connection to form. I know that the healthy reaction to this frustration is not to burrow deeper, but to force yourself to stand woodenly and maintain eye contact (but not too much eye contact); still I'm seriously looking forward to having my own, private space if not just to have somewhere to build my confidence.<br />
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Anyway, lest this morph into a Live Journal, the point is that I'm glad I had a chance to work with Kellen yesterday, but I wish there had been 30 seven year olds there because apparently that's really where I'm in my element these days.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuTpTWAVIfP67RS-TRhNWKuYzJ5MQ2XIJlo_C3hHkTAitLgrvj9S1TW2Yo9slhzr9OZ1Y54Ay8xxNgA-iLZ9kUvaU1Zlt1KO6D-x7xyWQeBGwxWqzeevySHl4_hK0aEnfxPq7qilIzDESA/s1600/DSCN0899.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuTpTWAVIfP67RS-TRhNWKuYzJ5MQ2XIJlo_C3hHkTAitLgrvj9S1TW2Yo9slhzr9OZ1Y54Ay8xxNgA-iLZ9kUvaU1Zlt1KO6D-x7xyWQeBGwxWqzeevySHl4_hK0aEnfxPq7qilIzDESA/s1600/DSCN0899.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some tools gathering for the migration to the barn.</td></tr>
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<i>Que sera, sera. </i>Any way you look at it, things are really clacking along at a good pace now. I'm hoping to pick up some nice Virginia Coal from a fella up in Hood River this weekend, and Hunter and Kellen lent me a coal forge firepot, so it's possible that as soon as a week from now, I might have a forge operational! Name suggestions are welcome. I'm leaning towards something unicorn themed*, but you never know...<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*I don't know if this is a joke either.</span>Benjohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11325981225032487487noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6476109366509073848.post-33290943870987702752014-09-29T14:52:00.001-07:002015-01-10T13:33:10.791-08:00I DigressSo I have been tinkering around with the geopolymers, without great success so far. I'm attempting to make a couple videos of the process, so I won't talk too much about it except to say if anyone knows any free video editing software, that would be helpful.<br />
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I have a couple of ideas of why it hasn't been working out, but I'm having a hard time justifying spending more money on it until I know I've got a place to put the eventual forge. The good news on that front is that Bucket met a nice lady at a get-together who might have some property she'd like to see used for something interesting. We're going out on Wednesday to meet her and her husband and see if we can work something out, I expect I'll write about that and how it went soon enough.</div>
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In the mean time, I thought some of you might be interested to see how my other side-project has been coming along! During the summer I taught a class on photography, and one of the projects I did with the kids was Cyanotypes, (sometimes called "Sun Prints"). They're a really basic, entry-level, relatively safe developing style that was used to make architectural blueprints, as they're cheap to prepare, quick to develop, and give you extremely high contrast contact prints. </div>
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Anyway, I had a lot of the chemicals and resources I needed leftover after the summer, so I've been messing around with it and seeing how far I can take it. Most of these are just little 4"x5" watercolor paper prints, but I did get some bigger ones in.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1sSnDXzO0HI5Q_K4RPmCCf1i_-_HTthrAfZwzk3AenqNzJ0wy-ACWPR7L8l5GyDk1bbqopTa3vwPgHohWMHuFck69z456W6YdAwS1QzpkNNT5lCnFoxdc58oXqcL7nfrGoTQE2sAXpX1j/s1600/DSCN0849.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1sSnDXzO0HI5Q_K4RPmCCf1i_-_HTthrAfZwzk3AenqNzJ0wy-ACWPR7L8l5GyDk1bbqopTa3vwPgHohWMHuFck69z456W6YdAwS1QzpkNNT5lCnFoxdc58oXqcL7nfrGoTQE2sAXpX1j/s1600/DSCN0849.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the only 8"x10" print that turned out in the first batch. I plan on doing most of the rest in this size eventually.</td></tr>
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All of the first batch were supersaturated with the chemicals because I had accidentally mixed about 50x more sensitizer than I had paper for. As a result, they all turned out a little weird except the two that I left what I thought was a "normal" amount of sensitizer.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-tmu1qEdyFDRsqKM1fl7tZMis738F71WZNNO-2_d_X2XVWxMkG1MJ7lUKJpZJiy-Cgn7qyCkzBQC4Ml4aDSPecK78zk57QW3gT3z1fkZVa6lX3PRVF4qvqtW4qm6SQYaH496KwR4P_r97/s1600/DSCN0850.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-tmu1qEdyFDRsqKM1fl7tZMis738F71WZNNO-2_d_X2XVWxMkG1MJ7lUKJpZJiy-Cgn7qyCkzBQC4Ml4aDSPecK78zk57QW3gT3z1fkZVa6lX3PRVF4qvqtW4qm6SQYaH496KwR4P_r97/s1600/DSCN0850.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can see along the right edge where the sensitizer was laid on so thick that when I fixed it, the sun hadn't penetrated deep enough to expose anything attached to the paper, leaving a big white strip.</td></tr>
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I've also been experimenting with toning them so they aren't all that eye-watering cerulean. The lovely folks down at Lone Pine Coffee generously donated some used grounds to my cause, but unfortunately I came away with extremely mixed results. The process involves bleaching the photos with sodium carbonate, and then re-toning the remaining gel layer with a natural tannin. You can use tea, wine, coffee, etc.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI9VtRYxuuFPNqA96DJ6GgLIUuzfmKMzUVxCL6xzSPSmKWpyqbzeNxWK5mtm46ACFx2rvusm4ZcW0btf3eqSOfZ-tLYEpHvzXppYkJL3zsn6_0NC_mN028qiYQJ-2dQzmvqob1_mwf775u/s1600/DSCN0852.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI9VtRYxuuFPNqA96DJ6GgLIUuzfmKMzUVxCL6xzSPSmKWpyqbzeNxWK5mtm46ACFx2rvusm4ZcW0btf3eqSOfZ-tLYEpHvzXppYkJL3zsn6_0NC_mN028qiYQJ-2dQzmvqob1_mwf775u/s1600/DSCN0852.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This was the only one worth sharing of the lot. This was a direct contact print of a handful of grass.</td></tr>
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As you can see, it didn't go super hot. I toyed around with varying levels of bleaching (from none at all to ultra-mega-super-bleached) and coffee strength/soaking time. Strangely, every single one turned out completely differently, and in ways I wouldn't have expected. In any case, I plan on trying again with some new prints using espresso instead (my guess is that the tannins will be more concentrated and the oils better released this way). I talked to a lady down in the Maker District who paints with coffee and beer, and she suggested letting it dry out/boil down a bit so there's a closer ratio of oil:water. We'll see how it goes!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir6iLDoRpDfqQBgU7mUbZaxUNe-7Vers6Tz0XDot8FbFk4TUKbi87oWO5_xv2HRbvl-ys9CCef9aZyTP8hUzOrtygk6rH-lnZsI71s5wp_MclJI3CRe37yfnhF7zB8YbEWadoEjyDmnSfJ/s1600/DSCN0848.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir6iLDoRpDfqQBgU7mUbZaxUNe-7Vers6Tz0XDot8FbFk4TUKbi87oWO5_xv2HRbvl-ys9CCef9aZyTP8hUzOrtygk6rH-lnZsI71s5wp_MclJI3CRe37yfnhF7zB8YbEWadoEjyDmnSfJ/s1600/DSCN0848.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
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You can really see the difference between the supersaturated prints and the ones that just had a light brushing of sensitizer (the oval ones). I got some really strange dark splotches on a few of them that look like finger prints, but whether they were made during the initial sensitizing, the exposure, or the fixing, I have no idea.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMU2d20VrIj-1uWlPLrqLkhrI8LPfSoc0OVbxcN4AMoWxruPs1PFqGKjRyQVV2t3yVH6pxNyCgGlrtfRhW_rf_Tqd7ptFnQrDM-rLYqO395OhwxZnlfPhf1tqQ8SpSwAsbf5DpZmtZBRrH/s1600/DSCN0851.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMU2d20VrIj-1uWlPLrqLkhrI8LPfSoc0OVbxcN4AMoWxruPs1PFqGKjRyQVV2t3yVH6pxNyCgGlrtfRhW_rf_Tqd7ptFnQrDM-rLYqO395OhwxZnlfPhf1tqQ8SpSwAsbf5DpZmtZBRrH/s1600/DSCN0851.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP3rKLmaTwd1VLPFZo8vZa4yYpH2OCfYfy-nFYcDfW8A1lUqxEajcufX3YULlGL-tqU7_AGxG7noGjUBViktpdzmGkaF4slqzkLZSBWIgGm-L5XaBRtJzZXIi0DJtjD_QHHDbyLUJuh6DQ/s1600/DSCN0853.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP3rKLmaTwd1VLPFZo8vZa4yYpH2OCfYfy-nFYcDfW8A1lUqxEajcufX3YULlGL-tqU7_AGxG7noGjUBViktpdzmGkaF4slqzkLZSBWIgGm-L5XaBRtJzZXIi0DJtjD_QHHDbyLUJuh6DQ/s1600/DSCN0853.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
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I used Photoshop to make black and white negatives of a bunch of my photos, and then printed them onto transparency paper. From there it was just a simple 30 to 90 second exposure in direct sunlight to print them out.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj67e4vHFDFE5OhlcjHkkAC2nAykDKuIpPMBt7CiZ46UwmMGQdyTcUxjnu_nBeTAdHStkF_g4VYaRZT5I5quOUDQInB_77FRqj3GCda2kA0D3DLtLtYgjttBWlryNWf0QtPddTovxlDfj8A/s1600/DSCN0854.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj67e4vHFDFE5OhlcjHkkAC2nAykDKuIpPMBt7CiZ46UwmMGQdyTcUxjnu_nBeTAdHStkF_g4VYaRZT5I5quOUDQInB_77FRqj3GCda2kA0D3DLtLtYgjttBWlryNWf0QtPddTovxlDfj8A/s1600/DSCN0854.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This one got a lovely finger print right in the middle. :/</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqf-9dHmEwPGjJrF4zukcxWkIpxWerjer6Nu05d-FzdRzHKAXXXcuWVZjsXfgGhYAjecGKnTP7vG0A1JaQ7mjQk8loxasDEBhTEJRZYcKATsu5fz9K-CMjJ6VcI_MQiAU5ys94t-JZS0Yp/s1600/DSCN0855.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqf-9dHmEwPGjJrF4zukcxWkIpxWerjer6Nu05d-FzdRzHKAXXXcuWVZjsXfgGhYAjecGKnTP7vG0A1JaQ7mjQk8loxasDEBhTEJRZYcKATsu5fz9K-CMjJ6VcI_MQiAU5ys94t-JZS0Yp/s1600/DSCN0855.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My favorite one by far. I've done a few prints of this one, but none have turned out as nice as this one. Thanks to Bucket for brushing the sensitizer on this one - I think it made all the difference.</td></tr>
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So there it is! We'll see what comes of it. Hopefully I can combine the two projects and make some nice frames for the prints out of wrought metal.<br />
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BLB<br />
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Benjohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11325981225032487487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6476109366509073848.post-50826978249339943682014-09-09T21:52:00.000-07:002014-09-09T21:53:41.255-07:00Shopping DayWell, today has been both productive and frustrating. I did manage to find a 1 lb. bottle of 100% lye right off the bat, and that will help a lot with the experimentation.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTjgj0qGbmyaC9GKzDtJT4C2dUqf5YGSRtMNvZjUhMIPxN_5fhlkfyXsGa7Y5jV2rpIvAkhC4C_KuJS4Swoc5ev6D0Fxcd3uuDXV-c26wNZqvcwlZLd3jX_Wk1-hDYlJpkbqe6SzJDsEy5/s1600/IMG_20140909_171743.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTjgj0qGbmyaC9GKzDtJT4C2dUqf5YGSRtMNvZjUhMIPxN_5fhlkfyXsGa7Y5jV2rpIvAkhC4C_KuJS4Swoc5ev6D0Fxcd3uuDXV-c26wNZqvcwlZLd3jX_Wk1-hDYlJpkbqe6SzJDsEy5/s1600/IMG_20140909_171743.jpg" height="320" width="237" /></a></div>
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I have some leftover sodium carbonate that I made in the oven for my cyanotype project, and my pH test strips have clocked it at 11 (almost 12 even!), but I'm worried it won't be strong enough. I feel confident that the lye will work even if my homebrewed Na2CO3 doesn't. Four bucks was a little steep for such a small bottle, but worth it for the piece of mind...<br />
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Outside of that, I spent a lot of time wandering around different farm supply/hardware stores looking for perlite (with<i>out</i> fertilizer, which is apparently impossible), diatomaceous earth, limestone, etc. to little avail. Lowes had this:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTYMbfRv74JXFBCNjfTAGjRkHsPpFBUQUMVUM0kpIR2k65GhlkXE-ACa_iwc_pzdHDLpitVmNhbuXUFc4rWlER_OMBHlkSH3y-LbDgPZwWYd2bWz-gqJ1ZWlNV93dyGGTdk8bvYc4gUXuA/s1600/IMG_20140909_130705.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTYMbfRv74JXFBCNjfTAGjRkHsPpFBUQUMVUM0kpIR2k65GhlkXE-ACa_iwc_pzdHDLpitVmNhbuXUFc4rWlER_OMBHlkSH3y-LbDgPZwWYd2bWz-gqJ1ZWlNV93dyGGTdk8bvYc4gUXuA/s1600/IMG_20140909_130705.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">GREAT DEAL, RITE?!</td></tr>
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I was pretty excited when I found it, but then I checked the ingredients.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaZz2PulyV_6DjuLUumeIuy3dDBVkn2u6DsTsBfQXwDyWUfLdWSAWKFdTqyomj2euGxifqn2h8sa-SqtRH-NZG4xtWh3DVwO4pG6US_7ueuv8saxUiVCfbPNbEPfWXTQvWd-bbLTptaBpb/s1600/IMG_20140909_130546.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaZz2PulyV_6DjuLUumeIuy3dDBVkn2u6DsTsBfQXwDyWUfLdWSAWKFdTqyomj2euGxifqn2h8sa-SqtRH-NZG4xtWh3DVwO4pG6US_7ueuv8saxUiVCfbPNbEPfWXTQvWd-bbLTptaBpb/s1600/IMG_20140909_130546.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></div>
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I'm not totally sure, but I think this is too many things. Also, I'm no math expert, but those numbers don't seem to add up right. Anyway, I also found this pretty sweet shed at Lowes marked down from either $900 or $2300 depending on which of these you believe.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDNxvJK9LgyPveHMnUr2xp8NFVcI0CZ1aiQnT6CHIbnCyFPR5cl7i2L6vqjrZokApeewBuqtptNyuVo3CFSItO-Bapj6HRAjmPea5ZiCkLrn4Yr6udgghNgFXNBQoY2fZQHBzuTgzuTjvK/s1600/IMG_20140909_133140.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDNxvJK9LgyPveHMnUr2xp8NFVcI0CZ1aiQnT6CHIbnCyFPR5cl7i2L6vqjrZokApeewBuqtptNyuVo3CFSItO-Bapj6HRAjmPea5ZiCkLrn4Yr6udgghNgFXNBQoY2fZQHBzuTgzuTjvK/s1600/IMG_20140909_133140.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjbZqC64v3yuefdfvkR-n0VmREArAjaQZOPh47j90F7R30mgKvT1dTealub4jgfULztNaLEd-hpuZsjhYjVBgVEq78EqNOQ2Z3WW_b7ij7-Xd679-kpigFMkVD9GZye1yaLLw9M82fElwL/s1600/IMG_20140909_132914.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjbZqC64v3yuefdfvkR-n0VmREArAjaQZOPh47j90F7R30mgKvT1dTealub4jgfULztNaLEd-hpuZsjhYjVBgVEq78EqNOQ2Z3WW_b7ij7-Xd679-kpigFMkVD9GZye1yaLLw9M82fElwL/s1600/IMG_20140909_132914.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wait...so it's...how much for what exactly?</td></tr>
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If I had a place to put this, I feel like it would be stupid not to get it, but I guess not having the option has conveniently reduced the complexity of the problem for me!<br />
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Here's a quick look at some of the other fun things I picked up today!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj73GpNZsYT4ym4zN129F_faPu2Wd9DYcA4ue0X7K90ppLDas5I1yFdlRBMQO7vDC5eCM-vZPsT8BtMG5tZor-Df2d_LCaJeRE7sv6lY7WoYIOARktwTirMkAjtNYtQEObaXh-e3oVL8ewO/s1600/IMG_1796.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj73GpNZsYT4ym4zN129F_faPu2Wd9DYcA4ue0X7K90ppLDas5I1yFdlRBMQO7vDC5eCM-vZPsT8BtMG5tZor-Df2d_LCaJeRE7sv6lY7WoYIOARktwTirMkAjtNYtQEObaXh-e3oVL8ewO/s1600/IMG_1796.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This blower might end up proving <i>too</i> powerful for the forge, even with a damper flap, but it was only like $10, and will find a way to be useful for something.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDRYp2chWJXtya4eNzRXffPpfHvJ77b-epEf5Ad3nCpxU71-HmNexOAlct_ACpcY7LD375lhcYVL17SgevNTIO3LunR01Lv1b6IzIJEmNH58W5b-ZPJW4cSVNbQ4TOMffrKalwT1k1mbry/s1600/IMG_1797.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDRYp2chWJXtya4eNzRXffPpfHvJ77b-epEf5Ad3nCpxU71-HmNexOAlct_ACpcY7LD375lhcYVL17SgevNTIO3LunR01Lv1b6IzIJEmNH58W5b-ZPJW4cSVNbQ4TOMffrKalwT1k1mbry/s1600/IMG_1797.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">By a stroke of luck, this package deal saved me a lot of money in brass.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn7uE9HKe-2ga38oJgyI4rOUkv6LtOk-xs8S6iYZhSdl6aSemPIoV6N9oeTlzOdZav-_SbN5dYMZmbfFIMYsQJmvACoxgBSbdTxThUsfvra7gGWwhCDeMjxmr3-wPWxnrzJjwrvbNa6gVS/s1600/IMG_1798.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn7uE9HKe-2ga38oJgyI4rOUkv6LtOk-xs8S6iYZhSdl6aSemPIoV6N9oeTlzOdZav-_SbN5dYMZmbfFIMYsQJmvACoxgBSbdTxThUsfvra7gGWwhCDeMjxmr3-wPWxnrzJjwrvbNa6gVS/s1600/IMG_1798.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No science project is complete without huge PVC gloves.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stainless bowls and tools to get messy with.</td></tr>
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That's all for now! A mercifully short update.<br />
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BLBBenjohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11325981225032487487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6476109366509073848.post-49013603636147670642014-09-07T18:04:00.002-07:002014-10-02T21:23:53.451-07:00The Rest of The Story So Far...So it occurred to me that for a lot of you who aren't my parents or one of the like six or seven other people I talk to "regularly", you probably couldn't name off the top of your head more than three or four of my deepest hopes and aspirations in life, at <i>most.</i> With that in mind, let me try to paint a big, messy picture of what I've been up to in the blacksmithing scene to date, which is probably how I should have started the first post, but so it goes.<br />
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<b>In the beginning: </b>My parents, lord knows I love 'em, but they raised me in the suburbs. This has a lot of perks, to be sure, if you're into that sort of thing - and I don't begrudge them or anyone that -however HOA's don't particularly leap with a quickness to support activities that involve things like, say, fire, or loud noises, unsightly and crudely built structures, large piles of scrap metal, frequent use of large power-tools, or aesthetic choices that may suggest that mankind existed before the 1950's and did anything more unordinary than host dinner parties. That's <i>tooootally</i> fine with me, I've made my peace with it, but it has resulted in a latent, untapped interest in a handful of activities which -because, y'know, suburbs - have rarely been expressed or acted on up to the last few years of my adult life. These include things like sailing, mountaineering, shelter-building, permaculture, fermentation, woodworking, and, topically, blacksmithing. Now, to be fair, my parents did a great job of exposing me to lots of different great things, and if I had had all the things I just listed growing up, then I would most definitely not have the robust background in computer science, business management, cooking, game theory, etc. that I thankfully do have. What I mean is that if I had been raised in the woods, I would probably have just stayed in the woods and had a less rich experience as a person, and most likely wouldn't be here on the internet blabbing about this junk to you guys.<br />
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Which brings me to Australia! Last year, Bucket and I were invited out to Mt. Malloy to spend some time living with my biological father (or as Bucket insists I call him - BioDad, which to me makes him sound like either a supervillain or an alternative fuel, of which he is neither) and his wife and their two daughters out there. They live in a great big Queenslander (a style of architecture where you generally start by building a box, then wrap a porch around it, and then put a nice, big hat on it and call it a day) with a healthy bit of property around it, and several crumbling relics of a copper smelting/lumber mill operation surrounding it. In a word: heaven.<br />
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That was an amazing experience for a lot of great reasons, but important to this blag is the fact that that was one of the first times in my life where I had a bit of space to get good and properly <b>messy</b>. Since BD generously agreed to play along with my premise that nobody in their right mind wouldn't want part of their back yard turned into a big, sloppy heap of metal shavings, dry mud, and repurposed trash, I had a chance to explore blacksmithing for the first time!<br />
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<b>Part 0.5, The Prequel: </b>Forge 1.0 was literally born in the middle of the night as a result of Overthinking. After wracking my brain for hours and days, agonizing over my options and drawing up plans for how to make it happen, it recurrently nagged on me that for thousands of years, humans have been whacking on shit without worrying about whether their steel is carbon-y enough, or their hardy holes have the best swaging, or their anneals are optimally quench-y, etc. I'm not training for the Blacksmithing Olympics - I just want to <i>bend some effing metal.</i><br />
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With that in mind, I gathered some charcoal left in BD's nice, big fire pit, picked a good looking cinderblock, started a fire, and shoved some metal in it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's hard to tell because it's so blurry, but there is indeed a glint of insanity in my eye.</td></tr>
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My metal of choice was six or seven lovely little rectangles of steel that I found. Now, at the time I had wildly romantic notions of making a little billet of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel">damascus steel</a> to make a knife out of, not fully grasping that damascus steel requires some intense heat (hot enough to forge weld - a process where you join metal bits together by hitting them with a hammer until they forget how many pieces they were originally), a huge amount of work (folding and refolding the metal to get that lovely wavy pattern), and at least two <b>different</b> types of metal (so that when you acid etch the blade, the metals dissolve at different rates, letting you <b>see</b> that lovely wavy pattern). My awesome plan was to arc-weld all these bits together at their ends, arc-weld a stick of rebar to the resulting block, stick them in the fire, and then bang the everloving shit out of them until I got what I wanted.<br />
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Great plan. While (shockingly) I did not succeed in making my billet, I did succeed in quickly breaking the welds, sending tiny rectangles of red-hot metal hurtling into the brush, and making a lot of noise. Things I learned:</div>
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<li>Be more careful to only whack hot metal when you're absolutely sure it's not a small fragmentation grenade of smaller bits of metal.</li>
<li>Arc welded metal has the grip strength of a toddler when you weld before you have learned anything at all about welding.</li>
<li>Concrete slab ≠ a fantastic anvil.</li>
<li>A bike pump, though simultaneously advanced in a sort of 21st century, plastic moulded way and quaint in an "I'm using man-powered forced air to make my tools!" kind of way, is not particularly suited to the task of forge bellows.</li>
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Though I made a spectacular mess of things, in the end I had, in fact, made some quite interesting shapes out of the rectangles. Sort of a Salvador Dali-esque exploration of the rectangle shape. This provided me with a flood of "BELIEVE IN YOUR DREAMS AND YOU CAN ACHIEVE ANYTHING" and "I AM BECOME A GOD" type emotions, and for me it's that delicate balance of positive attitude and megalomania that helps me get anything in my life done.<br />
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Thus I was motivated enough to put some more thought and work into Forge 2.0. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Look, Ma! I made it for you!! BE PROUD OF ME."</td></tr>
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<b>Part 1, "The Plan": </b>My first obstacle was that I had burned pretty much all the useful charcoal left in the fire pit and would need to secure a new source of fuel. Forges tend to come in two major categories: gas and coal (though there are plenty others; my favorite is the induction forge<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myL8QA2KlAI">[1]</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VydPQuLyEns">[2]</a>). Since the gas route would involve buying gas, and working with compressed gas (which was scary to me as someone who is consistently paranoid that my oven might just explode for the jollies), I decided to go with coal. Not being an expert in Australia's major exports, I have no idea whether there is bituminous coal lying about the hillsides, and being rather shy on account of my American-ness anywhere outside America, I decided that rather than spend time searching for a source of coal, I'd just make my own.</div>
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<b>Part 1.5, "The Distraction": </b>Consequently was born side-project Charcoal Retort 1.0. In case you've never heard of a charcoal retort, let me save you a Google. The idea is essentially to cook wood until all you have left is charcoal. But why?! Well, let's back up...<b> [WARNING: HUGE TANGENT AHEAD. TL:DR version: Charcoal burns much hotter than wood. Why?! Because of the way that it is.]</b></div>
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If you take a piece of wood, or meat, or any biomass, you could (and should) confidently shove it in your friend's face and proclaim,"There's a lot of carbon in this." This owing to life on Earth being carbon based (carbon being great at chemically bonding will all sorts of crap and allowing the pretty complex molecules necessary to life to form). So life is chock-full of all sorts of really complicated crap that don't burn so good. As a result, like tying a sack of cannonballs to a dog that's really excited for a walk using a bunch of kite strings, a wood fire simply cannot do as much as it would like to do, and not nearly as fast unless it puts the work into gnawing off a few bonds.</div>
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But, all those complicated molecular bits that have been diligently insisting things like "I'm a complex carbohydrate making up a cell wall!" and "I'm a bunch of tree DNA!" under the application of ever-increasing heat are, similar to people, suddenly like "WHAT IF WE COULD DO ANYTHING WE WANTED?!" and start running around combining with one another in newer, simpler ways. What fire, as a self-sustaining endothermic reaction, likes the most, though, is chemical equilibrium. In pursuit of this, it's pairing up free radicals with other, freer radicals, like some sort of furious, ultra-Sandman, pairing up molecules at ludicrous speed and sending them off into the clouds, or <i>as</i> a cloud as the case may be. This rapid matchmaking generates heat, which creates more free radicals as the more attention deficit elements break ties with their plant jobs and go see what Mr. Oxygen is up, which in turn generates more heat, etc. etc., <i>ad finem</i> when there is nothing in reach that can be convinced to combust without additional energy. </div>
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Since carbon is so fantastically un-picky about what it bonds with, it would be awesome if we could turn biomass (in this case, wood) into JUST carbon. Doing that would mean creating a low-oxygen environment that frees up all that carbon, but doesn't let it combine yet. But then again, if we want it to run off with oxygen <i>later</i>, then we had better account for proper ventilation - it is, after all, hard to set a pile of ashes on fire. If only we could cook off all that junk in the wood but leave enough non-carbon material to act as sort of a glue to keep that carbon in a sort of ultra-porous superstructure. Enter hydrocarbons. Our good friend tar will stick around (HAH.) and hold it all together as long as we don't overcook the wood, letting all its hydrogens go.</div>
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So there you have it: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis">pyrolysis</a>! There are a lot of ways to do it, heck it happens in a normal wood fire anytime you make one, but to get good, pure charcoal, you have to try to seal off the wood you're wanting to pyrolyze or else it will just burn to ash and be done. </div>
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<b>[/tangent]</b></div>
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So this is what I did: I put a big metal drum inside another big metal drum and set it on fire. Combining the best qualities of a rocket stove with a double burner and a pressure cooker, the theory was, get a right proper blaze going through the stove while keeping the charcoal wood bottled up inside it, and you'll be able to cook the wood without actually letting it "burn". </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This is actually a crude drawing of Retort 1.3, but it's the one that worked best so it's the only one I'm drawing. Sorry I spelled flue wrong.</span></span></td></tr>
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A cool thing that happens as you're cooking wood into charcoal is that it starts giving off wood gas. You can reclaim wood gas in the same way that you would distill whiskey or anything distillable, but rather than collect it, I designed my retort to have a second stage burn where it runs on the wood gas instead of wood. The part labelled "Gas stage checker", during Retorts 1.0 to 1.2, had a pipe that would run from it along the outside and vent into the spy hole, and there was no de-gassing center tube. This proved to be problematic, as half-way through a burn, tar built up so thick in the pipe that it sealed off and blew the pressure-release valve (which I had stupidly built into the TOP of the inner barrel), wasting the gas and resulting in an incomplete pyrolysis.</div>
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Here's a rough walk-through of the process of firing Retort 1.3:</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Load the inner barrel with your good wood. </b>You can see the degassing tube in the center (that square thing). Rather than just cut holes in the bottom to let the gas escape, forcing it to collect at the top of the barrel and then pressurize before escaping out the bottom goes a really long way towards creating an hypoxic environment inside the inner barrel.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Batten down the inner barrel and close the degassing tube at the bottom. Then stuff the outer barrel with your crappier fuel wood and some smaller kindling. </b>Here you can see what's labeled in the schematic as a "Gas stage checker". It's that grey pipe welded to the barrel lid's bleed valve. It's important to have that in order to be able to periodically check to see if the inner barrel has reached pyrolysis temperatures.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Having left some breathing room down at the bottom, fire up some kindling below.</b> I left the lid off at this stage because for some reason I couldn't get the air flow to cyclone properly during the early part of lighting the retort, resulting in a lot of unused material on one side in both barrels. Once the wood took fire though, it would cyclone properly with the lid on.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Put on the top lid, threading the Gas checking valve through carefully because, let's be real, welding galvanized pipe to ultra-thin oil drum metal is sketchy at the best of times.</b> Here you can see the stubby little flue #1. By having a few different lengths of flue, I was able to control the rate of air draw and thus burn during the process. I could have done that with a damper flap, but then I'd have to build one. This was easier...for reasons.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-zHK3QkktkmyYvjiWYk9OXew5SSLRz2eKi6QWm1fewQ69pVMMNRX0aWyL_DALkiL5EvA6yQVanRZVCJEO8GZQ5lrxqJY2CQ44n86g80fhJCQm5APO1cjjv5yfLoJVwwg3RDtgs2VdvGL1/s1600/IMG_2812.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-zHK3QkktkmyYvjiWYk9OXew5SSLRz2eKi6QWm1fewQ69pVMMNRX0aWyL_DALkiL5EvA6yQVanRZVCJEO8GZQ5lrxqJY2CQ44n86g80fhJCQm5APO1cjjv5yfLoJVwwg3RDtgs2VdvGL1/s1600/IMG_2812.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Once it's roaring, plug the spy hole and put on the long flue #2 to increase the draw to its max. </b>This gets the inner barrel up to gasification temperatures quicker, and saves you a lot of scrap wood since once it starts degassing, it cooks itself.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqxXaXqRHZ2QOExXbaYEkdIndQVlKK6t7J9EqvtCJwoJpA0U0uhVia0hyphenhyphenbXJxnNFcOI_eyNFEhqI_GgAE7hpO00MM3gB41SbyRMIedPkixqlwPIicIVC9LHtNfkpyFcZ2J5YIAxQmzBUr7/s1600/IMG_2815.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqxXaXqRHZ2QOExXbaYEkdIndQVlKK6t7J9EqvtCJwoJpA0U0uhVia0hyphenhyphenbXJxnNFcOI_eyNFEhqI_GgAE7hpO00MM3gB41SbyRMIedPkixqlwPIicIVC9LHtNfkpyFcZ2J5YIAxQmzBUr7/s1600/IMG_2815.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Check incessantly because you're paranoid that something might have gone terribly wrong inside and your whole effort has been a waste.</b> This happened a couple times with something melting and falling off or crumbling apart or exploding. For example the first inner drum had a few holes that were patched with some rivets and sheet metal. All of which seemed to vaporize during the gas burn. Several rocks that I missed in the clay cob exploded, which was very exciting.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguLwrWa8ChD2OkgQ3g8tlHLt39mxi3tc1SNYfZuMONKLVzsWo1LoO4X9ktFh34kKX9lQUj8BQLwB8-IvoIEBD3YsfPJfL-6penavzNQ_UxaK8qoOGGlsFQPCaHU10pXFibn67OY1ZsOTRe/s1600/IMG_2820.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguLwrWa8ChD2OkgQ3g8tlHLt39mxi3tc1SNYfZuMONKLVzsWo1LoO4X9ktFh34kKX9lQUj8BQLwB8-IvoIEBD3YsfPJfL-6penavzNQ_UxaK8qoOGGlsFQPCaHU10pXFibn67OY1ZsOTRe/s1600/IMG_2820.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Check the Gas checking valve with a lighter every now and then to see what's up.</b> For a while you'll get a lot of steam (pictured here) coming out of the valve, as there is still quite a bit of water in the wood that's is the first thing to go. A lot of tar condenses in the cap next, and you have to clear it out a lot, and then eventually the gas will go clear. Pretty soon after that, it will start to flare off when lit and then sputter out, and then eventually will be clean enough to stay lit like a blowtorch.</td></tr>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Once it starts blowtorching gas, I would cap it and pull the plate keeping the degassing tube sealed out of the spy hole, letting the gas blow out onto the burning coals of the outer barrel, which would combust the gas and cause it to cyclone around the inner barrel. At this point the whole thing starts to get <b>serious.</b> Like...serious business serious, it is roaring like an angry lion and glowing red hot beneath the clay cob, and the ground around it for like ten feet is warm, and there's a ten foot column of shimmery death air rocketing out of the flue, and it's scary to go too near it.<br />
<br />
After like ten or twenty minutes, it starts to calm down and run out of gas. Once it sounds like it might be sputtering or losing enough gas pressure to prevent oxygen from getting into the inner barrel, I quickly slide the sealing plate back into the degassing tube, then rip the lid off the outer barrel, yank out the inner barrel, and set it in a pile of clay cob and sand, putting a good seal on the bottom. Then I start throwing super wet cob onto all the spots where I think air might get into the barrel, like the rim, the pressure release valve plate, the occasional rusted through hole, etc.<br />
<br />
It's really important to choke off the barrel at this stage because it is now ready to explode into fire, if only it could reach oxygen. Once it's cool, it won't be able to combust, so I leave it there to chill out. Once cool, tag it and bag it up because that, my friend, is charcoal.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO5AYMhcbiCAsMW9lAROels-osNGzsuwsL4YDXaIf8SduKt0KbjzTVvpr9YeB-_L1BUphqpYhdQj9xLLkbbRogPeqBws8_eZgQy8SWMc0GBRKXYcEP_6CcenI6YLBQpwgpxUWVvf6UUNCC/s1600/IMG_2724.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO5AYMhcbiCAsMW9lAROels-osNGzsuwsL4YDXaIf8SduKt0KbjzTVvpr9YeB-_L1BUphqpYhdQj9xLLkbbRogPeqBws8_eZgQy8SWMc0GBRKXYcEP_6CcenI6YLBQpwgpxUWVvf6UUNCC/s1600/IMG_2724.JPG" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"I don't always make charcoal, but when I do, I wear flip-flops"</td></tr>
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<br />
<b>Part 2: </b>So jeez, the forge, right? That's the whole end goal, and I haven't really even started on it. If you're noticing a similarity here between my approach to making charcoal and my approach to making refractory bricks/cement, well, you're not the first.<br />
<br />
Thankfully forge construction is a little simpler. You just need a bowl that can hold some hot hot coal, and you need a hole somewhere in it where you can shoot air into the coal, allowing it to go nuts and live up to its fullest potential. Forge 1.0, you may remember, was a cinderblock with a hole in it. Not ideal, but it <i>did</i> check all the boxes and lest you forget I <i>did </i>bend some metal with it. Forge 2.0 started its life like the A-Team. An unlikely band of misfits come together for a nobel cause: the brake drum off a big-ol' truck, the inside of a washing machine, an oscillatory fan motor with a boat propeller attached to it, a drain tube, and some odd bits of bricks and cinderblock. Thus optimistically held together with some drywall screws and hope, Forge 2.0 was born.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCDzpJ8kV-aXvV2Hb9SFOnBkNOIWOu47dGMyp7t9PhGUCZQydaJIDr9ounELow8KCRpK_ZhFQrSB7s9VsB8KGskGdSOgSOE6m6JrH9nY2l4rPORkN_uzPleEtUDVk3Rg2AGjxnq6MkTrNM/s1600/IMG_2793.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCDzpJ8kV-aXvV2Hb9SFOnBkNOIWOu47dGMyp7t9PhGUCZQydaJIDr9ounELow8KCRpK_ZhFQrSB7s9VsB8KGskGdSOgSOE6m6JrH9nY2l4rPORkN_uzPleEtUDVk3Rg2AGjxnq6MkTrNM/s1600/IMG_2793.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Winning the prize for "Shiniest Forge in Australia", Forge 2.0-2.2 made up for in style what it lacked in practicality.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlfr_ggiTGWu4j2b7hku_JEoNynC-w1URSMR5DshOhdgblojja00T2L0PQpYcx1By_3IvDrKRSsLMC5EoyLziBoX_YHl0HuSpSoGX_U1suID71rEBWiJ4fJou_TT8Fk0u-cGYroFHl_FLh/s1600/IMG_2835.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlfr_ggiTGWu4j2b7hku_JEoNynC-w1URSMR5DshOhdgblojja00T2L0PQpYcx1By_3IvDrKRSsLMC5EoyLziBoX_YHl0HuSpSoGX_U1suID71rEBWiJ4fJou_TT8Fk0u-cGYroFHl_FLh/s1600/IMG_2835.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The first lighting of Forge 2.0. Note the uncanny exactness with which the brake drum is seated in the washing machine tub. Clearly proof of an intelligent designer as this is a match made in heaven.</td></tr>
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Forge 2.0 actually only made it for about thirty minutes before an obvious design flaw resulted in a collapsed lung. It only had one to start with (the propeller fan) so this was pretty serious. It was my fault, and I take responsibility for it - I didn't have a T- or L-joint pipe that would let me blow air in from the side and then direct it upwards. Being impatient, I made the executive decision to put the fan directly beneath the pipe, which stared straight up into the hottest part of the fire, separated by a worryingly thin bit of chicken wire as a "strainer". I knew this would end in sadness, but I wanted to whack some metal, so, to quote myself in that moment, "Meh."<br />
<br />
Forge 2.1 and 2.2 had similarly unfortunate arrangements of bellows made from increasingly desperate and pitiful FrankenFans. In the end it was clear that even if I did have the right shaped pipes, I wouldn't have a lot of room to position the bits, and it would still lack control over the air flow. I could have cut through the washing machine guts, but they're so shiny!<br />
<br />
Back to the drawing board.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjynRgAWsN_fbYhWU_2GNFZCLhGQFWobs4O0WoBZBmlU9cGzt1VFrwy6i1B6CPIknG6snzfC7_SkXo0_9JmCkQaxFffIsKYJGp7enrP4uKq7EQvpaWWSOU1YlpIONOJztme1AlYXllMc7r4/s1600/IMG_2999.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjynRgAWsN_fbYhWU_2GNFZCLhGQFWobs4O0WoBZBmlU9cGzt1VFrwy6i1B6CPIknG6snzfC7_SkXo0_9JmCkQaxFffIsKYJGp7enrP4uKq7EQvpaWWSOU1YlpIONOJztme1AlYXllMc7r4/s1600/IMG_2999.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Forge 3.0 ribbon cutting ceremony.</td></tr>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Forge 3.0 was my finest hour. I had been experimenting with clay cob throughout the month, and I felt like I had a pretty good formula down. I also managed to pick up some proper "fire" bricks. There are a lot of abandoned tobacco smoke houses about the Oz countryside lined with them. I took all the thoughtfulness that I had omitted from the previous two forges' bellows solutions and applied them to 3.0. I ended up with a couple pieces of plywood hinged together at one end joined by their hypotenuse with a double lining of tarp. You can see it squished shut in the picture above, and opened to its fullest in the picture below. A set of double flappy wood blocks hinged with bike inner-tube seals made for a proper and, I thought, pretty well designed bellows.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7DuXyYazql2xPDrc1AHDZHikTTzfcXqWx02ydpdFP8cdyNTcEekJ8oH1gH8KWYZ3owXplWRdMTsMBMXVMmsx3WtWoZ56j6XkCnJz3A5VQTpk0MhEWpGt_duhkgmxJQTI6OGvQwSorO2PG/s1600/IMG_3031.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7DuXyYazql2xPDrc1AHDZHikTTzfcXqWx02ydpdFP8cdyNTcEekJ8oH1gH8KWYZ3owXplWRdMTsMBMXVMmsx3WtWoZ56j6XkCnJz3A5VQTpk0MhEWpGt_duhkgmxJQTI6OGvQwSorO2PG/s1600/IMG_3031.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inaugural firing of Forge 3.0</td></tr>
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In that first picture of 3.0 you can see the box on the backside of the plywood that the air flows into from the bellows, and which also prevents back draw as the bellows are reopened. You can't see it in the second picture because it became immediately apparent that I had neglected to account for the prevailing winds in the area, which cheerfully swept the blasting heat from the mouth of the forge right out over the bellows and the unenviable person (usually Bucket [I love you, Bucket. Thank you. I'm sorry again]) operating them. A blast shield was quickly cut and thrown into place to at least prevent the tarp from melting too much, if not my bellows slave (who, again, I love very much and again, I'm very sorry).<br />
<br />
Though I had put an unusual amount of effort into staking down the bellows to keep them from wobbling too much during operation, I was eventually able to extract them (with BD's help) and move the thing to the other side of the forge. Thus was born Forge 3.0.1. Sadly, there was a casualty during the upgrade: The pipe that connected the bellows to the base of the forge was partly constructed with a little bit of a purple, plastic drain pipe, and while it was on the right side of the forge, it made this cute little whistling noise like one of those pipes you wave around over your head and it goes "OOOooOOOOoeooWOwoOOOooeoOOeoEOOOOOooo." After it was moved to the left, I could never get it to sing again, which was a tragedy.<br />
<br />
<b>Part 3: </b>The anvil. Fairly simply, it started as a concrete slab, as you may recall. Concrete's qualities do not inspire great praise as a hammering surface. BD donated a nice, thick slab of metal about 1'x1' that I first affixed to a nice bit of 4"x4" post, but then screwed down onto a hurkin' big log I dragged out of the mill and seated in a <i>really</i> big brake drum filled with sand to level it.<br />
<br />
Though I had not smithed nearly enough to justify acting on my petulant desire for a better anvil, I nevertheless would not be satisfied until I had something that more closely resembled the romantic silhouette of an anvil. BD then generously acquired a bit of rail track from a scrap yard for me, but even this not satiate me. I went so far as to take a grinder to the thing and carve a little horn-shaped end on it. It proved helpful, but I think if I had been thinking more clearly, I would have been able to come up with better solutions that wouldn't have put the grinder's poor little motor at so much risk. In the end, I never did come up with a great way to affix the rail securely enough to the wood block to satisfy me, but <i>que cera cera</i>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo_kTnOB0PXP46F6Ob8buHzXKl26kNqc4yuFF-lF_THrXJf-LA_IL2DrKGxyMhYm-t2KYA44Cjd6JkztjwuaelrgB2dDttL8KEuFEn-LKChH2N4yBRbJNDeWXewGQfl-KFDMGQ5ahcb-7T/s1600/IMG_2940.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo_kTnOB0PXP46F6Ob8buHzXKl26kNqc4yuFF-lF_THrXJf-LA_IL2DrKGxyMhYm-t2KYA44Cjd6JkztjwuaelrgB2dDttL8KEuFEn-LKChH2N4yBRbJNDeWXewGQfl-KFDMGQ5ahcb-7T/s1600/IMG_2940.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Angle Grinder + like 8 discs + 2 hours = Anvil (or so the equation went in my head at the time).</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzNzaT95awh7Vugwp8BAPRxjZt63R6y0aKF8Gmhkzgp5ZRP3Tp_DeIqlASSKCCPVV5DfVaNbc0Bhdmo3EObtHqCf0CXOq1dUJisWdGfKXAvEzIFZu48GdEXVQxuCWgXA8R1D6Ph_7XLK3O/s1600/IMG_3006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzNzaT95awh7Vugwp8BAPRxjZt63R6y0aKF8Gmhkzgp5ZRP3Tp_DeIqlASSKCCPVV5DfVaNbc0Bhdmo3EObtHqCf0CXOq1dUJisWdGfKXAvEzIFZu48GdEXVQxuCWgXA8R1D6Ph_7XLK3O/s1600/IMG_3006.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Operation.</td></tr>
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<b>Conclusions: </b>If I told you that I spent like a month combining and recombining bits of trash with the literal expectation and intent to use them to make exactly one knife, you would probably find that very curious, and possibly remark, "Then I hope it's one hell of a knife."<br />
<br />
Weeelllll...<br />
<br />
In the end my greatest achievement was this:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgujoQ76s_X-cwWvLCYou0UbErY272iavuF7XMUcVYkVGww5MpibwVd7ZPaYS_QsXxcp5bfjirZiY0lo9n9H1SgnS2ZC-SrsOVMGoRXsxkjXVtgN60ZtJxV65iRoAD5Bd-GySMVj9ubVh83/s1600/IMG_2996.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgujoQ76s_X-cwWvLCYou0UbErY272iavuF7XMUcVYkVGww5MpibwVd7ZPaYS_QsXxcp5bfjirZiY0lo9n9H1SgnS2ZC-SrsOVMGoRXsxkjXVtgN60ZtJxV65iRoAD5Bd-GySMVj9ubVh83/s1600/IMG_2996.JPG" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If you look closely, you can almost pretend that you understand what these are meant to be.</td></tr>
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There are lots of helpful tutorials on Youtube explaining how to make your first tongs, and I honestly did my best to apply their advice. These, as you can likely tell, are not very much tongs <i>per se</i>. I have referred to them affectionately since their birth as "Possibly Tongs". They are not really approaching tong shape in their present state, nor are they functionally tongs even in a sort of two-hand, salad tongs sort of way, however considering the amount of 3/4" bar stock that went unused at their handle ends, they still possess the strong <i>possibility </i>for tongs in the future. Provided that you cut most of what I did to them off, probably.<br />
<br />
In the end, Forge 3.0.1's downfall was over-enthusiasm. Since my Possibly Tongs were going so swimmingly, I decided to skip ahead to "decorative ram's head poker". This is a major theme in my life. Momma, if you're reading this, you will probably recall that upon receiving piano lessons, I threw out the teacher's ideas of how they were going to - all that nonsense about "learn how to read music" and "know things like what a major 3rd are" - and insisted that I immediately embark upon Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. If any of my college professors are reading this, you may fondly reminisce on my belief that 100-200 level courses were unnecessary inconveniences when considering 300-400 level ones. What I'm saying is that I sometimes I hurl myself in the deep-end and find me with a lot of pool water in my nose.<br />
<br />
Anyhow, the ram's head was looking a great deal like something you might see in a low-budget horror film whispering, "Please...*gurgle gurgle*...kill me...*burble*...pleeeeeaaase..." from a blood-smeared operating table caught in the shaky beam of a flashlight, and in my frustration to manifest my vision in rebar, I was happily obliging it with a sledgehammer. Part of the operation involved needing the ram's face to be <i>really</i> hot so that I could squish it down in sort of an S shape. I had enlisted BD for bellows duty (Bucket was mysteriously busy during forging hours that day), and being an impressively built, 7 or 8 foot tall man, he diligently plied the bellows up and down until, to everyone's complete lack of surprise, they blew apart spectacularly.<br />
<br />
It was a sad day, to be sure. If my father had been there, I'm sure he would have issued it one of his trademark catch phrases like, "<i>That</i> Didn't Work Out." I think BD felt pretty bad about being the one who busted the bellows, but hopefully he noticed that the tarp was only stapled on in a way that conveyed clear desperation, and was held together more by sheer force of will on my part than anything else. It could just have easily have been his three year old daughter that ended up holding the hot potato when the music stopped. So it goes.<br />
<br />
In the end, I learned much more than I made, and it laid the groundwork for what I hope will end up being a successful blacksmithing future. Everything I made was powerful and moving in its unattractiveness, and bewildering in its uselessness. Still...<br />
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It's the things that keep us that delicately balanced somewhere between congenial optimism and megalomania that keep us moving forward in life.<br />
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BLB<br />
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Benjohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11325981225032487487noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6476109366509073848.post-89202528856380602952014-09-06T01:01:00.001-07:002014-09-06T02:07:41.378-07:00The Story So Far...Now I know many of you will be wondering, "Ben, is the title of this blog meant to imply that you yourself are extremely loud and incredibly hot, or is it blacksmithing that is that?" The short answer is yes.<br />
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If your follow up question is, "Are you meaning to say, in an unfortunate dad-humor sort of way that you are hot in a Hugh Jackman sense, or do you mean that you, as a highly exothermic chemical reaction going about his day, are generally uncomfortably warm?" To this I must admit it's a bit of both, but mostly the latter, and here's a thing: both my bod and blacksmithing would, from a sort of...sad...4th grader grasp on chemistry, seem to be exothermic - that is, producing heat as a byproduct of reaction - but while smithing, I am also <i>absorbing</i> a great deal of the forge's heat, which would make me some sort of exo-endo-therm chimera, which <i>seems</i> impossible to my barest of understandings of chemistry, but there it is.<br />
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Which is a great example of the kind of fast-and-loose approach to understanding chemistry that I promise to employ throughout this entire project. And so you, dear reader, find me today; struggling mightily to stretch my mind around a subject wildly beyond my ken: Geopolymers. What are geopolymers? For two days now I've been wrestling with this, and here's my best answer: Geopolymers are a mixture of organic or inorganic compounds. An answer as unsatisfying as it is vague and useless, mostly because it seems that a huge variety of materials and compounds fall under this umbrella, and they can be made from all sorts of stuff (which, etymologically, makes sense since the word itself is basically Greek for "a bunch of rocks or whatever"). But let me chop it down to what geopolymer is gonna mean for the practical purpose of my project. Henceforth, I'll call "GP" anything that acts like concrete (aka, liquid stone), but is made up of highly silicate (and possibly aluminate) material.<br />
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Why is this important to my project? Moreover, what <i>is</i> my project? Right, I'm building a forge. I could take the easy way out and buy some firestone bricks, or forego the insulation altogether and go with a simple brake-drum style open forge, but I've been there and done that, and I think it would be really fun and useful to know how to make GP, not just for refractory purposes, but as a building material in general (given its emerging popularity as a low-cost, industrial byproduct-eating, earth-friendly alternative to concrete). "But, Ben," I hear you saying, "firebricks are like...$9 each and I can tell already that this is going to be a stupidly deep rabbit hole of a project." Yes. Yes, you're right. However, based on how my previous four jobs have valued my time, $9 is practically a week's worth of 9-5 work, which means I can chase this rabbit pretty far before I'm losing money on time investment.<br />
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Here is some light reading on GP's. These are a few of the sources I've been reading through trying to get the gist of it all, sans misc youtube and wiki's, some of which I'll toss in as I go:<br />
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<a href="http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/some-notes-on-geopolymer-cement-clay-bricks-unfired-and-diy/">http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/some-notes-on-geopolymer-cement-clay-bricks-unfired-and-diy/</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.arpnjournals.com/jeas/research_papers/rp_2012/jeas_1112_810.pdf">http://www.arpnjournals.com/jeas/research_papers/rp_2012/jeas_1112_810.pdf</a><br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolymer">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolymer</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.geopolymer.org/science/introduction">http://www.geopolymer.org/science/introduction</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIRTcmR6sSk&list=UUR4jAT1mvEwRRNo5qv8IewQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIRTcmR6sSk&list=UUR4jAT1mvEwRRNo5qv8IewQ</a><br />
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The distilled version of this is, I think, "Pick a glassy mineral, dissolve it in an alkali, add it to some clay or some such, <a href="http://files.sharenator.com/132460.jpg">cure it with fire</a> (or not, maybe), <i>voila</i>, GP."<br />
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My current understanding is there are two/three components, but I could be wrong here - the mixing phase is still a little mysterious to me at this point.<br />
<ol>
<li>An Alkali of at least pH 10, e.g.</li>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide">Lye</a> (Sodium Hydroxide [NaOH]) </li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_(material)">Lime</a> (Calcuim Oxide [CaO])</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_hydroxide">Hydrated Lime</a> Calcium Hydroxide [Ca(OH)2])</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natron">Natron</a> (which, seems to be functionally near enough to washing soda, aka <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_carbonate">Sodium Carbonate</a> [Na2CO3]</li>
</ul>
<li>A Silicate/Aluminosilicate, e.g.</li>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silica_gel">Silica Gel</a></li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth">Diatomaceous Earth</a></li>
<li>Class <i>F</i> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash">Fly Ash</a></li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentonite">Bentonite Clay</a></li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaolinite">Kaolin Clay</a></li>
</ul>
<li>A Strata? (Like perlite, or one of them clays from #2, or kitty litter)</li>
</ol>
So in that last link in my "sources" - the youtube video - this guy is making <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_silicate">waterglass</a> by dissolving silica gel beads in lye. This, I think, is just reversing the chemical process which produces silica gel to begin with. Once he's got the "glue", he adds <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlite">perlite</a> to it as a strata, and *sha-bam*, GP.<br />
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Now that we have a list of ingredients, let me butcher for you the chemical processes that form a GP. To roughly translate from <a href="http://www.geopolymers.com.au/science/geopolymerization">here</a> a bit, I would describe it thusly:</div>
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<ol>
<li>Initial Mixing - An alkaline solution is used to dissolve Si and Al ions from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_solid">amorphous</a> phases of the feedstock. I take this to mean that anything non-crystalline in structure (aka, your silicate ingredient) gets dissolved by the alkali.</li>
<li>Condensation - In the resulting solution, the Si and Al hydroxide molecules condense with adjacent hydroxyl ions, forming oxygen bonds (and water). I think that at this stage you have a monomer solution of silica and aluminum in water, just waiting to polymerize.</li>
<li>Poly-condensation (aka Polymerization) - an application of heat (apparently anywhere from ambient temperature to no more than 90ºC) causes the monomers and any leftover Si and Al hydroxide to polymerize into rigid chains/nets of oxygen bonded tetrahedra. I believe this is a science-y way of saying, "Then you dry it out and it gets hard."</li>
</ol>
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Now here's where my ignorance of both chemistry and cement mixing <i>really</i> begin shine. I'm left with the following questions:<br />
<ol>
<li>Is waterglass essentially a solution of "monomer-ized" Si/Al hydroxide waiting to be catalyzed into GP? I'm guessing that waterglass has no Al in it, and that for this purpose you would ideally want as pure a solution of dissolved SiO2 as you could get before adding it to an amorphous aluminosilicate strata for to make it into bricks and whatnot. I really have a very bad grasp on what I'm talking about here...</li>
<li>In terms of choosing a silicate material to dissolve in your alkali, the best example I've seen is in that youtube clip, where he used silica gel and added it to perlite, and perlite is essentially corn-puffed obsidian by composition at least. Well I live in Bend, OR and there are literally big-ol' heaps o' obsidian lying about. Could I dissolve obsidian in an alkali to make waterglass, or would the magnesium and iron in it mess it up? It would be awesome to have obsidian waterglass.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: normal;">I have learned that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_cement">Portland cement</a> is basically a calcium silicate, Al/Fe blend that sets when mixed with water by way of "a complex series of chemical reactions still only partly understood." I can remember partaking of cement mixing in the past and I feel like I remember it involving mixing the cement powder with equal parts sand and gravel/stone, and then adding water to a desirable consistency. With GP's it seems waterglass is kind of an equivalent Portland cement, which you would then add to whatever you want bound. I wonder how far off base this understanding of the process is?</span></li>
<li>Given that GP's are practically entirely glass and aluminum, I'd assume they are by default pretty damn fireproof, but I don't trust my grasp of the situation enough to rule out that there may need to be modifications/additions to the recipe to make this material useful for me as a forge liner. If so, I wonder what they are?</li>
</ol>
I suspect that the answer to most of these, if I asked them to any self-respecting chemist (or mason), would be a really solid, "MU." Therefore, let me reiterate my objectives in case it will make the questions behind my poorly conceived questions more obvious. My primary goals are to make a healthy number of refractory bricks that I can use to free-form a heat-shield around my fire-pot/forge mouth to cut down on coal/gas waste, and make a safe refractory liner for a gas forge and gas foundry. </div>
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So there it is. I've got a long way to go, but I feel like I'm on the right track. All this geopolymer nonsense aside though, I don't have a really satisfactory big-picture plan for how this operation will come together. Since I'm renting a duplex in a pretty cramped little cul-de-sac, I have neither an indoor nor an outdoor work space that I can call my own. I've been drawing up some crude plans for a blacksmithing trailer, and have been keeping an eye on the trailer market on Craigslist for a few weeks now, but so far nothing is leaping out at me. M'lady, Bucket, and I have been eyeballing the house market too, which is the long-game, low-fun solution to this problem, but I'm ready to smith NOW. I'm keen on the trailer idea owing to both my nomadic tendencies as well as a desire to make it possible to bring smithing to the community in the form of Blacksmithing Camp. Since Bucket is big-lady-on-campus with a camp organization here in Bend, she's designing all sorts of programs for all times of year, and I feel like I'd be a shoe-in for some of those. So yeah, Blacksmithing Trailer (aka OPERATION "ROLLING THUNDER") is a subject for another time. </div>
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Thanks for your interest! If you know anything about this stuff or, through reading have discovered that I've totally got it all backwards and upside-down, please, PLEASE let me know in the comments or jot me an email or something. You guys are the best.</div>
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Big Love, Ben</div>
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Benjohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11325981225032487487noreply@blogger.com2