Nail Forge...ASSEMBLE

They 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

BLB

Shopping Day

Well, 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.

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...

Outside of that, I spent a lot of time wandering around different farm supply/hardware stores looking for perlite (without fertilizer, which is apparently impossible), diatomaceous earth, limestone, etc. to little avail. Lowes had this:

GREAT DEAL, RITE?!

I was pretty excited when I found it, but then I checked the ingredients.

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.

Wait...so it's...how much for what exactly?

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!

Here's a quick look at some of the other fun things I picked up today!

This blower might end up proving too 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.

By a stroke of luck, this package deal saved me a lot of money in brass.

No science project is complete without huge PVC gloves.

Stainless bowls and tools to get messy with.

That's all for now! A mercifully short update.

BLB