Fun at work

[wroughtn_harv]

I started out with a piece of three quarter by three quarter bar stock. I heated it and hammered it until that little lizard started coming out.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

These are the horseshoes that are going to be in the address thingy. It was a three legged horse and it took me three days to pull these puppies off of it. If it had four legs I'd still be trying.

That's my foot just for perspective.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

This is the Colorado boulder that's gonna get the sword.

You have to wonder just what's with some folks. I told my bud his rock was gonna get a sword and he thought it was just short of super kewl and neater'n a pin.

My wife gave me a look like I was bragging about stepping in dog doo. I'm not sure if it's a man woman thing or if it's the old opposites attract kind of deal???????????

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Here's what four days of work will get you. Seven hundred plus pounds of rock and steel. And all just because she told me she wanted something unique with her street number on it.

We finish it up and install it tomorrow.

BTW I finally got the excuse to learn how to use a chisel to put digits in rocks. Gawd, I love it. Not good at it, but I love it.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Another view.

Tell me just who is the luckiest guy you know? I mean to blacksmith, weld, play with rocks, and get paid for all of it...../w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif.

 

[Harv]

Harv -

Is this a bad time to tell you that her address is actually 17? /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Pretty impressive and creative. Looks a little precarious in the picts, but then you're not in California like I am. The ground probably stays in one place where you are.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

A little gorilla glue and everything pinned. It's stable.

Here's a picture of Iris getting ready to load'm up for a delivery, aka forking around with the boss./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Here she is ready to be bound down for truckin'.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

This is one trick hitch. I saw it. I bought it. I installed it. I love it. (The pintle hitch above is for the real trailer)

 

[wroughtn_harv]

This is the rocks, shoes, and lizards at their new home. The customer liked it plenty fine it seems. They wanted unique. I do think there's not another on this side of town like it.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Another angle to ogle.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

What was hilarious was I happened to see a bud at the feed store in town so I stopped in to let him check out the piece. One of the old boys working there stared real hard at the shoes and then asked me if they were genuine or just fabricated.

I looked him dead straight in his good eye and told him they were genuine cause I'd fabricated them myself.

Did I mention these lizards are the same ones having so much in that fire up a post or two?

I had to separate them. They're both flirts.

 

[wallysue]

Cool Harv, What ideas you come up with. Please keep posting pics.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Okay Wallysue!

This is a pipe fence I'm putting around some areas of the new Weatherford High. If'n you're going down twenty west of Ft Worth and you see this blue streak just off the freeway, well chances are, I'm working./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

You're looking down six hundred feet of fence this picture.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Here's the same line from just a tad off kilter. It isn't perfect. But then few things really are.

I do this all by eye, height and line, just an easy way for an old man to do young man's work and live to tell about it./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[wroughtn_harv]

This is the perspective I look at when sighting them in. I see what you're looking at now and then I'm looking for the post in my hand to be one with the rest in the line. I just drop down the eye until it happens.

Then I know it's gonna be fine.

The good thing about doing it like this is you only have to worry about one post at a time. It's sorta like trying to get through a year. If you do it a day at a time before you know it a years done gone.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

And this is where we're gonna go tomorrow.

Yup.

That line is going up and making a bend. And then it makes another bend and then it really takes off upwards kinda like. About seven hundred feet or so.

And if I'm lucky it will come out just fine. There is some luck involved. And I do believe in luck. In fact I'd rather be lucky than good. Heck anyone can be good. That only takes working at it./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[wroughtn_harv]

I don't know if you noticed but them holes were a touch large. They're a foot plus across and three feet deep.

I told the locals the other day at breakfast that they must have some real mean short fellas around town. I'm building a heckuva fence and it's only twenty inches tall. Their short fellas must really be something.

Here's the way we do it. The mixer takes nine bags of maximizer. That's nine cubic feet. Nine cubic feet gives me enough concrete for four holes. We're not filling them all the way to the top, landscaping. There's thirty five bags to a pallet. So I get less than sixteen holes per pallet. That whole line in the pictures is about thirteen hundred feet. That's about three hundred sacks.

The concrete bucket that fits on the tractor pays for itself on a job like this. To set up the mixing operation I have to have room. So this place they've assigned to me and the stucco contractor is about a quarter of a mile at the closest point to where the posts are. So I put a mixer load into the tractor bucket. Dump the concrete in four holes. Sight them in. Then go back and mix up another load and do it all over again.

Ain't bad. Pays better than what you'd think. You get to see something from start to finish and done well. And while the hands are busy, my oh my, the mind does get to play.

But then you knew that, right?

 

[DUMBDOG]

Harv

Do not know about you, but the years seem to go by to fast now, but I still take it a day at a time./w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

 

[wallysue]

Wow thats a lotta fence! How much 5P you figure will get burned to stick it together? Wally