First Pour! Second Part -Making Charcoal like Vikings with Beer , Meat and My Own Stamp!

in freedom •  7 years ago 

Welcome! Here's part two to my trip to go visit a friend where I melted and repoured my first silver. It was my first real time away from Oslo since being here in Norway and it was a great few days away.

Check out the actual pouring post here part one


Here (left) was the loot from the night before! Best containers that I've seen for meat in a while.. we turned up just as a worker was taking food to the trash and managed to get an arrangement that we can get the food each day with the local Spar.

We were woken by the neighbor who has a farm out the back of my friends cabin. He came with beer and so at 10 am we started to drink. I remembered that we had from the night before, 5 pork fillets and 3 rack of ribs and lots of cooked chickens, and now in the sunshine it was the time to make a fire and cook it all. By the time the fire was burnt down to embers ready for cooking on, we were feeling the few beers on an empty stomach and was having a great laugh about life. Valhall!


We wern't sure what we were going to do this day, we had ran out of charcoal so the main goal for the day was to make charcoal and I wanted to maybe make something from metal but wasn't sure what after hearing how long the processes are to make a small knife for example. Metals not really my thing, Im a wood kinda guy and ended up deciding that I would like a stamp to stamp silver pours with in the future.

After eating like kings as usual from the waste of society I needed a siesta before taking action to go make charcoal there was no way a stomach full of meat and beer was going to work out well. We ended up all having a nap , well trying to anyway but it seemed the world and his mate wanted to come and knock on the cabin door and come in to say Hi. No siesta and a live Agra-Yoga show in between, it was time to go to the workshop.

The Making of The Stamp

I really had no clue what my stamp should be so of course I tried this design, for MovingMan..It was the first time I have ever worked with metal apart from steel beams on building projects, but just like wood if you shave to much off, you cant stick it back on! My friend had a part from a Ford that I could use and so we measured out a piece of metal the size of my hand plus a bit more on each end. Here's when it was marked out and ready to cut.
It was now time to draw around the end of the proposed stamp onto paper and then draw the design into the shape. This would then be cut out and stuck on with poxy glue onto the end of the metal stamp as a template like the picture here. You see how it will look *ON* metal, which means I was stoned and stuck it on the wrong way! but anyway for the photo it was perfect. Had to redo it and stick it on mirror-side up!

I used the angle-grinder to take off the "bulk" around the shape, but had to leave some to file off. Then it was to the part of full concentration.. Tools ready on the bench which a wide variety of files to use, and the mighty Dremel. I had only seen these advertised on cheesy 24hour TV commercials years ago back in "House-Life" when most likely when they were new, and because of this I thought they would be shit, but these things are amazing! Anyway here's some snaps of how it went!





We couldn't work out how to attach the thinnest metal blade on the Dremel, and I couldn't get the 2 M's as planned with a hacksaw blade, so it turned magically into 1 M!

After this stage it was ready for a quick sand and then into the forge.

The band for the wheel that pumped air into the forge would come off if you spun it the wrong way, and in the end it was time for a new one. They last a good few weeks usually and are just made from Duck Tape lol. My friend was then explaining to me about metal in great detail , all of which just seemed to bounce of my stoned brain and got confusing. What I did manage to grasp and learn (OK , just barely grasp) was the colour's of oxidization when the metal has started to cool down. Maybe you have seen like this before these band of colour's on something steel that has been forged. Here's something just from google images which explains what I mean..

So when we took it out of the fire, it needed a rub with a metal brush to take of any old rust. Then it was place in a vice to see the colour's of the cooling metal. Its cool to watch, the colour's rise up slowly as it cools, so as we heated the tip last it was going the oppersite direction of the diagram there above. When the golden yellow colour was showing on the head of the stamp , it was time to take it and cool it. Water dosn't work as good as oil to cool hot metal down, and this is it being cooled in this photo. If you don't cool it at the right temperature then the steel isn't hardend properly.

Here's a photo I just took now to show the colour's on the stamp.

So a little lesson about forging for us all!

Test On Clay..

## Time to make charcoal!

We had used the last of the charcoal and then we started to go look for a dead standing tree in the forest. Dead standing tress are the best for burning as the are dry from not laying down. We got a few other people and the Beast and it was her time to shine. We went out the back of the workshop and wasn't long before the snow was to deep for the tractor. oh and then my friend decided to go up the valley side as the snow wasn't so thick, and well..

After all that meat and beer , we walked of and left it. Ok fuck that- we found scrap wood and had a tidy up at the same time in the workshop, turned out there was plenty of dry wood around.

I really wish I could upload videos but I just cant , this whole trip would have been more exiting for the reader to have seen some video clips in between! But hey, just another sacrifice to have no contract for the internet :)


The Self Burning Rocket Burner

This is made so that the gas from the wood that is placed inside to make the charcoal from, collects and exits out down a tube which goes into the part where the wood is first fed into and creates a contact gas feed into the flames.
Its big! First thing was to collect wood from around the workshop

Then pack it all in as tightly together as possible into the huge barrel. We started lighting it whilst packing it and ended up getting very smoked out!


Look at that little inferno! The sound was so nice also, like a humming heard from afar..

I don't have any pictures of the finished charcoal 😔 and will wrap it up there, who knows there might be some random video uploads from me in the future of all this action!

Thanks For Reading, I Hope That By Sharing The Alternative Choice Of Lifestyle (that once was normal not so long ago, so what lifestyle is infact the alternative one?!) Others Will See How It Works Out And That Its BEAUTIFUL To BE FREE FROM THE SYSTEM!!


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Arghhh..!! What happened? I totally missed the first part of this adventure... So, I'll go back and read part 1 first, and then come back here. Glad you made back bro! :-)

Hahaha yeh there's a few days gap in between! My bad,been working long because I have only this month until the customers go on holidays for summer and last year sales slumped,so had work now and more strict action in the summer!

Your posts are an adventure! Keep em coming!

Thanks man! Ive been working alot lately, thats what happens for the last week and first 2 weeks of each month, im out on the street stood smiling and getting paid tax free :) I manisfested this cash oppertunity asking since a while to be in this position, and now i am so i work like 14 hour days im out the cabin..
I will start writing again soon, but the summers just started and I need to clear up the land here and explore it, got a few projects to do and will document them.. late June and July and August are quiet at work as Norwiegen people all go on holiday in the summer.. which makes NO sense whatsoever , but they do it! Yeh and then ill be back on here every evening! I do have some small adventures that i got pics of but im just so slow at html and I seem to never get that option to use markdown when I begin a post. If i wasnt such a Smart-Nazi (not using smart technology) then I would be snappin on the smartphone and doing daily stuff of just what I do lol, but i have an old small digital camera, a shit smartphone, and no intention to try swap that micro SD card etc to upload pics hahahaha.

Well, I always enjoy what you write. It's an adventure in itself. I understand. I'm outside a lot more when it gets warmer. I'll be in the yard more. Planting food to eat. Creating and expanding my permaculture garden. Spreading the gardening to others. Exploring the woods. Going to the lake. I'm excited for this summer. I need to make more adventures this year. I want to vlog my journey this year. A friend and I were talking about it. We need to make videos. Get creative. Have fun. I'm a bit limited too with resources. I have an old phone at the moment. I may get a newer one soon. I dunno. I try to hang on to things and get their worth. But, I don't like to trade off the time they waste for being slower. And, I don't like missing out on opportunities I could have with newer technology. Time is the most important thing. Think about. Time arbitrage is the best type of trading.

Yeh man, its all about what we do with time,that sounds great that you have a garden ,thats a cool post also! Ill do a tour of my garden soon 😀well its no garden at the moment lol,ill be doing some no dig gardening as its all moss and bedrock lol

Man, that would make a good post! I like permaculture. Anything that is wild and natural. And requires very little maintenance. I have some things that grow that with no dig. Some things need minimal work. I like the idea of creating a garden that would continue to grow if I quit doing everything.

Takes me back to my basic metals class in high school where I learned welding. I have gardens now. Some of this seems like tough work but is worth it. I love alternative living options. i'm Oatmeal.

Hi Oatmeal!

Release the Kraken! You got a 76.92% upvote from @seakraken courtesy of @movingman!

That's so cool... sorry to miss it when it came out.. I went and checked ginabot and wtf I didn't set alert for you which I fully wanted to but no worries it's there now. This is amazing. Despite being stoned lol you took a lot in and that M is Amazing!!!

M FOR MAGNIFICENT!