[TheForge] CQ CQ Anyone out there?

[bamablacksmith at comcast.net]

You can have some of our summer. Its too freakin hot to stand over a forge for any length of time.

Mike
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: ries <ries at riesniemi.com>
Sender: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2010 08:41:58 
To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA<theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Reply-To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [TheForge] CQ CQ Anyone out there?


Working, fer sure.
I am getting ready to install part 2 or a pair of stainless steel benches at Coupeville High School on Whidbey Island, a mix of forged and fabricated- a couple of hundred pieces of 1/4" x 1" flat bar tapered the hard way for the last 6"- that was a fair amount of forging- but all the rest of the flat bar is plain.
5 flagpoles, 12 feet tall, with forged 1 1/2" round perches for bird/books up top.
I forged the perches from 12" pieces of the 1 1/2", into 18" or so tapers, textured with one of Grants tools, and then forged tapers on 1" and 3/4" for the legs of the birds- the bodies of the birds are 14 gage stainless sheet, I made a complete set of alphabet stamps, spring swages with positive and negative halves, about 1 1/2" tall letters, that emboss the stainless- but it had to be done hot, in the 30 ton press- heat a circle of stainless with the rosebud, slam it in the swage in the press, squish. Get about 1/8" relief lettering in the stainless sheet. Then needle scale the whole thing, and bend in the brake, weld in pages, weld on legs, mount on perches. 16 of em. 

Now I am making an archway for the newly rebuilt railroad trestle bike path between March Point and Anacortes, almost no forging though- the budget wont allow. Mostly tig welded small round bar, trusses and the like. Found some nice 10x10 x 14' creosoted beams that were part of the now torn down Cherry Street bridge in Port Angeles, these will be the vertical posts, then I mount my 14' wide arch on top. Gotta be done by Friday morning for install.

Plus, picking and freezing blueberries and raspberries every day- a few quarts a day, usually. Eating lots of fresh stuff from the garden.

Built a huge fixed display for the 4th- about 14' tall, roughly conical, steel framework covered with paper. Inside, a hundred bucks worth of fireworks- mostly pinwheels, cracklewhip, and thousands of firecrackers hot glued to the paper. Up top, a 2 foot sphere, again covered with paper, that is hinged in half. the two halves are tied together with cracklewhip, which is kind of decorative exploding fuse- it sparks and snaps and crackles as it burns. When the fuse burns, the sphere drops open, inside were three layered pinwheels on one post- 8", 12", and 16",  all fused together into one giant spinning ball of fire.
Light the fuse once, run away, and it explodes, shoots sparks, and burns for a good five minutes. Good effects with the fireworks going off inside the paper, shadow style, then the sparks catch the paper on fire, and the whole thing burns. 

Finally, we have summer here, after a very cold, rainy June and half of July, so we are riding bikes and getting farmers tans...


Ries Niemi
Industrial Artist
http://www.riesniemi.com/





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