Making friends with the local smith

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Just met a fellow new to the area who does blacksmith work - a farrier by trade. He's got a kind of neat mobile setup out of the back of his station wagon (it's easier to bring the shop to the horse than the horse to the shop I guess, at least when you live in the "city") and asked him to make me a couple of hold fasts. Just been playing around with them in the holes in my deadman and saw bench (learned a lesson - holes that clear 3/4" when drilled in dimensional lumber don't stay that way after a couple of years) and so far am very pleased with them - The lock down well and have a nice feel to them. I've never worked with traditional holdfasts before, so I don't know quite what to expect, but the price was decent and I like supporting a local guy. He also knocked out a couple of quick bent blades from an old file - nothing pretty, but it was neat watching him work, having never done nor seen this sort of work in person. The idea with these is to have a go at making a kinshiro-style mortise gauge.


holdfasts:
250512
250511

Might do a little file work to one of them (or bring it back for a touch up - he's been very amenable with the gauge blades) - the pad on one doesn't rest quite as evenly as the other - I'm not actually convinced it's an issue at all, as I've been putting a softwood block between the holdfast and my work anyway, which takes up any slight discrepancy, and I need to check that it's not the holes I've been testing in being off-angle first.

All in all, though, it's just nice to have something made by someone in your town. I like that.

Now I just need to figure out where I want to drill holes in my nice bench. They actually seem like they might work in the square holes in the front of my bench, surprisingly enough, though. (Although I can imagine I'd want to be careful about the orientation, so I don't crack the front board on my bench!

He's pretty excited about making something different for a change - I'd like to have him take a whack at making some strap hinges, but I'd need to see about building something that could use some strap hinges first. I'm thinking something like one of those dutch-style tool chest/cabinet things might be neat and useful for the house.

[Jim Koepke]

My recollection is that my hold fasts, made by Junior Strasil are made on 5/8" rod.

And yes they can crack the front board on the bench when whacked in hard.

jtk

[Lonnie Gallaher]

The hold fasts should hold just fine in a square hole. At least they do in a square steel hole. Back in the early 70's I worked in an industrial black smith shop, in a steel mill, as a helper. The shop had a cast steel face plate that was about 10-0"x15-0"x4" thick. I don't remember ever measuring the hole size or spacing, but the holes were sized for a 2" round hold fast, we called them "dogs" in the black smith shop and spaced about 6" on center over the whole plate. The "dogs" looked just like the hold fasts in JP's pictures except 2" in diameter. It took at least a 12lb sledge to be effective in setting one of the dogs. They had a huge amount of holding power. Oh ya, you did not want to drop one on your foot. You can probably guess that we made our own "dogs". They were make out of 2" diameter 4140 bar stock.