Basket twist handle, Day 2.

 

Note:

I was going to just do the project and if it turned out good then I was going to tell you about it. After giving it some thought I decided to let you see the complete project; mistakes, screw up’s and all. That way we will all learn together.

Basket twist handles day 2:

First thing this morning I moved the anvil from the backyard to my shop. I haven’t used it in several years so I moved it out back. I figured I needed the room in the shop. Now it’s back.

Around 9:30 I went to the local Ace hardware store and bought three 1/4” steel rods 3’ long.

When I got back Patti was leaving to take Dina to lunch for her birthday.
They went to the Tides Restaurant at Bodega Bay.

I cut one of the 1/4” rods into ~ 5” lengths

A little lathe work.

Next I took two 3” pieces of 1/2” rod put them in the lathe and turned a nub on one end  1/4” diameter by 1/2” long. A real blacksmith would have heated the steel and hammered the end into the correct shape. The lathe works faster and I have one so I use it when I can.

Wiring the bundle together and tack welding:

Once I had that done I bundled all the 1/4” rods around the ends of the 1/2” rods and wired them together.

Once I got the rods all secure I tack welded the 1/4” rods to the the end of the 1/2” rod with the turned down bit in the center of the bundle..
Here I could have tried forge welding both ends to the center rod but instead I chose to arc weld them.

Here is my welding jig.

Below you can see them just tacked welded.

 

Heating the metal:

Now it’s time to start the forge welding process; I get the forge fired up and start heating the metal.

One thing I wanted to do was to make the two ends square.
Once the metal was nice and red hot I pulled it from the fire and hammered both ends square. This will give me something to grab onto with a wrench when I go to twist the bundle.

My first screw up:

Some how in all the excitement of getting the forge back running and all, I forgot a step in the process.
As soon as I got the square ends made and the steel nice and hot again, I put one end in the vice and a wrench on the other end and started twisting. Two of the 1/4” rods broke loose before I realized that I hadn’t forge welded them yet.
Ok, so I straightened everything out as well as I could then re-welded the rods that broke away.

Time for lunch:

By now it was time for lunch so I took a nice long lunch break.
While I was eating I was thinking that it was excessively hot in the shop when the forge is running. I didn’t remember it being that hot when I used to run it in there. Eventually It dawned on me why that was. In the past I always did my Blacksmithing in the fall and winter on cold days never in the summer.

I needed to do something about the heat and after a bit I remembered a small rolling table that I had made to house the metal chop saw and the belt sander. I think it is just the right size for the forge to set on.

After lunch I drug the table out, took the cutoff saw and sander off it and put the forge on the top. Then I put the propane tank on the bottom shelf.
Perfect now I can role the forge outside when I am using it and back in side when I am done.

Forge welding:

Okay, now that, that was done I was anxious to start the forge welding process.

To forge weld metal you have to heat the metal to a very high temperature almost to the melting point. Flux is used to exclude oxygen from the metal and help with the welding.
Tap the metal with  medium blows from the hammer; if it is hit too hard the almost molten metal will squirt out from the weld and the weld won’t take. It takes several heats to finally get something as large as the bundle of rods  to weld together. Eventually I got what looked like a good weld all around.

I heated the whole thing again and when it was the right color I clamped one end in the vice and with a twisting tool on the other end I twisted the hole group of bars into a tight spiral then pushing against the axis of the rods, I untwisted them slightly to open up the basket.

Below is the result cooling on the anvil.

  

Now it is time to bend the end rods 90° so they can be attached to a plate that will be screwed to the barrel.

Screw up #2

I put the work back into the forge to heat the end so I can bend it. Of course the whole thing gets hot so when it is time to take the piece out and bend it, the center has to be cooled so it won’t bend also.
I took the work out of the forge and quenched the center all the way to just before where the bend is to take place.
I put the hot end of the rod into the pritchel hole on the anvil and attempted to bend it.

I guess I didn’t get the body of the work cool enough because when I tried to bend the 1/2” rod, the end of the bundle bent also and two more rods broke their welds.

Here is what it looks like now.

Okay that’s enough for today; I am exhausted, hot and sore. I had forgotten just how much work blacksmithing is. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow to fix the problem.
I’ll give it another try tomorrow.

Morning at the Hospital and a new project

 

Morning at the hospital:

We spent most of this morning at the hospital getting all the paperwork done so Patti can be admitted for her surgery next Monday. Fortunately her surgery isn’t scheduled until 1:00 pm so we don’t have to get up at some unholy hour in the morning to get her to the hospital.

A new blacksmithing project:

It has been several years since I have done any blacksmithing but my nephew, Dave, has been making some real nice furniture and other stuff out of wine barrels. His latest project is to build a large cooler out of a 50 gallon oak barrel. As you can imagine a 50 gallon wine barrel is quite heavy so it will need some heavy duty handles on it to move it around.

I told Dave that I would like to try and make some nice hand forged handles for the barrel. 
After giving the project some thought I figured that some nice steel basket twist handles would look good and would be easy on the hands when carrying the heavy barrel.

Here is one that I made for an adjustable grill to use around a campfire.

Getting ready to blacksmith:

It is taking me a while to get the shop ready for a blacksmithing project. I finally got the welding table clear and set up the propane forge that I made for building knives.

 

I have been digging around in my metal piles and came up with some long steel rods. I was hoping to find some 1/4’ rods but only had these that look to be around 5/16”
I spent a little time getting the rods ready by wiring them together but then I decided that they were just too thick for what I wanted to do so I will have to go buy some 1/4” rod.

You can see how the rods are prepared below;

Wire management:

Oh, you may notice the tie wire sitting on the welding table. It looks a little strange but it is an experiment of sorts. When starting a new role of tie wire I usually pull the wire from the center of the role. Eventually the outside wire can get all mixed up and can become a real birds nest. This time, before I started pulling wire off the role I whapped Gorilla tape around the outside of the role. Eventually we will find out if this is a good fix or not. I probably should put the wire in a box with a hole in the top that would surly work. Maybe that will be another project.

Okay that’s all for today. 

Ready for Patti’s knee surgery.

 

I think we are ready for Patti’s knee surgery:

We decided that it would be best if Patti use the spare room for the first week or so of her convalescence since our bedroom is too small to allow for the use of a walker; and it would be safer for her knee if she slept alone at first.

After we emptied the spare room I vacuumed the carpet three times and then shampooed the rug twice. We swiffered the walls and wiped the window sills clean.
We put Patti’s antique full bed frame in the room.
We are going to use the full size air bed mattress that we recently purchased. Patti slept on it Monday night and pronounced it suitable.

Today we went to her Orthopedist for the pre-op; tomorrow we will go to the hospital and take care of all the admitting red tape.

Patti’s surgery will be on July 27 at 1:00pm.

Okay that’s all for the last couple of days. If anything exciting happens I’ll be sure to let you know.

A day paddling around the Russian River Estuary

 

More room work:

The last couple of days we have been working on the spare room. I vacuumed the room three times and shampooed it twice.

Paddling the Russian River Estuary:

Yesterday I went for a paddle around the Russian River estuary  at Jenner with Bob.
I got to his place around 11:00, we sat around for a bit then headed for Jenner for a paddle. We got on the water by noon and headed across the river to the north shore of Penny Island.

We sat along the shore watching the area for a little while then paddled along the north shore of Penny Island heading for the rivers open mouth.

Big bob cat:

As we paddled along Bob noticed a large bob cat walking along the shore. I tried to get some pictures of the cat but every time I pointed the camera at it all I could see was the reflection of my face in the view screen. I just started taking pictures in the cat’s direction. As it turned out I did get some shots of the bob cat but he was hard to find so I had to blow the pictures up and enhance them a lot  so you can see the cat. The cat walked along for a ways then just lay down in the grass.

Here is an unenhanced long shot. The bob cat is the brown spot in the tall grass about 6ft to the left of the big log.

This is an enhanced close up view of the bob cat. Isn’t he beautiful!

And another shot just because he is so beautiful.

I was amazed that I got any pictures of the cat at all.

Heading to the rivers mouth:

After the bob cat wandered out of view we headed for the mouth of the river.
We passed a blue Herron

and a cormorant waiting for fish.

 

As we crossed in front of the open mouth we passed what looked like hundreds of seals sleeping on the shore waiting for fish.

No wonder the salmon fishery is collapsing. With all the seals, otters and other predators it is a wonder any fish make it far enough up stream to spawn. After they spawn the young ones have to run the same gauntlet back to the ocean. Then when they mature in the ocean we catch millions of them in nets.
Good luck Salmon!

Paddling along the south shore of Penny Island:

We sat around near the mouth for a while watching the seals, etc. then paddled across the river to the south side of Penny Island and followed that shoreline.

We passed these Turns posing along the shore.

We saw a couple of Egrets in some cedar trees across the channel as we drifted along.

A little hike to Swamp Rock:

We slowly continued up stream stopping occasionally to enjoy the scenery and eventually arrived at the trail to Swamp Rock.

We beached the yaks.

You can see the rock against the hill side in the center of the picture

The trail to Swamp Rock is a narrow game trail that after a short walk through tall grass enters some taller brush.

At one spot on the trail where it goes through a thicket of small trees, we passed under this Twin Berry bush. It’s pretty but is likely poison.

 

After getting through the brush the trail crosses a swampy area (hence the name “Swamp Rock”)

 

Eventually we made it across the swamp (dry at this time) to the base of Swamp Rock.

The climb up to the seat on the rock was short but steep. By the time we got to the top of the rock I was done in.

Here is Bob waiting for me to get to the seat.

The climb is a little tough for an old fart but the view is well worth it.

We sat on the rock for about an hour enjoying the view and contemplating those who had sat here in the past.

Eventually we headed back to the boats. Bob wondered if I could find my way back to where we landed as the trail is a bit tricky to find. I have been wandering around in the woods for most of my life so I am fairly observant when hiking around. I noticed from the the rock that the brush more or less funneled  anyone walking around right to where the trail comes out of the brush. So I just followed the brush line to the trail. We got back to the boats and after a short break sitting on the grassy shore we got in the boats and headed for the ramp.

It was a fun day paddling around the Russian River Estuary.

A trip to the Salvation Army store and an afternoon in the ER.

 

Yesterday was kind of different:

The plan for today was to go get a commode for Patti, vacuum the spare room and have dinner with Gabriella, Felice, and Marci.

We left the house around 10:00 and went to the Salvation Army store in Geyserville to buy a commode for Patti”s convalescence.
We found one for $5.00 and headed for home.
As we drove down the freeway toward Santa Rosa I found that I was feeling very hungry although it was only 11:30.
When we got home and I was walking to the house I felt a little dizzy. By the time I got in side I was so dizzy that I had to sit down.
I thought that maybe I was just hungry and my blood sugar was down or I needed to drink something.

Patti made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a drink. I ate the sandwich and drank some of the drink but the dizziness just got worse with sweating and a bit of nausea.
After a bit Patti suggested that we go to the emergency and I concurred.
I didn’t know what was happening but I have heard that if you have dizziness that you may be having a stroke and to get to the hospital as soon as possible.

An afternoon in the ER:

We went to Memorial hospital just six blocks from our house.
They were very efficient and had me checked in and being triaged by a nurse in just a few minutes.

As they wheeled me into a room I became very nauseous and had to use a barf bag. There goes my lunch!

They hooked me up to a bunch of monitors checked blood pressure and drew blood from my arm. They took an EKG and poked and prodded for a while.

Eventually a doctor came in and checked me out. He did a few tests like checking that my eyes tracked properly, listened to my heart and lungs. After a while they decided to send me to get an MRI on my brain to see If I’ve had a stroke.
 
That MRI was my first and what a strange experience that was.
They put me on a table, clamped a strange mask with large open areas over my face and slid me into this big white machine. Fortunately I’m not claustrophobic or this would have been a very bad experience. So, I’m laying there listening to some of the strangest sounds for about ten minutes. By the end of the session I was feeling like I was part of some strange cosmic rock band.

Awaiting a diagnosis:

After the scan they took me back to the room to await the diagnosis.

OK, so I have been here for about five hours, my dizziness has gone and I want to go home. 
Eventually the neurologist came in and told me that everything looked perfect on my brain, no stroke, no tumors.
I hadn’t had a heart attack so the diagnosis was that I had Vertigo, cause unknown.
I was sent home around 7:00.
Patti went to get a prescription for a Dramamine like medicine. She also stopped at Lepe’s for a couple of taco’s for our dinner.

Around 8:00 my daughters Gabriella and Felice came by to see how I was doing.
We had a nice visit and the girls left around 9:45.

♪ What a long ♫ strange trip its been.♫

A slow week.

 

We haven’t been doing much since I got home from the fourth of July weekend so this blog will be short. Just puttering around the house and getting things ready for when Patti has her knee surgery.
We decided that the best thing was to set up the spare room for her as there is more room for her walker and a commode for night time use. The bed room we currently use is just too small.
We also found a new recliner for her at Lazy Boy. Her current chair is too big for her and is broken. We may buy two new chairs since the ones we have now are old and have become uncomfortable for long periods.

Dave and I went up to Boonville yesterday. He is working on a project and needed a piece of Madrone tree limb. I am going to make some forged handles for his project and needed to get one of the propane tanks from the cabin to power my forge.

The weather was beautiful up at the cabin. Dave found a suitable Madrone branch while I puttered around the place. 

We had lunch and then drove down to the creek so I could take the crawdad trap out of the water and pick up a couple of things that I left down there.

We left the creek around 2:30 and headed for home.

Okay that’s it for now . . .

A week at the cabin and July 4th.

 

Wednesday 7/1:

I arrived at the cabin around 10:00. The temp 90°.

Wood stack down:

The first thing that I noticed was that the firewood that Johnathen had stacked when he was visiting had fallen over. I guess it was too tall.

It was too warm to mess with firewood today so I left it where it was.

Work on the refrigerator:

I got moved in to the cabin and then started working on the fridge.
The refrigerator’s freezer is working ok but the refrigerator part isn’t getting cold enough.
I pulled the back off the fridge and inspected the burner. I noticed a nice pile of rust on and around the burner so I fired up the generator, plugged in the vacuum and sucked all the rust and crud up. The burner for the fridge sits below a tube that is like a chimney. The heat goes up the chimney and causes chemicals to move through the system and the reaction between the chemicals causes cooling. If you want to know more; Google “How do propane refrigerators work?
I cleaned out the chimney and made sure all the rust was out of the burner and chimney then I hooked the fridge up and turned it on. It takes a while for the fridge to get cold and by the time I had finished working on the fridge the outside air temp was already 100°.

Off to the creek:

I had lunch and went to the creek for the rest of the day. I came back to the cabin around 6:00 It was still hot. I cooked a pork steak for dinner. I also fried up a bunch of pork fat to use for crawdad bate. I plan to set the trap tomorrow.
At 8:00 the OAT is still 88°.

Thursday: 7/2

Had an early morning rain shower large drops for about 5 minutes. It didn’t even settle the dust.

After breakfast I replaced the back on the refrigerator. The refrigerator’s freezer is working but the lower section is still not as cold as it should be. After giving the problem some thought I decided that one of the problems may be that when I built the enclosure I didn’t allow enough ventilation so on hot days the fridge can’t get rid of the heat. At the top of the fridge I had a 6” wide board, closing up the space between the fridge and the roof of the enclosure. I removed the board and replaced it with some 1/4’' hardware cloth. A lot more heat is now able to escape. That seems to have fixed the problem. Time will tell.
Later I moved all the cold food from the cooler in the van to the fridge.

Harvey is bringing up three of his friends for the weekend.
For some unknown reason I volunteered to feed them. That was dumb! 
After I was done with the fridge I went to the dining hall and set up the barbeque and cooker so I can cook dinners for Harvey and his buddies.

At 10:30am the temp was 80° a little cooler than yesterday at this time.

Off to the creek again:

By noon the temp was 90°. I ate lunch and went to the creek for the rest of the day. I took the crawdad trap and the fried pork fat with me.

I set the crawdad trap in a hole down stream from the swimming hole.

Headed back to the cabin around 5:30. It was still 90° at the cabin. We had another rain shower late at night. It didn’t last long.

Friday 7/3:

Joanne and Dave at 10:30 were the first to arrive.
Darleen arrived around 11:15 and Patti and Dina showed up at 12:00.

Temp at 12:00 - 90°

Harvey and his friends didn’t show up until around 4:00.
They were in Harvey’s friend Mason’s car; a Honda sedan of some sort.
We all headed down to the creek to set up the boy’s camp.
On the way down to the creek Mason was driving very slow. Apparently the car was dragging its bottom on the road. When we got to the creek it was obvious that the car wasn’t going to make it across the creek so we loaded all the boy’s gear in the van and left the car parked on the other side of the creek.
We got the tent set up for the guys and then went down to the water and sat in the creek or the rest of the day.

Our friend Lynn and her friend Michael and his niece and nephew were camping in the grove when we got there.

Dinner:

At around 6:00 we went back to the cabin. Mason drove his car up the hill and the rest of the posse road up with me in the van. It looks like I will have to shuttle these guys back and forth to the creek every day they are here.

For dinner I cooked three tri-tips, some baked potatoes and corn on the cob.
We ate almost all the food except for some of the corn and a couple slices of tri-tip.

I was standing outside around 10:00pm and suddenly heard a hissing noise behind me. It turned out that a connection at the water spigot by the redwood tree blew out. Fortunately there is a valve for this spigot so I shut it off right away. Unfortunately the valve shuts off the whole lower end of the camp and the bathroom. 
I’ll have to get up early in the morning to fix it.

Saturday 7/4:

Got up around 6:00am and headed out to the outside crapper on the road to the Bear Spring.
As soon as I got back I removed the redwood bark from around the water spigot and found that this connection didn’t have a clamp on it. I’m surprised that the connection stayed together this long. I found a clamp in my spare parts box and fixed the leak.

By 11:30 it was 86°
After lunch we went to the creek for the rest of the day.
We sat around visiting in the shade for a while.

That’s Harvey and the troops in front row. L to R - Mason, Harvey, Isaiah and Justin.

Eventually it got so hot that we moved our chairs into the creek.

Peter and Gene showed up a little later and stayed until Sunday. I asked him if he had ever seen crawdads in the creek. He told me that he had never seen any but had heard stories of people trying to plant them. He has been coming here since he was a toddler and has never seen crawdads in the creek before.

While we were checking the creek crossing on Friday when Mason was trying to drive his car across, I saw a second crawdad walking up stream.

We checked the crawdad trap but nothing was in it so we put the trap back in the water.

Around 5:30 we headed back to the cabin for dinner. I fixed up a big batch of Nopalito’s and we ate almost all of it.

Darlene had set up a night bowling game using glow-sticks to line the alley and put some glow sticks in water bottles for the pins. Unfortunately It doesn’t get dark right now until almost ten o’clock. You can just see the glow sticks on the ground and the water bottles.

They played with this for a while. At about 8:00 I took the boys back to the creek. 

Sunday 7/5:

The boys were leaving today so we hung around the cabin until around 1:00 and then I went to the creek to get them and their gear.
I fixed up a bunch of hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch.
Around 3:00 we loaded all the guy’s gear in the Honda. Three of the them got in the van and we followed Mason up the hill to the gate where I sent them on there way.
Darlene left around 3:30 and Joann and Dave went home around 4:30.

Just Patti, Dina and I are left.

Monday: 7/6

At 10:00am the temp was 65° much cooler than what we have been experiencing.

The cabin spring is drying up; it has just a very thin stream of water running from the overflow pipe. I took a walk up to the main spring tanks to see how the flow was. There is plenty of water coming from that springs overflow.

Patti and Dina left around 12:30.

I went to the creek around 1:00. While I was there I checked the crawdad trap. It was empty so I dumped the old bate and replaced it with new stuff (left over bones from the Nopalito’s) and put the trap in a different spot.

Around 6:00 I fixed myself a couple of quesadilla’s for dinner.
After dinner I started re-stacking the firewood that had fallen over. I got a little les than half the wood stacked when I decided that I would finish in the morning.

Tuesday: 7/7

After breakfast I finished stacking the firewood.
I fired up the generator and put Battery #2 on to charge.
I checked the temp around 11:30, it was just 73° much cooler than on the weekend. It’s still rising though it was 78° by 12:30.

Finish faucet repair:

I noticed that the spigot by the redwood tree was still leaking a little so I tightened the clamp some more. I let things dry out for an hour or so then checked the connection again. It looks good so I put the red wood bark around the pipe again.

Cabin spring down to a drip:

I noticed that the cabin spring is down to a fast drip. I switched the cabin from the cabin spring to the main spring.
I guess that proves that last winter’s rains weren’t enough to bring up the water table.

Wednesday 7/8:

The morning is cool with a thick marine layer that is just beginning to break up at 10:30. The temp is 64°. Another beautiful day in the offing.

I decided to head for home today.

I had to move some more pieces of firewood; the ones that were too big for John to split.
Using the wheelbarrow it only took a few trips to move it all.

 

I piled them on the end of the stack by the cabin to be split later.

It looks like I’ll need to cut up some more down stuff for this fall.
By moving this wood I now have room to stack the wood that I cut this spring.

An observation:

Yesterday afternoon I noticed that the cabin spring overflow was just a drip about every half second. When I got up this morning I saw that the spring flow was more like a very thin stream.

 

I got to wondering what was at play here and decided that during the heat of the day the trees take more water out of the ground than they do at night so the spring has a chance to recover a little over night.  I noticed that the flow had diminished some by the time I left to go home.

Around 11:00 I walked up to the main spring storage tanks to see what the overflow was like. It looks pretty good.

I have to make some changes to the vent and overflow system on these tanks but there is plenty of water flowing down the pipe from the two springs.

I left for home around 1:30.

Had a great week, even if it was a little hot at the beginning.