I broke the last handle I had on a decent hammer, so now that it's cooling down it is not as crazy to have a fire going and there is no point having a fire without red hot meal is there? I just bought a new handle from the hardware store. I'm quite happy with it. It wasn't varnished which is the biggest problem I've found with most new handles you can buy.
Hmmm, good starting point, but difficult to work metal like this.
Still some shaping to go. Lets get to it then.
I started off trying to be sensible and gave the plane a go. Unfortunately it wasn't really that useful. Because of the relatively radical shape of the handle it didn't really cut on the end of the handle. A Spokeshave or Drawknife would've been better tools.
Seeing as the plane didn't work I figured I'd give the rough old hatchet that we've had lying around for ages a go. Unfortunately it is the epitome of not sharpness and would be vastly improved with an hour or so of work. But this did remove material fairly well and though it was a bit rough in the end it worked.
I thought I should probably take a little care of what's left of the edge on this and put a piece of an old pallet on the anvil I was working on. Eventually I will get around to sharpening it properly. But until then I don't need to worry too much about the edge.
This is what the handle ended up needing to fit the head of the hammer. I didn't realise the eye was so small. If I end up making a hammer then this is something I will have to be careful of to ensure that the eye is a reasonable size so that an off the shelf handle will work.
Nearly there. Can you spot what still needs doing?
Wedges!! though perhaps not with sweet chili sauce or sour cream. But still one of the many useful things that make this much easier.
And here it is all finished.
Of course I had to test it. However there wasn't much to see past this point. Particularly after I started to try some charcoal Briquettes. They looked like they were getting hot, but there was no heat in the body of the fire and it died as painful death. Perhaps something to do with this?
Anyway, it could also be that I'm using a dodgy forge design and it's blocked up with ash and dirt. A very distinct possibility.
Now that I have a working hammer however, all that I will need to do is light a fire, get a draft and I can get to it. So look out for more forging posts over the next few months.
Those who know me will agree that I'm lazy, very lazy. If there is an easy way to do something I will do my best to find it. So when I had in mind a project that needed a smallish metal container I went looking for the easiest thing I could find.
A tin can will serve nicely for what I have coming up and many other projects in the future. But how to clean it without taking too much effort? Here's what I came up with:
If you look closely you can see I put it in a little fire I lit to burn off some of the tree trimmings from our yard. I got impatient so I pulled out the can rather than just letting the fire burn out. This is what I had left:
It is a little blackened and charred, but a light coating of carbon may actually help with what I have in mind. But if I needed to I could probably clean up the can with a wire brush or some sand paper. But I don't need it clean and I am lazy so it will stay dirty.
So there you have it. If you need a tin can for a project and don't want to spend too much time cleaning it all you need is a fire and the work will be basically done for you.
Thread tape, Plumbers tape, whatever you want to call it. You may have seen it used on hose fittings to help keep fluid inside. What many people don't know and can cause quite major problems is that you must be very careful about how it is applied. I recently replaced the shower rose in our bathroom so I will use that as an example here.
These are pictures of the old fitting and the wall fixture. It's a little difficult to see but the tape has been cut off the end of the thread and has gotten into the pipe and is partially blocking flow. In a shower this is not much of an issue, however when I used thread tape to seal up the transmission cooler hoses on the Jeep I had it could've caused some quite major problems if pieces had come loose.
These are the bits that I pulled from both the shower head and the wall fitting. Could be bad.
This is how I've been taught to apply this tape. Yes I know it's pink not white but it's all that I found around the house.
You need to wrap the tape so that when the fitting screws in it tights, not undoes the tape. On a standard right hand thread this means going clockwise around the thread. Another, lesser known trick is to feed the roll of tape in such a way that you can maintain even tension. If you look at the above picture you can see that the roll is away from the pipe. This means that I can ensure there is enough tension on there to pull the tape down into the threads and make for a good seal.
I usually do 2 or 3 wraps, but this depends on the depth and sharpness of the threads. Putting too much on will make it hard to screw the fitting together and can cause bits to be cut off and carried into the flow. To finish applying the tape I just pull quite hard on the tape while keeping it as if I just wanted to increase the tension of the wraps. This will stretch the tape until it tears and will leave it nice and neat.
If you find that you've wound the tape the wrong way when you start to screw the fitting together then simply unwind the tape and start again in the other direction.
Here we are, a new water saving shower head that will hopefully start to save us some money. A fairly easy thing to do for the average homeowner and over the course of a number of years can make quite a considerable difference.
I hope you find this useful at some point and if you've got any other ideas on how to apply plumbing tape please share below in the comments.
