mike-hr

I look across the door opening in a dim light, and fiddle with the needle valve until there is a slight hint of orange breath coming out the door. I take this to be a slightly rich flame. Turn the valve towards closed until the orange breath goes away, that's neutral. A rich flame makes less scale, but makes CO, a bad thing. My ribbon burner makes copious amounts of CO until it's at working temp, then I can get zero CO on the meter with a neutral flame. The 3 psi doesn't mean much, it's variable with the jet size, and the cfm of the blower pumping into the system. You need to watch out for pre-ignition, when the flame is burning before it gets to the ceramic block. I put a dab of axle grease on the inlet pipe. If it starts smoking, close off the gas for a couple seconds, then turn back on. The forge will light itself again but the flame is on the correct side. Not much calculus involved, but works for me...

I live in potato country, and used a lot of digger chain for punches and chisels. It's got a narrow heat window to forge in, put it back in the fire if it's not red. Mark Aspery said it behaves like 1090-ish steel. It's hard to heat treat, I was breaking 2 or 3 tools out of 10 with an oil quench and blue temper, then Mark got us using the triple draw water quench method. I would recommend doing a full anneal in ashes on your new tongs, and never quench them when they get hot. I now make chisels, etc from S-7 and use the digger chain for dinner triangles. The high carbon triangles ring lots louder than mild steel.

What comes to my mind is, use the pien end and make a series of divots in a fairly ordered progression, on all 4 sides. Then come back and forge the divots out. It's also fun to use a rounding hammer on the horn, you get actions on 2 sides of your work. Square, Octagon, Round.

Beautiful tool! Bet that design would be a good seller. Thanks for showing us.

Stand on the floor all comfortable like, and measure the height to your knuckles. subtract the height of the anvil from this, and offer your local firewood contractor a six-pack for a large round cut yonder long.

You mean a stump? look at the base of a tree.

I've been walking down the spinning path for about a year myself. I went though two 4x8 sheets of 18ga cold rolled steel before I started to get a one out of five success rate. A buddy gave me a pile of 55 gallon drum lids, the theory is that there is less carbon and therefore less work hardening in this drawing quality steel found in drum lids. Last week, I had 4 out of 5 successes with the lids one night, spinning trumpet shapes with 10 inch diameter discs. I've machined stainless a few times, and never enjoyed it. In fact, I've come to get queasy in the stomach whenever anybody wants me to look at something stainless. If you're like me, and I know I am, start with drum lids, graduate to CR plate, then try stainless. Keep us informed on your progress. I find spinning to be fascinating, and one of the foremost challenges I've ever taken on. Well, besides staying married for so long...

Might be a question of how much room is in your shop. I'm not familiar with this machine, but general experience dictates that multi-machines don't do anything really good. I have a nice large vertical mill (lagun ftv-2) and a big 16 inch swing by 8 foot South bend lathe, and I've often found the upper limits of what they both can do. Personally I would look around for a worn out bridgeport mill and a worn out 1950's lathe that can still do a lot of work. Light industry is taking a dump, there's lots of good machine tools out there begging for a new home.

I used a side blast coke forge for a week at a class a while back. I found the hot spot was above the blast a couple inches. The sand and clinker reflected the heat upward so I ended up placing the work directly above the end of the air nozzle. The other trick that helped was to give the clinker a bit of a lift at the start of each heat with a straight poker. I could hear the blast improve with just a slight nudge. The advantage of the side blast is it allows the clinker to settle below the air blast. I think you may be burying the work a little too deep.

From the 'Learned the hard way' files, forge the square hardy stub first. It's scary and dangerous to try and grip the wedge end with tongs.

We ran a bottom tool workshop at the CBA spring conference a couple years ago, under Marks supervision. I was sooo happy I had a separate block. We ran more than 30 folks through, came out with 2 broken sledge handles, dozens of mis-strikes, etc. We decided it was humorous, because nobody cares if they whang up the block. An anvil would have gotten too much character beat into it.

I use Sherwin-Williams OPEX metal laquer. I guarantee the finish for 3 years. It's semi-arid around here, I think that's why I'm having good luck with it. I doubt it would last very long in a wet climate.

I can't make anything like that without an engineers stamp of approval on the blueprint. They take into account roofing material, snow load, earthquake zone, etc. and then multiply by a magnitude for safety. I would like to say, now that it's mentioned, that engineers, at least around here, are either scared of liability, or have forgot how to run calculations. A couple weeks ago I made some steel posts to hold a laminate beam for a roof support on a small cabin. 3x3 inch tubing would have been just fine, but the engineer spec'ed 5x5x.375 inch square tube, with 1 inch thick footpads and 3/4 inch bolts epoxied 18 inches into the foundation. The four posts were between 6 and 10 feet tall. Almost popped the guts on the carpenters that installed them.

That's very encouraging news! Stay on the mend, Frosty. I've been mindful all weekend about all the tips and nudges you have given to all of us. My life is better because of him. You and Deb are in my thoughts.

Aluminum melts at 1220 degrees F. Are you just 'Assuming' that a wood fire never gets that hot?

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but your bricks look like those light weight types. If they only weigh a pound or less, they will probably crumble away after a couple weeks.

Cheap Flourescent lights get angry below freezing temps. I use HO flouro lights in my shop, they work below freezing, but below 0 degrees F plain old light bulbs would probably work best. Your forge, gas or solid fuel, will eat oxygen and generate carbon monoxide. fresh air inlets are a must.

If you are just starting, my vote for minimum tooling would be a car, tank of gas, and a free weekend to drive to a local guild meeting or hammer-in. You can beat your brains out for a long time and develop bad body mechanics without a coach handy. A weekend at a good hands on oriented hammer-in will jump start you at least 6 months.

I agree that controllability is most likely more important than all out squishing power. I have some issues with this statement that I hope to qualify. My old mechanical hammer has, I admit, poor control compared to a new Say Ha, Sahinler, Anyang, etc. I can still put out fair work on my old hammer, I got used to it's personality, we get along fine together. What this test can do, other than polarize folks that sell new hammers, is give the using public a chance to see if their individual hammer is doing as good as it could. If we got 10 folks with 50# Little Giants to log their results, and someone sees that their individual setup is 20 percent less effective than the norm, they might have cause to check the spring and toggle arms for excessive wear. This could hypothetically increase productivity, and maybe warn them of a potential safety breach. I got the opportunity to watch Tom Clark tune a new hammer he delivered on the west coast a while back. He had his amp meter out, was watching what power it drew during use, and made some mystical adjustments that made the hammer sing like an angel. I don't think this is all about which hammer thumps the hardest, it's about how your individual hammer does in the field, and if it's not up to par, there are some of the finest brains around the world hanging around here that could help you to get somewhere in the middle. Carry on.

The first year I had my power hammer, I made a pick-up truck load of unrecognizable flattened lumps of scrap. I think most of us on this forum practice open-die smithing, meaning we as the driver guide the hammer, manual or power, to form metal to our liking, using hand-held tooling and and various differing blows, without a closed form. I've heard many people say 'If I only had a power hammer, I could make whatever I want'. That's just not true. A person needs a fine background in hand hammer and anvil work to get used to what plastic metal can do, a power hammer can make ugly scrap 15 times faster than hand forging, and hurt you bad in the process. The final product in either process is a result of the smiths planning and execution.

That's quite pretty Mark, Congratulations! How did you machine all the tight radii in the guard? They really catch my eye.

That's a great question. The point on liability/cracking is probably valid. I'm wondering about what bolts you want secured, and if they can be replaced with rivets, or, can you put some skip welds along the framing to join the two pieces in addition to the bolts..

Another thing to evolve into is , 'forging the hole'. Make the round ball divot in the punch, then try squishing one side a little bit to get a tear drop shape, lemon shape, etc.

Heat it up, put the length in the vise, gripping on the collar. use a pry bar to align the cube while in the vise. The jaws of the vise will give indication of when every thing is parallel. You may have to put wedges in the stock behind the collar to hold it where you want it before attacking the cube with the prybar.

One time I was helping a guy demo that was a good front man, he did all the talking so i got to just work...I spent all day making twisted link welded chain from 5/16 round. It turned out to be a great demo, folks could come by in a few hours and see how long the chain was getting. This led to conversations about how valuable chain might have been , if there was no Ace hardware store on the corner, etc. A lot of smiths won't forge weld in a public demo, and for good reason, but if you keep a weather eye on your crowd, it's fun and educational. I came out with about 45 inches of chain, It sold for $180-USA. What to make is often the hardest part of the weekend for me. I'm not keen on public interaction, I usually pick a long involved project that weeds out the 5-minute lookers. It's just what I do, pick something you are comfortable with, and get to work.