[TheForge] Re: (no subject)

[Mike Spencer]

> long time. no mail.

If I didn't have mail from the NS Linux list, I'd be having withdrawal
symptoms.  Twitch-twitch...  :-)

But this is the "Heaven" season here. So many outdoor things to do.
Digging potatoes -- well, exhuming them from under the seaweed --
collecting apples and pressing cider, getting the last of the winter's
wood under cover, glazing and installing the new window sash to
replace the 140 year old sash that literally disintegrated, nursing
the tomato plants through the last days of summer for just one more
peck of vine-ripened tomats, getting the micro-greenhouse organized to
keep tomatoes and basil past the soon-to-appear killing frost, walking
around with coffee cup in hand admiring the purple asters and
goldenrod and dragonflies.

ObSmithing:  

Working on the window sash, which appears to be mostly original to our
1860s/1880s house, I'm reminded that a house wasn't built in a day.
There are wire nails, cut nails and hand-forged nails in the wood.  As
well, there are cut nails that appear to have been hand-headed after
they left the nail-making machine.  I'll have to put a few under the
scope and see if I can spot any evidence of what kind of tooling was
used.

This was a pretty nice house (for very rural Nova Scotia in the 1880s,
anyhow) but probably not nice enough to order specialty nails.  So I
haven't spotted any butterfly nails but quite a few "finish" nails
made by putting a smallish-to-medium hand-forged nail on the anvil and
just mashing the head cold from one side so that, in one direction,
it's the same thickness as the shank.


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^