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Hey guys, I thought I would share my latest project. I bought this axe for $5 at the local flea market and really wanted to make it stand out. I decided to construct it more like a knife where I put a steel tang throughout the entire handle. For the handle, I used Walnut and Maple pieces to give a good color contrast. This was my first time trying metal etching. I love how the etch worked, however I wish I would have etched it even longer to get a deeper depression in the metal. To get an even deeper etch, and add a little more design, I took a rotary tool and bored it out even further. I then put some super blue on to darken the depression. After that I needed to test the weapon in slow motion of course! Overall, I am happy with how this axe turned out and I would love to hear your what you guys think / what you would have done differently. Full Timelapse Video- Thanks!

Hey there folks and greetings from good ol germany! Here i did a little restoration of an old knife that has been sitting to darn long in a dark corner. Unfortunately i don't know much about that knife but i couldn't help myself with giving this fella a facelift. Have a look and leave a comment if you like...criticism well welcome!

I haven't been posting much on here recently, mostly because I've been too busy... BUT, this commission was too good not to share: A regular customer found this "Victorian Briarwood walking stick" in an antique shop. (for $40 USD) [It's not actually bent, my phone just refused to accept that fact.] He of course noticed this: The blade, if there was one, was absolutely frozen in the stick/scabbard and it wouldn't even wiggle. It rattled slightly, but the sound was just from the loose cap at the tip. When he asked about it, the antique dealer said "I bought it in an auction house on my most recent trip to England, as part of a lot of 'pre-1850 antique canes' and I don't know enough about weapons to risk my reputation by saying it is anything more than a walking stick." [I don't recall which auction house, but it was reputable in the business.] Obviously, he bought it, and brought it to me with the instructions to figure out how to get it apart, preferably without breaking it, but considering the price he paid, using whatever means were necessary [within a rather broad definition of reasonable.] I decided to go with the slow and steady approach to start and tied a paracord harness along the full length: I put the handle in the pipe side of my 50 lb bench vise, with ample padding: Then I hooked the loop at the end of my harness to the frame of my barn door with a ratchet strap: And started to apply tension, very slowly and carefully: Absolutely nothing happened! So I cranked a little more, then a little more etc. A couple hours later, the ratchet maxed out and refused to allow me to crank it another notch! [1,000 lb working load rating] So I left it overnight, nothing. So I cranked it a bit tighter... 3 days later [no joke], i gave up on that strategy as it hadn't budged in the slightest. That begged the question, "what was I actually working on?" So it was time to take some fancy pictures: [Disclaimer: Nobody at my full time job would ever bend the rules regarding the use of highly sensitive and very expensive medical equipment... not even at 04:00 hrs. I took the pictures with my cell phone camera, maybe not directly as there was a computer console in the way, but that doesn't have any relevance...] So now what? [After picking my jaw back up from the floor.] Research and consultation, at least a metric ton of each. [Continued in next post.]

Now that my power hammer is sitting on its new home and securely bolted to the new foundation, I am working on fixing the other minor issues that it has. Originally it has been setup with the motor hanging off the side, going to a countershaft mounted above the hammer, and then to the rear pulley, to slow down the speed of rotation. This is a bit janky and unwieldly, and the jurryrigged idler pulley for the slackbelt clutch isnt the most responsive. In order to fix this I will be making a new motor mount to mount the motor down low and behind the hammer, building a new idler arm for the slack belt clutch, and fabricating a mount for it, and re-building the treadle linkage. I first found myself a proper 900 RPM motor, as the original spec called for in motorized fairbanks power hammers as opposed to lineshaft driven. This motor is ginormous, over 100lbs and easily twice the size of the motor that was on it, but it's still actually only a 2hp motor. I've got a large angle bracket which I will drill and tap the rear column of the power hammer in order to bolt down, and then due to the size and weight of the motor, I will probably have a rear leg at the back of the shelf going down to the floor as well. I already have a 3 inch pulley with lips on the edge which will be used as the tensioner / idler pulley. The rear pulley is 13 inches in diameter, which means that the motor pulley should be 5 inches in diameter to get the specified 350 BPM. Herein lies my first challenge. I have looked everywhere, and can not find a 5 inch crowned drive pulley for a 2.5 inch wide flat belt which will fit on a 1 1/8 motor shaft. Thus my first bit of work is to make a new drive pulley. I bought an aluminum round 5 inches in diameter and 6 inches long to be my pulley blank. In order to turn the face of the pulley concentric to the motor shaft, the first thing I had to do was create myself a mandrel the same diameter as the motor shaft to mount the pulley on once I have the center bored and reamed to 1.125 inches. I chose to make the mandrel first. For the mandrel, I have a piece of 2 inch round stock which has already been drilled and tapped for half inch 13 on the end (and had part of it turned down for some other job, but that can be ignored) I've done very little machining, even though I've had my lathe for 9 months now. Getting objects perfectly centered is still a bit of a chore, but I got the 2 inch round almost perfect, so I felt that I was off to a good evening in the shop =) My lathe is an 1890 Prentice Brother's lathe and has no gradations on any of the dials, and only horizontal feed, no traverse. I run it nice and slow and take my time, and a lot of measurements. Once I got really close to the final dimension I was barely skimming a thousandth off the top to zero in on 1.125. After this cut it read 1.126 on my digital caliper, and 1.124 on my old brown and sharpe vernier scale caliper. Not bad for an ancient hunk of iron, although it took me a large number of passes. Good thing I dont have to make money doing this !