Misc A&S

Very busy at A&S this weekend. Finishing and starting projects. An outline of work first, then details below.

Saturday:

  1. Finished one set of Puttees hooks to give to their Highnesses for largess.

  2. Started forging period nails.

  3. Forged a bad hoof pick

  4. Forged another skewer

More on these below.

Sunday:

  1. Started a leather bottle project for a friend.

  2. Started an armguard for myself.

  3. Started an armguard for a friend.

  4. Started a pouch for a friend

  5. Forged a very period ( ;-) ) paper towel holder.

Details of Saturday’s projects:

  1. Puttees hooks. These are from the casting I did last week. The wax that I cast these from is beginning to show signs of age. Not sure how many more sets I will get out of them. The polishing went smoothly and I was able to work some detail in where the cast did not come out well.

  2. Forging nails. I have begun a 1000 nail challenge. I am doing this for a few reasons. To start, I wanted some nails for finishing some medieval woodworking projects. Secondly, in forging 1000 nails I hope to improve my hammer and heat management skills, and third, I will always have something to work on in the forge( see notes below). I will be working on them in batches of at least 12 at a time. Of my first dozen, I think I have 7 working nails. Of these I am not sure I will even want to use 1/2 of them on a project I care about. As this was my first attempt, I feel like I at least have a grasp of the process. The next forging will show me how much of it stuck.

  3. Bad hoof pick. Poorly done and will be thrown away. This is what happens when I want to do something , but I do not have a plan in place. When I came home Saturday night, I just wanted to forge, not make anything specific, just wanted time at the forge. Without a focus and a plan of action, I fumbled around trying to decide what to do and ended up half assing this piece. I need to go into the forge with a plan of action and not just wing it. I might hang this piece on the wall of my forge to remind me of this. It is bad work in so many ways.

  4. Skewer: After botching the hoof pick I decided to get my sh*t together and work smart. This skewer is made from 1/4 in round stock and came out pretty well. I still need to do more research on skewers and their use in the medieval kitchen.

5. Paper towel holder. When my wife and I first moved into Grimmsfield, the lack of a paper towel rack in the kitchen. I quickly bought an inexpensive plastic holder and jammed it on the wall for the time being. That was years ago and I have hated that paper towel rack ever sense. I finally decided to do something about it. My wife and I looked through the Internet at how others had solved the paper towel rack conundrum. After deciding on a style, I set to work. It was not to be a copy of a piece, but an amalgamation of several we had found. This presented several more problems then I anticipated and the final results were less the satisfactory to me, My wife likes it and therefore it was installed. But I hope to redo this with a better design in mind. I am not happy with the proportions and flow of lines and the general look of the piece. I feel better pre-planning could have improved the looks greatly.