# Custom Made Fire Poker



## quads (Oct 10, 2009)

My homemade fire poker from the teenage years. It works better than those factory made pointed pokers. It's really heavy, so you just kind of let it plop down, then pull, and everything has no choice but to be raked forward.

It was built as a joint effort one fine evening between me and some of my partying buddies. It's outlived several stoves, but we originally designed it for an old barrel stove. After that, a Ben Franklin cast iron fireplace/stove, an airtight automatic heater, and a box stove. I still use it now, but I have to hide it in the ash bucket behind the wood box. I'm told it's too ugly to have it prominently displayed, but to me it's a work of art filled with good memories! And fully functional too.






The fancy handle, recycled from a broken pitchfork. Note the equally impressive cotter pin securing it to the metal rod. Also, it has a hole for hanging by the stove through which we originally looped a leather shoelace.





The working end, with impaired precision welding. The holes serve no purpose; they were already in the piece of scrap metal we used to make it.


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## savageactor7 (Oct 10, 2009)

hummm, held up for years and has a story behind it...that's what I would call a 'heritage' tool. Congratulations.


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## LLigetfa (Oct 10, 2009)

The proper term for that is a hoe.  An ash hoe to be more precise.


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## wahoowad (Oct 10, 2009)

I like it! 

Here's my homemade poker...


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## LLigetfa (Oct 10, 2009)

Nice welding.


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## quads (Oct 11, 2009)

wahoowad said:
			
		

> I like it!
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> Here's my homemade poker...


Pretty!  I would probably be allowed to display mine in plain view if it was as nice looking as yours!


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## quads (Oct 11, 2009)

LLigetfa said:
			
		

> Nice welding.


That's precision alcohol welding.


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## LLigetfa (Oct 11, 2009)

quads said:
			
		

> LLigetfa said:
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Sorry, I didn't mean to be an ash hoe.


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## Ratman (Oct 11, 2009)

nice job quads...


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## quads (Oct 11, 2009)

LLigetfa said:
			
		

> quads said:
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Are you just poker-ing fun?  Ha ha!


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## bill*67 (Oct 11, 2009)

i like it quads. looks like the perfect companion for an older stove and would fit in perfect at any camp!


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## LLigetfa (Oct 11, 2009)

quads said:
			
		

> LLigetfa said:
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Not really.  WRT the welding, I was commenting on the job wahoowad did.  Momma told me, "if you have nothing good to say..."

That said, it is nice to hold on to something from one's youth that's practical and has passed the test of time.  I keep meaning to take the handle from the whisk in my set and convert it into a combo hoe and rake.  The hoe part to shove everything to the back and the rake part to separate the coals and drag them forward.


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