Metal working badge brainstorming

I would like to suggest a campfire rotisserie or a tripod.

Wayne Fajkus wrote:I bought 4 tripod stands recently.  They are GREAT. I put 4 in line to cut boards or pipe. Nothing falls to ground. I Put them in a rectangle for plywood(like 2 sawhorses).. Easy to store. When welding horizontal fence pipe, the height adjustability holds the other end up. Mine are vee shaped at top for pipe. I drilled 2 holes in the vee so i can screw a board across the top for lumber.

A good point about screwing on a wood top, either for flat/smooth surface OR as a waster to saw into!

Paul, how's that wall-mounted lever splitter working out for you? That seems like another easy fabrication job.

Nobody uses it.  Everybody uses the "cracker".  I'm not even sure what phrase would best describe the wall mounted thing.

after I watched the wooden cracker video, another was cued up to play afterwards

Embed it here?


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Today is another day and I am now thinking that there are so many excellent lessons in the cracker that I think that should be the core of the sand badge.  Plus, I think it is something that Otis would be impressed with.  

Danger Will Robinson!!! The ranger's not gonna like that Yogi!!! You'll shoot your eye out!!! It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye!!!
DANGEROUS upturned blade on a stump KINDLING (and everything else) CRACKER

I think the bucket for the blood fits under the blade on the left...? YIKES!

Yikes, Kenneth.  That one does need either blood gutters to help with clean up or the ring/cage up above the blade for safety!

Right now I'm aiming to make mine this weekend.  I'm opting for the top ring over blood gutters.  ;)  

Gonna try to make the sand badge for this in the next few hours.   Any more ideas?

For what it's worth, I'm working on finishing up my kindling cracker today.  Then I plan to make a blog post much like I did with the copper tongs.  I suspect though that the You Tube videos out there might be better instructional material.  I've almost got it done, but the blade needs to be ground down narrower and sharper to work better I think.  Ugh, it's a lot of grinding to make a blade!

One other idea I had for a project was to make a clean out tool for a rocket mass heater.  Since you can't really buy them, as far as I know, anyone with a RMH would need to rig something up anyway.

The cleanout tool is an excellent idea!

I just finished making my kindling cracker.  OMG!!  That is an awesome tool!

David Huang wrote:I just finished making my kindling cracker.  OMG!!  That is an awesome tool!

pics!

Would you call it a good beginner project?

David Huang wrote:I just finished making my kindling cracker.

How long did it take you to make it?

paul wheaton wrote:

David Huang wrote:I just finished making my kindling cracker.

How long did it take you to make it?

Is it a beginner project?  That's a hard one for me to say.  I would probably place it in the advanced beginner category.  It's certainly much more involved than the copper tongs I posted about before, which would be an easy beginner.  

The kindling cracker, as I made it, involved cutting steel, bending to form a ring, welding, drilling holes, and a lot of grinding to make my blade.  I started it on Friday, spending a couple hours, measuring, cutting the steel, bending my upper ring, and deburring/rust removal.  This time was longer than it could have been because I was stopping to photograph a lot for a blog post tutorial.  It was also much longer because I didn't really have ideal tools for cutting the steel bar.  With a good metal bandsaw it would have likely been less than an hour.  With a plasma cutter possibly even less.  On Saturday when I was at a friends home who has a welder I did the welding, maybe another hour and change.  Again I was stopping to photograph, plus learning a bit on the fly as I've never done stick welding before.  Today I spent probably 3 hours drilling the holes to mount the removable blade and then grinding the 1/2" thick blade bar down to a splitting edge.  Most of the time was in the grinding of the blade.  I've also got tools in 3 widely separate buildings so far too much time is spent walking from one to the other to get that tool I forgot I needed.  So my guesstimate would be around 6 hours for the one I made.  I'm sure it could be less if someone knew what they were doing and had proper tools all set to go.  In fact, I think it would be fairly easy to set this up into a small production operation to make multiples as a business venture.  That said, while I'm not as experienced with steel work, I'm not new to metalwork either.  I can imagine it taking a truly new person longer.

What it has going for it as a beginner project, aside from all the different skills one can learn doing it, is that it's fairly forgiving with regards to precise measurements and perfect welds, holding everything in the exact right spot and angle.  Put differently, you can be pretty sloppy and get away with it.  Mine is not pretty or beautifully crafted by any means.  It also allows for much adaptation to what materials are on hand.  Broken down to the basics you want to get a splitting blade mounted upright a foot or so high, and a safety ring/cage at least a few inches above that.  It needs to sit securely either with a heavy base, as I did it, or by bolting down to a stump.  It also needs to be able to take the force of the hammer, so welds or joints can't be too sloppy.  

It's other advantage as a PEP project is that it is a HIGHLY useful tool!  Wow, was it great to split wood on this thing, compared to how I was doing it with an axe.  Anyone who heats with wood really should have such a tool.

Here is what I think the sand badge will be:

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build a kindling cracker
  - cage accepts wood 9 inches in diameter
           o bolted to a tall chopping block
           o lots of knots in block
           o bolted offset
  - stamp “made by” followed by your name on it

(wood burning tools list) complete 1
  - poker
  - tongs
  - rmh scoop
  - metal rack to hold a poker, a set of tongs and an rmh scoop

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This makes a very complete sand badge.  I would be will to rename the "wood burning tools list" to something else and add a whole bunch of projects there.  And I would be willing to have a second list that includes the cracker as one of the projects.

paul wheaton wrote:Here is what I think the sand badge will be:

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build a kindling cracker
  - cage accepts wood 9 inches in diameter
           o bolted to a tall chopping block
           o lots of knots in block
           o bolted offset
  - stamp “made by” followed by your name on it

I'd suggest the cage accept wood 8 inches in diameter, but only for selfish reasons since the one I just made can only split wood 8.5"  :)  
That irrelevant bit aside, I don't understand the reasons for bolting to a tall chopping block, or why lots of knots in the block?  I made mine with a heavy base just because I happened to have something that would work for that.  (photos will come later)  In using it I first set it on a higher stump to do the splitting and felt it was too high of a work station.  I went a bit lower and still felt it was too high.  In the end I set it on a couple 8 inch high cinder blocks I had lying around and that seemed like a good height.  Hence, I'm a bit confused as to why a tall block?

For what it's worth here is a link to a blog post I just finished covering how I went about making my kindling cracker, only I decided I should call it a kindling splitter in the post since kindling cracker is a trademark name.  https://theartisthomestead.com/an-incredible-tool-for-splitting-kindling/


I'm extremely please with how well this tool works and would strongly encourage anyone who has a rocket mass heater to consider making one.

How about calling it a "whacker cracker"?  :)

Wood popper?

I've been calling mine a kindling splitter, but that does lack pizzazz.  I'd say we could call it a wood whacker, but then I realized that could have some other questionable associations!

David Huang wrote:I've been calling mine a kindling splitter, but that does lack pizzazz.  I'd say we could call it a wood whacker, but then I realized that could have some other questionable associations!

Which makes it even better!

We made the official metal working badge page here:

https://permies.com/wiki/108547/PEP-Badge-Metal-Working


So all further brainstorming and discussion is going to happen on that page.   I'm going to lock this thread.