Boots and Blisters

Boots and Blisters 👨🏻‍🏭💥 WELDING + FABRICATION
⚒️🔥 BLACKSMITHING + FORGE WORK
🏭⚙️ SITE + MAINTENANCE

This useless shower of pricks has let me down one too many times. Do have the item you want in stock, like the website c...
07/05/2026

This useless shower of pricks has let me down one too many times.

Do have the item you want in stock, like the website claims? Probably not.

Will it arrive promptly and on the day they say it will?
Almost certainly not.

When it arrives, will it be good quality? No.

Can they move your item from Burton to Birmingham im fewer than 4 days? Nope

Will they do anything to expedite your order after they mess it up twice in a row? Will they f**k.

You'd think that after the thick end of a century and a half they would have managed to get their arses in gear, but no. Another example of a large organisation that f**ks up repeatedly and carries on regardless.

Spout and pivot pins.Fabricated and forged in-house by our blacksmith HappyVery little was left of the spout. Only about...
29/12/2025

Spout and pivot pins.

Fabricated and forged in-house by our blacksmith Happy

Very little was left of the spout. Only about half of a cast iron fl**ge and two wrought iron screws remained.

I kept it simple when fabricating the new spout. A 45º elbow was bought from a local supplier and the rest of the pipe and plate steel came from my stock rack. The parts were TIG welded together ensuring a nice amount of filler material was deposited. The crowns of the welds were then dressed off to better resemble a casting. When fitted, the spout was bedded in with a layer of the ubiquitous linseed putty.

The original fl**ge screws had been incredibly well preserved. I was determined that they would come out in one piece. They came out in one piece. I used map gas to heat up the heads of the screws and rubbed the joints down with paraffin wax. A little percussion with a small ball pein and some gentle working back and forth with a spanner freed them up. They can owe their longevity to the layer of linseed putty that had been used as a thread locking device and had also prevented water ingress.

I gave the screws a perfunctory tidy with my thread file but they didn't really need it. I reused them when mounting the new spout, ensuring to bed them in with some linseed putty.

The old pivot pin had a nice groove worn through the middle and needed replacing. A new one was forged, this time from steel as I did not want to use wrought iron for a wear part. The bolt was punched to accept a simple split lynch pin and greased with copper grease on installation. The same pin was made on a smaller scale for the pivot on the top of the modern link rod.

Ta

Gasket ringsProduced in-house by our blacksmith Happy.Once again the old fence provided the material for these parts. A ...
29/12/2025

Gasket rings

Produced in-house by our blacksmith Happy.

Once again the old fence provided the material for these parts. A rod was selected and drawn out thin. The side of the bar that would form the inside radius was bevelled to help mitigate any swelling of the iron.

We purchased h**p webbing, because even I am not willing to go as far as to weave my own, and measured it to length by wrapping it around the rings. Once we had our webbing cut to length it was smeared with linseed jointing compound, as were the rings, and then they were wrapped round the rings for a final time and allowed to set.

At this point I should have pressed the rings under a book press whilst they set. However, I dropped the ball and failed to think of this until after the pump was reinstalled.

On the day of installation, I caked the gaskets in a healthy layer of linseed putty in order to combat pitting in the fl**ge face, and any gaps that may be present in the gaskets.

The design was taken from the original gaskets.

Thanks to Jo Keen for her help with the laborious task of wrapping, unwrapping and treating the h**p webbing

Ta

Piston Head and Con Rod.Produced in-house by our Blacksmith Happy.The piston head was the first part that I managed to e...
29/12/2025

Piston Head and Con Rod.

Produced in-house by our Blacksmith Happy.

The piston head was the first part that I managed to extract from the pump, and it was at this point I realised that we wouldn't be able to buy a modern repair kit and slap it on. As far as we can find, there is only one company that makes wooden piston heads for pumps and the model that they sell is very obviously different from what we have here.

Once again I find myself doing things that no self respecting blacksmith should ever have to... such as woodwork. I neglected to take photos of the woodworking process so you will just have to imagine me swearing alot.

It was much harder to figure out the structure of this part than it was with the NRV. Old wood and wrought iron look very similar. Once again I used a magnet to realise that iron rods ran through the length of the piston head from the ends of the con rod fork, and then were piened over to hold a retaining bar in place. This bar in turn helped to hold an iron tyre round the base of the piston head. Another tyre was present at the opposite end of the piston head.

I made the con rod by firewelding a number of component parts together to form a complete structure. The tyres were heat shrunk onto the body of the piston head. The iron rods running through the head were, again, a hot fit. Picture 11 shows the rods trimmed to size and the tie plate fitted, ready for me to pien them over. The other end of the rod was threaded to ⅜ Whitworth

Pictures 12 and 13 show me casting the lead for the weight that holds the leather flap down during upstroke.

The last photo is my only image of the modern link rod and threaded end of the con rod. This is them being fitted and locked in place during installation

Ta

The lead in this part came off the roof of my childhood home and has been sitting around waiting to be reused.

Making and fitting the non return valve.In-house heritage engineering undertaken by Happy, our Blacksmith.As you can see...
29/12/2025

Making and fitting the non return valve.

In-house heritage engineering undertaken by Happy, our Blacksmith.

As you can see from the second picture, I had no idea what was in this pipe. It was rammed full of all sorts of stuff. After hours of gently cleaning away what was inside I discovered an object that was a lot more firmly bedded in than the rest of the gubbins. I wanted it out but I wanted it intact.

It was nesled in the bottleneck of a pipe reducer and glued in place with pitch. So my solution was to cut between the pitch and the pipe wall using a long, flexible auger that I made from a length of 2.4mm stainless TIG wire, and about half a metre of bandsaw blade that I put in the end of my pneumatic hacksaw.

I used a magnet (picture 7) to make my best guess as to what was underneath the jute string, linseed putty and pitch, and came up with a design from there.

After carving the oak and forging the iron for the U bracket; I forged the stock and the hardware needed to hold the leather flap in place. I cut Whitworth threads for this project and made square nuts to hold them.

After final fit of the iron and leather parts, the lower half of the valve was bound up in jute twine that had been smothered in linseed jointing compound. On the day of fitting the pump, we heated up some pitch in a baked bean can and set the new valve into the reducer.

All this iron came from the stock provided by the client and was repurposed into what you see today. The leather came out of the scrap bin of a gasket manufacturer in Deritend.

#

This pump has sat in the yard of an 18th-century farmhouse for a very, very long time. Sadly, it hasn't drawn water for ...
28/12/2025

This pump has sat in the yard of an 18th-century farmhouse for a very, very long time. Sadly, it hasn't drawn water for many decades and it had always been a dream of our customer's to get it back to a usable state. The customer was also completely unaware of the existence of a brick lined well on their property until we started our excavations and so we made a plan to create a discrete feature that was sympathetic to the period of the rest of the property.

At some point, the main piston chamber had become filled with silt and bricks, broken glass, a key, a rib, and a handful of wooden clothes pegs. This created an environment that had preserved most of the original workings of the pump mechanism. Pretty impressive considering they were made from iron, oak and leather

From these parts our blacksmith was able to reverse engineer the gaskets, piston head, con rod and non return valve to match.

The original spout and link rod were not present, so we designed our own in order to fill those gaps.

The new grille was also an interesting design exercise. The wrought iron from which it has been made was supplied by the customer. It had at one time been the boundary fence for the farmhouse but at some point had to be replaced with a new, wooden one. Whilst we love the romance of returning the iron to a functional role on the same property it had always been a part of, this meant that our smith had a very limited supply and range of stock with which to work. The design also had to try to work with the holes and features already present in the iron.

A request was fulfilled for a nondescript hatch that could be opened to pump silt from the bottom of the well, should the need arise.

The iron from the fence was also repurposed into the internal mechanism and the gasket rings.

Many thanks to , and Hunter for their work and support in removing and reinstalling g the pump

Thanks for reading, and if you have a similar project that requires some passion or a friend that you think would be interested, please don't hesitate to get in contact.

Ta

My very gifted student, .f decided he wanted to make a hammer. Seeing as we are based in he decided that the obvious c...
22/12/2025

My very gifted student, .f decided he wanted to make a hammer. Seeing as we are based in he decided that the obvious choice was a chainmakers hammer and I just happened to have some large scrap stud chain to make it from. Fantastic job, Mattia, you impress me every session.

Couple of little soldering jobs from the last week
04/10/2025

Couple of little soldering jobs from the last week

Went to the Jewellery Quarter this weekend to participate in . We were hosted by , who were brilliant, and God made man...
21/09/2025

Went to the Jewellery Quarter this weekend to participate in . We were hosted by , who were brilliant, and God made many new friends whilst we showed the people of the JQ what real chain looks like.

Next weekend we will be at the . Feel free to drop by for a natter and to see what we do.

Any jewelers out there that need mandrels, stakes or any other tools? Come see us before reaching out to Jeff Bozo.Custo...
19/09/2025

Any jewelers out there that need mandrels, stakes or any other tools? Come see us before reaching out to Jeff Bozo.

Custom shapes and sizes available. Bespoke ergonomic designs for those with restricted mobility.

Discounts for students of the Brum school of jewellery.

Address

Unit 4, Oldfields
Cradley
B646BS

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 6pm
Tuesday 10am - 6pm
Wednesday 10am - 6pm
Thursday 10am - 6pm
Friday 10am - 6pm

Website

http://bootsandblisters.co.uk/

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