End of Building Season

I've about run out of time to work this fall as the weather keeps getting colder. This weekend I finished the roof, the window frames are all in, and the cupola frame is in. The cordwood is about four feet tall all the way around the structure, although I'm definitely running low on wood and will have to prepare some more for spring.

Cordwood Masonry Takes Time

After about 16 hours of cordwood work, the East (back) wall is about 4' tall on the left side and 2' tall on the right, the south wall around the electric switch is about 4' tall, and I have just started the North wall. The East window frame is in and hopefully in a few days I will have the North window in.

The cordwood in big open spaces doesn't take too long, but the corners take way longer than they should. I guess fake stacked corners may still not be the way to go....

Fake Stacked Corners and First Bit of Cordwood

Fake Stacked Corners
I've been studying cord wood masonry construction for quite some time now. One of the design traits I really like is stacked corners, sometimes also known as Lomax corners - but they take a lot of time to build and require quite a few piece of the 4x4 or 4x6 size. I didn't have enough 4x4s to build the three required corners, and I really wanted to get the roof up soon so I had to forgo the stacked corners - but I still wanted the look of it.

Then along came the idea of the fake stacked corner method. I built a post and beam structure, but I moved the posts inwards by 1 1/2" inches to accommodate attaching 2x4 cutoffs in such a manner as to appear as if they were a stacked corner. I already had a large pile of 2x4 cutoffs I had obtained for free, some were 27-1/2" long, others were 24", so alternating them to create a simple pattern up the wall was easy - and cheap. It also greatly reduced the amount of cordwood needed for the structure. In the end, this method probably took as much time as if I had built regular stacked corners, but it was well suited for the materials I had on hand - and allowed me to get the roof up sooner.

The First Bits of Cordwood
After 2 months of construction I am just starting to lay cordwood. Over the next couple of days I hope to fill in the rest of the south wall and have the east wall in the back of the building tall enough to install the window buck. I also still have a small amount of stone masonry work to do on the outside walls near the forge - and then build up the forge itself of course.

The Roof (Frame) is Up

The smithy is progressing along. After almost a month doing masonry work I was able put up the corner posts, beams and trusses in one afternoon - although I had framed the trusses up the day before.

The next item to do is to fill in the walls. Once the walls are filled in the temporary bracing can come off and the structure should be rock solid - and then I will go up on the roof and install the decking, cupola, and shingles. I've temporarily tarped the structure, until I put the decking down.

Yes, I did say cupola. Among the many crazy things I am doing (many for the first time) on this project I am going to build a cupola on the roof that will act as the chimney for the forge. But more on that later....

Smithy Progessing Along

The walls are slowly progressing along, as is the forge itself. All of the stones are set in a mortar mix. For the small foundation walls I used a lime-portland-sand mix of 1:1:3. Near the forge I used a high-temp version of 2:1:4.

For the arch of the forge I used some pavers I cut in half. I was going to dress some stones but I could only find half as many as I needed in a size close to what I
wanted.

As you can probably also see from the pictures I am not building 8" tall walls. After going 4" tall most of the way around I am quite satisfied that I have done enough stone masonry on this project - winter is coming and it's time to move on to another phase in the construction. I decided that the 4" tall walls will be fine for protecting the cordwood from splatter from the ground.

The Smithy Is Underway!!!

The foundation pour is complete, in a few days I will tear the forms off and start building up the 8" tall Celtic random rubble walls.

The Craftsman

Anyone who has ever heard of Gustav Stickley and spent any amount of time looking into his furniture has probably heard of The Craftsman. Stickley published the magazine from 1901 to 1916. Some of the early years (pre 1904) focus mainly on ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, however the later years have everything from simple living, to house designs, to how to make furniture. The best part is - the University of Wisconsin has scans of all 180 issues available online for free right here

A New Focus

I created this blog to be able to post easy updates on what I'm working on in the shop - and then along came GooglePages. Now my website is just as easy to update. I will still post the occasional progress report on this blog, but from now on many of my entries will be links to web resources. I'm continually doing research on old ways of doing things and I keep coming across FREE resources on the net that I really wish I had known about five years ago. In hopes others might be able to find them I will post them here.

-Fergs

Thoughts on the Twin Screw Vise

I've had the Lee Valley Twin Screw vise for a couple of months, tonight I had to use a regular vise at Class to cut dovetail and realized how much I love my Twin Screw. It's really nice to be able to slip the piece through the vice and start cutting the tails.

Thoughts on the Steel City Mortiser

I picked up the Steel City Mortiser about 2 weeks ago from Woodcraft at the Woodworks Show in Springfield, MA. With the $50 rebate and only 5% tax it came out to about $230 for the mortiser with 4 chisels. The packaging was exceptional, you just have to be careful opening the crate so that you dont slice the manual in half.

The first fence that was included with the mortiser had some corrosion and overspray, but SCTW responded within a few hours of my first email and sent out a new one. Great communications, hopefully as the company gets larger they will keep the great communications and customer service up.

Some of the great features of this mortiser include the horizontal feed rollers, the extension supports, and the easy access to the chuck to install the bit. The horizontal feed rollers work very nice for holding the workpiece to the fence and also do a pretty good job keeping the workpiece down to the table. The extension supports are a nice design. The giant opening in the front of the casting allows very good access to the chuck for installing the bit. The plastic door knob is a little hard to use, it has a washer on it that tends to fall back and get stuck meaning you have to pull it back out in order to close the clear plastic doors, I finally got fed up with it and just superglued the plastic washer to the knob. The fence ratchet movement is very smooth, and the locking mechanism works very well.

The mortiser has good power, it cut 1/2" mortises in Hard Maple with no problem. The chisels were sharp right out of the box, I plan to get one of those sharpening cone dealies at some point to see how much better it makes the chisels work, but it already works quite well.

After getting this I don't know how I got away without a mortiser for so long. This tool has really increased my productivity.