Loen Smed | The Wildest Job (so far)

Good morning you wonderful people.

First things first, there’s still a few spots available at the blacksmithing class this coming weekend 16-17th of April at Kroloftet in Oslo. We’re working on setting up a few more classes before the summer, but they’ll mostly be shorter projects and such.

Now, to the main attraction this last week that was a bit out of the normal scope of what I do; A cable drum that needed some modification to be shipped by air freight. Why did it need to be modified? Because Putin blew up the largest airplane in the world at an airport in Ukraine. The result was that this 18 tonn heavy cable, was too large to fit on the next available flight. Needless to say, it was quite a challenging job. Figuring out how to reduce the height of the drum by 40 cm, while making sure it can still be loaded by forklift, while not destroying the 230.000€ cable with heat, while keeping the structural integrity of the drum intakt so that it doesn’t just collapse in on it’self. Because, it weighs fucking 18 tonns! Oh, and did I mention we also had to roll it so that we could cut at the other side?

That being said, and slight spoiler alert, it did go very well. I had some amazing help on the job, both from the client flying in from Singapore and Quim that I share workspace with at Kroloftet.

I posted about the whole story over on Instagram, in my highlights over there, and we talk about it on the podcast both last week, and on tomorrows episode. Links to that below if you’re curious.

Here’s the pictures and original post from Instagram

I get a message on WhatsApp that looked very much like spam, but me having nothing better to do in the moment figured I could see what this was all about. A few messages later, a short drive down to the docks of Oslo and a phone call later it seemed very much legit, but also intimidating.

This roll of cable weighs 18 tonns, is worth around 230.000€ and because Putin blew up the largest cargoplane in the world, it no longer was possible to air freight to Singapore. Yes, this was about the time my stress level started to rise. But also, being pathologically optimistic and somewhat stupid I gave them a quote and they said; Yes please, can you have it done by yesterday?

Shit.

Realising I needed help, I reached out to @q_kamikaze_ who actually knows how to weld and operate a cutting torch and together we got to work. On site we was met by Rob, a Scotsman whom got flown in from Asia to help us out. He was a brilliant chap and together things went incredible well.

Almost too well ... because while cutting through the header bar, we're removing a lot of the structural integrity of the drum and it did shift a little on us. Nothing to serious, I hope, but enough that we considered it wise to weld on some bracers to stiffen tings up.

Then, of course, we had to roll it and place it in the gribb we fabricated together. Exciting is a small word at moments like this. We got the crane in, confused the operator a bit by what we wanted to do, then got to work. He did an excellent work, and although he was sweating a fair bit, got it done in a cool manner.

We met the deadline of the air freight, sent it off, and I'm now working on unpuckering my sphincter. At some point next week, this cable will be unrolled onto some large ship, sent out to sea and used to operate an underwater digger, laying power cable, oil pipelines or whatever needs to be done at a few hundred meters below the surface.

At least the weather was nice this week.

Blacksmithing Classes

As I mentioned on top, there’s a few spots available at the blacksmithing course this coming weekend, 16-17th of April. It’s all about basics of blacksmithing, but I think anyone who want to improve their hammer techniques or learn more of the fundamentals will learn a lot.

Anyone who previously bought a gift card can still use them to attend the classes, simply send me an email if you want to do so. Otherwise, click the images to be taken directly to the site to book your spot. Or, you know, go through loensmed.no/kurs, I’m happy either way.

There’ll be a few more classes before the summer, including some 3-hour evening classes and some one day classes, but we’re still working out the details for these. If you are interested or have something in mind you’d like to learn how to make, please let me know and we’ll figure something out.

Podcast:

On last weeks episode there’s more information and banter about this mad cable drum job, but we also talk a bit about finding your island of bliss and why we can’t stay happy.

On tomorrows episode there’s more information about cable drum job and how it all went in the end, while we also insult each other and talk about having a bad day.

You might have noticed there’s a lot of talk around mentalt health on the podcast, and it’s not without reason. It’s somethings that’s near and dear to my mates Red and Jan, and my self.

You can listen on Soundcloud, Spotify, or at whatever bay you pirate your podcasts from.

Thank you very much for your attention and support.

… and remember that challenges are a good thing

— Rasmus

Semi-by-smeden

PS: If you like what you see here and want to support small makers doing weird things, share it with somebody you think will find it fascinating. Words of mouth is the best words after all.

Loen Smed

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