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 The Old "Shop"

Before I went full-time, I apparently had the foresight to take this picture of my old shop, thinking that one day, I might have a better one and it might be fun to look back at the old one with fondness.  Yeah, I know it wasn't much of a "shop", just a few junky tools in a 2 car garage.  Come to think of it, it was a shame to leave the cars outside just to make room for this mess.

There are a few highlights to notice:

My first forge on the  left.  It was several soft firebricks wired together with tie wire.  There was a little hole on the front and a large hole in the bottom for the burner.  The burner is a giant venturi burner from a kiln that could probably have heated a chamber 100 times the size of my forge. However, you can see that I do have a pyrometer mounted on the wall behind the forge running to a thermocouple in the side of the forge to tell the temperature.  The whole arrangement was propped up on a few cinderblocks.  For the safety conscious, here's a heart attack...  What you can't see in the photo is that just out of the frame on the left is my water heater.  I ran a length of pvc pipe from the gas line on the water heater to my forge about 2 feet away.  One bad bump would have knocked the forge over, broken the pvc pipe and kaboom!  I have gotten a little smarter.

The ammo can on the floor next to the forge holds my quenching oil.

My "anvil" at the bottom left.  It was a section of railroad rail my dad found at a junkyard.  I never bothered to grind the top flat, I just left it like it was.  Needless to say, it's a little hard to forge a blade straight when your anvil is curved across the top.

My grinder on the workbench.  This was a particularly awful piece of junk that I was given as a gift new many years before.  I had cut it apart and welded it back together a few times trying to modify and/or fix it.  The whole thing shook like a belly dancer when it was running.  Also notice the little spindle on the left of the motor that I used to mount a buffing wheel.