Workshop at Home

Fast forward about a year

Workshop

Round about this time I decided I needed a workshop, this involved a small extension to the house in the form of a couple more garages and a new lounge with patio on the roof of the garages. There are now a total of four garages one of which is my workshop.

Workshop

I purchased a bench to start and some basic tools (saw, files, tweezers) and a pair of torches one for melting and one for soldering and rented in propane and oxygen cylinders to start, as the months and years went by I have added significantly to my tool and equipment collection. Working a 9 -5 job helps feed my workshop’s desire for tools.

 I get my gas installed – this involves setting the regulators a lot of piping to my two torches …. And suddenly you are on your own, not in the safe confines of a classroom studio but your garage with your wife in your head giving subtle advice - she is always in my head giving subtle advice…. Don’t do that don’t try that you will hurt yourself……… you’ll break something….. You’ll burn the house down,  blow the house up….. Hurt yourself ……..so I switch off the voice in my head and fire up the melting torch, now I don’t know if anyone has ever held an instant six foot flame thrower with the howl off a jet taking off in your hand; well the feeling of absolute terror that overwhelms you is unsurpassed, I just stood there eyes bulging holding this monster at arm’s length …. Burn the house down now that sounds familiar, after what seemed an absolute age I get the thing calmed down (read switched off) then called back the supplier – blah blah blah …..we set the regulator thing up wrong or something along those lines.


Well all is great now with a constant stream of melted silver passing out of my crucible along with a lot of failed pieces going into the crucible to be converted back into ingots for re-working.

Melting torch, crucible and ingot mold

Soldering torch