Very good day...
Today was very productive with about 6 hours of forge time. I started the day with a few nails. I've found that starting the day by doing a few nails is a good way to start. When I first fire up the forge, it takes it about 20 minutes to get up to a full, even heat. During that heat up time, I can make a few nails to take advantage of that otherwise wasted time. Also, since I hate repetitive work, its a good way to make nails without getting bored.
After I got the forge up to a full heat, I went back to working on the lock plate. It took me a little over an hour to finish flattening the plate. I followed up with some cleanup work. After taking a break, I next needed to punch the holes for the nails. Now that I actually have nails, I knew that I had to make the plate holes a little bit bigger to hold the nails. In just a little over an hour, I was able to punch all 20 holes. I am happy with how those came out and it was a much faster process than the previous plate.
As a reminder, the reason for the remaking of the plate was to give a little more room for the lock. So, I added about 1/2" to 3/4" to the height. The new plate is pictured below. It is the top piece in the pic. Notice the holes are bigger than the old plate. Also in the pic are some of the nails that I've made.
I decided to plunge ahead and start putting in the hole for the key(some might even call it a keyhole...) This went pretty well. I started by punching holes on either end of the slot for the key. Then I used a chisel to remove the metal between those holes. I was making good progress until I realized that I needed a certain sized file that I don't have. So, I packed up the shop. I will pick up the file tomorrow on my way home from work. The pic of the plate with the start of the keyhole is shown below.
The trapezoidal shape of the plate is from camera angle. The plate is rectangular.
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