The Stand-Alone Dust Pan

From the look of the studio floor, who would ever think I occasionally sweep the floor.  The stand-by-itself dust pan was an idea I came up with to avoid having to bend my stiff back and hold the pan still while I’m trying to push the debris into it.

I attached a length of flat bar to the dust pan handle so that it made the pan work like a tripod base with a tall handle - no bending.  Works great.

There are fancier versions.  This is one example http://www.foodservicewarehouse.com/continental/808/p334657.aspx   My version cost only a couple of bucks.

Washing Welding Gloves

About once each year I gather up all the grimy welding gloves and give them to my wife so she can run them through the washing machine. It seems like as time goes by the insides of the gloves collect the grime which quickly transfers to skin and the washing greatly reduces that nuisance.

The first time washing the cowhide gloves occurred to me I did it as an experiment with rather low expectations.  I had noticed, however, that if they were accidentally left out in the rain they didn’t seem to have any long term damage after drying.

This has worked out just fine.  After washing we hang the gloves overnight then finish them by tumbling in the dryer on "air tumble" without heat.  She also put in some dryer balls.  They look like tennis balls with bumps on the surface.  I made one pair a control without the tumbling and they were much stiffer initially but they soon sofened up when they were put into use.  I have no idea if fabric softener whould help.  I don’t think they make cowhide softener.

Only one glove had the liner work out of the fingers and had to be worked back in place with a small handled ball tool locked in the vise.  When the liner was starting to get back in place I put in my hand and pushed the web area between each finger over the shaft of the tool to finish the job.

I only wear a glove on my left hand most of the time so I have a collection of worn left gloves and “like new” right hand gloves.  I should try to find some left-handed smiths who could use my extras.

I have been using 13” cowhide gloves which is great for welding as it protects the forearm area from MIG splatter burns but it is excessive for general forge work.  I watch for sales and for big lot deals where I can get ten pair or so inexpensively.  I’m looking for some shorter cowhide gloves now.

These gloves aren’t very expensive.  I’d estimate I’ve purchased them for about $3 a pair but I don’t see a reason to discard them until they develop a fatal defect such an an unrepairable hole or shrinkage and hardening from excessive heat.  I grew up in a home where “waste not want not” and “a penny saved is a penny earned” were often repeated phrases.  On the other hand, it’s better to throw away a damaged glove than to get burned.

 First, I push the glove onto the ball to get the lining started down the finger.

Then it's easy to put the glove on and push on the shaft in each web space.

Another Online Reference

Well, it’s too hot to forge again and I have been really busy with other things so there hans’t been much to post.  I am about to start assembling sale items from the hundreds of parts which have been forged already.

The time away from the studio has been used to clean out a lot of files on the computer and in the hanging file cabinets.  It has also allowed me to do some more web exploration looking for items of blacksmithing interest.  This is one I thought would be worthwhile to share.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/ah637e/AH637E00.htm

Today it may only be 85º so the forge will get fired up.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

Grandfather was a Blacksmith

Almost every smith will say that from time to time a visitor will announce, “My grandfather was a blacksmith.”  Eventually, that event will become less common.  Blacksmith numbers are not what they were a century ago.

One of the friends, Scott Miller, who often helps me can confidently claim his grandfather, Jim Lewis, was a blacksmith.  He has the proof of it.  A history of his hometown, Lebo, Kansas, contains a photograph of the grandfather and great-grandfather standing by the door where they burned the cattle brands of their rancher clients.  The old building stood from the 1880’s until 1951 when it was replaced by a Quonset hut, which became widely available for civilian use after WWII. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quonset_hut

Scott has a good eye for design, a devotion to technical competence and the strength to pull it together so one more branch is forming on the blacksmithing craft tree and someday there will be others who can say, “My grandfather was a blacksmith.”

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

Groove, Slit, Slot, Hole

Even if we are familiar with the language we are often not precise in picking our descriptive words.

A groove is a long, narrow indentation. Such as a furrow, trench or the spiral groove of a phonograph record. There is no “all the way through” connotation. It walks the boundary between a line and a hole. Think of the mark left by the blacksmith’s veining chisel.

A slit is a long narrow cut with an “all the way through” connotation.

The insect emerges from a cocoon through a slit. The scissors cut a slit in the paper. The knife slit the throat. The notion is that there is a lot of length and virtually no width. When the blacksmith’s slitting chisel pierces a bar it creates a slit.

A slot is a wide slit - longer than it's wide, which is designed for something to pass through. Often the shape of a long rectangle like a coin slot, a letter slot, or a ballot box slot. A blacksmith’s slot punch knocks out a rectangular slug.

http://www.blacksmithsjournal.com/archives/issue_153.php

It can get more complicated. Essentially, I have described several kinds of “holes”. A hole is a hollow space in either a surface or a solid. So, a hole can be a cavity or an aperture (fenestration) depending upon the “all the way through” nature of it.

Often holes imply a roundness aspect more than a linear aspect. Paper and leather hole punches remove circular drops. Most blacksmithing hole punches make round or square holes. But the majority of square holes start as round holes and are drifted square.

This site gives a nice pictoral and text description of punching round holes. http://ironoakfarm.blogspot.com/2010/07/fiery-friday-punching-hole-in-steel.html


I’ve been making a lot of square holes this week while building the pieces for a railing grille with a lot of passthroughs so I began musing about the general nature of these negative spaces.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/