I am making another retirement gift…a shoe horn. Man…people who are old really like shoe horns. I guess they like their shoes to look sharp, kinda like a Cadillac in Texas. They should really call these things a shoe pry bar.The redesigned forge! Ready for….well, forging. At least once I build a new table for the new Whitlock Wood-fired Forge, the gas forge, the metal rack,….hmmmm…seems like it will be a while.The completed snake bracket. Never try hanging anything from the tail of a real snake…but with this one you a good. Perfect for you coat, hat, or sandwich….well, maybe not a coat…it is pretty low to the ground.I am working on expanding the blacksmith shop just a bit. I will be adding an steel roof “awning” to the front to keep the snow and rain from blowing in the door. I am making it with steel brackets and I thought that these would need a bit of decoration….snakes are the perfect touch for anything….planes, adventure movies, and blacksmith shops!A parliament of owls on a slab of barn wood from the old Shoals homestead. Just a bunch of owls waiting to deliver messages or hold a pointy hat.The start of another owl hook.Just a quick peak at the place where the magic happens.Another lizard just hanging out doing lizardy things like eating bugs….well maybe metal bugs. And laying out in the sun. And hanging out in lounges. Dreaming of the good ole day in the Jurassic Period. You know…just being a lizard in a mammal-dominated world.A few leafy key rings…for those who want to lock up their trees, house plants, books, and other leaf-bearing items.I am back to making owls for a while. Here is a new tool to make the beaks a bit more defined and a bit quicker to produce. This one went to a good home in Newfoundland. Be free little owl and enjoy your new home, open those bottles with gusto, and take care of any rouge mice you might come across.A couple of owl hooks. I try to make it a habit to remake items I have previously made to keep current on those skills. In this case I was refining a new tool to make the beak.A compact version of the deer hoof print bottle opener…for opening bottles in tight spaces.A new style of deer print bottle opener for the start of 2023. The longer handle provides more leverage for those really tight bottle caps…and it give more room for those deer to stomp around on.
I have been working on renovating the bathroom, so it is time to make bathroom fixtures. The first thing we need to start with is a toilet paper holder. Can just let the toilet paper run around in the bathroom.This was my first attempt at an otter. I think I can call this one an otter failure. I don’t think I got my pre-shape correct. So about half way through I started making it into another mammal. What type….I don’t know. Just a random mammal. It looks about half way between a rat and a bear. Maybe a bearrat?I am working on an otter. The first step is to figure out the pre-shape. The head is much more rounded and flatter than the cats.I thought I had better add some dog hooks to my repertoire so all the dog folks don’t think that we are cat centric here at Blacksmith Cottage.Yep….you know what this means…another co-worker is getting the ax 😜. Wait…no…they are getting the RETIREMENT ax, you know…for their retirement gift. Not the ax ax. If they came to my website that would be a horrible way to find that out. Of course no one ever comes to my website.You can tell it is fall in Brown County because the leaves are starting to fall….and they have key rings attached to them…well, some of them. The ones at my shop anyway.A few new leafy hooks for fall.Here is a lizard made from the 4” block. It can be used for a number of decorative items, such as a hook, paperweight, or it can just be stuck on a fence…which would then make it a fence lizard.Then it gets flattened out and the legs moved from underneath to the sides.Once we have the basic shape, now we need to split the legs into 4 legs…unless you are making a spider….then you need a few more…7 or 8 to be exact.This type of block made from 4” of 7/8” square bar can be used to make a number of 4-legged animals….or, a tiny anvil.A squirrel cooker…although it can be used to cook a wide variety of small linear foodstuffs…that can be cooked over a fire. Not spaghetti…definitely not spaghetti.I thought I would start working on making three dimensional animal heads in the style taught by Darryl Nelson, and to do that requires making several fullers and chisels from 3/4” tool steel, but it turns out I did not have any tongs for 3/4” round stock….now I do.Heating up a bit of H-13 tool steel while making tools for forging various animal heads. With the charcoal forge I can heat up the working end while keeping the striking end cool and relatively soft. You don’t want to strike a hard tool with a hard hammer because all sort of bad things could happen.Another style of leaf hook made from a bit of scrap at the bottom of the scrap bucket….because you can never have enough leaf hooks…because there are a lot of leaves out there that need a place to hang..
I shortened the nose on the hippocat to make it more bobcattish. I think on the next version I will cut off another 1/8”. On the other long-nosed bobcat, I removed the ruff and rounded the ears of the other long-nosed bobcat making it more of a mountain lion.I needed to make a pair of face grabber tongs to take the head in and out of the vise. The tiny tong points are needed so that the head does not get damaged. And also for drinking tiny cups of coffee as needed. Pair of cats. I was shooting for a bobcat, but the one one the right turned out more hippoesque than bobcattish. The nose was too bulbous…too much like a mountain lion. And the ears wound up in the wrong spot. I mean they are still on the top of the head. It is not like I put them coming off the nose. They are just too far back.My first attempt at a Darryl Nelson style animal head…a bobcat…just in case you were wondering what this was. I mean I hope you could tell it was a bobcat. For a bobcat, it needs to have a shorter nose, so I will make those changes on cat #2.An intermediate stage of creating an animal head.A pair of forge cats…ready for a new home.A set of leaf hooks for a colleagues retirement gift.A railroad spike knife…well, a knife made from a railroad spike. You would need a blow torch to cut a railroad spike, not a knife.A railroad spike knife and a railroad spike, fresh from the pile of railroad spikes.Just a big old pile of old railroad spikes.Putting a handmade hook up with drywall screws can detract from the character of the hook. So we can made screws with the same black oxide look by removing the zinc coating, heating them to turn them black, and then coating them in oil for protection.The final product. Don’t these look much more appropriate for a handmade hook.A small pair of trade axes…ready for trade. How about a pair of aluminum gas tanks from a 1956 Airstream Tradewind for these lovely axes? Any takers?A tiny tomahawk head fitted with a handle made of hickory. Can be used for fighting off tiny zombies, or maybe a zombie squirrel. Or for an exciting way to chop an onion.The final tomahawk ready for chopping, battling zombies, or surviving a variety of apocalyptic adventures.The tomahawk drift is used to expand the hole to fit a standard tomahawk handle.To stretch out the initial rectangular hole I punched in the block of 1045, I made a small drift from H-13.I used this excellent handled punch from GS Tongs to punch out the initial hole in this piece of 4” x 7/8” 1045 square bar.
Blacksmith Cottage