Something New Brewing

Greetings my wonderful Fox River Roustabouts, today I am excited to announce something new coming out of the shop. I am going to start doing coffee review videos. I’ve been a regular coffee drinker for decades consuming vast amounts of the wonderfully caffeinated elixir while working or making music or just hanging out at a cafe with friends. I’ve noticed that coffee culture has been growing and when you look on media sites there is all sorts of content related to “this roast” or “that grinder” or “those brew methods” and is constantly portraying a glamorized idea of coffee culture. I noticed something missing. There is very little input from the average, everyday working stiff slugging back a “cup-o-joe” as they deal with their blue-collar, multiple-job trying to make-ends-meet life. So I thought I could develop a series using a basic automatic drip coffee maker and do some taste tests of different types of coffee available for purchase. I’ll use some standard controls so I can maintain a neutral brew environment like store bought water and a reusable, dishwasher safe filter. I think this will help eliminate anything that might unduly affect the coffee I brew. I’m looking to start this series in the very near future. I hope it turns out well and provides some entertainment for everyone. If there is a coffee you would like to recommend please feel free to send me an email at Chris@foxriverforge.com and I’ll check it out.

Giaco Whatever Unboxing

In a fit of retail therapy I paid money to a Kickstarter in order to get a specialty retractable utility knife from a maker named Giaco in Italy. I stumbled across it while watching videos from Jimmy Diresta. In this video, I open up the package and check it out for the first time and give my thoughts. I will do a review of it in a couple weeks.

Enjoy

Setting up the Shop

I finally got some time and weather to get into the shop and get things essentially placed. I was able to dig up a knockoff GoPro camera my wonderful wife gave me a few years ago so I could have a couple different camera angles for this video. I also used a licence free music site called “Epidemic Sound” for some of the video. It was an exercise in creative problem solving moving some of those items alone but I succeeded.

Enjoy

A new Beginning

I’m not a New Year’s Resolution person,
like, AT ALL.
I don't need a special day dedicated to making promises I’m not likely to keep. I do, however, like tidy increments of time so since it’s January I’m launching an overhaul of my YouTube channel. I haven’t been able to get out to the forge at my dad's house for months mostly because it’s inconvenient to wedge into my schedule, so I made a decision. I’m moving the forge.
Again.
My house has a two car garage and I am going to give up parking inside so that I can put together a shop where I can work both on home projects and other creative endeavors.
I want to start making regular YouTube videos showing the creation of the shop and the projects that go through it. I’d like to augment that channel by creating corresponding posts here. I would use these posts to provide more details and explain things that either I didn’t have time for in the video or would be too tangential.
My gear and expertise in video creation is fairly sketchy but I hope to improve that with time.
The first video in this series is called “A New Beginning” and I’m literally, starting from scratch. I used my phone and the YouTube app to shoot it. It didn’t sound or look that great but I got it done.

Enjoy

Strange customer

While I haven't been doing very much smithing at all recently, an off hand comment led to be sharpening some lawnmower blades for a friend.  Shortly after doing his set, someone else contacted me to sharpen their blades based on a recommendation from the first set. This has led to a small but steady stream of work sharpening mower blades and even repairing some yard tools like rakes and shovels. It's not a lot of money but I enjoy it and a couple extra bucks is nice.
It has, however, led to a strange encounter.
A lady called  looking to get some items touched up and said she would send her son out to the forge to meet me. He arrived and I immediately took notice because he was very large, easily four inches taller than me. He was also, evidently, a huge Detroit Red Wings fan because he was wearing one of their goalie masks. He was shy and didn't say much as he handed over a machete, an axe, and a pitchfork with some bent tines. I told him I'm just now getting into knife sharpening and these were the first blades of this type I'd sharpened. He didn't seem too bothered. I touched up the axe easy enough.  The machete had some pretty good dings in the edge, probably from some hardwood limbs or something, so that took a bit of time. He wasn't overly anxious but he did have some sort of sneezing fit because I heard him make a sound lime "ki, ki, cha, cha" a couple times.
Anyway, I got the pitchfork tines straightened without needing to heat them up and he wad on his way. I assume he had to get back to work because he was wearing coveralls with the name if some camp on them. Weird guy, never said a word aside from the sneezing. But I guess it's October and people are more open to let their Freak Flag fly.

Split crosses for a church auction

The church I belong to had an auction recently to raise funds for its outreach program. This year I donated three plaque mounted split crosses. Split crosses are made by making two intersecting cuts in a length of metal and opening those cuts up in a specific way creating a cross with a diamond shape in the middle. They look really nice when done well and I’ve made a few of them in the past so I know how they’ll turn out.

I made these particular crosses out of some discarded railroad spikes. I chose the spikes because I had them in my stock inventory and the dimensions were decent. I also like the symbolism of turning spikes into crosses to help raise money for my church. I bought the bare plaques from Michaels Craft’s because I wanted the rough, hand-forged look of the crosses to work with the proper, cleanly milled edges of the commercial plaques to show a union of thrift and wealth.

I also took the time to record the process of making these plaques. I recorded footage of the entire process for one specific plaque, edited it and put it on a flash drive to be auctioned off with that specific cross. I also uploaded a copy to my YouTube channel. You can watch it below.



I’m pretty happy with how they came out and I hope they do well at the auction.

Lunatics on the internet

As I've said recently, 2018 has been a year of intense change in my life and my opportunity to be creating with metal has had to take a backseat to the remodeling of my life. That doesn't mean it hasn't been on my mind. I find that even if I can't swing the hammer my self, I get pleasure and inspiration from watching others being creative. Most of this comes in the form of watching other create. I am an avid fan of Forged In Fire (which I greedily consume via Amazon.com) and I subscribe to several channels on YouTube. There is a channel in particular that I want to talk about right now.

Let me set the stage.

One Friday afternoon I found myself in a particularly foul mood, I took up residence in a chair in the living room in full grump-mode. These are not particularly flattering details about myself but it's important to the story plus the more I call these traits out, hopefully the more I will be able to recognize their onset and be able to subvert them. Anyway, Jessie was trying to brighten me up a bit and asked if I wanted to watch a blacksmithing video or something. I responded with a indifferent grumble of syllables so she turned on the TV, pulled up YouTube, did some searching and hit play and I soon found myself watching a guy with a birds-nest of hair and beard grinding on a large plate of metal with an angle grinder while NOT WEARING A SHIRT! Such was my introduction to Michael Cthulhu.

Believe me when I say I have spent more than a few hours removing metal with an angle grinder and the idea of not wearing a shirt during this process is ludicrous. This brazen disregard for everything my previous Safety Coordinator had spent decades pounding into my brain proved to be a worthy opponent to the gloom that had been holding me captive and soon I was fixated on this crazy guy who, it turns out, makes giant swords for people.

In fact, what endears this artist to me is that he does amazing work with what looks like a crazy mix of in various states of ill-repair. While I know from experience what it takes to make videos like the ones he produces, the average viewer is left with an impression of a madman in the woods using scrap metal and cobbled together tools to create beautiful and detailed works of art that happen to be absurdly large swords.

He started off making short "smash" videos using swords he created for customers to destroy various chunks of wood, ice and mannequins, some of which were on fire. These are often quite theatrical and only 3 or 4 minutes long. He then posted a "build" video where he filmed his creative process of laying out and fabricating these swords from scratch which were often over an hour long and discovered people, like me, would watch these as well.

My goal here is obviously to get you to watch a couple videos from Michael and hopefully subscribe to his channel so that when we are together next we can sit and talk excitedly about this build or that. With that in mind I spent some time and picked a couple videos hoping to entice you into checking him out.

A great deal of the swords he builds are from video games so I am quite ignorant about them, however, he did do a build related to something I am at least aware of and have interacted with.

Star Trek

These videos are related to Michael's build of "The Sword of Kahless" which, in Star Trek cannon, was the first bat'leth ever forged. Here is the "Smash" video for this build.



See, wasn't that FUN!!! He used a Sharpie to paint his face like a Klingon! It's a beautiful piece of work. However, to really grasp the level of detail and effort he put into this weapon, you really should check out the build video. It's a little bit longer but it shows just how talented Michael is. He's pretty good about explaining what's happening on the screen at any moment. Also, he has an accent which makes him even easier to watch.



Man, what did I say about detail. All that pattern grinding by hand!!

As I said before, I really connect with how these videos turn out because it reminds me of how I am when I'm working on something. I'm muttering to myself, trying things that sometimes work and sometimes don't. I like the realism of the videos. The Discovery Channel did produce six episodes of a show called "Big Giant Swords" where Michael and a crew of people he assembled built some swords. I have watched clips from the show on YouTube but it just wasn't the same. It seemed too polished and gimmicky. I believe that was cancelled shortly after it was started so now he is back to being his own entity.


It's kinda strange because, as a fabricator/blacksmith, I don't really have a desire to build stuff like this. We are talking about swords that are sometimes over 100 lbs and 6 feet long. I'm not really even into blade-smithing, I just really enjoy watching people being wonderfully creative in whichever medium excites them. Plus some of the skills, tricks and equipment are transferable.This isn't to say that if someone approached me about making a knife or a sword that I would reject the idea right away. I'm more than willing to discuss any idea. I've made knives and at least one Uruk Hai sword for a friend and it was fun but they aren't my main focus. He has started a patreon to help pay for the immense time it takes to make these videos. He has said that most swords take about a month to build and each build video takes about a full work week to edit and assemble. I hope to be able to jump in on that in the near future. Until then I will be waiting eagerly for the next build video to be posted.