#PhotoOfTheDay is a before-and-after of my current post vise. I bought it when it was “farm fresh” and then restored it to good working condition, including fabricating a new spring for it. This is my 2nd post vise and 2nd restoration.
As with my first post vise, this one is likely a hundred or more years old. They are really wonderful, important tools for blacksmithing.
#photo #photography #blacksmithing
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Back in my early teens I had this fantasy that I would live in a cottage somewhere and be absolutely jacked with a wild beard and a smithy out back, wearing welding goggles and blasting NIN. Because of tools like these.
I guess it’s not too late but I have way too many hobbies.
@[email protected] I also have far too many hobbies but this one is fun and sometimes very useful!
“Specialization is for insects.” - Heinlein
@Geojoek @croyle That would be some honest work
@Geojoek @croyle When you say you had to fabricate a spring, what was involved in that? Did you have to forge or draw (I have no idea what the right term would be) your own spring steel? Or just cutting an existing spring to the correct shape/size?
Coil springs, at a minimum, are fascinating things, I watched a vid once of them being made commercially, and it’s an amazing process.
@scott @Geojoek In this specific case, a (one inch?) bar of mild steel cut to the right dimensions, bent and then with some small 'ears" beaten into it works just fine. I could have use spring steel but it’s not necessary in this case, and then would have probably involved an extra step of some heat treating at the end.
Coil springs are fascinating. I’ve forged corkscrews but not coil springs… Although I’ve forged a nice table knife out of a broken & rusted piece of coil spring that I found.
@[email protected] @[email protected] Here’s a photo of what the final spring (foreground) looked like and a photo with it in the center of the vise.
@[email protected] @[email protected] It really is a great looking vise.
@[email protected] @[email protected] For blacksmithing, I rely on it second only to my forge and anvil.
@scott
I could use some honest work. Few things are more dishonest than GIS.
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@Geojoek @croyle I’d like to get into lighthouse tending at this stage of my life. That would be a seismic shift.
@scott @Geojoek It’s sounds very peaceful, apart from the tourists and hopefully no desperate emergencies. :)
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Especially those Spanish speaking tourists looking for scrap metal.
@[email protected] @[email protected] I’d manage
@scott @croyle
I don’t think blasting 'Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" from the top several times a day would instill confidence in you, though.
@Geojoek @scott Well, it *is* a great song, but I’d leave that for after hours when the tourists have gone, for sure.
I do love lighthouses. I’ve been to most of them along the central and northern CA and OR coasts and we even have a couple of related knickknacks up on the walls of the house.
@[email protected] @[email protected] As the big songs go, it was bigger than most
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] You could also do LOTA!
@Geojoek @scott Haha, I’ll be sure to share that wisdom with my recently-graduated GIS-using kid. 😁
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Part of my job is sharing job listings with our GIS students, and I am still amazed at just how many there are, and the relatively high starting salaries most of them have [compared to geology].
@[email protected] @[email protected] Good! My kid will eventually need a job and preferably their own money. 😂
I suspect that on the pay front being a trained and competent computer user likely helps, as opposed to just like a field surveyor of old… Maybe?
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Yes, yes it does. Many GIS jobs are GIS + your current field, which can be lucractive, but other are just straight up GIS. Field surveying can be good money, though.
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