Jenny Smith

Hello i saw your ad my wife and i arent looking for a place to stay but we have been starting a 5 acre food forest in charlotte MI. So it sounds like we are neighbors we have been wanting to find other likeminded individuals near us to learn from, befriend, and trade with. Would love to chat with you sometime pm me if you want to any time. We would love to get to know you bettet

Jenny

I agree with jim on froes as both of mine came from an old truck if you turn a handle out of ash that is too thick to pass through the eye of the froe it can be removed and reversed if necicary

No need to bolt it in as a froe is twisted in use

I agree that it seemes silly they don't seel them in a modern hardwear store they are really useful for splitting kindling

If you are shy a leaf spring i do have one laying around

Where you thinking swept back like the barb on a hapoon or more straight across like a mutt or ice chisel?

Trying to picture it i could use one to we have allot of multiflora. Rosa on the farm to chop and drop at will

Let me know i would be happy to take on ghe commision

Jenny

Jusd a mad idea of mine i am trying to find a way to quit my day job and do somthing good for the world i am looking for ideas i gave been blacksmithing for 10 years and in that time i have learned to make just about any tool you might need on a homestead. So i was wondering what tool / tools do you all need that you simply cannot find at the local hardwear store i have a few ideas like you just cannot find a fro nowadays but i was wondering what you all want that you simply cannot find?

Hello we just took the plunge and built our first RMH we went with a 8" system in our basement through an existing fireplace so we have 25' vertical chimney to vent and all of the runs are downhill from the chimney. the bench has 18' of pipe with 3 turns.  i am on my 5th fire trying to dry the bench out  and we are having condensation drain from all our clean outs is this normal in a new system (lots of wet cob still )? will this likely go away ? or did i plan all my ducting wrong? she drafts well with a good woosh and no smoke from the chimney once she gets going but i worry about the abundance of liquid smoke (4-6 ounces per burn) when i am not making jerky. oh we are burning 2 year old seasoned ash that has been in a open wood shed.

Any Help would be welcome?

thanks

Jenny

From my understanding bio-char is charcoal same thing if it is black all the way through then you have charcoal. if your wood is being held in a mostly sealed iron box or can above the electric heating element in your smoker that i assume glows red like the heating element on a stove you will cook off all the volatile compounds in the wood and and up with charcoal. ( glowing incandescent red at a medium red orange means 1500- 1800 degrees f the smoke box in your smoker only needs to be 500-700 to cook off most of the volatile compounds in wood to make it into charcoal and give the food that yummy taste we all enjoy.
the thermometer in you smoker should be up top telling you the actual temp of the cooking area in a good smoker this should be around 150-200 f or you are broiling your food.

put your charcoal in the garden and watch it keep water, oxygen & microbes for you in the soil where you Want it and feel free that there is no more magic to bio char than that.

jenny

Thanks for the apple if you need any advice on rehabilitating old tools or techniques for making them yourself out of metal let me know steel is green the whole way through one small in investmet should last you a lifetime or it was made poorly out of substandard materiel.

my path to self sufficiency has led me down the road of learning wherever i can how to make the tools of mankind and it is my duty to share with my fellows the knologe of the ancients.

feel free to ask anything if i don't know i will tell you i don't know.

Jenny

Excellent point it is not all ways the tool but the user who makes it work well you can do great work with shoddy equipment and damn poor work with great equipment i was attacking the topic more from the reasons behind the design than which is better. Asian and old Finnish/ Swedish tools are a joy to use for the same reasons they both took great care in selection of their material and their attention to how the tool would be used.

as a general rule i have found the Japanese to have a better overall approach to tool design in ergonomics and making tools over all that work with the bodies natural flow of movement and as a tool maker myself i highly revere their work both European and Japanese smiths made tools with laminated blades for the same reasons steel is strong can be hardened and will hold an edge a long time and also during the pre industrial era expensive. iron is tough durable and relatively cheap by comparison during forging most axes from that era would have a iron body and a high carbon steel edge that was seamlessly forge welded into the body of the axe so that when the final shape of the tool was rendered only the last 1/2 inch or 12mm or so of the cutting edge would actually be steel the rest of the tool is made from lower grade iron.

part of the way Japanese tools are made and what fascinates me is that they learned without the advent of modern technology to find and exploit these differences in the metallurgy of iron purely by color, tone touch, and feel of the smith producing some of the most metallurgicaly superior tools of the era.

European smiths using a basically inferior smelting technique had wrought iron and low grade steel to work with ( higher grades of steel where available but worth their weight in gold they to came upon the same solution to put the best materiel forward where it would do the most good but had even less availability of good steel to work with making a good axe out of nothing but steel would guarantee only a lord or king could afford it

obviously the drawback to a tool with a steel edge and iron body is that every time you sharpen it you remove some of the steel at the edge of the tool eventually the tool may be sharpened to the point where there is no longer any steel at the edge giving you a very early iron age axe the must be sharpened after every tree or so. i have seen many an axe that has been used until it is nothing but an iron collar around the handle usually out of the love of the user these are perfect for hanging on the wall as they where great tools when they where made but have been essentially used up.

One other piece of advice in buying old second hand tools is that it should have the exact shape, size and profile you would expect of the tool when new: rounded corners, foreshortened blades, and chips, are all bad signs bid low

if you have a bare axe blade in your hand and you hold it gently by the back and tap it with another metal object it should ring like a bell this would indicate that what ever it is made of it is sound and free from stress fractures probably a good buy even if it looks rusty and dull ( this test wont work on an ax that has a handle)

Sorry about the long winded reply i get exited by tools

also sorry about the name change the moderators did not like my name as Black Smith even though i am one

i am also sorry about the tardy reply Please forgive me as i have spent the day moving form my 1/10th of an acre farm in the city to 5 acres in the country 30 miles away that i just can't wait to permie up

first farm jitters what can i say 5 acres of old growth timber rolling hills and swamp sigh ......everything a girl could want except a Cobb building to house her shop !!!

well gotta finish movi'n so i can get permining.

Enjoy

Jenny

hello i recently found a beauty of a broad axe second hand at a barn sale for 25$ USA if you look closely at an American pattern ( pattern may be originally Swedish or Finnish i just know we made tons of them hear in the USA and you can find them all over.) broad axe you will notice not only the bent handle but unlike the Japanese pattern which has the beard but lacks a flat face this makes the Japanese axe a more Generalized tool that will carve fell and split as well as square. a traditional American pattern is dead flat on the one side to the edge and beveled on the other and sharped from only one side like a chisel. See image linked below

http://www.traditionalwoodworker.com/images/367-7505-lg.jpg

This allows you to control the cut so you can hew a beam almost dead flat as if you planed it without the axe biting into the grain as the plane of the cut can be parallel to your intended final surface and still cut the waste away this handedness of the tool of course makes it more specialized and less useful for felling or splitting but you still could in a pinch.

We also have the collector problem here in the USA people even put pretty paintings on them and hang them up on the wall a poor use for a good old tool. to avoid paying a collectors premium i kept looking at flea markets junk shops and barn/estate sales until i found one for cheap mind you it did not come with the bent stick it was axe head only and rusty and dull you can carve a handle and most farmers back in the day did if you want a really strong handle you will never find in a store look for a branch of a tree that already has the bend you want for the handle in it and carve it to final shape that way the grain will follow the bend naturally and keep it strong or you can make it straight and steam bend it when it is done.

rust can be removed, dull can be sharpened, if you have made one handle you can always make another.

also many people who hew beams also have a right and a left handed axe and learn to work ambidextrously so they can always follow the grain without splitting it out.

If i find another i can ship you one but from the frozen north of Michigan to Australia might cost as much as buying a collectors piece.

good luck and happy hunting.

Black Smith