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I Forge Iron

Sam Falzone

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Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Hamilton. Ontario.
  • Interests
    Viking history/re-enactment, blacksmithing, woodworking, wood carving, jewelry-making (silver), stained glass.

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  • Location
    Hamilton, Ontario. Canada
  • Biography
    -hobbyist blacksmith, elemenatry school teacher
  • Interests
    SCA, blacksmithing, woodworking, cooking, axe and knife throwing, Viking history/re-enactment
  • Occupation
    Teacher

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  1. Thanks. Hi Frosty ... life's been busy. I know I've been neglecting IFI ... I've missed it, but time has been a scarce commodity lately. Hopefully things will quiet down soon.
  2. Greetings all ... it's been a while since I've posted last. I remember a few years back, someone had posted a list about the different types of steel you could find on a car or in a junkyard. I'm having trouble finding it on this new site format (looks great by the way). Could someone help me locate it? Thanks.
  3. Andy and Frosty have the right of it. Blacksmithing is not about swinging the heaviest hammer - it's about swinging the hammer weight that you can control comfortably and still get the job done. It's ignorant and inconsiderate comments from smiths like that guy in the original post that discourage a lot of young smiths or convince them to swing hammers way outside their comfort zone causing them to do considerate damage to themselves - both short term and long term. We need to teach better than this. Sam
  4. WOW!!! I can't believe someone actually said something like that. This is an open forum and everyone has the right to voice their opinion - but that crosses the line. I mean, sure, I've disagreed with things Thomas has said before, and I may have even been the recipient of a less than flattering comment, but no one has the right to tell anyone else to shut-up (except maybe the moderators in a way). Thomas I have always appreciated your knowledge and skills in the art of blacksmithing. Please keep it up.
  5. What do you get when you have 2 blacksmiths who are professionally teachers and who have that same March. Break? A week-long blacksmiths playdate. I'm currently sitting in the Buffalo Airport waiting for my flight to Minnesota to go visit Danr (Dan from Irontree Works) to spend the week collaborating on a project. Best March Break Ever!!! Have I ever mentioned how much I love my wife?
  6. The only thing I've heard of in smithing that mentions using graphite is in some lubricant recipes for slitting and drifting. Sam
  7. Thanks to everyone for your kind words and warm welcome back. I realize now how much I've missed this place. Today has been another good day. Did more much needed clean-up in my outbuilding (which will be my smithy). Moved stuff around and got everything in place, ready to move a lower rolling cabinet to my basement for my silver-work bench. However the cold and my aching back forced me back inside the house, so I'll move that cabinet and finish setting up my silver-bench tomorrow. I've also set up an old 13" tv and dvd player in my basement workspace for those long work sessions. I'm excited about how things are coming together. Cheers all and thanks again. Sam
  8. Happy New Year everyone. I know that I have been largely absent from this list for a long time but the past few years have been difficult. I've been dealing with life changes and deep depression and have not been very active in any of my crafts for the past 2 years (at least). I'm hoping to change that. I've slowly been dragging myself out of the depths of depression, trying to kick-start living again. So far my biggest success has been completing the set up of my stained-glass work bench at home - I even made 2 quick stained glass ornaments for the season. Next on the list is my silver workbench which is mostly complete. Still to come are my woodworking bench and finally my blacksmith shop in my back shed. I'm finally starting to pick up some momentum and things are finally happening - I'm taking this as a good sign. I'm looking forward to getting my silver-bench operational. I want to get back into doing some jewelery in silver and copper and even bronze. I picked up some sheet bronze this year and I'm looking forward to playing with it. The big project will be my smithy. It has sat untouched for too long - it now needs a new roof, but once the shop is complete and operational, I've decided to commemorate the event and and major turning point in my life with a tattoo of my shop logo - but that is still to come. I want to get more active on this list again. I want to share new projects and hear about your new projects, see your pictures and have some good discussions about topics and ideas Well, that's it for me for now. I'm hoping to post again soon with more good news. Happy New Year to everyone. All the best of Luck, Health and Prosperity in the coming year. Sam
  9. Greetings all. I'm in the process of planning out a bellows project for my travel forge rig. However I've hit upon a possible snag/question that i hope someone here can help with. First the details ... -my protable rig is a charcoal forge -the fire pot itself is around 12" x 12" x 3" deep (fire brick). -- The bellows will be a double-lung (over/under) model -- I want the bellows to provide enough air delivery to get the forge to welding temperatures. My question is, "Is there a formula to figure out the minimum or maximum size the lungs need to be?" Or does it not matter? Thanks all. Sam
  10. Southeshore I'm with you on this one ... I just don't get it. To each their own.
  11. It would be great blacksmith karma if you can buy it and pass it on to a beginning smith at a fair price. That and it would be a really decent, upstanding thing to do. You could become some young smith's mentor. Good luck. Sam.
  12. Just thought I'd post this for historical interest. Years ago I bought a repro of a 1908 Sears Roebuck catalogue because our house was built in 1908 and my wife and I thought it would be interesting to see what was available at that time. Here is a page from the blacksmithing section ... it almost made me cry. Yup ... you're reading it right ... Acme anvils sold for 15 cents per pound - this sale ad was for 9.5 cents per pound. Now I know times and costs are all relative, but to hear about anvils selling for 15 cents per pound at any time is still mind-boggling. On other pages, Sears sold complete home blacksmithing kits including a small forge, anvil and a set of tools for $45.00. I want a time machine !!! Sam Hamilton, ON. One other thing ... All those years watching Bugs Bunny cartoons and I've just realized that all the times Wille E. Coyote was mail-ordering stuff to make his traps, he was ordering from Sears Roebuck (... they were the only company carrying Acme anvils).
  13. That is SWEET !!! Nicely done. Truely something to be proud of. Sam.
  14. Charcoal is pretty much my primary forging fuel so I have quite a bit of experience with it. You may actually have multiple things happening causing all this "sparking" (... I call them fire-fleas). First off, bagged charcoal tends to have a lot of fines mixed in with it and that's just charcoal getting ground together during handling and transport. These tend to be most concentrated at the bottom of the bag, but can be added to your fire every time you up-end the bag and add more fuel. The easiest solution is sift and grade your charcoal. Sift out the fines from each bag of charcoal - some smiths even grade their charcoal, busting up large pieces until they have charcoal lumps about the size of walnuts. It does deliver a much more consistent heat, but the smiths I knowI only do this step when smelting. After sifting and/or grading, you could also store your charcoal in a separate container (- like an old wicker basket) so that you're using a shovel or grabbing handfuls of charcoal to fuel your fire instread of up-ending a bag full. If this is your first time using charcoal and you've learned on coal, I'm guessing you're using a bottom-blast forge. Bottom-blast forges are great with coal because coal is heavier than charcoal. A strong blower on a bottom-blast forge can send sparks, embers and whole coals flying out of a forge because charcoal is less dense than coal. I find side-blast forges work best with charoal. Charcoal CAN be used on a bottom-blast forge, but you have to be more careful - ease-up on the blower or modify your grate to difuse the air more (use smaller holes and more of them). Wetting your charcoal can help a bit in controling sparks, but I tend to use wetting to control charcoal consumption - wet down the carcoal around the outside of the pile that is away from the hot centre to prevent the fuel from being burned up for no reason. Don't give up on charcoal yet. It takes some adjusting to but it is a great fuel to use. It is much cleaner than coal, gives much cleaner welds when forge-weldng, and if you're interested in history, it doesn't get more old-school that charcoal. Good luck. Try changing some of the things I mentioned and see if it helps, but the truth is you're never going to get rid of all the fire-fleas - there will always be some. For me, I tend to forge outside most of the time anyway - so long as I'm not getting embers or coals shooting out of my forge, I tend to ignore the fire-fleas ... they're mostly harmless (... though I did catch one on the tongue last month ...). Cheers. Sam. Hamilton, ON.
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