Wood, Metal, and Leather! Oh my!

It's fair season here in MN. County fairs, Renaissance fairs, reenactment fairs and more! Lots of these events hire blacksmith demonstrators so I wind up at a lot of them. What you're looking at is a (47) double-decker nail flattened into a sword. I sell them for a buck, but sometimes I give them to kids for free or for a completed quest.

A toasting fork for all your lightly heated needs! Meat, marshmallows, cheese, bread. It all fits on a fork.

Big loopy handle that twists back into itself.

The tines are bent in opposing directions so that one is always pointed up, hopefully preventing your food from slipping off.

A variety of knives. They got hit with a wire wheel immediately aftet this pic.

Here's a set of in-progress drawer pulls made out of railroad spike heads. There will be a completion pic in a future post.

One little shop upgrade. It's a wall rack to hold hardy tools and treddle hammer dies.

A hardy hole is the square hole in anvils. It exists as a way to hold a tool in a working position without needing an extra hand or helper. I mostly use it for cutting tools, but I have a shaping tool called a guillotine that I get a lot of work out of.

A tredel hammer is a foot powered hammer, mine is the blue thing in the background. Incredible invention for saving your shoulder and elbow. To maximize usefulness yoy need to make dies that act as different parts of the anvil and different hammer heads. The problem is that then they sit around and get in the way. The rack here solves that problem for me.

Lining up wood options for a cutting board a friend ordered. This is maple, nogal (south american walnut), and padauk.

Looking at a freah glueup is always a "trust the process" moment. I tried to cut the lumber in a way that will allow me to add a handle alongside the working surface. We'll see if I used enough.

This is a fun one. A guy ordered a wallet from me with a customization: the King's Egg from Berserk. I have painting stuff so I took the job and it's coming along great!

A closeup of the finished artwork. I did NOT enjoy analyzing this thing as closely as I did for as long as I did.

Pepperjack resting after shredding some cardboard. Being a kitty is hard work.

Comment with things you're working on! I'd love to see what other imgurians make!