[Mods:This may be slightly off topic, so feel free to move]
I had a group come to my woods for a private axe making course last weekend. I can't say what the weather was like elsewhere, but on saturday it rained non-stop from 8:30 (when the students arrived) until 7pm (after we stopped).:umbrella:
The area that i use for my group courses is on the down hill side of a bank that has a ditch running along the uphill side of it. I have a tarp over the area at the moment and although it's not great it does normally keep most of the rain away from the forges. The forges by the way are the same as my touring Iron Age setup, so they are holes in the ground.
On this occasion the rain was so relentless that the ditch had water running through it (first time I've seen that) and springs appeared all over the place. In fact by mid afternoon, the guys were complaining that one of the forges wouldn't get hot. I assumed that there must be clinker or ash building up, but when I scraped it out the things was actually filling with water - from underneath!
We were almost done with the forging, so we all shared the remaining forge, until that gave up due to the rising water!
Luckily I had a strike of inspiration. My old man had dropped off a portable forge that a friend gave me years ago. I've never used it coz it weighs a ton and isn't a very useful size for bladesmithing, also I don't have a portable blower to fit to it
Anyway, we pulled it under the tarp and I connected up one of the bellows. To start with I taped the nozzel onto the inlet, but the leather was heating up as the hot air got sucked back in. So I had a stroke of genius involving a self regulating valve made froma sprite bottle
it worked great and we got the axes finished without any more trauma. At the end of the weekend we had turned the area into the Somme but everyone went away happy, all the stronger for teh experience
I bet you're wondering about the 'Violator 4000'? this is a little film of the Heath Robinson forge in action the guys sent me the other day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-601LDF2NY
Here are the guys with their choppers out afterwards
I had a group come to my woods for a private axe making course last weekend. I can't say what the weather was like elsewhere, but on saturday it rained non-stop from 8:30 (when the students arrived) until 7pm (after we stopped).:umbrella:
The area that i use for my group courses is on the down hill side of a bank that has a ditch running along the uphill side of it. I have a tarp over the area at the moment and although it's not great it does normally keep most of the rain away from the forges. The forges by the way are the same as my touring Iron Age setup, so they are holes in the ground.
On this occasion the rain was so relentless that the ditch had water running through it (first time I've seen that) and springs appeared all over the place.
In fact by mid afternoon, the guys were complaining that one of the forges wouldn't get hot. I assumed that there must be clinker or ash building up, but when I scraped it out the things was actually filling with water - from underneath! We were almost done with the forging, so we all shared the remaining forge, until that gave up due to the rising water!
Luckily I had a strike of inspiration. My old man had dropped off a portable forge that a friend gave me years ago. I've never used it coz it weighs a ton and isn't a very useful size for bladesmithing, also I don't have a portable blower to fit to it
Anyway, we pulled it under the tarp and I connected up one of the bellows. To start with I taped the nozzel onto the inlet, but the leather was heating up as the hot air got sucked back in. So I had a stroke of genius involving a self regulating valve made froma sprite bottle
it worked great and we got the axes finished without any more trauma. At the end of the weekend we had turned the area into the Somme but everyone went away happy, all the stronger for teh experience
I bet you're wondering about the 'Violator 4000'? this is a little film of the Heath Robinson forge in action the guys sent me the other day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-601LDF2NY
Here are the guys with their choppers out afterwards
