mike-hr

There's been plenty of input on this subject in past threads. I'll let that rest, and bring up the subject of,,,, Recovery Rate! I run a blower type ribbon burner for production, coal forge for art work. I do a lot of millwright stuff for a local concrete guy. He called one time, he was pouring a retaining wall in 3 hours, and there was no J-bolts in town, for the spec the plans called for. The steel yard had 24 inch studs that would make the spec, if bent correctly. we did 75 J-bolts in 1-1/2 hrs , 3/4 stock, he made it to the pour easy. The advantage to blown vs. atmospheric,in my opinion, is the ability to crank the mother up to eleven,adjust to a neutral flame, and get the job done.

It's beautiful. I got that tumbling feeling in my guts when looking at the pictures. Nice job.

That's a great construction. The handle won't break off without a fight. Most of the hay around these parts anymore is processed as 3x4x8 foot bales that weigh half a ton or so. My current favorite set of hay hooks says 'Hyster' across the back.

2Dogs, I know it can take 11 hours to drive across So. Orygun, but if you're within 3 hrs from Klamath Falls, Get aholt of me a few days in advance, I'll get the local boys in a bunch and we can do an afternoon of bottom tool whacking. I've got blocks in 1 inch, 15/16, 7/8, and 3/4 if I remember right. It's actually a fair bit of a good time, we all got pretty good at it when we did the CBA conference workshop 3yrs back or so. Bring a pile of beer, the rest is on me. 541-892-2208
mike h

One of my smithing buddies, Darryl, is a VW van life member. I always pay his way to hammer-ins, just to take advantage of his packing abilities. He's like a kid in a candy store when we pack my demo station in the longbed F-250 with a 16 foot trailer behind. He can get half my shop in there, with coolers on top, and room for tailgating treasure eventualities.

I use way oil, bought 5 gallons for the mill and lathe. I would like to interject into this conversation, I don't care what oil you use! Seriously. If you're squirting anything into all the leetle beety holes in your hammer where lube is supposed to be squirted every day while the forge is heating up, that's a whole lot better than thinking it only needs a squirt of oil every week wherever it's convienient. My hammer is over a hundred yrs old. I don't consider myself as using it up, i'm preserving it till my grandkids can work it. Okay, I work it hard untill the job is done, then i oil it some more. Sounds easy on paper, works good in practice, too.

I haven't shaved since last December. I have a full head of black hair, but the beard is snow white. I like to tell my wife that i had a black beard, until we got married, it must be her fault. Don't know if I'm coming out ahead on that discussion or not. I have noticed, however, it seems my street cred has improved when customers come to the shop, I'm looking grey and wisened, but still have all my fingers and teeth. If I tell folks that their plan will most likely self-destruct, they listen more than they did when I looked 20 yrs younger. We're planning a trip a lot closer to the equator than we are now come New Years, I reckon I'll cut the whiskers to get a snorkel mask to fit better. I'll take notes to how much flak I get from cubicle dwellers when I get back clean shaven and armed with the same experience base next year.

As an aside, I figure I've saved enough money by not shaving for a year to buy a 12 pack of miller high life in the disposable razors I didn't have to buy. Will make for a guilt free Wednesday, probably next week.

I have an industrial duty pedastal grinder that uses 12 inch pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) discs. Historically, it's a real task unpeeling the used disc to apply a new one. I got mad this morning and took the oxy/fuel rosebud to the surface, for just 5 seconds, whilst the machine was spinning, but turned off. The disc popped off in one piece, something that's never happened before. To remove the old rubbery glue, I turn the machine on for a second, then cut the power and use the backside of a sharp wood chisel and spin the glue off toward the center. To seat the new disc on tight, I bought a wooden wallpaper seam roller and apply pressure while it's spinning. This probably sounds silly, but I've spent 20 minutes each dozens of times fighting the used disc off when it's cold.

I can't verify this personally yet, but I was talking to a Washington state smith at a hammer-in a couple weeks ago, when he leaves his shop for the night, he lights a stick of mulberry incense. He reported zero spiders in the shop for a couple years now.

I have a chunk that looks similiar to that, but the size is approx. 10 inch square by 4 inch high, and no dovetail. I use it for my floor anvil. Finally found out it is a bottom die for an ore crushing mill.

Rich, that's plumb sweet! I'd buy it if I wasn't earning blacksmith's wages.

I've got the 275# double bick Peddinhaus. I wouldn't trade it for any other.

-no blacksmithing content- I did a lot of housebuilding work before I reclused to my metal shop. I was working on a big house, and the siding was to be the natural basalt that was on the property. We found a nice dike of 3 inch thick chunks that would work perfect, but it was 80 yards down a 30 degree slope. Four of us worked carrying armloads of rock up the slope for an hour, then I clocked out to try and think up a better way to move tons of rock up the hill without footprints. The next day, I came back with a spool of 5/8 inch cable, some clamps, a long hank of rope, and a 4 foot square heavy wooden box. I rigged the cable high up a tree at the top and bottom of the hill, used a warn winch snatchblock pulley on the cable that was rigged to the wooden box. I tied the long rope to the box. I took the front wheel off my old F150 4x4 and used the hub as a windlass. We had 2 guys bringing rocks to the landing and loading the box, once it was full, I did a wrap on the wheel-less front hub ( I blocked the rear axle off the ground), and had the kid put the Ford in gear. It brought the box with hundreds of pounds of rock up the slope in seconds! We mined the dike in a day or two, can't remember. Nobody ever gave me attitude for sitting in the corner, drawing on the floor with a piece of soapstone after that.

I use soapstone on the shop floor. Costs about a dime for a stick of soapstone. If I'm feeling artsy, I dig a piece of charcoal out of the bottom of the woodstove and draw on a piece of paper.

Thanks folks. Phil, the furry texture is a top die sharpened to look almost like your thumbnail on the end. There's a thread in the Power hammer section here, called 'High Speed Hammer', that has a picture of the little hammer. The brass ruler used to be Mark Asperys. I found one on Ebay and bought it. Showed it to Mark at a hammer-in, turns out I had found the holy grail of english brass rulers. All I wanted to do was measure stuff, so he traded me for his.
Sam, I did a demo on hinge eyes last year, that made me tune up on the process. I ended up making a couple tools that really helped out. It might take a week or so, but I will map that stuff out.

6 hinges, made from 1/4 x 4 inch flatbar. I hot rolled the eyes freestyle, drifted to 3/8 inch, then finished drilled to 3/8 after they cooled. Lots of filework getting the eyes to link together, but maintain minimal sag. I chased the diamond shapes in with a small radius fullering chisel, then put some fancy texture inside the diamonds with my newly restored High Speed brand rivet hammer. I bid these way too low, as usual, but learned a lot, and will most likely get more work from the customer.

Something else to keep you confused, what kind of soil do you have? If you live on alluvial sand and river rocks, you need to do more thinking than if you have six inches of topsoil with six feet of hardpan beneath.

That's a fine 3-sided unit. What I would question is..
Can air get through it to feed the forge? My turn of the century 3 sided ball covers about half of the air opening.
Are the wings too long? They probably are, but will burn down in short order. You may get some false readings of burning your work up(sparklers), and it will be the long edges of the wings trimming themselves down.
I would drill and tap at least 1/4 inch set screws into it. use lots of high temp neverseize on the threads. The allen heads will guaranteed burn off, so you will have to weld nuts to the burnt setscrew pegs to get them out. Not a big deal, I end up doing that to mine every couple years or so.
You did a good job. I'm not cutting you down at all. This piece will see a lot of bad days, you can expect it to take some abuse. Have fun with it.

I love it! Thanks for the video. We did something like that last year, I found a cell phone in the road. I tried in vain to find who owned it, so decided to end it's life in a way no one could misuse it's potential. Mcraigl was over with his son, I asked if he could make a classic 'step taper' with the phone on the flat dies of my 80# mechanical hammer. He was doing a great job, but about 10 hits into the project, the phone started to smoking, bad. About 5 seconds later, it plumb caught fire on itself. He dropped the phone to the floor and we evacuated and opened the big door to let the smoke escape. We decided to quarantine the shop until all traces of smoke had disappeared, 20 minutes or so. I guess it lends creedence to the old addage, 'It's all fun and games until a cell phone catches on fire under the old power hammer'.

I think this has been covered before, but don't know how to look for it.. my vine dies(borrowed the idea from many other folks),make some spring clapper dies,mine are flat so I can use various size stock. I think Off-Center tools makes them semi-round, a better idea. Take a .040 slit wheel and slit a bunch of lines randomly, 1/8 apart or so. It works in the anvil hardy hole, or the power hammer. Hit, pull, index, hit, repeat. looks like vines to me.

Mark, that's beautiful.

Don't know if this applies to your project, but a lot of failures I've seen when working with spring steel originated from beating and bending after the steel cooled too much, and got into the feared blue brittle range. I try really hard to only work steel when it's red. If I can't see red, it goes back in the fire.

Another picture

I spent a lot of last week taking it apart, fixing a few worn things, and painting. I thought i would post some tidbits I discovered in case somebody wants to fix up one of these in the future.
-There's two gooey thick flatwasher type spacers on the crankshaft, turns out they are actually thrust bearings, and have a tiny hole to inject grease into.
-The clutch disc is made from cork gasket material, works real good.
-The top dies are threaded in, 1/2-20 tpi Left Hand threads. A little set screw on the ram snugs them in. Handy having a lathe in the shop for making new dies.
It doesn't hit very hard, but I was able to victimize some bits of oil drum lids with good success. I'll try to attach a couple pictures.
mike

I'm proud to admit i consider Mark Aspery's system of education one of my lifes high points. I have the tools and technology to to mig weld and blend in leaf and vine work, and i admit, it happens, depending on the budget for the job. The wierd thing is, I always hear this Welsh accented voice in the back of my head telling me to jamb it in the fire and do it right. As I progress in this trade, I find i can do the same work with increasingly less power tools. You're correct, very few folks can discern the difference, but the whole piece has a very different flavour when done in the fire than on the fab table. most of my new client sales pitch is slanted to educating folks on the differences. We're not losing the old ways at all, it's just a mental (and economic) struggle to incorperate them, and still get paid.