...at my buddy's place, and make some repairs to some recently acquired antiques as well as make a replica 18th century pot hanger and some beam hooks. I have a late 18th century hearth toaster that had a broken leg and is bent up badly as well as a rams horn peel that both need repairs, also have to make a secondary hanger rod for the antique sawtooth trammel I found in a scrap pile last year. Not sure how much I'll get done but I'll post some pics later for y'all.
If you hold your mouse on it for a sec, it tells you what it is. That one's a "faint". That works, 'cause I might faint when Scotty finally puts up some pics of the forging process from YESTERDAY. Not that I'm being pushy or anything..........
Well fellas yesterday's forge event was a bust. We did fire it up and start to make repairs to a 18th century hearth toaster I have but I screwed up the piece I was fabbing for a leg, and to top it off we didn't get started till too late and my buddy had something going on later in the afternoon......soooooo got you all hyped up fer nothin.... Here is a pic of the toaster and the broken leg I want to fab. I did get the kinks and bends out of the other parts of the toaster so all it needs is a cleaning and the leg installed, hoping to get that done soon. The leg on the right is original, it was bent badly but we managed to get it straightened out without popping it from the toaster....you can see there is no leg on the left side, it was broken off eons ago. The missing leg goes in a small punched hole here.... You need a good day when forging to really get anything done......I have all kinds of little things I want to do but didn't have anywhere NEAR enough time.
Funny, I just came back to this thread a few mins ago and didn't see any updates. and Voila. there you are. Too bad things didn't work out this time. The next time it will be freezing out and you'll be happy to be indoors banging hot metal.
Big problem was we didn't even fire it until around 2-2:30pm. He had somewhere to be by 5 and although he said I could stay and work in there, I didn't want to be using a coal fired forge in someone else's shop with them not around.......wouldn't want anything to happen and be my fault, so to speak. So we put the fire out at 4 o'clock, probably only had around 45 minutes of actual play time and I did have a leg almost completely made but was rushing it and messed it up. Better to quit at that stage then to destroy the entire piece.
I find that just the pieces you have are interesting enough. There are not a lot of original forged items out there to be had around here. I think most are kept in private homes and collections. Sadly, many people don't realize what they have and away they go to the scrap pile.
I know you are a lot like me Jon, you have an appreciation for those things. I'm awed by the detail in these items, how each one was hand made from a lump of iron and charcoal........in a time where mechanized automated machinery wasn't even thought of.
