Greetings, friends. (XXIV)

Greetings, friends. Today was a sequence of catastrophes in miniature. I confess that almost didn’t write a journal entry, but I don’t want to burn a streak freeze. Please excuse the cheese sandwich nature of this post. It is almost 23:30 and I wish I were already in bed.

That’s partly because I woke up at 05:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep. At one point I actually got up and went and turned on the kettle because I figured it just wasn’t happening. Next thing I know it’s 09:00 and I’ve just had a set of absolutely terrible dreams.

This was mildly frustrating, because, having accomplished so little on the bookshelf brackets yesterday, I wanted to get up early today in the hopes of making some progress on them.

I started deep in the aforementioned yak shave, though. Remember, I just wanted some bookshelves to hang on my wall, so that I could finally finish unpacking the books. Then I decided I wanted to make my own bookshelves, and then my own wall brackets.

Before my last trip to New Hampshire, I actually went and bought 12 inches of flat bar steel in the right width and thickness, measured it all out, and cut it into 9 strips of 16 inches each using an angle grinder.

Then I set up the forge, which meant reattaching the burner to the forge, and reattaching the forge to the stand, and finding a propane bottle, and attaching the propane bottle to the regulator.

Then I set up the anvil, which meant finding the chain I had previously used to hold the anvil to the stand, along with the turnbuckle I’d used to tighten the chain with, and then spending a whole bunch of time fussing around trying to figure out exactly which way I’d had the chain wrapped around the stand to hold the anvil in place.

Then I tried to light the forge, which was itself a miniature comedy of errors. My propane torch wouldn’t light, even I could hear that there was propane in the can. Besha’s barbecue lighter mysteriously wouldn’t spark. She found a box of long matches in the kitchen, and I swear three of them snapped before I got one lit.

I was able to heat the ends of each of the 9 pieces of flat bar, and hammer a lip into each one over the side of the anvil, which was the first of the two bends I need to put into each bracket. The short lip retains the shelf on the bracket, two holes get drilled and countersunk into the horizontal bottom of the bracket to affix the shelf to the bracket, and then the vertical ascender of the “L” shape gets two more holes drilled and countersunk to attach the bracket to the studs in the wall.

Well, friends, the half inch or so lip I had meant to bend into each bracket as a preliminary wound up being anywhere from ½” to 1½”. The results from just marking off the lip on the flat bar, and then hammering over the edge of the anvil were very erratic. Some of it was just me being out of practice. Hot steel doesn’t always bend in simple ways. Sure, the lip bent over the edge of the anvil, but then the whole bracket would bow, and then need to be flattened. My hammer blows were kind of all over the place.

Moreover the anvil stand had an annoying tendency to walk towards me as I hammered. This was a serious problem and not one I had really had to contend with on the wooden floor in the shipping container at the Box Shop.

The truth was that I really should have been bending the bracket in a vise, not free-handing it over the side of the anvil. Fortunately I have a blacksmith’s post vise, minus the post, which was somehow broken off of the thing long before I bought it. I’d been meaning to attach it to the forge stand for a long time, and had never gotten around to it.

There was already a hole drilled into the stand, so I just needed to use an angle grinder to remove a bunch of bent steel that someone had welded to the top of the stand, then drill a second hole in the right location, bolt the vise to the stand through the two holes, and then strap what was left of the post of the bottom of the vise to one of the legs of the stand with a hose clamp.

As for bolting down the anvil stand to the concrete, I did eventually come up with a plan for that, which involved getting a couple steel anchor points, and bolting them to the concrete with concrete fasteners.

The problem was that I’d never drilled anything into concrete before, and I am slightly terrified of damaging permanently installed fixtures like concrete pads. I cleared this plan with Besha, who asked me if, while I was at it, I might not also bolt down her boot scrapers to the steps near the side door.

I thought I’d start with the boot scrapers. I bought some masonry bits in the right size, got out my brand new cordless impact driver, and put two insufficiently deep holes into the concrete before the drill bit stopped working. I think one of the carbide drill tips actually broke off in the bottom of the hole. I wasn’t getting anywhere.

That was weeks ago, before I went to New Hampshire. I haven’t even gotten to today’s catastrophes.

Remember the bookshelves? I’m supposed to be making bookshelves. I still don’t have bookshelves on my wall.

If you’re reading this, I’m grateful for your sympathies. Thank you. Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet cessandam est. More tomorrow.