A Ride to the Cabin and the last Twist Handle.

 

Ride to the cabin:

Patti was getting really bored and had to get out of the house. We had to pick up some meds at Walmart, which is north of Santa Rosa. Since we were going north anyway we decided to continue north and have lunch at the cabin.
We stopped at the Boonville Market and bought a couple of sandwiches and headed up to the cabin where we found everything in good order. There was evidence of previous visitors but they left the place in good shape.

One thing that surprised me, was that the cabin spring was still ‘after all this drought’ producing water. The stream is small but not to much less that the last time we were up here.

   

It was a beautiful day at the cabin, as always.

The last twist handle:

This morning, I decided that it was time to finish the “basket twist” handle project.
On Saturday I arc welded the six 1/4” rods to the 1/2” rods.

This morning I heated about half of the construct, especially the area around the welds.
At a dull red I fluxed the area and put it back in the forge to try and bring it to a welding heat. I waited quite a while until the metal was a bright yellow and smoking when I pulled it out of the forge. I quickly hammered all around the joint flattening and merging the steel. The part went back in the forge a few times while I consolidated the weld by hammering. Since the rods were initially arc welded together all I really had to do was smooth everything out.

Once both ends were pounded out it was time to make the twist.
I heated the whole thing, pounded a square on one end of the rod, heated it again and put the round end in the vice and with a twisting tool on the square end, twisted the rods up tight; then backed the twist the opposite direction and pushed against it opening up the basket a little.

After the basket was made the piece was cooled so only the 1/2” rod was heated to a bright red heat in the forge just to where the rod met the basket.

Here is where the new bending fork comes in to play.

The way it works is; the “red hot” piece to be bent is put in between the forks. A length of pipe slipped over the end down close to the fork then you just pull the pipe in the direction you want the bend to go while holding the other end with tongs.
It worked great, got a nice 90° bend with out distorting the basket.

Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures while I was making the last handle but here is a picture of all the handles.

Okay, that’s it for now.