My father Lionel and stepmother Lynn were here to stay for a day again, so while Lynn took Sarah shopping, Lionel sorted out the little garage I am planning to make into my metalwork shop.
He did such a great job:
...that there's more space than I had hoped for, so I will instead make it into my full metal workshop. I was planning on just doing the forging and casting in here, and shouldering the metal machining into my grandfather's old workshop - but that can now stay as a wood workshop.
I just need to wait for the rest of my tools and the foundry stuff to arrive - hopefully not before I finish my backlog of work, because it would be frustrating to have it all there waiting to be set up when I don't have the time...
Lionel also found time to enjoy feeding Jean:
Whereas I, in an honest effort to (in one stroke) keep her warm, absorb any more partially-digested milk that should come out, and keep her sitting upright (which she likes, and cmplains if laid down when she's feeling inquisitive), managed to make her look like a Boohbah:
Last weekend, we went to visit the Mill and take the first load of boxes up to the Bakery, which is now unoccupied (except for being used to put guests up) until we move in.
There is a single garage on the end of the Bakery that I'd never given much thought to, since it was always full of junk and for some reason I remembered it being made of wood. However, it turns out to all be very obviously made of stone (my powers of observation are just great!), and whats more, it had been used by the tenants in the Bakery and was, therefore, now empty. In fact, it's where we put our boxes of books we'd taken up there.
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Ok! Right!
Furnace Mark 1 was made in a coffee can, and was a bit too small. The crucible it was designed for was too small to pour some of the things we decided we wanted.
So we made the Mark 2, which was bigger. And then it was nearly ruined when a crucible (thin steel cup, since I can't find any iron pipes anywhere, and couldn't weld until recently) leaked molten Al everywhere, so we moved up to Salamander crucibles. And then we had to make crucible tongs, since we couldn't fit them with lifting lugs. And the Mark 2 turned out to not have enough clearance to fit the tongs around a crucible inside, as well as the inside having gotten rather crumbly and fallen to bits a lot. We tried to chop it down the side so one half of it (except for the base) could be removed to get the tongs in, but it just turned to power.
So on to Mark 3.
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Today my mate Mike and I made new crucible tongs.
Check out my dodgy welds:
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As a treat, I've bought myself a manual metal arc welder!
Manual metal arc welding, however, is quite tricky to learn. Basically, the stages are:
- Being able to make the thing go at all. You need to create an arc, then maintain it, which needs a fair amount of practice and dexterity.
- Being able to then move the arc at the desired rate, in the desired direction, to leave a weld behind.
- Being able to do this well enough to produce a strong weld, rather than a rough blobby one that's only attached here and there
- Being able to do this well enough to produce a neat weld, which is the same as the previous hurdle, but now keeping the weld the same thickness all along, and nice and smooth
- All of the above again, but under trying circumstances such as when the objects being welded aren't nice and conveniently placed in front of you
I've just managed 1 today, and am part way through 2!
My medium-term goal is to make new crucible tongs - the previous ones are OK, but a little hair-raising to use since they don't grip the crucible perfectly. They were made by bending single lengths of steel, which constrained them a little. With welding mastered, I should be able to make crucible tongs that fit around the crucible much more snugly, so requiring less wiggling to get them in the clearance between crucible and furnace wall, and then a tighter grip of the crucible itself rather than just squeezing it at a few points...
Arc welding is fun!
