Pleasantly Insane Forgery

27/12/2024

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25/12/2024

Art-deco inspired mini utility knife fresh from the forge at Pleasantly Insane Forgery. Undercut blade gives you the fine control for small chopping tasks that a traditional Native American Ulu offers, but without the awkward grip. The point allows fine work you might do with a small chef's knife, but again, with far better control. High-carbon stainless with a scalpel bevel, literally razor sharp.

07/10/2024

Evacuate!

I've been studying disasters and their aftermath for 35 years, and I'm telling you, if you want to live, get the hell out of Milton's path.

Evacuate!

Most US disaster fatalities can be attributed to people refusing to evacuate.

Evacuate!

Looting after disasters is so rare that it effectively doesn't happen. No one will touch your stuff.

Evacuate!

Seriously. Looting DOES NOT happen. No matter what you've heard, people don't loot before or after disasters. It's been investigated over, and over, and over, and reports and stories of looting are just that, third-hand rumors and bu****it stories. In the 40,000+ disasters in my research database, there are maybe 50 or 60 confirmed instances of looting and almost all of those are people taking water, food, or medicine needed to survive.

Evacuate!

Evacuation assistance is almost always underutilized.

Evacuate!

Take your pets! Evacuation assistance, both private and government, has programs and processes to assist with pets. Ask don't assume.

Evacuate!

Milton's project path is the worst possible scenario for Tampa/St. Pete. Surge is predicted to hit 10ft, but funneling effects could take that much higher and send in much farther inland than you might imagine.

Evacuate!

Even if you aren't killed by a hurricane, the path of a major hurricane is a hellish and deadly place. Remember the Superdome after Katrina? Every one of those people was offered the chance to evacuate. A week in a FEMA shelter is five-star heaven compared to what Milton will leave in its wake.

16/09/2024

The new forge has officially been named The Magmatron 4000

14/09/2024

The new forge can hit 1500c pretty easy. Now I just need to find a way to keep it from melting itself.

25/08/2024

Doug made lava today.

First fire in the new forge and I discovered that splurging on the air-forced burner will give me all the heat I need. In minutes, it took the fire clay lining all the way past cintering and straight to lava.

Pleasantly Insane Forgery

Forged In Fire

20/08/2024

The cleaver is one of the three professional quality knives that all serious chef's should own. Spring steel is recommended over stainless. It requires more care, but is better suited to a razor bevel for chopping.

Pleasantly Insane Forgery

doug.vanbelle at outlook.com

17/08/2024

https://wordfirepress.com/products/a-world-adrift
The Drift lies 55km above the surface of Venus. Atmospheric pressure, gravity, radiation shielding and temperature are all Earthlike, and with the dense CO2 atmosphere, breathable air acts as a lifting gas, turning every habitable structure into an airship.

Venus has become a world of Zeppelin cities where merchants fly carbon-fiber airships. Whalers harpoon tin behemoths that rise from the murky depths. And the only woman who can save it all from ruin is being hunted by a man willing to do anything to seize her father’s empire. Privilege is a double...

16/08/2024

Buy a sushi knife instead of a carving knife. Unlike carving knives, sushi/sashimi knives are "handed." They have asymmetrical right-handed or left handed bevels which keeps the blade from "biting in" when making thin cuts of fish.

Pleasantly Insane Forgery

doug.vanbelle at outlook.com

15/08/2024

While the standard chef's knife is easy to make, the Eastern European Chef's knife is made for the kitchen. The undercut gives you a longer edge. the recurve spine creates an ergonomic handle and keeps the weight down.

Order from Pleasantly Insane Forgery, New Zealand
Doug.vanbelle at outlook.com

31/07/2024

A package arrived from Lithuania today and the peasants are rejoicing.

After a year learning the basics with a kludged together forge that had a piece of garbage home-made burner, then several years of refining my skills by working with with a cheap entry-level model, I've sorted through what I need and have started ordering the parts that I need to put together a top notch forge.

This new forced air, high efficiency burner is the key piece. Instead of the flow of fuel sucking air into the burner, my air compressor will shoot a high pressure jet of air in, increasing the efficiency of the burn by over 500%. Using less fuel, this unit will produce over 300,000 Btu per hour compared to the 70,000 Btu max of the burners in my current forge.

While a forced air burner can't make propane burn any hotter than its max burn temp, it does make pretty much all of the propane burn at its hottest possible temperature, and because of that, the forge temp will be much higher than my current set up. Right now, I can barely get high carbon steel hot enough to forge weld, but with this new forge, I should be able to quickly get just about any steel hot enough to weld and I'm looking forward to trying to mix layers of this and that to see what I can create. I'm particularly keen on layering spring steel with high-nickel content tool steels for some chef's knives. I also have a bunch of old disks off of cultivators. That's some incredible steel, super hard, super resilient and corrosion resistant, but it needs a higher temp to work. And if I can get it to weld with a spring steel, that could be some wow level stuff.

Now to build the forge itself. I have a plan for making an adjustable configuration forge, where I can adjust the size and shape of the forge interior to suit the task at hand, small for getting Damascus billets up to welding temp quickly, long and thin for drawing out the blades, then wide and short for working hatchet heads and cleavers. I'm also going to keep my old double burner forge and design the new one so I can marry them end to end for when I heat treat long blades.