Marc

Dear Father, please give Glenn, his family, and all their friends and loved ones strength and peace during this difficult time.

It's been a couple years since I've tried the local scrap yards, but my formerly favorite yard used to let me rummage through their lot and charged 20 cents per pound. A couple years ago they stopped selling to individuals, but it wasn't about liability. It was far more profitable to cut everything they had in 2-ft pieces, load them in a big dump truck and sell them to a scrapper in the state that shreds. They, in turn, shipped it all overseas. This was during the big Chinese buildup, so I don't know what they do today.

They used to have a pile that was easily 12 - 15 ft tall. But when I was there, no pile at all. He said they cut everything up all week, and every Tuesday would bring the full truck to the shredder.

I use a squirrel cage blower for most of my forging, but it's not strong enough for welding, so I have a shop-vac motor for that. One thing about vac motors is the noise. They are much louder than the squirrel cage. So I can see the need to slow it down over gating. For my vac blower, I tried my router speed control, but that didn't do much. The motor didn't turn at all. The nice thing is this vac has a resistor-based speed control, it just doesn't slow it down enough. I need to play with that resistor when I get that round tuit.

I hadn't thought about that whip at the end of the blow. That would rotate the counterweight up and actually add some force to the blow. I have gotten used to the short handle and forged a hammer to the same dimensions as Hofi's, who was nice enough to email me those dimensions. So I think I'll test this counterweight concept with a long-handled hammer. I'll keep my grip choked up so that the counterweight has more leverage and see if my forearms wimp out as fast. I'm a perfect test subject for this. I don't get in the shop nearly often enough to build up endurance, so I'll know in about an hour if it makes a difference.

This topic has gotten interesting. I, too, find my forearms are the parts that get tired. One thing about the counterbalance - When the hammer head hits the steel, it stops, but the counterweight will want to continue. So now you're hand/arm has got to reverse that direction. Still, as Grant says, this is easy enough to experiment with.

I don't think you need to worry about the floor. All the energy going into the floor is really coming from your leg, and there's not enough there to do too much damage. If you have an anvil with enough mass, that would be fine. I've got a relatively light (35 - lb) treadle hammer, but even a heavy one wouldn't be a problem. And from what I've read on the various forums, it takes a large-ish power hammer to start worrying about foundations.

Interesting idea. I always thought those guys dealt mostly in fireplaces, pizza ovens etc and wouldnt have anything in the temperature regime we need for forging. I bought some insulating firebricks from the local pottery supply house and they melted into puddles of slag. Still its worth following up. Its the shipping thats the killer on this stuff. Often more expensive than the material itself.

There are four in my area and all of them mostly dealt with big stuff like incinerators, kilns, etc. Look for places that are really industrial. None of these had showrooms or anything even close. It was interesting because I'm just some schmuck off the street looking to by a few bucks worth of stuff. Yet they were all really nice to deal with. But they'll have little variety of stock. Only leftovers from what their last job needed.

I remember reading the blacksmithing part of the Foxfire series of books and they said blacksmiths preferred anthracite to bituminous because it was cleaner.

I've had good luck buying refractory from local refractory contractors. I've gotten insulating firebrick and insulating castable from a few within short driving distance, saving shipping. They were willing to sell small amounts, like a single bag or a few bricks. Usually it's stuff left over from a job.

I don't seem to have a problem peeling the disc off platter. I fold the disc back pretty much on itself and pull straight down. That leaves some adhesive on the platter, which comes off easily with mineral spirits on a rag while the machine is spinning.

I've got a prosthetic testicle, and I don't believe I do anything special for that. However, my teacher had a prosthetic leg. He was a farrier before diabetes took his leg. He then went to just blacksmithing and teaching both smithing and farriery. The only thing that slowed him down were the stairs going to and from his shop. There was one funny episode, though. One time in class he dropped something that set his jeans on fire. One of the guys in class saw the smoke - "Hey Ken, you're on fire!" Ken didn't notice because it was the prosthetic leg.

eBay could be a good source of used blowers.

Cutting soft brick - they do still make cable saws. Look in the H/W store in the plumbing. They're for PVC, but soft brick is so soft I suspect it will work fine. I just used a wood coping saw with a narrow blade. That would work fine for all but the tightest curves.

There is a new vise grip available only at Harbor Freight to my knowledge!! What the heck? Anyway- they are a long handled plier with short jaw and they are the cats meow for grabbing something that got dropped in the forge!I bought a few pair for gifts. Can't find them on any USA Made sites...

Would that be these?
Link to pliers.

You know, these look like passable tongs - if they can stand up to the pounding. I may get a few and weld in flat jaws, v-jaws, box jaws, ...

I strongly agree with the CO warnings. I have a monitor near head height in the shop, which is a 2-car garage. I swapped out the "normal" overhead doors with some homemade swing-outs and put open-able windows in each door. While the forge warms up it puts out enough CO to be dangerous. But opening a couple windows and putting a dept. store fan in front of one of them clears out the CO fine. Once the forge is hot, I can usually turn the fan off with no problems.

I put anti-seize in a tuna can and use it to lube punches and slitters.

I've accidentally turned off the blower on my forge and it also keeps burning, but mostly outside the forge. There's no pooling, however it's just as dangerous. Now, the flames will lick up and I can see how it might catch fire to the joists above it. A sheet of cement board up top might make it safer, but I'd rather not chance anything.

I always wear glasses. Something about having 20/2000 vision without them makes me feel safer with . But I try to remember to put on my prescription safety glasses on whenever I'm in the shop.

Gloves - I don't often wear any. Sometimes on my tong hand when I'm chiseling/punching. Even with vice grips or my short tongs holding the tool, my hand is too close to the hot end. And also when using my small scrolling pliers. Same reason. But I'll add a vote for Kevlar gloves. I use the inexpensive terry-cloth type. They protect as well as leather. But if things get too hot, just removing the gloves from the heat source is enough. They don't hold heat like leather.

Usually I wear short sleeve all-cotton shirts and long pants. I only normally get scale burns, and that's not a problem. But when I was working one this birdbath things, I used my torch for localized heating and bending. I got some nasty burns when brushing against the part I just finished bending. So now when doing that type of work I wear either a long sleeve cotton shirt or some Kevlar sleeves.

I've got a cotton duck apron I like to wear once in a while. On hot days I'll wear shorts and that apron. The fan cools me off better than if I wore jeans.

Always wear my work boots in there now. I did some "quick" forging once in my sandals and the scale was too distracting. *All* of it fell on my feet, it seems.

My anvil is a Fisher, so is nice and quiet. But the treadle hammer isn't, so I use those rubber things that go in the ears for that. Also for lots of grinding and other noisy power tools.

Face visor when using the wire brush.

I guess it all depends on what you mean by "very". My punches and chisels are short to use under the treadle hammer and I used to use tongs for those. But with different sizes of shafts, I find the vice grips very good at holding those, instead of different sizes of tongs. I personally rank vice grips up there with Velcro and bungee cords as the most useful simple inventions.

So, to sum up: They're quite good for a few things but not very good at anything.

I'll throw in with the Linux crowd - Mint Linux (Ubuntu-based) for me. Macs look great, and my son loves his, but I couldn't part with the extra $$ to get that. I put in some config time years ago when wireless Ethernet was relatively new and my laptop needed some driver work. And most recently with my brand new Walmart special eMachines laptop I wanted to dim the screen with the keyboard Fn keys, so a few minutes Googling and a few minutes to fix a config file. Other than that, Mint/Ubuntu is pretty stable and installs painlessly.

Different strokes....

I used hockey pucks for my bumper stops.

Really slick design, by the way. Reminds me of the Grasshopper, but less complicated.

Trying to get the ultimate answer to the age-old question, "If a tree falls in the forest - does it make a sound?" But using faulty monitoring techniques.

Next up - What about that bear doing his business in the woods thing?

I didnt even know you guys did this!, but sadly lost was on last night and my fiancee wasnt about to let us miss it lol.

Now that I know you guys do this on Tuesdays, I could do a screen cap video of the sessions and post them for those who missed out.. if anyone would be interested.

I, for one, would be interested. Until the IFI Blueprints get going again, your offer would be really appreciated. I get up early in the morning and just can't stay up past 10:00. If I tried, it would take me forever to clean the drool off the keyboard, and my forehead would develop a permanent dent the size and shape of the edge of my laptop's screen.

I would disagree, a little, with that advantage. A forge that's designed for forging heat at 8 - 10 psi will not get steel to forging heat at 3 - 5 psi. So while it will operate at 3 - 5, you're not doing much except keeping things warm at that pressure. In most cases, what's done to run at lower pressure is the orifice is enlarged, often just an open pipe, in combination with lower pressure and a blower to get to forging and welding temperatures. The larger orifice means more propane is coming out at a lower pressure so you're not really using much less propane. The blower can help in the mixing, though, so you can get a more efficient burn and use a little less propane due to that.

A side benefit of using a blower with low pressure is safety. If you develop a leak after the regulator, then there's less pressure to pump propane into your shop, and in this case, less propane will fill it up if you get to the shutoff in time.

In my case, I use my house tanks, and the propane company will not allow more than 5psi, so I'm stuck with a blown burner.

Advantages:
1. The forge can operate a a lower pressure 3-5 psi as opposed to the 8-10 psi my 'venturi' forge needs. Less pressure usually equates to lower propane use.

There's a another, similar, burner that I ran across, the Giberson Head. I have zero experience with it, but ran across it some time ago. Their site, if nothing else, has lots of great burner information. http://www.joppaglass.com/

Why wouldn't a candle work?