Not sure why I am continuing to write these things, other then for myself to keep track of what I have done. I find more and more I am just forging and not keeping track of what I am making. I am working on researching and possibly making a set of Roman Hipposandals.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipposandal). But with no reason or timeline, i find it hard to get started. I have been doing some work in the forge, but it has been more along the lines of mundane projects and not A&S.
The first thing that I have not documented yet was a key-hook that I made for my wife to hang at the front door. I am rather pleased with it, but she is not. With the way I carved the ears, she says that they look mad. I think she may be right.
The next project That I decided to undertake was to create new bird feeder hangers for our deck. Hopefully, this would unify the deck and alleviate the hodgepodge of hangers we currently have. This project was started at the beginning of the moth and still is not finished. I have finished 3 of the 8 I was planning on making, but I am not sure that I like the design. The support bar looks off to me. Either way, here are some pictures and progress pics:
As I wrote about in my last note, I was gifted a set of top tools from GS Tongs. These were from my wife fro our Anniversary. I wanted these to be displayed nicely so I would always remember her gift to me. For this I designed a very flowing and organic tool rack to hang them from. This was a poorly thought out design and was a complete failure. From the ashes of this design came about tool rack #2. I am not as happy with this rack as i was with the one in my head but here it is:
It has been bloody hot this week. Temperature in the garage before firing up the forge was in the low eighties. So hot even the squirrels were melting and my cat not giving a damn about chasing them:
It’s crazy to be working at the forge in this heat! So I decided to work on making the forge a better working space. I had an old stump on a riser that I kept my swage block on set behind my anvil. This tended to be the place I set everything down on as I was working. Not good for the swage block and not good for the tools as well. I had started thew week before designing a rolling cart to handle tools and other objects that I needed at hand but was not using right away. A staging and holding area so to speak. I needed a hammer rack, tool bar, place to put hot metal and a place for hardy tool that I needed to swap out. At the same time, I also decided to get rid of the stump al together and build myself a swage block stand as well. This stand needed to be able to hold the block both flat and on end to use the edges as well:
Heres some more on both of them:
The next day (outside temp 102) i had to try out the new layout and see how it worked for me. The cart actually might be to big for my shop. The dimensions were based on the size of corrugated metal I could get for the hot area. This is 2 sheets wide and 1 long. I think I might need to rebuild it based on just 1 sheet. I will have to play with it a bit more before I decide. Either way, i decided to make a few things for around the shop. One problem that I have been having is that I wear bifocal safety glasses (insert old joke here) and I am constantly scratching them by wiping them while dry or setting them down on the lenses when I am done with them. My wife suggested that I needed a place to hang them when I was done and should keep lens cleaner and a glasses rag handy for cleaning. Let me introduce you to the Grimm Glass-o-holder Station. Copper cup for the glass spray, hook for the cloth and a bar to hang the glasses on when I leave the forge!
There were a few other odds and ends I decided to devote my forging time to. Hooks for my spring swages, a hook for my bending wrench on my vise stand, a holder for my hold down and finally, a paper towel holder for work.
Finally, for those who have made it this far, a look at the design pages for these project:
Forgot to note that during this time I also refinished a desktop for my son in law