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What creative projects have you been working on?
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
I don’t know if this counts but I’m working on my set list for mums birthday party next week. Left it a bit late. Probably limit it to six or seven mostly Irish ballads. Getting nervous thinking about it.
One of my best friends had a new fence put in at his house with a sliding gate across the driveway. He had the fence built because they do need a new fence, but also to increase the value of the house when they go to sell and move in a year or two. He'd prefer a motor to open the fence for him, but adding a motor to do so is obviously one of those easy profit margins for fence builders as even a very expensive gate motor is $1k, but every single fence builder said adding a motor to slide the gate was $5k.
Installation labor costs money, it does not cost $4k markup money.
So he asked for a handle for the fence. Sent me a drawing of something he had in mind and I went from there to blacksmith one. It's made of 1" solid square steel that was 12" long before I started drawing it out for the finials, which is grossly overbuilt and you could club someone to death with it. Which is probably why they wouldn't allow it on an airplane, which he and my other best friend found out when they flew up to visit me last month and the other friend had half of his wrenches confiscated because they were over 6" long.
I simply ran out of time to get it done in time for his visit, but was ultimately a good thing because TSA would have stolen them lest he, I don't know, hijack a plane with a gate handle...
Might upload pics when done, but it has a blunted square spike finial on each end of each handle (one for each side of the fence) on a double reverse twist shaft (middle is twisted one way, each end prior to the finial is twisted the other direction) with twisted standoffs that I'm welding to the main handle. Next step is to get them all mounted to my mill and use a carbide drill bit to make a hole through 3" of solid steel for mounting via hammer head cheater rivets. Then I'll do some grinding to blend the pieces together before adding a wax finish.