Arb’s Iron Range Forge

06/02/2026

Bending handles.

05/28/2026

Making heart hooks to warm up my arm.
Lots of bugs with my exhaust yet. Working on it.

05/22/2026

The new exhaust system is hanging, but only marginally working. So now I need to source two pulleys and add a bigger 1/2 hp motor.
My research was alarming last night to just how much fan I need.
So after deep research I need a 15” fan mounted to 10” pipe turning at 2450 rpm driven by 2 belt , 1.5 hp motor…Very expensive.
But I can make what I have work by pulley magic and elbow pipe elimination.
I’ve got a 10” fan on 60’ of 8” pipe and it
Has four elbows. By eliminating two elbows, swapping to 1/2 hp motor and pulley replacement I can get to the cfm I need, although it’s at the lower end of the air I need to move.

05/06/2026

Ordered a new fan for the shop. We tried a different route and fan test that failed.
These one will set us straight as it’s a copy of the original basically

04/30/2026

I’m amazed at the number of these bottles in the ditch. Just around Palmer.
There’s less since we lost the little store.

I picked up every littered liquor bottle while walking 26.2 miles one day in my city. I called it the "Trash Marathon."
I collected 421 bottles over almost 12 hours of walking.
Fireball was the undisputed littered liquor bottle winner with 86 bottles. Smirnoff came in a close 2nd with 70 bottles.
My daughter called this a "Dad Hobby" which got me thinking this might be Dull Men's Club worthy. Cheers everyone!
EDIT: Thank you for all the positive feedback. I can't respond to all the comments but if it's OK I'll answer a few commonly asked questions here:
1.) I'm not a giant. These are mostly miniature bottles (aka shooters, nips, airplane bottles).
2.) I filled five trash bags in total. Three with misc trash. Two with only little liquor bottles. I realized about six miles into the Trash Marathon that I wasn't making enough progress so I changed my strategy to pick up ONLY little liquor bottles.
3.) I left the full bags on the side of the road and then came back for them the next day. I HAD to get an accurate count because this is for science!
4.) It is my dream that the Trash Marathon can be my small way to raise awareness of the health benefits of walking and the unexpected joy in picking up litter.

04/29/2026

The in-line exhaust fan does move enough CFM. A bummer. Back to the drawing board😕

04/22/2026

I can make it into the shop!
My exhaust system is the next step to a fire in the forge!

03/26/2026

I scouted out the shop the other day and the snow is impenetrable for sometime by the looks. It’ll be late April I figure before I can drive to the shop.

03/15/2026

Looking forward to springtime in the shop. Here’s a few pictures from the past

02/13/2026

Switching exhaust to the righthand stack
Got the run hung today, and now need an elbow to connect.