Touch of Man Flu'

I've been taking it easy, finishing the bracket for my new digital scale. I couldn't be bothered with endless filing and smoothing with emery so I took it to Mick the Blacksmith's workshop.
It took an age to find his place as although I'd been there once before I wasn't driving that time. I tried my new satnav, which drove me right past the entrance, and a mile up the road to a caravan site!...  I got there in the end. Mind at one point I pulled into a lay-by to take a rescue call from Mick on my mobile... some bloke in a van tooted me and pulled up alongside shouting abuse... would he rather I'd just stopped on the road? Or maybe driven whilst taking the call, which is what most van drivers would do? I click down the 'lock' button for the car doors and waved him off... I'm too old for silly road side altercations and arguments. Yeah, ok, I had pulled in a bit sharpish, but if it actually inconvenienced him, he must have been too close, or maybe he was busy on his phone?


I used Mick's bead blaster on my mild steel bracket which smoothed it off nicely. Then we got it red hot and quenched it in oil to blacken it, nice looking job.
While I was there we had a good chat and he showed me his rolling mill which he'd made, for rolling out red hot pattern welded steel billets into blanks for swords and knives etc. It's one of those machines that you need to see in use to appreciate how it works. We joked that we could post a good YouTube spoof of using it to create wooden laminations by rolling out a billet of wood.

After a couple of hours, the man flu' was kicking in so I drove home for some nosh and a 10 minute catnap that lasted 2 hours.


Mick very generously gave me two billets of his pattern welded steel blade blanks to take with me on my forthcoming trip as gift/trade items for the natives ;-)
The numbers on the billets indicate the number of steel layers. Google Mick Maxen to see more of his work.

Just tried the new scale on my 50# side nocked  ELB it read 47.8 lb which is good, it was good and legible, it also clipped nice and securely onto the bow string.