Damascus Steel part 2

Last nights damascus class did not go as well as last week. I prepared my billet for folding by grinding off the scale. I was able to get it folded at the beginning of class like I had planned, but while we were folding, the billet broke. So we had to tack weld the halves together which is not the ideal method. I then heated it back up and away we went on the press to forge weld it. Well it started off good but then one side began to slip at an angle which made it bulge out on one side, then the other end began to split apart. No matter what my teacher and I tried to do, we could not get the split to weld back together so we cut it off. This sucks because now I have a little less material to work with for the billet, but I did keep the scrap pieces and am going to try thinning them down for earrings, a necklace pendant and maybe a small carving knife. The billet end still had a small split so we just used the welder instead of the press.
After all that craziness, I was able to get a few presses in and begin to draw the billet out for another fold next week. The press made my billet go into a diamond shape, so the first thing I will have to do next Tuesday is get it back into a square, which is not as easy as it may sound. With only three classes left, I don't think I will be getting the layer count I had orginally planned for.

Domestic Goddess

Recently I have been teaching my roommate Jessica how to make homemade jams, as you know by my post on making prickly pear jelly. Well the grocery store next to our house was having an amazing sale on raspberries, so on saturday we made raspberry jam which you can see behind me. While at the store, we also discovered that peaches were on sale for 59 cents a pound. So yesterday we canned 22 pounds of peaches. What a day! It took seven hours, mostly due to having to wait for the water in my pressure canner to heat up so we could sterilize and process the jars. I also wish I had just a slightly bigger stove; we kept having to swap out pans depending on what we were doing.

We used a recipe in my canning book but it wasn't very clear on the best way to remove the peach skins. We tried putting the whole peaches in the boiling water and then the ice water only to realize that it didn't make the skins easier to come off; instead, it made the peaches very slimy and hard to hold while trying to slice them up. I'm surprised we didn't slice ourselves instead. We then figured out that if you slice them before you put them in the boiling water the skins come right off and we didn't have to risk any of our fingers.

We also learned that you really need to pack the peaches in the jars. We thought we had them so tight only to discover, when we pulled them out of processing, that there was half-an-inch to an inch of extra space at the bottom. Next time I will be more aggresive in my packing. It also helps to use the mason jars with regular openings instead of the extra wide. We used the wide ones for my peaches. It did make it easier to get the peaches in the jars but once you add the syrup they could float right to the top. At least the reglar mouth curves in a little to help stop the floating peaches and you can actually measure the headspace properly.
Since this is my first time canning fruit I decided to try a couple different things. I canned some of my peaches in medium syrup, some with cinnamon cooked in, and some canned in honey. I will let you know which I like best.

Next on the list to tackle: apples or pears.

p.s.-the apron I'm wearing is the one my sister helped me make

Making Damascus Steel

Every Tuesday night for the past four weeks I have been learning how to make Damascus Steel. What is that kind of metal you say? Simply put it is laminated steel using two kinds of metal: 1084 tool steel, which for our class was in a powdered form, and 15N20 steel, which has a nickle content and gives those particular layers a shiny look.
You heat them up in a forge until the metal is bright yellow and then forge weld them together using a hydrolic press. Last night was my first time using the press and it was fun to watch the layers of metal being squished together. I started out with 17 layers alternating between the two kinds of metal which was about 3 inches thick before the heating began. By the end of class last night, I had those layers compressed to about an inch thick and ready to be folded back on itself next week. It was crazy to think that I went from having separate layers, half of which were powdered, to a solid bar of metal in just three hours of work.
Now the goal for the remaining four weeks of this class is to get my steel to the number of layers I want with a pattern set in. I am hoping for over 500 layers, which sounds like a lot until you realize that each fold doubles the amount of layers. I should have that layer count in five folds. For the pattern, I am going to experiment with two designs: a twist and a bird's eye. I'm hoping the combo will give the steel the look of a topo map. My ultimate desire is to make a knife out of the finished steel.
I will try and remember to bring my camera to class so you can see the process, and I can have a photo record of what I did.

Anatomy and Physiology: one of my greatest fears

So I began my first anatomy and physiology class this week. I have been terrified of this class ever since I was a student at BYU, and I did everything I could to avoid taking it. I can't avoid it any longer as it is a prerequisite for a master's program I am looking into. I finally bit the bullet and signed up last week to take it online. I was so intimidated by this course that I couldn't even open the book for the first few days without a feeling of panic.
Well I just finished my first two quizzes and so far so good. I must admit that they were both mostly review of material I learned in previous biology classes, but it is making me a little more comfortable with the idea that I might do alright. I haven't gotten to any major memorizing yet. We'll see how I feel in a couple weeks but for now I'm feeling confident.

A fun afternoon making prickly pear jelly

My roommate just celebrated her birthday. She asked that my gift be to teach her how to can jelly and jams. I was happy to oblige.
By far the funniest part was gathering the fruit. We didn't have time to go out to the desert to gather, which is my preferred way to get the best fruit. So we had to settle with gathering in the city. We found a house a few blocks away that had a cactus covered in fruit. Imagine the woman's perspective, who has only been in arizona a month, as she answered the door. Here are two women telling her they make jelly from cactus fruit and wondering if we could pick some from her yard. She agreed since she doesn't know what to do with them; she probably thinks all arizonans are crazy now. In exchange we offered her a jar of the finished project. To keep our fingers from being covered in little spines we used kitchen tongs to pull them off.
We drove around a little more but really didn't find anymore good fruit so we headed home to juice what we gathered. You may wonder how you go about juicing something that has little spines on it and the inside looks like a pomegranite. I will say only two words: steam juicer. You just throw the fruit in there and let the steam do all the work for about an hour. Occasionally we had to smash them down with a potato masher to extract more juice but other than that we just let it work while we watched movies. From the fruit we gathered we had enough juice to make two batches of jelly.
Once we had the juice the rest is just like how you would make any other kind of jelly. My roommate loved learning the process, even though she did get some spines in her fingers (a good method for getting cactus spines out of you is to use elmers glue. Just spread it over the spot, let it dry and then pull off the glue like you did when a kid. Many times this will pull the spine out with the dried glue). Now my roommate wants to learn how to make jams starting with raspberry, yum.

Why Renaissance Woman

I thought I would explain the title of my page to those who may not undestand. I guess I will start with my dad who always talked about being well rounded. It was important to him that we have many interests in a variety of areas. Simply put I agree with him, plus its fun to have so many things to learn and keep you busy. I think it is important to have a knowledge in so many areas to be able to converse with a variety of people about common interests, but its more than that for me. I feel driven to learn as much as I can in so many areas for the self-confidence it gives me in knowing that if push came to shove, I could be able to do it myself.

It has also helped having a dad who was into woodworking and doing home improvement projects all the time and a mom who was amazing at working with textiles and fiber arts. This not only shows you options of things to learn but it helps when you inherit a small portion of their talents for working with your hands.

Many of my projects revolve around primitive technology (I know its a funny phrase but it refers to anything primitive man might have had to build or had to know in order to survive in the wilderness). I have also begun learning more textile arts from a variety of weaving styles to quilting to making simple clothes. Last year I learned simple blacksmithing and welding. Some of my more time consuming projects involve making my own leather, jelly, beadwork, and tatting. I also have my photography which I have been doing for at least the last ten years. Everywhere you look in my room, I have some type of project in progress. My grandma can't believe the amount of things I do, so she was the one who called me a modern renaissance woman.