Been working

As usual, things have been pretty busy around here.

I've still been working on building stock for my craft shows, but I haven't spent a whole lot of time on this as we've been doing other things. Whenever I can spare a day or two from blacksmithing, dad and I work on the barn.
Our accomplishments on that include finishing about three-quarters of the exterior siding, adding more second story flooring and shelving, jacking up posts in the old barn to repair the rotten bases, removing a TON more dirt from the old barn, and buildng a wall along my side of the shop to divide my shop from the old barn. Now we are working on making me a room dedicated to steel storage and cutting. This frees up a lot of space in my shop.
Here are a couple pictures.

This is the wall dad and I built. The opening on the far end will be a door with two steps going into the lower section of the barn. (The old barn sits about 18 inches lower than the new shop.) 

The opening in the above picture leads to my "up-and-coming" steel storage and cutting room.

At long last, I have begun work on the 12' enclosed trailer I purchased a month or so ago. This trailer!

I am putting six shelves inside the trailer. Three that are ten feet long will go on the left side of the trailer, and three that are eight feet long will go on the right side of the trailer.

The frames are angle iron and the shelf itself will be wood. Here are the frames.

One of the ten footers clamped to the welding table.

Here is one side of one shelf unit.

Here is one whole shelf, minus the legs.

One of my welds!

In addition to all of this, I have just completed a blacksmith order. One custom firepoker and one custom grill fork.

Here they are.

And finally!

After a long, expensive, and sometimes frustrating set of events, I have my power hammer up and running. It is hitting strong and true. The entire hammer and it's base weighs somewhere between 1200 and 1500 pounds. Despite this, the vibration of the hammer makes the hammer "walk." I had not used it for thirty minutes and it had walked about 4 inches. At that rate it would be across my shop in a couple hours. So, I made some stakes out of 1-inch solid round bar and drove them into the ground around the hammer. They seem to have done the trick. I used the hammer to put the points on the round bar. In one heat the hammer could taper the 1-inch bar down to a good point. I'll post a video and pictures next time I use it!

Till then,
"Let courage rise with danger and strength to strength oppose!"