Marc

ApprenticeMan, I'm not really sure what you're referring to. Maybe you mean Thomas and the rotating die holder? Personally, I'm really satisfied with being able to rotate in 90-deg increments. My die holders are just hardy holes. The bottom die isn't clamped or wedged in. The top die is held in by the wedge. But this is one place where I differed from Clay Spencer's design. I have four posts holding the die holders up and can drive the wedge between the posts to position the die, so the die can be in any of four positions. Clay has his holders sitting on two large rounds mounted horizontally, so the wedge can only go in two ways, 180-deg away from each other. Ian, there's a company out there that sells a treadle hammer built to Clay's plans. They sell an option to add an air cylinder to get some big hits. It doesn't repeat, though. But originally I was thinking of making a combination treadle/power hammer. It would have been very much like the one Cheftjcook showed, but built like a Rusty power hammer with a spare tire clutch. And it would have been convertable by switching linkages around. But when it comes time to JUST DO IT, I set my sights lower. So now, I actually am pretty happy with what I can do with it. I no longer have power hammer envy. Never thought I'd see this day, I tell you.

I haven't done any experimenting with hammer weights. I can only compare with the very small time I've spent on other hammers. I do like my arrangement better than the others I've tried, though. With those drawing dies, I can easily draw out 3/4" square. I haven't tried anything bigger, but I don't see how 1" would be a problem. It's most definitely not power hammer speed, but a lot closer to that than hand hammering. The nice thing about keeping it light is for smaller stuff. Things like chiseling veins in leaves is great. I can easily modulate the force so I don't cut through. Shearing and splitting is also great. I've got a cutting "hack", basically a hot-cut blade with a welded handle, that went through 1/2" square in two or three blows. I just put an aluminum channel over the anvil head to protect the hack. And I was able to split some 3/8" for about 2-1/2" using my regular hot cutting chisel in one heat. The anvil is two solid pieces. The long piece is a journal, or bearing surface, from a paper mill roller. The bottom is some cutoff from who knows what, but it weighs around 360 lbs. So together the anvil is around 500 lbs.

You can get Clay Spencer's plans from ABANA (I believe) for both a swing arm and an inline treadle hammer. I used his inline plans to build mine. But I bascially used those as a guide for the dimensions of the individual pieces. My goal was to scrounge as much as possible, and I was able to build it for around $50. But that means pretty much ignoring most of the supplied parts list. I found Clay's plans to be very useful, though. They gave me lots of ideas and things like the mechanics, spring selection, etc., would have taken a lot of trial and error experimenting. Overall, the only thing I'm disappointed about it is the the length of time it took me to get off my butt and build one of these. It's so incredibly useful. Some pictures of it are at: Blacksmiths Gallery

Chris, this forge looks like what you're looking for: Plans Available Ralph Sproul sells the plans for this, called the "Vertical Sidewinder Forge". The roof is raised with a trailer jack so you can reposition the bricks as you see fit. I've got a small forge with this concept that I've used quite successfully bending odd-shaped items. You can see the story of that one at: Building the new forge But it's nothing compared to Ralph's.

I've got 200-ft of cord stored in a milk crate. The plug end goes in first and sticks out the bottom of the crate about 6-ft or so. There's no fancy rewind feature, but if you do a good enough job winding it yourself, then it slides out of the crate pretty easily. The crate has its own handles, so the whole thing is really portable. A tip on winding - Don't use your forearm as the spool. That guarantees a twist when you pull it out. I just hook the cord in one hand and "reel" in a couple feet, hook it over my hand and keep going until it's too heavy. Dump that in the crate and get another section going.

I color in different ways depending on the look I want. - Brass brush on black heat - Wire brush on my angle grinder to get it shiny - Manual wire brush to leave it "natural" - Scotch-brite pad to buff out high spots to get definition - A light coating, more like an over-spray,of some colored Rustoleum, for color - Temper colors - Good, old, flat, matte, or satin finish black paint - Whatever strikes my fancy. Then, on top of that, I tend to use Rustoleum clear matte. For indoor pieces, that does a nice job of keeping the underlying color while giving it a decent coating. That stuff dries very quickly, which is a nice benefit in a multi-use shop with no space for a paint booth. I've also used Penetrol for a glossier finish. That takes longer to dry, but it seems to give a clearer finish. For outside stuff, I've really only done some shop door strap hinges and went with a primer of cold zinc galvanizing and satin black Rustoleum on top of that. It's only been two years up here in NH, but not signs of any rust at all so far.

My comment way down below about the false sense of security was not to compare eye safety to foot safety. It was more a comment on the concept of a false sense of security. I rarely find that an excuse, in and of itself, to forego the protection. If it's cheap enough and doesn't get in the way, then it's just another level of security. For the record, I don't have steel toe-ed boots. Maybe when these boots wear out and if I find some cheap and comfortable enough I will. I wore my sandles once for a quick forge at the treadle hammer. I won't do that again. I think the scale somehow aimed directly for my foot. As for gloves, I occasionally use a cheap kevlar "terri-cloth" type. They go for around $5 a pair from Enco and seem to protect as well as leather. But if they do get too hot, just letting go of the hot steel is enough. Leather seems to hold onto the heat longer and I have to fling the glove off. I also got some thin kevlar gloves for TIG'ing, handling sheet metal, and general work gloves. I like the range of motion, ease to pick up small stuff, and the general protection from sharp things. But they're not good for tiny pointy things. I'm on a vision plan at work that gets me galsses for $25. So it was easy to get some prescription safety glasses with side shields. I'm going to look into getting some shade 2 or 3 lenses the next time. Full face shield sometimes when using the angle grinder, always when using that nasty wire wheel. OK, almost always. Most of the time, anyway :-) Natural fiber clothes pretty much all the time in the shop. Usually just jeans. In the summer I'll wear shorts, but I put my full-length, split-leg, apron over that. It's made out of cotton duck. I use ear plugs, the rubber mushroom kind, when using the angle grinders or treadle hammer. Or banging sheet metal. My anvil is a Fisher, so no real ringing there. It's interesting how I can hear people talking, phone ringing, even the nice outside sounds through them, but they very effectively squash the loud, painful, noises. ANd if I'm going to do a lot of grinding, I wear a NIOSH mask. It's more than those nuisance paper masks, with some decent gasketing, but far short of real air filter. It seems good enough to keep the grinding swarf from darkening my handkerchief.

Steel toe boots and amputations. This may be an urban myth. Mythbusters did an episode on this, Unofficial Mythbusters: Episode 42: Steel Toe Amputation, Bottle Rocket Blast Off And found that even a 400-lb weight from 6 ft did not cause amputation. Lots of broken bones, but considering the alternative, still better than a regular boot. I know that Mythbusters doesn't always follow strict scientific principles, but this one seemed accurate enough. Others have mentioned, prevention is still the better way, and I agree. But accidents do happen. Does eye protection provide a false sense of security? Face shields? My feeling is that if the protection itself doesn't actually present a different safety risk, then it's probably worthwhile.

I had my chop saw go ballistic once. I don't even know what caused it to shatter, but the guard caught all of it. A broken belt on a belt grinder can be exciting. When the drill bit catches when breaking through the other side, it likes to grab. If the piece is not clamped down, it spins and smacks your thumb pretty hard. And don't leave hot pieces on the anvil if you have to answer the phone. That way, if you turn the corner too sharply and jab your thigh on the horn of the anvil, then lose your balance (saying "OW! OW! OW!") and stick your hand on the anvil to steady yourself, you won't end up with a leaf-shaped burn on the palm of your hand, (saying something stronger than "OW! OW! OW!").

You should be able to get furnace cement at most local hardware stores, Home Depot, etc. Look in the aisle with the wood stove supplies, stove pipe, ...

I really like the first one, too. I like scrolls to have the gap match the steel, both tapering smoothly down. They look more organic that way.

I've got a dept. store type pedestal fan that exhausts out my garage door window during the winter. I still need the opposite door's window open for the fresh air intake. In the summer, the fan points at me with all the doors open. That keeps my CO meter down at 0. Funny thing about the CO from the forge. It does seem to vary. Some days it never gets above 0, even with no fan and doors closed. Other days I need the full fan and window thing. I think I'm consistent in the fuel/air supply, but obviously not.

This thread is interesting. It seems that there are always questions about where to get coal. But now we have other potential fuel sources. What about wood pellets? Up here in the Northeast, lots of people heat their homes with wood pellets and some with corn. So it's not hard at all to get bags of that stuff fairly cheaply. But are they cheaper than coal or charcoal in $$ per hour of forging? Also, I would guess that corn and maybe pellets would need a deep fire like charcoal. Does that make sense? The downside to corn is storage. Supposedly it can attract rats if not stored tightly.

I just put a cover on mine. Once in a while I add some bleach, but that's more to kill the other biotics.

Thanks, Thomas. How big a tank would I need for the occasional 3-lb hammer head? I was thinking of just going with a popcorn can.

I asked my local fried seafood place if I could get some of their discarded frying oil. That's not a problem for them, but the owner said that he uses an animal/vegetable oil. Would that present any problems as a quenchant? I'm most concerned with the oil going bad over time. Does the animal part of it get "ripe"? I'll only be using this on occasional junkyard steels, like 4140 and 5160 (or whatever crosses my path), for hammers, treadle hammer tools, etc. --Marc

Combination swage block stand and hammer rack. The swage part is built to hold the block in all six surfaces.

Hey Yesteryear, what business are you in that a blacksmith might go ask? And when you mentioned that wrist pins, etc., are free for the asking, where to ask? One thing I've found around here, New England, is that the scrap yards no longer sell to walk-ins. They get too much $$ by cutting and selling to a shredder. I've still got one near me that does, but he's gone to mostly cars and has just a small stash of non-car metal. I've also been told that the highway department occasionally scraps out their plow scrapers, which is a good source of abrasion- and impact-resistant steel.

I'm guessing you're talking about high-speed steel. It's used in drill bits, router bits, taps, etc. I've been told it forges OK, but is very diffiicult to heat treat correctly. An air cool would cause it to turn brittle, and really needs a controlled heat-treat oven to prevent that. Anyway, that's the rumor.

I get an error when trying both those links: Coppermine critical error: Unable to connect to database ! MySQL said: Access denied for user: 'meforgef@localhost' (Using password: YES)

If you go about half-way down my page, http://ironringforge.com/#My_Smithy I've got a couple pictures and a description of my swage stand. Just another point of input. --Marc

The nice thing about this forum's format is that those who choose to ignore the topic and move onto smithing, can easily do that. Those who like the off-topic discussion can do that, too. Plenty of stuff on this forum to keep everyone busy. And of you don't like it, you can always run away and take your posts with you. :wink:

Good morning. I'm Marc Godbout. I'll be 48 tomorrow and have been smithing as a hobby for 5+ years. To pay for this, I'm an electronics engineer for a defense contractor. I've been married for 27 years to the same wonderful woman and have two boys, both grown up and moved out. One lives around here and works for a mortgage broker. The other is working on his PhD in math down at Lehigh, in the shadow of the old Bethlehem Steel. Unlike many here, I've got no metal background at all. I made a toolbox out of sheet metal back in high school. That's it. But some time ago I read an article in the paper about the last blacksmith in NH retiring. That kind of whetted the appetite. Then, a little over 5 years ago, I found an article in the local paper about a blacksmith in my town who also gives lessons through a community ed program. I signed up before they had the signup sheets ready. It just sounded like the right thing to do. I've met a lot of great people, both online and through the New England Blacksmiths. It's been a wonderful ride so far, and I have no intention of jumping off. You can check out the early years (I've been real lazy at updating) at http://ironringforge.com

A few things along this thread: To get to that balance point quickly (for cutting in half) I put the piece on my hands as they're held out sort of like a karate chop. Then slide my hands together until they meet. That'll be the center. I haven't done it hot, but I would guess any old bar/rod stock would replace my hands just fine. On my hot-cut hardy - I made it from a piece of leaf spring. I ground the bevel most of the way, leaving something like 1/8" flat. Then I ground the center sharp, leaving a 1/8" wide "strip" on each edge. That gives kind of a stop that a hammer would hit before hitting the sharpened edge. The method also leaves those stops raised a little, and should take into account whatever crown your hammer has. And lastly - Tom Latane demo'd for one of our meets. He's a big repousse guy. He uses mild steel for his chiseling hammers. Not only does it cut down on chisel mushrooming, but the hammer develops a dish that he feels helps keep the blows centered.

Thanks for the input. I've got some paraffin and plaster-of-paris and will play with that. If paraffin doesn't work, beeswax is easy enough to get on eBay. Thanks for those links. There were a couple I didn't have yet. The pitch is a backing that takes the shape of the indents as you create the shape. Repousse tools, chisels, butchers, fullers, ..., are pretty small, allowing fine detail. The pitch has to be tough enough to not "dent" where you're not denting the metal, but soft enough to take the shape whee you want it. Wood is good for thick metal, but doesn't allow detail. Lead is similar. At least this is what I've gotten from my very limited experience so far.