Packing Horses into the Park County Electric Power Line

     We all know the Recession has been hard on the construction industry...my main customer base for the past 18 years has been the construction industry and national historic sites. Happily for me my shop was employed way over 40 hours per week filling orders for hardware, lighting, firescreens and other custom articles which fall under the heading of housesmithing. Prior to that the historic reenactment participants throughout the Country kept me busy. Hats off to those boys and gals for they fed my family for the first seven years of business, and have been helping take up the slack during this Recession. Thank-you for your patronage.
    Having said all that, for the first time in 25 years the shop work has not been enough to keep me as busy as I am accustomed to...so after completing our house remodeling projects, cutting and splitting 10 cords of wood to heat the house and shop, staining the house and log blacksmith shop...I found I still had time to fill after filling the blacksmithing orders the shop produced.
    So for the first time in 25 years I took a job helping a freind of mine in his business which mostly involves treating infestations of noxious weeds on rangelands. In a nutshell we ride ATV's over incredibly rough terrain spraying species specific herbicide to treat foreign invasive weed species that threaten to destroy habitat for wildlife and livestock. At first , I have to admit, that it was an adjustment to take a job after being self employed a quarter of a Century, but that sense of embarassment was quickly replaced with a sense of fulfillment that rather than sitting around feeling sorry for myself and waiting for some governemnt bureaucracy to bail me out, I was ,as always, taking resposibility for myself.  If I had to find a part time seasonal job to help take up the slack, this one was perfect for me. I got to spend up to 12 hours a day outside in beautiful Montana landscapes, improving wildlife habitat.We treat everything from private ranch lands to Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and Wildlife Refuges. The nature of the work still allows ample time to fill my blacksmithing orders between projects.
     Last week I was able to fill an unusual contract for Prairie Elk Forge...my freind who owns the business had a project to treat weeds on the Park County Montana electric transmission line  right of way into the mine South of Big Timber and McLeod Montana.  The terain required the use of horses to get water and herbiced to the weeds. I rode Char's old gelding"Senior" and packed herbicide and water on my riding mare "Whitney" to backpack sprayers who mixed and applied the herbicide to Spotted Knapweed, Canada Thistle, Musk Thistle, Ox Eye Daisy, and Houndstounge. All these weeds destroy habitat for wild ungulates such as Deer, Elk, and Bighorn Sheep, which of course impacts all the carnivores. This is very steep mountain side country with stumps and down timber criss crossing erosion washouts and boulders, stirrup deep grass, and young fir and pine trees on slopes greater than 45 degrees!
    I wish I had some photos to go with this blog, but I decided not to bring a camers as I already had 8 equine legs to worry about not breaking in that challenging terrain, and the possiblity that a Grizzly Bear could show up at any time and make my life more entertaining than it already was! I carried a .44 magnum pistol on my hip all the time, while we had one pistol and two cans of Bear Spray with the backpack crew so everyone was covered even when the horses and I were on the trail picking up or delivering water jugs and herbicide to the crew.
  There were times I was off the power line riding back to the trucks to pick up more water, and lunch, cigarettes etc.needed for the manpower doing the spraying. The road was much easier and safer for the horses, so I used it to intercept the powerline and packed loads to the tops of the ridges the powerline crossed to supply the crew, as much as possible, with downhill spraying.
    The horses and I shared the road with logging trucks, contractors vehicles, mine trucks and busses hauling miners to and from work, as well as a few bowhunters looking for Elk. I have to tell you everyone I met was very polite to the horses and I, and slowed down or stopped til I waved em by.
    I left that project so very proud of my horses, they did what I asked of them, and performed beautifully in a very challenging landscape...even if I occaisionally had to ask the a couple of times.
 

Coat Hanger Pictures

This is an axe I recently made and sent out to a client in West Virginia, he described it as a Hudson's Bay Saddle axe, made specifically for use by horsemen in woodlands. There are tool steel cutting edges forge welded into each edge, forged to shape and heat treated for hard use. This axe weighs in at about 2 pounds and has a 13 1/2 inch handle  

Too busy to blog

I want to thank everyone who has read my blog...I have been told by a number of folks that I didn't know were reading it that they enjoyed it, so I will be writing more often and including more photos of what is going on. Also look forward to more recipes as  we get into Fall and things slow down a little. My son has agreed to help me negotiate the maze of the internet, so I hope to be less frustrated by the ever-changing buttons etcetera!

I just completed a coatrack for a freind I've had for over twenty years but haven't ever met. He's been a great client for all that time and we talk on the phone about things freinds talk about but haven't ever shook his hand, here's hopin' that will change before too long!

Anyway the coatrack is about 4 feet long with swinging hooks (they swing side to side as required) made to hold a Western Hat and coat on each double hook. The hooks are forged from 1/2 inch round steel in a forging die I made in the shop. The little ball on the end is forged in the die which  I also make using technology that is thousands of years old and allows a blacksmith to reproduce complex forgings easily...once the die is made. The rest of the work is hammer textured while hot and finished with the traditional hand rubbed black that is so popular and traditional. A coat of high quality paste wax over the iron will protect interior work from rust for about a year.

Photos of this coatrack temporarily installed on my shop back door will follow, with technical help from my last remaining teenager!

Amazed at the internets ability too make something much more difficult than it should be.

    Several weeks ago...ok it's more like a month now...I sat down dutifully to add a new post only to find out, that all of the commands I had used so successfully the day before, didn't work at all! My technology experts were A). Not at home B). Couldn't explain what to do about it.  C). Hadn't a clue why the idiots at the blog site had changed all the sign in "buttons" ( I'm still looking for the buttons on the screen!?!) Rather than calmly take the computer out to the stock tank and drownd...I mean gently immerse it in the stock water, turn and go back to the house, sans computer...I decided to just walk away. I can hold a grudge, it's taken me a month to try again!
    If insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, isn't the inverse also true when you do the same things and get different resuts? I know it's enough to make me plead either temporary insanity, or justifiable homicide!
    However after a month that included some interesting blacksmith projects, alot of cowboying for the neighbors, some nice deep snow horseback rides in the Mountains, I'm almost ready to try again, especially since an old and treasured freind told me he could't read my blog without getting hungry... this one's for you.
    Tonite I took a 3-4 pound Elk  hindquarter roast, rolled it in freshly ground pepper, salt and dryed onion chips, soaked it with olive oil, and tossed it on the center of the upper rack of the gas grill at 3:45, I only lit the outside burners and left the burner under the meat unlit, and grilled the roast indirectly til about 4:45. I left it set on the counter to mellow while I steamed some fresh broccoli.The meat turned out very moist and completely cooked pink and hot on the inside. Note to George: save some large hindquarter roasts next year,I always give in to the temptation to cut all that meat into those beautiful one inch steaks.
    Thanks for the encouragement, and wish me luck!

Feeding for the neighbors

My neighbors had to be absent from the ranch for a few days, and even when they are home they have been short a damn good man this Winter, so I offered to help their hired man doing any chores they needed done in their abscence. So this morning I spent about three hours feeding cow / calf pairs from one end of the ranch to the other. With Gus (my Weimaraner Dog) as co pilot we went down and fed my horses and my freind's horses,and then took off up Big Coulee Crick to load round bales, then proceeded South below the Rims I trap for Bobcats, to Painted Robe Crick where I fed a bale to cows and calves there. The we went East of the State highway and fed another bale to the Bulls in the Bull pasture. Back across the highway to pick up two more bales to bring home to the ranch Headquarters.

Next I drove up to the Woman's Pocket, and fed a couple bales to the cows with bull calves pastured there. This ranch sends cows with bull calves North into the Pocket, and cows with Heifer calves South of some of the Rimrocks I trap. This way when we start branding we don't have to sort through heifer calves when we are castrating bull calves.

It occured to me that I fed almost as much hay today usig a pick up truck and bale handler in three hours as I did feeding 6 Horses, 2 Burros, 4 Goats and a Llama all damn Winter with a pitchfork!

Reproduction Revolutionary War Skillets

Finally my technology expert walked me back thru the process of uploading photos to my blog. Thanks. Of course the goofy thing didn't do all the things I accused it of,so I guess I have to figure that the problem was the loose nut behind the mouse!

I have therefore enclosed some photos of the skillets I mentioned the other day. Each skillet measures about 6 inches in diameter and 2 to 2 1/4 inches deep. I start with a flat sheet of steel about 10 inches in diameter and using heat, sink the center of the skillet blank into a die I made many years ago for that purpose, when you do that you are asking the edges of the sheet to "shrink" which the flat plate is reluctant to do, as a result it shrinks and thickens a little each heat before wrinkiling to get away from the stress of the process, all the wrinkles are subsequently hammered out in a suitable form which in this case is my Swage Block.( The swage block was cast in the 1870's and was used in the engineering program at Rocky Mountain College starting in 1878!) The process of heating, sinking, and hammering out the wrinkles continues many time until the pan is forged about like you see in the photos. After the rough forging has cooled, I use a divider to mark out the top edge so it is equidistant from the bottom, and thereby level with the bottom. Next I take the cold forging and planish it using hundreds of hammer blows to cold forge, and refine the shape. This process brings a subtle texture to the skillet and makes it indistinguishable from one forged before the Revolutionary War!

Next the folding or fixed handle is forged out and the hinge joint is made in the folding handled model. The handles are riveted in place and the whole thing is polished, and pre seasoned with Bear Lard the I render from the Bears I have shot over the years. Bear Lard makes the best seasoning for iron cookware be it cast iron or forged iron.

I have carried one of these skillets for years in the backcountry hunting and use it as a cooking utensil and plate, so I can tell you it is certainly a handy item for the backcountry traveler irreguardless of what century you happen to be living thru!

Apologies for not keeping up

    It has been a while since I updated my blog, apologies to anyone who has been wondering what the heck I've been up to. I got busy in the shop the last few weeks making historic reproductions of everything from Revolutionary war folding skillets, to forging replica axes for reenactors from the 1750-1850 period. To be completely honest I lost my temper with the technology last time I tried to upload photos of some of this work I'd been doing and said the heck with it. I am from the generation that is emmigrants to this computer age, not a native, so when they change some electronic button and the process that worked yesterday doesn't today I get as mad as a Bobcat killin a porcupine! It reminds me of the old cowboy who sent his dad down to get the model A out of the shed, a half hour later the old man walked by on his way to the house, when asked what he did with the truck he responded " You'd better go down there, when I left it was still tryin' to get out of the shed!" So now you got some idea how old timers feel about runnin this new fangled technolgy!
   Tonite we're having a Whitetail rolled rib roast I like to brine 'em to make em tender, try this out
3 Tablespoons Kosher or pickling salt
3 tablespoons brown sugaar
1 sliced onion
1 cup red wine
Dissolve the above ingredients in 2 cups boiling water, add enough cold water to cover the roast and submerge it in the brine for 2-4 hours,in the fridge. The process of osmosis (remember what your teachers used to ask you?) draws the salty liquor and the flavors of the wine, sugar and onion into the non salty meat, adding flavor, moisture and tenderizing it.

You can grill the roast indirectly (with the heat next to it not directly over it) for an hour hour and a half, or you can drop it in a roasting pan with an inch of water and roast it in the oven for 11/2 to 2 hours at 350 degrees.

When my technology expert gets home  I will impose on him to get me straight on the picture uploads and try again.