And so it begins

       

I needed a picture so this is it

    I've been considering documenting the way I work. I want to share the methods and skills I use to make the things I make.  I know there are a lot of books that show how to smith or weld or chase or engrave or whatever.  They are pretty dry, but also absolute.  I don't do absolute very well.  These books contain good information, but they also leave a lot out,  and sometimes they make the whole process so stinking hard.  I have a book on blacksmithing published in the early 20th century.  The first thing it instructs the new smith to do is make a set of tongs  You will need tongs.  I guess the problem for me at the beginning of the 21st century is that I don't know how you will make them without all the other things you will also need.  We no longer live at a time when there is going to be a forge and anvil at your disposal just down the street.  That makes me unsure how you can even begin to make tongs.  That's problem one. Problem two is that this book instructs you to make the tongs from 3/4" square bar.  I think that's insane even if you do have a forge, an anvil and a power hammer.  I don't know why anyone would make tongs from 3/4" square bar unless they really wanted to spend days making them.  My advice is that when you are starting out just go buy a pair for $40 and call it a day.  Later on when you need specialty tongs and you have experience, you can make them  from 3/8" x 3/4" flat bar or even 1/4" x 3/4" flat bar.  Why anyone would ever make a pair of tongs from 3/4" square bar is a mystery to me.  Better yet, if you really want to learn the lessons that you can  learn from making tongs, make a pair of tongs every day for a month.  After about 20 pair you will feel pretty confident about your ability to make tongs.  Make at least ten more pair.  Then you will have the knowledge that making tongs can give you and you will have a bunch of tongs.

     Anyway, there are also classes and conferences and YouTube videos where people show their skills, and you can learn an amazing amount from them.  I would never discourage anybody from taking a class.  Classes give the opportunity to work in a shop that has all the equipment you need to do the things that are being shown with an expert right there to get you past obstacles.  This is amazing and is a great way to start.  It will also be just like every other class you have ever taken.  As you can tell from my advice on making tongs, I don't think you will have learned anything if you just do it once.  If you did those calculus problems from high school every day until you really understood them, one at a time, and then did them a few more times, you would know calculus.  Maybe that's just me.  Still, you need to spend time practicing each skill until you feel comfortable with it.

     Conferences and videos are also valuable ways to learn.  I do think in order to learn from them you need a bit of background.  The demonstrators have practiced whatever they are showing until they are sure they won't make mistakes, but by the time they get to demonstrating they skip a lot of valuable information in order to do a better show and if they don't you walk away because it's so so so boring.

     Please don't misunderstand.  I'm not saying that my way is the best way, nor is it always the conventional way.  It's just my way.  Working with metal and making things is how I make a living.  I'm not a purist.  I think I have some practical information that might be valuable even if you never intend to make anything from metal.  I hope that looking closely at how I do my work will help you do yours.  Problem solving is problem solving.

     I want this to be the first chapter of an ongoing series. I intend to go deep, to share my successes and failures, my processes and my thinking.  We all struggle.  I will try to make my struggles entertaining.  Feel free to laugh even if I'm crying.

     There are a lot of skills that are guarded because we all fear competition to some degree.  My animal brain has lots of fear, but my rational brain knows that sharing my skills won't really create competition.  My work has me in it.  Your work doesn't.  Because of that, I will share my knowledge without fear. Besides, at the rate I write these posts, it will take a decade for me to get to the end.

    There are a finite number of skills and an infinite number of ways to manipulate them.  Maybe not infinite, but there are a bunch.  I will include sketches, even though I really can't draw with a pencil.  I will have videos and photos to help with understanding.  I will explain how I do things and why.  Along the way, if you have questions, I hope you will ask them.  There are a lot of ways to reach me.  Pick the one that works best for you.

      Each of us has a finite amount of time.  I want to leave some of my knowledge behind.  Some of it is useful and I'd rather pass it along this way than by having my brain kept in a jar.  I don't think that would be a good look for me.

     That's my plan.  Over the next ten to twelve appallingly slow years I will make a metal artisan of you all.  If you use it as a reference because you want to try working with metal, that's great.  If you just use it to know that you are not alone in the struggle to master your skills, that's good too.  After all,  it's always nice to know you are not alone.

So...until next month when we meet again
j

The magic of muriatic acid

      I was working on a new coat hook design and working through what screws to include with the hook when I realized that there is no perfect screw that will work for every application.  This is sad. What follows is my attempt to help rectify this for the average person. Or perhaps the person with no fear and time on their hands.  

The coat hooks I'm working on.  These are made from scrap square bar. Slotted screws not hammered.  

Hammered Phillips head screws.  You can see how rough the slots are.

Hammered Phillips head screw. 

   


     I think if you are reading this you probably have a fantastically funky home and amazingly wonderful taste.  It follows that somewhere along the line you bought some forged hardware because ...hey...it's beautiful.  You may have gotten it online from one of the big players (or a small shop like mine) or at a festival or even from the local hardware store, but when you tried to install it you discovered that the screws aka mounting hardware didn't work for your situation.  They might have been the wrong length or the wrong type or maybe there wasn't any mounting hardware.  The supplier of the beautiful forged  hardware was no help, mostly because they are not me, so you went to the local hardware store and got some screws that would work.  Those new screws were perfect except they were bright silver and not the wonderful color of forged iron.  Rather than live with that you either returned the forged hardware in frustration or maybe you painted the screws, or if you are like me, you colored the screws with a Sharpie.  (This is not a paid endorsement.  I'm not opposed to paid endorsements so if you want to pay me to endorse something, drop me a note.)    I admit to using a Sharpie on occasion to fix a color issue on my hardware.  I'm helpful, not perfect.

     There are, however, a couple of other probably better solutions to the bright silver screw or bolt problem.  For this muriatic acid solution the screw has to be zinc plated.  I think it's also called hydrochloric acid.  It can't be stainless steel or nickel plated although you can darken both of those too.  I'll get to that later.  The easiest at home solution to darkening zinc plated screws is muriatic acid.  If you have a pool, you already have some.  If not, it's pretty cheap, comes by the gallon, and can definitely hurt you and possibly kill you if you aren't careful.  Also it's available at all the usual home improvement stores.  The important thing for this application is that it dissolves zinc. 

A really bad picture of zinc plated screws

      In order to get the zinc off the screws they need to be immersed in the muriatic acid.  The guy I learned this from used a piece of steel wire to dip the screws in the bottle of acid.  It only takes a couple of seconds.  I like the acid to remain fresh and I do this a lot so I usually pour a little acid in a plastic cup and drop the screws in.  For the samples in the pictures, I just put a little acid in the lid. 

 

On the left is the plated screw.  On the right is the screw with the plating removed by the acid.

     Once the plating is gone, rinse the acid off the screws and let them dry.  They will probably be a little rusty, but they will be the dull grey color of steel.  After that you can hold the head in the flame of your stove while holding the screw with a pair of pliers until the head turns black.  I would then dip the head in wax.  You can also oil it with kitchen oil.  Like seasoning a cast iron pan.  I had a buddy who seasoned his cast iron pans with Crisco ( Again, not a paid endorsement, for the buddy or Crisco). You can probably use that too.

 

     I think this is a fairly easy way to get a better look for forged hardware.  It doesn't give you a hammered look, but at least it's not bright silver on black.  

 

The plated screw.  The screw with the plating removed.  The screw heated in the stove and waxed.  My dirty hand.

     I'm trying to make hammered screws for my hooks.  I tried to find slotted screws at the big box home improvement stores.  They only have Phillips head.  Phillips head doesn't work that well when I hammer the head so when I have a big enough hardware order, I will add a box of slotted screws to supply with my hooks. I can clean up the slot after hammering much better than I can clean up a Phillips head.  Once I have the screws, I can list the hooks for sale.

    I should mention that there are a couple of caveats with this process.  You do not want to touch muriatic acid.  It's acid.  You also do not want to breath the fumes.  Do this process outside and don't stand over it.  I'm pretty sure breathing the fumes will mess you up.  Once you have removed the plating, the screws will rust. If you want to look at a list of safety tips, click here. 

    If you need blackened screws or bolts for a bathroom, you could try just holding a stainless steel head in the stove fire. This would also work for nickel plated screws.  Neither of those will rust as readily, but they are also more money.  Natural gas heat on the stove would probably be enough heat to make the head turn black.  It may take a bit longer. I don't know because I have a propane torch, and a forge and an oxy-acetylene rig. (google spell check wants to change this to foxy-acetylene.  What is foxy-acetylene?  Please tell me if you know unless it's going to scare me.)  I don't actually use the stove.  

   The best looking decor is consistent.  You want the mounting hardware to match the rest of the hardware.  This is a little step in that direction. 

    I hope this works for you without pain.  

    Now I need to get back to work.  Until next time

    j

Pain, echoes and Ghosts

I’m sort of fascinated by how easily I deceive myself.  Normally I begin the New Year and end the old by prowling the desert alone.  This gives me comfort and an inner calm that is hard for me to describe.  And each year, for the last decade or so, has run into the next without much change or real personal or professional growth.  At least it’s all been sort of imperceptible.  This New Year was different and, because of that, I had high expectations for this year.  It turns out that, so far, this has been a year filled with pain, echoes and ghosts.  I’m trying not to take this personally.

When I first started out in business every job was painful on some level or another and, therefore, a learning experience of some sort.  Either I would miscalculate the amount of time it took to do the job and end up working for very little, or I would not put some vital piece of information in the bid and it would cost me, or sometimes I would just take jobs that I didn’t have the tools or equipment or knowledge to do and that too would cause problems.  I think this is a normal learning curve.  After a couple of years I had moved past most of these situations and I had consistent customers and a fairly consistent product.  I had an array of tools and equipment and I had developed much more knowledge and many more skills.  So the challenges got farther apart and actually less interesting.  Every once in a while one of my customers would ask for something out of the ordinary that required me to stretch and I enjoyed that.  

Now, primarily because of the changing economy, I have been forced to expand my customer base and, with that, the types and styles of products I make.  And I am back to making mistakes similar to those I made when I first started.  I am enjoying these encounters with the ghost of my younger self.  They show me how much more competent I am now than I was when I started.   My craft has improved exponentially.  My ability to do business is better as is the way I solve problems.  It’s too bad that it has taken such a painful year to show me this and I could use some relief soon.  Not that I'm not enjoying this level of pain.

I am choosing to continue to deceive myself about the way this year will ultimately go.  I am choosing to look forward to making beautiful things and learning new ways of communicating.  I am choosing to believe that the pain I am feeling will bring me positive growth.  I am choosing to continue to push myself and I am choosing to try never to become complacent again.  Finally, I am choosing to experience the pain, listen fully to the echoes and embrace the ghosts.  I do hope this works out.

These are the final words of

Uncle Vanya

by Anton Checkov

SCENES FROM COUNTRY LIFE

IN FOUR ACTS

SONIA. What can we do? We must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender smile--and--we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith.  We shall rest. We shall rest. We shall hear the angels. We shall see heaven shining like a jewel. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink away in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. Our life will be as peaceful and tender and sweet as a caress. I have faith; I have faith.  My poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are crying!  You have never known what happiness was, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest. We shall rest.  We shall rest. 

I only saw it once but it made an impression.

I will get back to work.