Well... I didn't do much work last night. I got some clip lights and an extension cord to have lighting up on the second floor, got that set up, then Nick showed up with a new prototype engine and a pint of Jameson. By the time we got that rolling, more people showed up and we decided it would be a good idea to fire up a boiler to run the snow ( Read more... )

A blacksmith isn’t much good without a forge… I need some way to heat up that metal! There are a number of commercially made forges out there, and I have worked on some of them with decent results, but what is the fun in that? I want to make my own! The last forge I worked on was a commercial model meant for horse shoeing. It had a large ( Read more... )

Last night was half shop work and half KSW work again. I got the ground floor shop all cleared out and most things moved up to the second level, set up shelving on the second level and generally cleaned and organized. After that I made a huge mess tearing apart a water heater, whose tank will hopefully be the outer shell of my new forge. I took ( Read more... )

This is just going to be a quickie of a post this morning while Penny sleeps in. With Maker Fair coming up this weekend, I haven't had much time at all to work on the shop, but there was one development that came up that I'd like to share. For the last few weeks there have been two "used" water heaters sitting in the corner of the parking lot. I ( Read more... )

I got to the shop a little late in the afternoon Saturday after attending the SF Spanking Society munch and a quick stop to buy Penny a present. It cut into my workday quite a bit, but it was well worth it. Saturday was spent getting everything ready to put the front wall up. I put the front half of the right side wall in and put in the “nailing ( Read more... )

I got a little done in the shop last night, but not enough to do a big post about it or take pictures. Most of last night was spent getting KSW ready to show at Maker Faire. I will be at the shop pretty much all this weekend, so I hope to make some serious progress.

For once I had no plans for the weekend, nothing I needed to get done, and nobody visiting. What did that mean??? A whole weekend to work on the shop! Visibly it doesn’t look like I made much progress (at least it doesn’t to me) but at least there is some forward progress. I got the two left hand towers welded together and then put in the wall, ( Read more... )

Well… once again I made absolutely no progress on the shop, but I did get the truck running. The problem was something minor and stupid that was not in any of the directions for the electronic ignition. The problem was something that was just told to me on the phone with the company's tech support as something extra to check after he emailed me ( Read more... )

I haven't posted on here lately about the shop, but to be honest there hasn't been much to post. I went to San Diego to get another load of tools and shop stuff, but I haven't had much time or ability to work on the shop since. The truck is broke, my shoulder has been super bad, KSW stuff needed to be handled, and life in general has been getting ( Read more... )

I managed to get up fairly early on Saturday to go work on the shop. With a couple bank stops on the way, I made it to Oakland by 11am and got to work. Nobody was there working for the KSW workday, so the shop was kind of lonely and empty. I really felt like being around people, so I called up Francis to see if he wanted to hang out and work, ( Read more... )