mike-hr

Georg O'Gorman of the CBA told me a fine anecdote a while back. He was making S-hooks or something volunteering at a mission. The tourist lady had visited the gift shop, and was grilling Georg about why a simple hook cost what they were asking. He replied," Well, it took me three years and twenty minutes to be able to make that piece." She thought for a minute, smiled, and went to the gift shop to buy some.

Glenn and Family,
I can't imagine the pain of losing a child. My heartfelt condolences goes out to you.
Mike

I do several public demos a year. I pay half price vendor fee at one, but I volunteered to do so because it's a fundraiser, a great time, and has a crowd that appeals to my niche. The other events I do I get free lot space and keep all the money i make. I honestly feel public demo's aren't about selling widgets, it's about being professional, having a picture book on the table, and handing out business cards. I don't like the repetition of selling $300 of widgets at $10 each, I'd rather sell one plant hanger with a wind vane for $300. I worked 3 months last year from one bystander at a fair that liked my style, and referred me to different friends. Ain't nothing beats a happy customer with a speed dial on their phone.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Fe at the last hammer-in, heckofa nice guy. I'm a bit concerned about big steel lumps in the van, just one 18-car pile-up on the eyefive, and you bought into a world class headache. Might be a good idea to drag a week old dead sheep behind you to ward off the tailgaters...enjoy yourself

I recently built a new, small atmospheric burner propane forge out of a mini-beer keg (1.3 gallon). It ran 3 hrs yesterday on a mostly empty BBQ tank, it did fine heating 3/4 square all that time, and will make a 8 inch long heat. I'm trying to get efficient by sizing the furnace to the work I'm doing.

I agree with MacBruce, that things a ringer for my 'Perfect' hammer. They have good control for a mechanical hammer, the dies not being offset does kind of suck, but I forge railings from 1 inch square up to 10 ft long just by skewing past the frame. The main problem I see with that hammer, is the dies appear to have been ground to a taper, probably for jackhammer bits. To use it for general purpose you'd have to grind back to flat, or weld up material.

I'm on the Oregon/California border, plenty of beef, beer, and backyard if you're in the neighborhood.
mike

Looks like the radii don't match in your top and bottom die, you may be troubled with generating hockey sticks using those. I use flat dies exclusively, with additional spring-clapper dies for specific uses. I'd reccommend finding a copy of the Clifton Ralph videos, an occasionally boring but invaluable look at what can be done with flat dies. Branch out after that.

Get ahold of Marty at Countryside Fabrication, Aumsville. I toured his shop last year, he's been smithing a couple years, and has a brilliant mechanical mind. I don't want to give his phone # over the web, but if you can't find him, leave me a personal message by clicking on my name.
mike

Beautiful, you got that high, lonesome feeling conveyed spot on by my estimation.. I'm humbled.

Okay, I'm in the same boat. I learned on a coal forge, for creative work, that's my special happy place. I'm getting elkhorn coal for $30US per 50# bag, central Oregon, 400 miles round trip to buy. If cash gets tight, it's hard to sink $500 for a supply. What I'm doing now, is use the coal for creative and odd-sized projects, use the big ribbon burner propane unit for railings and stuff over 3 ft long, and a buddy and I recently built mini-atmospheric forges from those cute 1.3 gallon beer kegs, for leaves and BBQ tools, etc. I've got socket wrenches in 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 3/4 inch drive, it seemed intuitive to make different fuel consumption forges to match what's come in the shop door that day.

I have a forge similair to yours I take to demos and hammer-ins. It's a great size for traveling with. I was having hit-or-miss troubles forge welding with it because of the lack of firepot. I ended up making a drop-in firepot using the top of an old CO2 tank, probably from a soft drink machine. I hole sawed through the end with the threads so it fit over the air flange in the forge. Then cut the tank so I had 3 inches or so of fire pot. I cut a piece of 3/16 plate to fit in the forgepan, cut a hole in the plate that matched the firepot,welded together, and it simply drops in. I use a handful of dirt on the edges of the plate to combat tipping and shifting. It made the forge a whole lot better for an afternoon of work.

John at Gearhart Ironwerks started making hammers, I got one at the last hammer-in and went right to work with it. I feel they are under-priced at the moment. He posts here sometimes, or google gearhart ironwerks for the website. I'm not getting any kickbacks for the plug, I just feel he's got a handle on a good hammer.

I millwrighted in a dairy a long time ago, I finally got tired of all their crap.. Heeheehee. Anyways, there's a lot of fluids that come out of cattle from the non-milk producing anatomies, If you could get permission to chunk a load of iron in the aweful lagoon of any feedlot or dairy, I'm pretty sure it won't look brand new in a month.

Those legs look great! I've done stuff like that before, it's always a challenge keeping all the tapers consistant. I was discussing this with one of the local group elders (Garey) and he pulled a stack of sheetmetal tapers off the wall. He uses them as a guage stick, it's easier to see the thick spots after the heat.
It was great to finally meet you at Weaverburg,
mike

Should it roar every time you pump the bellows?
I reckon that's a gray area, but I notice a lot of folks that are new to burning solid fuel are choked up lots more often than running clean. The roar is something you use as a tool, I guess. Example: I've been making dragon heads from 1 inch square for the last week. The first few roughing out moves need a hot, fast fire so's I don't waste time. I listen for that sound and I know I'm being efficient. After the teeth are worked in, ears and horns peeled out, I'm risking sizzling off delicate anatomy by woofing on the blower. In this stage, I don't mind a choked down, clinker riddled fire, because it switches to a patience game, trying to get the main stock to a workable color, while preserving the detaily bits.
Keep after it, you're doing fine.

I use sound to help me know when to clean out. When you first light a new fire, do you notice an 'angry' sound when you pour in the airflow? Like when you blow on a campfire. A good working coal fire should have that sound. You can prolong cleaning by taking a lift at the bottom of the fire with your pokey tool while air is blowing.

My opinion, take it or leave it. Cut 8-10 inches of your I-beam nice and square. Stand it upright. Plate weld the loose sides with some 1/4 inch plate or thicker. Take misc 10 inch lengths of scrap and fill in the 2 voids nice and tight, grinding when required to get a nice tight pack. take the misc chunks out, one at a time, and grind bevels on the ends. Weld up the gridwork from each end, then grind flat. grind a heckofa bevel around the outside edges, then weld a 1 inch plate on both ends. after it cools, leave one edge sharp, and grind 3 other radiuses on the other edges of the top plate. 3/4, 3/8/, 1/4 radius, fourth edge stays sharp. Set your block on a stump, and build up retainers on the edges with screws and 2/x/6's, so it stays put. You'll be able to approach the stump at whatever face you want, the mass should give you the same inertial sweet spot as a small anvil, like 60-80 pound. Work smart. When your steel isn't bright red, put it back in the fire. You'll do fine. The funny thing is, as soon as you get used to your set-up, somebody at the grocery store will see your blacksmith tee-shirt, and give you an anvil that's been setting in their garage for decades. You can give the anvil block you made to the next student that comes along.

I'm going to be there, I've found I don't like big conferences because I usually can't process all the data input/day, but I got a smithing bro who's offered free lodging with designated driving, and it sounds like this will be a true kick! Could someone define "blacksmith wars"? Knives, guns, hammers? How long is the allotted time? I made a personal vow several years back to stop taking on Cinderella work from guys with expensive haircuts, wearing golf shirts, that casually mention deadlines, and use me as the scapegoat for the whole project running over, even though The stair treads weren't installed till 6 days before move-in date. It seems like a different paradigm, trading quality for time.. I'd be happy to have a tinnie and watch, however.

Bob Thomas of the NWBA told me this a couple years ago, When you first walk in the shop in the morning, squat down low and have a sniff. One never knows if the propane or acetylene didn't get turned off last night.

AJ, Trying not to beat a dead horse, but 'You the Man' for taking your time to post your efforts!
I've got the Kinyon plans, and plan on tackling this project in the next couple months. I understand fully your concern about the bracket placement. What I can't figure out is why the upper cylinder is mounted so close to the hammer head. I run a mechanical leafspring hammer, there is a dynamic going on with the spring, toggle arms,blows/minute, and die clearance that creates a whip to the blow. It seems like a person should be able to fiddle with moving the upper cylinder mount back and forth, and find a place where the leafspring up top starts working for you, in more than just a mechanical transition kind of way. With that thought in mind, I'm tempted to mount the lower bracket farther out, so I'll have more fiddlin' room. I hope somebody out there has thought about this also, and has some input.
A quick thought from a couple posts up, reguarding hand tapping holes. If you take a big thick block , like 2 x 2 x 2 inch, that's machined square, and drill a nice hole the size of the tap in the middle, use it for a tap lining up guage. The tap is required by the bore to start in a straight line.

I'm a big Penninghaus fan, but don't let that sway your opinion. What I look for in a small anvil is a thick waist. Old Mouseholes and Jymm Hoffman's colonial anvil are almost all sweet spot. Compare that style to a Hay-Budden farrier style of similiar weight. Peddinhaus is mindful of compromising graceful lines for an efficient product also.
Curly George brought up a point that could be expanded upon. If you're tired of lifting equipment into the truck to do demos, then stop doing that. I take my 275 Peddinhaus to craft demos and hammer-ins. The answer lies in rigging all the tables, forges, vises, and anvils to work with a hand truck. I made a ramp that pins to the pick-up bed, 9 foot long with swivel hinge end that conforms to where we park. All my tongs, hammers, etc go into ammo cans, also hand truck-able. If I can get a buddy to come by, I can always use help pulling the anvil up the ramp, but it can be done single handed if need be. The ramp ties to the contractor rack over head, not a problem.
I used to help a friend do demos up and down the west coast. He never got around to simply bolting a chunk of angle iron to the forges, 2 inches off the ground, so they could be hand trucked off the trailer. We always had to bust a noodle with 3 guys all taking half steps and tripping all the time. That's why I used to help him, and now don't.

I've got one of those, but my flywheel says 'mfgd for the jdh co'. It's called a JDH foot and power combined, if I remember right. There's a write up about it in the book 'Pounding out the Profits'. Could you post a picture of the flywheel Deere mark? The book says they were mistaken for Deere, but not the same company. If you disconnect the eccentric from the hammerhead, there's supposed to be a system of cables and springs that accompany the scissor hinge behind the hammer slide, and it becomes a single-stomp treadle hammer. It's on my to do list to get mine working, I need to reverse-engineer how the treadle linkages work.

I'm dear friends with John at Gearhart iron, spent several weeks on different occasions working at his shop when i got slow, and he was busy. Here's some viewpoints from inside the fence... I'm a farm boy, I got lots of common sense, been around machinery, chainsaws, and construction equipment since childhood. I took machine shop and welding in tech college, wanted to be an inventor. We had to take an aesthetics class at tech, all of us tech heads would rather clean out the cesspool than look at slides of why Rembrandt was important. I inadvertantly found forging somewhere along the line, and thought there was something important in this venue I needed to explore. I spent lots of time making scrap until I found my way aroud the forge fire, and began to produce some marketable product. My early stuff was all blocky, hard corners, and looked like something a farm kid would make. Be utilitarian, keep the cows inside the fence. I met John at a hammer-in, who's an art student turned iron guy. I'll be real honest here, an art guy can sell stuff to housewives lots easier than a farm guy. Art folks aren't burdened with the background that an unhappy bull, or a front-end loader slipping on the ice, can plumb uproot a four inch pipe buried 3 feet in the ground. Housewives can get snippy, but they can't move a four inch pipe. I slowly learned that homeowners like wispy, graceful stuff lots more than blocky, utilitarian product. I'm grateful for my tech background, I can fix most anything that comes in the shop, but in hindsite, I wish I would have paid more attention in that art class, and had taken more art classes when I had the opportunity. It's taken me 10 years of forging to finally convince myself to reduce the cross-section in my work, there's a low chance of range cow stampedes in most interior work.

Grant, John N, I feel the 'test' should stand at 5 blows and 10 blows. I'd given up on being active in this thread, even though it was my fault birthing it, from all the bickering and whining of the new hammer sellers wanting to skew the simple process for their own benefit. I've been smithing for 15 yrs or so, and have been witness to countless pints consumed at hammer-ins late at night from folks talking about xx's Beaudry and how just plain hard it hits, and watching the immediate counter of yy's LG100 and how it can lay waste to a 1-1/4 sq bar, and if you really want to see some work done, try zz's 3B and collect your paycheck. I've run a fair bit of power hammer, after you figure out how each machine runs, it's mostly full throttle, get the most out of the heat,get subtle when the taper is almost finished. There has been enough counter-posts for me to concede the test's absurdity. Where I feel the value lies, is not in the quarter mile race, but with the guy like me, who lives semi-rural, and does what he can to make a living with what he's got to work with. I've never seen another 80# Mcgowan and Finnigan triphammer, besides the one I use every day. Is the leafspring pack on the linkage worn out? I haven't a bloody clue, because I've nothing to compare it to. I know I can make a passable living with the hammer as part of my arsenal, but is there another hammer out there of the same model that can thump harder? I want to talk to that guy, get a dialog running, trade ideas. If I'm behind him by 1/8 inch in 5 blows, I want to know why. It might be a simple tuning issue, or a sign that my springs are fatigued, They're only 100 years old, should be still fine, right? It seems like LG25's are the most common hammer I've seen in my area. We all know they won't compete with a BlueCow 150, they're not supposed to. If we can get some data compiled of how a rebuilt LG25 runs at 5 blows and 10 blows, from several different hammers around the universe, then LeRoy Backwoods can make an assumption that he's doing okay, or can start a dialog with the folks on the world wide inner-tube about what he can do to get close to the median. There's already been some talk about modern hammers running below what's posted. There's more clear thinking brain machines on this forum than I've seen anywhere else. Throw it out there, let's get your machine tuned up and get the shop running at its peak. Folks have been whining about the choice of materials. Let's face it, hot rolled square is a crap shoot. The reality is, if we have to forge a handrail, we're going to use hot rolled mat'l. I don't see the beauty in forging lead cubes, because we don't make railings from lead cubes. No matter how bad your chunk of hot roll square is, if it's at a near welding heat, it will deform under your flat dies. If it's 20% worse than what's posted here, let's pick the collective brain, and get your die clearance, air pressure, etc. figured out. There should'nt be any glory, testoserone, or anything else included. If you don't have 2 inches of flat die available, or can't approach a welding heat, don't post your results.