Strouhal Forge

05/16/2026

In my last post I mentioned autoguiding. Most people won’t know anything about that so I wanted to explain a little about it. In the pic of my telescope rig you can see I have a little telescope and camera riding on the main scope. The camera on the smaller telescope takes an image every second or two and sends it to the guide computer. The computer looks at these images and tracks how much the stars are moving from frame to frame. It then calculates the amount of error in the tracking and sends corrections to the mount to keep it on target. This allows me to take much longer exposures and get more detail of the target I am trying to image.

05/16/2026

Every so often I like to revisit targets I’ve imaged in the past to see the improvements in technique that I’ve learned. Here are images I made of the Whirlpool Galaxy about a year apart. In that year I got better equipment and learned techniques such as autoguiding that have allowed me to get better data and have better final results.

06/02/2023

I don’t know if anyone noticed but it has been a long time since the last time I posted. Like almost a year and a half! Well in March of 2022 Dorothy and I sold our house and that wonderful shop and bought 26 acres. Since then my equipment has been in storage. Finally, after a long series of setbacks, our house is finally done and is wonderful! Now I can get to work on putting my shop together. Here is what will be my shop. As you can see it needs A LOT of work!

12/22/2021

Got out into the shop and had a forging session for the first time since April. Forged 4 knives and tried something new...I made my first attempt at making a billet with a layer of copper which is called Cu Mai. Pretty cool effect in a blade!

04/18/2021

02/10/2021

Here’s a better view of it in operation. I have it adjusted so the ram doesn’t go all the way down because the dies should never hit each other directly.

02/06/2021

It has taken me a week but I finally made the power hammer function!!!

01/30/2021

Also acquired a heat treating oven with electronic heat control!

01/30/2021

Well you can say some BIG changes have happened in the forge!!!! How about an Erie Foundry Co. POWER HAMMER!!!!

10/07/2020