Gerald Boggs

16 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

Did you put an asymmetrical centre back seam on that?

Help me out, what is an "asymmetrical centre back seam" and how do I see it?

He does make nice hammers, I have two of the "Mark Aspery" style. 

Once again, I'll take this opportunity to advise folks to get Mark Aspery's first book.  it has quite a bit of information and how-to on making and using punches and drifts, including steel section.    He also has number of Youtube videos which support the book.

Camping reservations made, I'll be at the same campsite.

3 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

 

We will have a new firepot in the coal forge, so Gerald can actually finish his demo! 

That will be nice :-)

If the is a one-off, no idea, but if you're planning on doing a number of these, then maybe a top and bottom tool.  Press them at the same time and you should get a tight fit.

22 hours ago, Francis Gastellu said:

donkey crap

That's not crap, that's premium fertilizer with plenty of soil conditioners :-) 

While I don't know nothing about sausage making, in the realm of fermenting, 3 to 5% appears to be the rule.  Except for Kimchi, there the recipes I've looked at are higher, but that could be because of the addition of shrimp paste. :-)

Sorry, I was a little brief on the recipe, let me try again

Ingredients:

Peppers

Garlic

Salt

Right now, I'm using quart jars and the silicone tops with what look like a baby bottle nipple, lots of them available on Amazon.

Slice the peppers in half and remove the seeds and pulp.

Using a blender, add as many garlic cloves as you want, (I use a large bulb per quart), 1 tablespoon of salt and as many pepper halves as your blender will handle.

Blend until you have a uniform paste and pour into the quart jar, repeat the process until you've filled the jar, leaving about two inches of headspace.

Cover the paste with a layer of salt and put on the nipple. 

As I wrote before, I'm using a measurement of two, plus one tablespoons of salt per quart. There's 64 tablespoons to a quart, so two tablespoon works out to about 3% and three about 5%.

Because I don't add any water to the blend, the gas produced by the fermenting has trouble escaping. If you want to avoid that, thin it out a little.  Thank you Charles dP for pointing that out

Ah, the fun days of my youth.  I came across the book "Knife throwing; a practical guide"  Sounded like fun, so I bought the Bowie-axe throwing knife.  Built a four foot wide and eight foot tall target out of 2x6's and had a lot of fun learning to throw that knife.  Someone stole it and for whatever reason, I never got around to getting another one.  Don't know what type of steel, but it took quite a beating and never even chipped.

There's as many recipes as there are opinions :-)  I'm doing this by feel, so I could be wrong, but it's worked great so far.

For one quart:

Peppers as needed, the red are the ripe ones.

One large bulb of garlic or less if you don't want a strong garlic flavor.

Three tablespoons of salt, two blended in and one sprinkled on top to provide a barrier to reduce any possible mold.

After a couple of volcano effects, I'll be increasing my air space to 2 1/2 inches.  This needs to be checked at least once a day, better twice a day.

6 hours ago, Charles dP said:

thin the mash a little more. Those CO2 bubbles are still trapped.

I could, but I like the consistency. All the jars have formed the air spaces, just not as energetic as that one, that one I did gently stir to help settle it down.

How to tell if it's fermenting :-)  This happened in less then 24 hours, as I check them everyday.  It's only happened to two out of five, no idea why the fermenting is this strong on some and not the rest.   I've been leaving about 1 1/2" of space at the top, I think I might need to leave more.

I do a fine mash.  I put the peppers, garlic and salt though a blender until it's a pourable liquid and after it's in the jar, cover it with a light layer of salt.  Rather then adding vinegar after the ferment and straining, I just eat it as it is.  Salt is three tablespoons to the quart, two blended in and one on top.

The salsa recipe is from "Ball's Canning Back to Basics" book, but with some minor modification, such as I use Romo instead of cherry tomatoes.  I recommend this book for those that want to learn canning, as all the recipes are water boil. 

One can also find the recipe on-line: https://www.ballmasonjars.com/blog?cid=corn-and-cherry-tomato-salsa 

One of the things I hope to do, is make enough hot stuff to last into the next Fall.  Want to compare how 12+months ferment compares to 1-2 months.  But with only getting seven quarts, maybe eight, not sure if that's enough.

I was putting up some more hot stuff. Decided to skip removing the seeds and pulp and learned something. If you don't remove them, the mix is too dry and chunky. So while you can still ferment it, you would have to add water before the ferment or vinegar afterwards to get a paste.

4 minutes ago, Jaron Martindale said:

When I was building my website this was my take on it.  It really doesn't say much other than if its defective I'll fix it but if you abused the living day-lights out of it I won't, lol. 

That's about the same as Snap-on tools.  Lifetime warranty for intended use, zero for abuse

This hammer-in, while small was pretty damn good.  How often do you get to watch four different ABS Mastersmiths and a bunch of other talented smiths demonstrate and explain how and why they do what they do.  We got to watch blade forging, handle shaping, Hamon, and blade grinding all in one day :-)

Big kudos to Alan and all the other members of the State of Franklin Blacksmith Guild for putting this together

On 10/9/2022 at 7:45 PM, Brian Dougherty said:

Well, I made it home.  It isn't as easy as it once was,

I had to get off 81 a couple of times and use route 11, traffic kept doing the accordion thing.

40 minutes ago, Alan Longmire said:

There are a few folks camping

I'm one of those camping, I got a small trailer and this will be it's second outing.  I got a small Weber grill and I'll bring that.  Steaks, granola, and beer it is.

Rats, I already have home made granola for breakfast, but nothing for supper,  I guess I could eat the granola for supper.

Question about food.  Do you know if the hosts will be open for food all three meals?  Just planning on what meals to prepare for myself.

Sure, I can do the axe, as long as I get to use a coal forge.  I have the steel in stock and will bring it.

No photos, but since I decided to bring the step by steps for the axe, hawk, and chisel, I'm spending today running all the bits through the tumbler to clean off the rust.

On 9/26/2022 at 8:55 AM, Joshua States said:

We used to make leaf motif towel bars and hooks as well in the ealy years. Always sold well too.

Me too, but on-line, not so much.  Too much low balling on prices to compete and time/effort/return has me making other stuff.    I do think from time to time of working my way back into the fancy stuff. 

On 9/25/2022 at 5:14 PM, Alex Zandonella said:

I thought as a soft material there should be no problems

Bronze, as in a blend of copper and tin, isn't soft.  It's one of those little oddity's in metallurgy, two soft elements blended together form a very hard metal.   I read somewhere that some bronzes can be as hard as medium carbon steel.  

2 hours ago, billyO said:

So what @Gerald Boggssaid about the process is true:  Heat>quench>hammer > heat>quench>hammer...

Actually, I didn't say that, as I don't know :-)   We forged all the bars hot, but we were mostly just drawing out tapers on the power hammer.