![]() ![]() ![]() I advise having a very strong magnet to retrieve the fallen feathers out of the muddy holes. Once a crack forms all the pressure will come off the row of feathers and the wedges will lift easily out. Basalt is no joke- on the Mohs hardness scale it's somewhere between quartz and titanium carbide- but when it cracks, it cracks with a sound you have to hear in person to really enjoy fully. Most of these boulders are hard, Lake Superior basalt. Something about reading the rock and the sound together is very satisfying.Īnd the best sound of all is that wet apple-crack sound. They have so much character that I find myself really listening to the tones and switching up which wedge to hit and how hard to hit it. The sounds that come from tapping these wedges down between their feathers is delightful. The feathers must be harder than the wedge so they don't deform or break inside the hole drilled in the rock. Heat treat the little feathers by bringing their tips to dark straw color. That will be enough to crack very large stones wide open.Ĥ. When the wedge is slid all the way down to the tips of the feathers it should move them apart that 1/8 inch and make the waist an exact circle the same size as the hole their in. When assembled the wedge should glide between the feathers. Sand the matching faces of the three pieces until they slide smoothly. I made a light octagonal chamfer around the thick end. The wedge should taper from a full 1/2" at the top down to about 1/8" at the point. This is a super easy shape, perfect for a 1/2" square bar, 4 inches long. The main feature is that the feathers must have flat bellies that, when held together, must make a circle at their bottom tips.Ģ. You'll have to watch the video above to make sense of the shape. They are semi-cylinders with a 1/2" shoulder and a tapered waist. These feathers end up a shape I can't really describe, though they are very simple. These were roughly semicircle in cross section. ![]() My friends at the local spring company had given me lots of side cuts from leaf springs. I realized I could forge them out quickly from scrippiescraps I have in the bucket. Buying tools is no fun, especially when they seem so simple to make. ![]()
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