"Backyard Blacksmithing" pounding iron on the forge this evening!

Yer gonna look and feel like an old steam locomotive engineer when yer done I'll tell ya that.....lmao...

That coal smoke gets ya....

 

Did a little tinkering in the shop this evening, I still don't have the hood built for my forge so I used the old Alaska woodstove to heat my stock.....a few shovels of coal and wide open draft made sufficient heat to do the job I was working on.

Tonight's project was something I've wanted to fix for many years.....a Revolutionary War-era spider pot I have. A spider pot was a small pot that had a long handle and three riveted legs to hold the pot over the coals on the hearth. All three legs were long gone from my spider, so I had to remove the handle, weld on a new leg to the handle, and fabricate two more legs.

Here you can see the pot when I started. The legs are long gone. I had to remove the rivets to get the leg remnants off of the pot.






Here's the stock I prepped for replacement legs. It, too, was vintage material. I made them as close to the originals as I could.


And here's the handle reinstalled with the new leg attached. I made rivets out of an old 16d nail. They worked perfect, the legs are nice and tight.

 

I also repaired another 18th century spatula and tasting spoon this evening that will stay with our camping gear, after a good cleaning and seasoning, all three of these utensils will be going to our Klondike campout in the tipi this weekend up on the mountain....

 

I hear you and Redfin might be hitting some iron this weekend? Take lots of pics!

 

Thanks brother, how have you been? Good to hear from ya!

 

What's the name of that page, Jon? I'd like to check it out...

 

Tonight's woodstove forge project....a small table knife and spoon, made from the scrap spatula handle I cut up. They turned out pretty good, I used the round side of a ball peen hammer and the anvil top to create the swage on the spoon, there's several hundred hits on that sucker!

 

Nice work Scotty Overkill!

 

I'm no blacksmith, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once......