Open shop 12/17/10
Friday's open shop was full of people, and very busy. Wilhelm brought over the baronial guard's halberds, which needed some TLC. He'd managed to get the thick, crusty rust off, but there was some deep pitting, and some of the welds had gotten a bit pithy. We popped the rivets out so we could take them off the hafts, and got aggressive with our improvements. Here he is polishing one of them:
I've sunk a couple rods of extra steel into these guys. After all the rust, the original welds are like sponges.
Barnet fired his greaves. Martel made some gauntlet repairs and worked on strapping her shield so she can play left handed.
Nicola fired his elbows and got the worst of the forge scale off. This is what they looked like out of the tempering oven:
Hands and Diane made progress on vambrace splints. Wilhelm's in the background grinding away. You can see a snippet of my neighbor's winter wonderland through the open door. It's really spectacular, and even contains a festive Christmas frog. Seriously, I love that goofy little frog.
Conspicuously absent from the wall is my slightly racy poster of ladies getting armoured. I took it down Wednesday morning because I was teaching a class here on armouring to a homeschool class. It didn't seem quite appropriate. The class went quite well. We covered a great big overview of armour, and managed to give a good lesson on metallurgy. Through the wonderment of science these little kids managed to snap a steel rod into little bits with their fingers. An apparently identical rod they couldn't even bend, and another they could turn into a pretzel, but not break. They got to watch and even help with all the firing, quenching and normalizing, but I'm not sure if they really understood what was going on. Hopefully it sparked some curiosity.
Life in the busy shop. Nicola grinding out temp rivets, Hands fitting splints, Martel polishing her gauntlets. You can see one of the halberd heads sparkling in the foreground.
I've sunk a couple rods of extra steel into these guys. After all the rust, the original welds are like sponges. 
Barnet fired his greaves. Martel made some gauntlet repairs and worked on strapping her shield so she can play left handed.
Nicola fired his elbows and got the worst of the forge scale off. This is what they looked like out of the tempering oven:
Hands and Diane made progress on vambrace splints. Wilhelm's in the background grinding away. You can see a snippet of my neighbor's winter wonderland through the open door. It's really spectacular, and even contains a festive Christmas frog. Seriously, I love that goofy little frog.
Conspicuously absent from the wall is my slightly racy poster of ladies getting armoured. I took it down Wednesday morning because I was teaching a class here on armouring to a homeschool class. It didn't seem quite appropriate. The class went quite well. We covered a great big overview of armour, and managed to give a good lesson on metallurgy. Through the wonderment of science these little kids managed to snap a steel rod into little bits with their fingers. An apparently identical rod they couldn't even bend, and another they could turn into a pretzel, but not break. They got to watch and even help with all the firing, quenching and normalizing, but I'm not sure if they really understood what was going on. Hopefully it sparked some curiosity.Life in the busy shop. Nicola grinding out temp rivets, Hands fitting splints, Martel polishing her gauntlets. You can see one of the halberd heads sparkling in the foreground.
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