mike-hr

Wondering if the 4R brand should have vents cut out at the 3 and 4 way intersections, to keep the steaks from looking smudgy if the iron gets too hot..

Beauty score Mark.. If you get all the holes dug, etc.. I bet i could get a few hands your way to do an old fashioned shop raisin' day.. You'd come out slightly ahead of paid labor if you supply beer and ribs...

Congradulations! You won't be sorry. Sore, maybe, but not sorry. I'm lucky enough to live close to one of Marks favorite training grounds, and have taken all his classes. I would heartily recommend any or all of them. Sometimes it may seem like he's having you do something the hard way, but its a jumping point to the next level. Let us know how it goes.

Are you installing it? Did you check for a level floor? Inside or outside? If inside, did the contractor put lots of blocking in the framing for you to bolt to? Do you have to weld the corner together onsite, on top of new white carpet? If outside, be careful of stucco walls with styrofoam sub-sheathing. If you want to core drill and grout the legs, the drill guys hate uneven surfaces like rock and slate, they cant get a good suction on the drill. All these little dingers could add days to the install, and burn up all your beer margin.

Great idea, thanks!

Hwy 50 in Nevada is my favorite scooter road.. Utah, Montana, Idaho, Oregon(east side) have all been real good to us.. except for getting caught too many times in fierce thunderstorms with strikes every 15 seconds for several hours, but hey, that's where good memories come from. We rode from Calgary to Banff in a thunderstorm on our honeymoon, I had to go 70 mph to keep the rain rolling off my visor so I could see, my cheap plastic rain gear was ripped to shreds after 3 hrs. If you get to southern Oregon, we'll feed you and forge for a day if you want..

It would be convinient to make the forge bed the same height as your anvil, they both could work extra duty as stock supports

I did a big repair on the clutch/pressure plate recently. I took some pictures and did a BP on it, It should appear in the BP section someday.. Anyway, mine has four or five 1/2inch diameter compression springs that hold the pressure plate away from the drive wheel. If you tear the head down, let me know, I'll be happy to mail you the new springs for it. I had to buy 20 of them to make the minimum order at the spring company.

I have a 80# Perfect, says 'Patent 1907' on the frame. I've grown quite fond of it. I like the leaf spring set-up, you can get different behavior and hitting power with small adjustments to the tensioners.

So, what do you make with it? Anything you want would be an acceptable answer, but really, what do you make with it?

Instead of welding the cast iron pan, consider using flat bar and rivets, and doing a band-aid repair. I quit trying to clay the pan on my demo forge, I'm just real careful about not pouring too much water on the coal when it's hot.

I worked in a machine shop in Portland for almost a year in the 1980's until the rain made me suicidal.. Anyway, they bought a nice waterjet machine and were doing some nifty art engraving stuff by running the travel speed so fast the jet would cut only partially into the steel plate. I reckon you would have to call your local shops and ask. I would think the smaller coil you are working with, the more difficult it would be.

Could you post some pictures of it? I can't really help you with information, but I bought a big mechanical ironworker a few years ago, and don't know what brand it is. I haven't set it up, I'm kind of scared of it. I was told it would shear 1 inch plate, but don't know if I want to be in the same county when the lever trips.

Thanks for the compliments Mark, come over again sometime, we'll make some tongs...

I got to play with TI 2 times, at hammer-ins. I hope someone can shed some light on the different alloys.. The first piece was a crescent shaped saw drop about 4 inches long. The guy that had it asked if we could make something out of it during midnite-maddness. I got to be the forge guy, and got 2 strapping lads with 8# sledges to strike for me. After maybe 6 heats and plenty of re-hydration, we succeded in making a slightly dented crescent shaped piece, we all agreed on a stupid art-speak title for the 'scuplture', and gave it back to its owner. The other piece was at another hammer-in, a piece of flat bar, maybe 1/2 by 1 inch, we heated it up and it moved a bit faster than warm butter, but left a yellow powder residue on the surface..

My boy and I made a machete last week from a big sawblade. We used a piece of broken axehandle (hickory) for the handle scales. We counter sunk and used copper rivets. The copper was malleable enough to fill the countersunk hole pretty easily. One thing we learned the hard way was to use little nuts and bolts in the vacant holes to keep the handles tight while doing the riveting. Do a trial run with your brass rivets, some brass would rather crumble than peen over.

That's a real nice new puppy. As a safety note, when punching holes, don't try to punch a hole that's smaller than the thickness of the plate. ( don't try to punch a 3/16 hole in 1/4 plate). A buddy was trying this, the punch exploded, the shrapnel dented the 6 inch steel ruler in his apron pocket, which was just in front of his heart....

The eccentric runs down and transfers power to a piece of flat bar on the flat...looks like a weekend design, with too many pints of mead clouding the big picture of elasticity and yield points.

You should figure out what handle you like. Do you buy a handle at the hardware store, or make your own from a chunk of firewood? You make your drift to approximate the handle. There are a couple threads related to this recently on the site, one is under 'drifting a hole' in the blacksmithing section, the other is in the knife section under 'tomahawk' I think.. Check these out, and feel free to ask more questions.

Hello Adrian, I just looked at all the pictures you posted in the gallery. Very nice stuff. I especially liked the texture you created by using layed courses on the fireplace basket and the triangular stair rail. When I try to free-form pieces, I often end up with the same curve shapes that you have in a lot of your work. The difference is, I never know what to do with them. Thank you for some inspiration. Mike

John, the pictures are a great help, thanks. I'm a bit muddy on the non-return valve. I researched mcmaster-carr, McMaster-Carr which is one of the bigger industrial suppliers in the USA. I went to 'process contol' on the front page, then clicked on 'check valves' . The two that looked like what you use are either 'ball check valves', or 'spring loaded check valves'. They both look like they would work. There seems to be a choice of cracking pressures, 1 PSI, or 2PSI. Am I on the right track here? Which type would you recommend? Thanks again for helping with this. Bob Graham never seemed overly concerned with little issues like this, I appreciate that you've identified a problem, and found a fix. mike

John, thank you for ringing in on this! I know several folks that are on pins and needles with user support since Mr. Graham passed away earlier this year in California. Would you please post a photo of the oiler fix (Take this out of there and put a new one here) and maybe a photo of crowning the rings for quicker take off? The Anyang we were using is at a museum/volunteer school, I'm on a quest to get more people in my region to feel more comfortable using hammers. The 33# is a great size to not intimidate folks but still get some work done. If we can tune this one up in a morning, I'm sure it will have a positive impact. Also, does anyone know if someone is taking up the USA franchise for anyang? I love my old mechanical hammer, but have known that if it crashes hard, I could drive to Grahams and have a new hammer running in a few days if in the middle of a big job.