stuarthesmith

This is highly ironic, because it was I who bid against him on that catalogue on ebay! Thank you so much for posting the catalogue. Now I have a copy! If there is ever a favor I can do you, just let me know. You are a class act for posting it on this forum!

In the shop where I used to work, we used to make a lot of chain links. One type of link we made was round links, two inches in diameter. To make these, we used to heat up lengths of round stock, and then bend them around a pipe two inches in diameter, wrapping the hot steel around the pipe like a coil, then cutting it later into links. To do this the most quickly, we used to heat the steel about two and a half feet at a time, in our coal forges. How does one do that, when the firepot is only about a foot long? By heating an area over the fire pot, then, when that area gets orange hot, sliding the steel forward until another 8 inches or so gets hot, then pulling it back until the opposite end of the stock gets red hot, then sliding the steel in and out of the fire, reheating the different areas of the bar in intervals of about twenty seconds or so, until a long length of the steel gets yellow-hot by sliding the steel in and out of the fire. This greatly increases the amount of steel you can bend in one heat. Other applications for this method will help smiths heat up longer lengths of steel at one time.

As I had stated in a previous thread, I had a Hay Budden that a lady gave my mother, over 30 years ago, which originally weighed 200 Lbs., that someone had knocked the heel off it. Being a freebee, I couldn't very well object to the gift. It languished on my shop floor for thirty years. A very good friend of mine, named Jim Kieffer, a genius of a blacksmith, offered to repair it last year. He forged a wrought iron heel under a hydraulic press which upset it, then he forge-welded a high carbon steel plate to the heel that he had made. It was broken off at the hardy hole; no doubt some fool tried to force a hardy into the hole too big for the hole. My friend then, using his tandem forges and a capable assistant, forge welded the new heel to the rest of the anvil. The result is magnificent, a beautiful, beautifully proportioned hay budden anvil that rings like a church bell, which is at lEAST as good as new. Jim winkingly said to me, as I rolled away down his driveway, "please don't break this heel off"! I am attaching pictures, which I just took in my living room, so please forgive the library table and the grandfather clock in the background. I am going to use this anvil while doing demonstrations at craft fairs and reenactments.

As I keep telling folks, my blacksmith shop is in the basement of a cowbarn. In susquehanna county, pennsylvania, you stub your toe and hit spring water.......right next to my barn is a spring house which was used, many years ago, to water cows stalled in the basement of the barn. Every evening, between 5 and 6 pm, with all this moisture in the air, it all condenses to cover every piece of equipment in my shop with moisture, causing rust. Even my anvils, all 8 of them, get covered with this coating of moisture every day. Sometimes, even in the summer, I have to wear a jacket in my shop to keep my back from spasming, due to this diurnal moisture-covering of everything in my shop. I used to cover everything with transmission fluid, but I got to the point that I said, "what for"! The reason the horns on my anvils KEEP the rust coat is that I do most of my bending on bending jigs I have made for production runs. So I do not do much bending over horns, and the minute an anvil gets polished from bending over the horn, it rerusts in the evening. Since the overwhelming majority of work I do is on my 700 lb. hay budden, one of 8 anvils in my shop, it has the highest lustre in the herd of anvils! Besides, what is this fascination with shiney anvils? What sense does it make to use transmission fluid on 8 anvils, five vises, two triphammers, four forges, 200 pairs of tongs, a hammer rack with over 200 hammers and handled tools, two lineshafts, two large pedestal grinders, among many other tools comprised of steel and iron? I find it much more economical to concentrate on finished product, like the 100 slate shingle rippers boxed and painted and sitting upstairs on shelves, where there is zero moisture to rust my stuff. Or the thousands of boxed and oiled grapevine joiners in stock on shelves that I dare not let rust, for fear of having to wire brush them all, and rebox in order to ship to customers that I also have stocked on upstairs shelves, all DRY! A shop this size is hard enough to keep clean, let alone derust everything in my shop every day of the week. Alas, I will continue to suffer with rusty stuff in my shop! I am posting pics of my equipment, showing how quickly they rust in the evening in my shop, even though all these tools were used all week long, making hundreds of hand tools in my shop on this particular production run of caulking irons that I manufactured that week. Take particular note of the last two pictures, showing the triphammer dies used to forge the handles on over 100 caulking irons that week. Even though during the day, forging one iron after another all day produced a shine on these dies and a mountain of scale to boot, they still rust up when the dew point in my shop goes under a certain temperature in the evening. The very last photo shows the polished product, which I store, ready to be shipped, from my dry upstairs shelves! The PRODUCT is the key, not the anvils!

Many years ago, while serving my apprenticeship, my mother, who was a bookkeepper, told a friend of hers in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, that I was serving an apprenticeship, at this craft. Her response was "I have an old anvil which belonged to my father; would you be interested in it"? Of course my mother said yes. When the anvil arrived, it was a beautiful, perfect looking 220 pound hay budden, except for the fact that the heel of the anvil was missing. Evidently, someone had tried to force an hardy tool shank too big for the hole, and the heel broke off. This anvil languished on my shop floor for 33 years, until I brought it to my good friend, Jim Kieffer, a lancaster county blacksmith of extraordinary skills. He offered to fix it. What he did was to upset a large piece of mild steel into the shape of the broken and missing heel, then forge weld a high carbon steel plate to the top of the replacement heel. After that, he forge welded, using his tandem forges, the heel to the body of the anvil. The job he did is magnificent! The anvil rings like a bell, and looks like brand new! He even got the hardy hole and pritchell right! Looking at it and listening to it, it looks like a brand new hay budden anvil. The amazing fact about my friend Jim is that while he is one of the greatest colonial hardware blacksmiths in america, he is SELF TAUGHT, having learned by borrowing a set of Albert Sonn's "early american wrought iron" tomes and reproducing almost every forging in all three books. One of his colonial reproductions of a toasting fork was so well recieved, that it sold for over forty thousand dollars at a recent sotheby's auction. When Jim contacted them to inform them that the fork was a replica that he forged, they told him that it was StiLL worth the money!! That is how good his work is! I figured that since he is one of the nicest guys in this business, I traded his labor in fixing my anvil for a set of original Albert Sonn First Editions of which I had an extra set. He has always been very forthcoming in teaching techniques that he personally developed in forging hardware and utensils, never charging anyone ever for his mentoring. I figured that the least I could do would be to provide this master smith with his own set of Sonn's, so that he could continue to reign/rain his sparks of ingenuity and excellence upon this humdrum world of ours. Please be advised that at my earliest convenience, I am going to post pics of this rebuilt anvil.

I have an idea. This forum boasts a membership of close to 15 thousand members. How about an IFORGEIRON National Conference? I think the attendance at such an event would be stupendous!