[TheForge] Re: Twisting Jig

[Mike Spencer]

me> http://www.abana.org/ronreil/ford.jpg
me>
me> How's that supposed to work?

pf> The 2 mounted wrenches  hold 2 points of a hot bar from twisting.

What? What two mounted wrenches?  [mutter mutter mumble...]

Oh, shpx, I couldn't fer the life a' me figger out what those shiny
things were.  It is, of course, obvious.  (Now that it's obvious.)
If the photo had been taken maybe 10 degrees further to one side, it
would have been, well, yew know, obvious. :-)

Thanks for the clue.  I maybe should even make one of those.

Bonus item: My son found a stack of miner's picks in a junk yard.
They're clearly hand made -- that is, not die- or drop-forged although
probably drawn out with the aid of a power hammer.  Brought me a dozen
for Christmas.  Very thin eye, much like the eye of a felling axe but
more symmetrical, chisel- or slot-punched rather than welded.  Most
other miner's picks I've seen have eyes more like a pickaxe or
mattock, largish oval with reverse taper. Cheeks roughly drawn down on
each side of the eye to increase contact with the handle.

No idea where they came from. Circa 1975 I visited a working
underground coal mine to investigate buying their forge shop (no go,
went for scrap). They were using air drills similar to those shown in
the Encyclopedia Britanica circa 1910 and having a hell of a time
maintaining them.  They said they had a store room full of picks but
that nobody had used them for decades.  The above-ground guys -- stock
room, air supply maintainance -- were all career miners and were in
their 80s or 90s, slacking off, you know, because the underground work
was a bit too strenuous for them.

- Mike

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