03-16-2015, 03:58 PM
No pictures, so a verbal description will have to do.
We were invited to a bonfire at Ocean Beach in San Francisco yesterday, and I woke up from a short nap with a plan: build the ultimate weenie roasting forks.
I found in my stock bin an 8-ish foot section of 1/4" round mild steel. I thought it would be enough for 4, but was only enough for 3.
I rooted around in my scrap bin and found some 1" round and 1" square tubing. I sliced a pair of ~3/4" pieces off the round and welded them to the square tube roughly 4" apart - these would be the former for the handles and forks.
With the former clamped in my vise, I used a scrap of cardboard to determine the length to cut for the handle - turned out to be about 8.5". I chopped 3 pieces to that length in my bench shear.
With a pair of needle nose vise grips, I clamped the handle blank so the joint would be in the middle of one bend -- that way I could put the 27" shaft between the ends and weld it. Each round end was heated with an O/A torch and bent around the former.
To make the forks, I sheared some 4" blanks, chucked them up in my favorite pencil and TIG electrode sharpener (cordless drill) and pointed both ends at the belt sander (linisher for the Brits) about like a pencil. These were also heated and bend around the former.
In retrospect, I needed a bit of vertical scrap between the tubes on the former to clamp to -- clamping to the tubes was not satisfactory. Especially on the shorter fork pieces - they were not up to my typically modest standards, mostly because my torch ran out of oxygen...
A grand total of 30 minutes of heatin' an beatin'...a few minutes of welding... and a bit of tuning up with a hammer, et viola! Manly weenie forks!
I zip-tied the wicked-looking forks to the luggage rack of my motorcycle with the pointy bits sticking out the back and headed into town. No tailgating, y'all! They were a big hit - people were trying unsuccessfully to roast weenies with bamboo skewers.
I've already come up with a couple of improvements for the Ultimate Weenie Roasting Fork MKII:
--incorporate a bottle cap opener somewhere,
--the 27" handle was a bit hot on the hands -- 35~40" would be more comfortable, so maybe a folding handle.
--maybe stainless for the Mil-Spec model.
We were invited to a bonfire at Ocean Beach in San Francisco yesterday, and I woke up from a short nap with a plan: build the ultimate weenie roasting forks.
I found in my stock bin an 8-ish foot section of 1/4" round mild steel. I thought it would be enough for 4, but was only enough for 3.
I rooted around in my scrap bin and found some 1" round and 1" square tubing. I sliced a pair of ~3/4" pieces off the round and welded them to the square tube roughly 4" apart - these would be the former for the handles and forks.
With the former clamped in my vise, I used a scrap of cardboard to determine the length to cut for the handle - turned out to be about 8.5". I chopped 3 pieces to that length in my bench shear.
With a pair of needle nose vise grips, I clamped the handle blank so the joint would be in the middle of one bend -- that way I could put the 27" shaft between the ends and weld it. Each round end was heated with an O/A torch and bent around the former.
To make the forks, I sheared some 4" blanks, chucked them up in my favorite pencil and TIG electrode sharpener (cordless drill) and pointed both ends at the belt sander (linisher for the Brits) about like a pencil. These were also heated and bend around the former.
In retrospect, I needed a bit of vertical scrap between the tubes on the former to clamp to -- clamping to the tubes was not satisfactory. Especially on the shorter fork pieces - they were not up to my typically modest standards, mostly because my torch ran out of oxygen...
A grand total of 30 minutes of heatin' an beatin'...a few minutes of welding... and a bit of tuning up with a hammer, et viola! Manly weenie forks!
I zip-tied the wicked-looking forks to the luggage rack of my motorcycle with the pointy bits sticking out the back and headed into town. No tailgating, y'all! They were a big hit - people were trying unsuccessfully to roast weenies with bamboo skewers.
I've already come up with a couple of improvements for the Ultimate Weenie Roasting Fork MKII:
--incorporate a bottle cap opener somewhere,
--the 27" handle was a bit hot on the hands -- 35~40" would be more comfortable, so maybe a folding handle.
--maybe stainless for the Mil-Spec model.