borgnar posted:

last summer i smelted some iron by accident

one of the things about using a sandbox for a forge is the sand turns to glass everytime you run it. this ain't a big deal, you just have to pull the big half-melted chunks of glass out and dig the firepot back out and you're good to go. one thing you can do to prevent that from happening as much is mixing ash in with the sand, so i'll regularly stir the coal ash around with the sand to get it homogeneous. i was doing this one morning ahead of lighting up for the day and i hit something weird right underneath the air pipe. it was a lump of something that wasn't clinker, what in the hell is this, it's really heavy, this definitely isn't clinker. wait, why is it sticking a magnet? oh gently caress, i made iron!



after thinking about it a little, i figured out what happened. the sand i used to fill up the forge is black, which i didn't think anything of when i bought it. but that poo poo is black because there's a whole lot of iron oxide in it, and the conditions directly underneath the air supply were perfect for the iron oxide to reduce and then melt together into a pretty drat good iron bloom, very pure. so i spent a couple hours flattening it out and folding and welding it, and i got a little chunk of iron i made myself, by accident, out of sand



this summer i plan to build a full size bloomery furnace and make enough iron to really do something with

Daikatana Ritsu posted:

I feel like a huge pussy for buying a telescope now.

Daikatana Ritsu posted:

I feel like a huge pussy for buying a telescope now.

Wormskull posted:

Got a ton of inspiraysh for my next day off in the Forge (this must be said Wesley Willis style). Hope I got the energy for a 12 hour sesh.

symbolic posted:

Wormskull posted:

Do you got a fancy country flux recipe. I read about stuff made of borax and iron filings and I have a DIY belt grinder I bought for fifty bucks so I’m thinking I might save the stuff.

mysterious loyall X posted:

i found out theres some guy sculpted hieronymous bosch resin miniatures

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2004599158/hieronymus-bosch-tabletop-miniatures

time to learn to paint miniatures folks and start iwth something really hard and give up immediately, then sniff the glue and paint instead. and do food hacks like making squid ramon nacho cheese deep frted burritos instead

Fortaleza posted:

Other than woodwork my main crafty thing is moonshinin'



I stick to fruit brandies and aquavit since they're harder to come by and I can make stuff better than store bought at this point. I age 'em in little oak barrels in my cellar and when a batch gets good I share with with bartenders around town so now I get free shots all the time and never have to wait for a drink it's awesome

Spanish Manlove posted:

Found one, it's Artorias vs a Knight

Spanish Manlove posted:

The face on the sun was done with a very fine tip brush and black ink mixed with black paint. Base was kind of an afterthought because I was happy enough with the sun and the tabard. Gave this one to a friend for her birthday



This was actually a test model for some fancy metallic paints I wanted to try out from Vallejo. The base was a last minute "sure whatever" idea where I mixed a bunch of green powder stuff from a children's school diorama kit and some thinned pva glue into a slurry and then put yellow foam pieces on top to look like flowers. That's a weird recipe I came up with when trying to make moss one time and couldn't get the powder to stick to a surface so I thought it might work better if I mixed glue into it then applied it to the surface. It's the same idea used in places on the Artorias diorama.



The cheapest way to get a bunch of swords was a pack of plastic skewers that were cut up to make them look a little different than each other, and then different kinds of oxidation colors. I had to make the rock in the middle a lot taller so that was just the pink xps foam that you can get a square meter for $5 at home depot. The wolf was mostly painted using makeup brushes to build up a gradient. Since then I figured out a more convincing fur recipe where you blend wet paint together on the undercoat then use the makeup brush for the overcoat.

Wormskull posted:

My first Training forge was this wooden box filled with dirt and bricks with a hair dryer and charcoal:


Then I turned the box into a better forge with the bottom of a barrel and a 6 inch blower and eventually put a roof over it with the top of a barrel and a big rear end ventilation duct as a chimney (additions not pictured) and I used coal in it mostly. Coal smoke is both extremely epic and also really embarrassing lmfao:


And now since coal is expensive and can be a tremendous fire hazard when you live under a huge tree and work beneath a tarp and I needed a better forge for tool and knife making I use this propane one called Mr Volcano:


I want to make another coal/probably more likely charcoal forge someday when I learn to weld, with the top of an oxy canister for a firebox (didn’t have a deep enough one on the first forge) but I’ll do that when I’ve made the tools I need to make bigger projects. I’d like to buy an old school riveting forge someday also but I want a better anvil first.

Wormskull posted:

My cutoff hardy was a success but I kept hitting it with my hammer so I have to reforge it lol.

Wormskull posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAg04rKNZE
I reforged better shoulders onto this and I think did a much better heat treat but the shank is still kinda hosed so I’m gonna make a better one when I can cut through the 1 1/2 inch axle I have lol, but here’s me cutting off something I was making for my dad’s business card holder. For fungah.

Fungah! posted:

also i burned my hnd rasping the end and my instructor looked at me and said "that's what people smell like" and laughed like a hyena