[TheForge] Re: Ban the anvil!

[Mike Spencer]

> yep a firearm is a type of drill ! works great to let the water out
> of your car after you leave the windows down during a thunderstorm.

Ay-yuh.  Course that's assuming it doesn't have some nice big
drainholes in the floor already, compliments of the county salt truck. 

When I got my very first forge and anvil, I was in a terrific hurry to
get it set up.  At that time we were renting a huge, turn of the
century New England farm house that had been built on to the original,
1840s two-room house.  The old house had become the workshop and shed
but one with a brick fireplace and flue, perfect for the budding
blacksmith. 

So I found some stovepipe and galvanized sheet metal and whipped up a
sort of hood for my rivet forge.  A collitch ejucation and a couple of
years as a sports car mechanic hadn't given me any metalworking skills
to speak of so it was a great PITA to get the floppy sheetmetal bolted
onto the forge to start with.  When I went to close the top, it was
too springy to hold in place, too springy to drill with my 1/4" hand
drill and I was too excited to take it apart, think about it and start
over.

Solution: fill a tin can with sand, pull the the sheetmetal together
to roughly match the stove pipe and clamp it and the can of sand
together with Vise Grips.  Then I shot a hole in it with a .22.
Bullet ended up in the sand, 1/4' bolt went in the hole and Shazaam!
I wuz a blacksmith.

Several years later, I tried this again when I realized I had gotten
preoccupied with scrolls, mouse heads and such and had failed to leave
a drain hole in my 10 ga. mailbox.  Mailbox was very firmly installed
at the roadside, nearest power outlet was a mile away, so it looked
like the long range percussive drill was just the thing.  Dang!  Too
good of a mailbox!  The .22 just bounced off.  So my mail occasionally
gets dampish but now my mailbox has a proof mark like some of the
plate armor made after firearms first appeared on the scene in Europe.

> ...every child knows an anvil is ONLY for smashing people and
> critters flat.

I don't think much of the current gun control frenzy myself but, on
the other hand, most children can't come home from a Roadrunner movie
and playfully squash baby brother with an anvil even if they use both
hands.  Lessee, toy guns sell real well.  Is there a marketing niche
for big foam rubber anvils and huge styrofoam safes?


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada 
                                 
mspencer@tallships.ca            
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/