ThomasPowers

Woodburn it into the bottom of the lid so it shows when the lid is opened.

Keeping hydrated also helps you to bleed prolifically!

Does it meet *your* needs; not someone else's! I don't like my knives so hard that you need a diamond hone to sharpen, other prefer them that way. It does seem an odd first post; be interested in what the next one is like. The website referred to in their profile is for a Chinese environmental monitoring company.

They have certainly burned their bridges with the rest of the extended family. There are number of old adobe houses still in Socorro, one of my forging buddy has one. One of my co-workers at NRAO had a great? Aunt and Uncle who had puddled Adobe from the soil on their lot and built their house. If you think Santa Fe is bad; look at Taos! (Both for the prices and the pretension...)

I had the exact same thought when I read TW's post! And what's wrong with giving your kids rusty barbwire for Christmas?

Another trip to the scrapyard, nice 6"? disk cut from 1"? steel to make into a bending form, lug wrench, 110V 20A outlet, lifting ring and about 140# of 3/4" cold rolled sq stock in various lengths under 5'. 144# in all, 20 USCents a pound. Not getting bit by the junkyard dog again---priceless!

Do not feed self to the dogs! Hope it heals fast and well; but you will be feeling it for quite a while I bet. Do you have a good rolling stool and chair to take the weight off while you do as much as you can for work?

Take a look at how the mastermyr chest is done also.

Not my problem! They have had over a decade to get their act together.

Our passive solar house has a stabilized adobe wall to act as a heat buffer in the room with the solar windows.

Can't believe that NM, one of the poorest states in the USA has a better library system than FL!

It's more about sociological aspects than the technology; but it's good to be aware of the context.

"for the two level effect"? I have mine bolted to a piece of street sign post---galvanized hollow sq tube with holes on all sides spaced evenly. I find pieces at the scrap yard all the time as they tend to get run over a lot out here. You can see some of the smallest tongs I have found over the years hanging on it. One grace note is to mount it high enough that you naturally grab the handles and not the hot end(s)! You can see the run of the tubing by the screwdriver handles, the bits going through the regularly spaced holes. Today: 119# from the scrapyard mainly a bunch of 3/4" cold rolled sq steel bars in pieces 5' and under, down to around 6". Also two hay rake arched tines, 2 plastic milk crates----I put my BBQ propane bottles in them so they pack and ride easier in the truck, 2 sockets, a handful of SDST screws, a horseshoe, etc. Got home, ate a late lunch and watched the rain fall; made it just in time!

Hey I've owned a car that cost me US$100 and came with *2* mounted spares in the trunk. Yes you could see the road through the floor in back; no AC in fact the *heater* was an "option" and had a box screwed to the dashboard for it. But it ran---'62 Buick Special; used it until I made enough money to buy a better vehicle and sold it for US$60... The problem with most fixes for Mom's situation is that either I need to make the 150 mile drive down there (each way) at least every other week; or Mom needs to move in with us---we have a room for her away from our end of the house with a bathroom across the hall just for her. However she currently refuses to move. Soon she will have no choice. When the well runs dry; her house will have to be sold off and the "kids" will be on their own. I'm going to tell them that I'm lowering the boom when she gets down to 6 months expenses as we will need to clean out and fix up the place and put it on the market. (Her house is twice the size of mine; but her electric bill is 4 times mine!)

The main thing: hydro test places want to be sure that a "bad tank" won't be put back into pressurized use. Steel scrap price has gone down recently; might be a good time to ask!

I like my nails to be oriented 90 degrees to the direction of stress in a wood joint.

GG find out where they send welding tanks to be hydro tested in your area. We once picked up 3 full sized pickup loads of failed tanks from ours---all they required was that the tank be cut in two before leaving the yard---and they even supplied the O-A gas to do it! This was in Columbus Ohio. Out here there was a fire in a rather junky place in town and I now have a stack of tanks that were scrapped and sold at 20 USCents a pound. Hydro testing is about 100 miles away from where I live now so buying the complete "Bell, gas forge shell, dishing form" for scrap rate works ok for me.

Don't tone them down *raise* the price!

If you have access to a bench grinder you can modify jigsaw blades into small keyhole saws. Note that if you need a wider hole you can stack jigsaw blades side by side for hand use.

I live in a small rural town in New Mexico and our adobe library has NO books on blacksmithing; except that I can ILL books there from 90 other libraries including several University Libraries. I am easily able to ILL a copy of a book I had on book search for over a decade on Amazon and ABEbooks with no hits. So if you say your library has no books on blacksmithing; but have not asked the main desk about Inter Library Loan, you are suffering a misapprehension! When it comes to the expensive books, always ILL first to see if you will be happy shelling out the big bucks! (I have some books that were over US$300 *used*; scholarly works with high printing costs and low demand get $$$$ fast! Cheap ripoff copies just don't have the photomicrographs in a clear usable state.)

Probably more blacksmiths now than 75 years ago; rather in a boom---or bubble in the craft.

Back home; rough trip in some ways; Grandpa is visibly going downhill; but it was rougher getting home. Had to tell the kids living at home in their 30's not paying rent that 1 could not spend money in my mother's account as if it was hers. (Removed her signing privileges she had from when Mom broke her wrist...got a new debit card and pin.) Told the other who was driving Dad's car and having Mom pay for gas and insurance and it uses premium; that we were going to have to sell it. He asked if she would give it to him---works in a restaurant and can't afford to support an elderly Lexus. I told him he needed an older Ford Escort. These kids have been living rent free for years they should be dripping money! Mom is also getting very forgetful about everything. When the well runs dry they will be on the street. Mom will be able to live with me or one of my kids---we have all volunteered; but they will be cut off and have to figure out how to live on what they can make. Currently I'm executor of the will too.

Well one Christmas my wife asked me for gift suggestions so I ticked off a lot of the cheaper reprints in the L catalog and told her to just buy me one---she bought them all for me!

We had a friend that was a farmer and sheep shearer. He'd go into sheep shearing season with hands you could use to rasp hammer handles down with. At the end of sheep shearing season they were like a newborn's skin and he had to wear gloves to work the farm until his callouses built back up.

I have a 1828 WF myself but it is in such abused condition I only use it once a year of so just to let it know it's still an anvil. Heel missing, 80-90% of the face missing, etc.