Lousy weather...

  Yesterday, I went to a blacksmithing meeting in Barberville (north of Orlando) with two fellow blacksmiths from the Tampa area.  Saw some good stuff including a class by Dan Tull from Georgia.  We pretty much closed down the meeting, spending most of the day at the meeting.
  Today I restarted the posts.  I started two of them.  I wanted one of them as a template and the other one as the one to actual work on and try out some variations of work.  I cut slits in the metal using a hacksaw then I began to use the hot set to cut between the two slits.  Then, the weather stopped me again.
  Well, I didn't get as far as I wanted but I will say that things are looking much better that the first one. 

Nice work...

  Spent a fair amount of my time in Philadelphia this week looking at gates, fences, decorative iron work, etc...  Its really amazing to see some of the work.  I wish I would have brought my camera.  Makes me want to get back to my own forge.

Weather washed me out again today.  I was about to start when weather began to roll in.  So, I quickly made a bird feeder holder then shut down the forge.  My last real chance to work is tomorrow.  I head out to Philadelphia on Monday.

Grrr...

  I have not been able to do anything meaniful at the forge for the past several days due to weather.  I'm hoping to do some work tomorrow.

A fresh start...

  So, laying in bed last night as I drifted off to sleep I came to the realization that I should start over on the corner post.  This is not an artistic "it's not good enough", this is a practical "it's not good enough".  I really do think that I have what it takes to make these corner posts now.  I just had to make the most recent one to find the final mistakes I was making.

  Hopefully tonight but more likely Thursday or Friday I will be starting over.  This time, instead of doing one, I will do all four.  This will help me to keep them all uniform.  Second mistake I will correct is with my hot set.  The current one does not give me the clean edge that I want so I have to do a lot of hammer work to correct it.  That hammerwork changes the size of the post.  If I do all four at once and I need to do cleanup hammerwork, the should all be about the same amount of size difference...

Not the sharpest spoon...

  Who would have thought it?  I was doing some of the decorative work on the corner post which involves using a hacksaw and files.  I was killing myself with the hacksaw as it was very difficult to get any work done.  Then, I remembered it still had the original blade and that I had bought some replacement blades when I first bought the saw.  I put in a new blade and suddenly I was able to cut with very little effort.  I really have to think more but it hurts so much...

On schedule...

  Just as I hoped, I finished the forge work on the first corner post.  I am annealing one end now in preperation for doing filing and cutting for the decorative work.  I hope to pick up some better files and some new hacksaw blades tomorrow.

  Also, purchased a swage block yesterday.  A swage is like an anvil with a major exception.  An anvil is essentially a flat hard piece of metal to hammer against.  A swage block has shapes cut into it allow different shaping for metal such as cylinders, dishing, spoons, etc...