John McPherson

Dave, you are doing fine. You seem to have all of the elements that you need for success, now all you need is time do develop your own style. Like cooking or playing a musical instrument, you start out copying a teacher/guru/mentor. When you can put down the page and wing it, you know that you blazing your own trail. Asking advise is not a sign of weakness, following it blindly is. Age has nothing to do with it. We have had a young giant demo at several NC ABANA meetings, to show what he learned at JC Campbell. His dad had to drive him because he was too young for a license. I am a firm believer in the 90/10 rule. Whatever it is, 10% of the people have 90% of it, whether you are talking about money, talent, brains, etc. Oh, by the way, good looking hardy.

This is something I stole off the web found interesting while doing research.

It is a Canedy Otto blower. The ring pattern of the lettering and the fat gear disk are distinctive. Sorry, no help on colors, other than Champions, which were what I think of as welding smock green.

I think it is about my posts on the 'It Followed Me Home' thread about starting a local group. I said I would stop hijacking the thread. I was not a welder, or an artist, or anything else. I was a residential real estate appraiser, who played with wood and metal and old tools on the weekends. About a dozen years ago, an acquaintance said he had just come back from a sword making class. I found blacksmithing and knifemaking groups were available, and never looked back. I believe in putting in whatever I can contribute to a cause I believe in. To that end, I have volunteered as a Scoutmaster, NRA range officer, Scottish Society board member, museum demonstrator, and now college faculty advisor for a blacksmithing club. I have worked with literally hundreds of Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts and Cub scouts to do metalwork, rifle and shotgun shooting. I am working with a local historic site to rebuilt a historic smithy. I use my tools and donate 3+ hours a week to teaching the craft of blacksmithing to those who know even less about it than I do. (In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.) It is always easier to walk away than work to effect change. Is any organization perfect? Hardly, being that it is made up of flawed human beings. A few good people can steer an organization in the same way a few bad apples can wreck it. Want platitudes? Be the change that you want to see in the world. Saying that a couple of knotheads ruined the experience for you just means that for whatever reason you failed to take the reins. NC ABANA has been around long enough to have local groups be formed, blossom and die. It happens. Start your own local group to do what you want. If you can get a core group to form, and a spot to meet, then give it a shot. If what you have now is nothing, then you have nothing to lose. Some people just are are not joiners. There are more lurkers than posters on any website. I contribute when I think I have something to add to the dialog. There are way more wannabes and part-timers and hobby smiths than professionals, and an even smaller number of professionals who freely share their knowledge. Human nature.

Too late to edit my last post, so here goes.... I promise this will be the last off topic post here. 95% of ABANA and other groups dues-paying members are hobby smiths, part-timers, and wannabes. Most of the folks doing the demos at big meetings are pros, the few that care enough about the craft and about other people to share their knowledge with us. Many if not most professionals consider us a waste of time at best, and a threat to their market share at worst. The reason I never got into blacksmithing out of high school was, like many people have lamented here, nobody wanted to talk to me for five minutes, let alone take on a fool kid as an apprentice. I meet people every day that would love to take blacksmithing classes at our college, but there is no budget and no space right now. I am chipping away at solutions to both. But I have students who turn out work that wins art contests and becomes gifts for the Trustees, so I stay noticed, in a good way. Again, if you can't find a local group, start one! Even if is just an informal, once a month thing. That is how most chapters get started.

Our community college welding department did not have a blacksmithing club, so I formed one. I am now the faculty adviser. Maybe you need to start a regional sub-chapter.

Just a guess, but a plowshare would fit. They are bulky and would be hard to hold by hand.

GSM, you can have the best of both worlds by taking the high path. Get together with your local tech school welding department or blacksmithing group and offer to do a public property clean-up. Local gov't will clear the hurdles and you might even get some good press out of it. With any luck, that exposure will provide you with more opportunities. That is what our CC welding clubs have done with the local Park & Rec. For the cost of one staffer for a day, they get a dozen workers with cutting torches, picks and shovels to clean up a dump site on public property. We have obtained literally tons of scrap metal in the last few years, when we could not afford to buy it. The good stuff goes into student projects, the bad becomes cutting class practice, the awful goes directly into the rollback to be sold to the recyclers. Getting our picture in the paper in the Community section and not the Crimes page keeps the Dean happy. Or, risk a criminal record for a few bucks worth of scrap. Your choice.

Eric Thing has been a professional armourer for years. Anvilfire has published his forge plans, and has a tour of his shop. http://www.anvilfire.com/21centbs/planfile/

(1) Continue to explore health benefits of moderate quantities of single malt (uisge beatha). What the Hey, it's good for my mental health. (2) Make it to see 2012. Everything else is negotiable at this point. I am unimpressed by the results of the hoppin' john and greens New Years prosperity tradition, this year I am going for filet mignon and caviar, see if that works. Happy Hogmanay!

More like 1.90 USD, 'coz that is what the junkyard would pay you for it, and THAT is what it is really worth. It is not even pretty enough to mount a mailbox on. How many times to we have to say it? You would not try to find a good Christian girl for a wife by trawling the sleazy bars and back alleys, why do you waste time looking at shiny ads of import junk tools for a real anvil? Snap out of it!

Wholesale Tool carries acme rod and nuts in sizes up to 2", left and right hand thread available, and lengths as short as 3' up to 12'. Reasonably priced, easy to ship. http://www.wttool.com/ So does ENCO. Not so cheap, but higher quality C1018, 4140 alloy, and 316 $tainle$$ $teel. You DO want this to last forever, don't you? http://www.use-enco.com

Tailgate sales. Sections for beginner anvils, jewelers anvils, armouring tools, small hardy anvils and other hardy tools. Cut the top rail off to use for power hammer tooling, large hammer and tomahawk drifts, jewelers stakes that are gripped in a vise, sheet metal stakes with stems, weld sections together to make blacksmith stake anvils. Use the bottom flange and web for cut-off hardies by welding on a stem.

The 'ring' that you hear is subjective, and is affected by lots of factors, including carbon and other alloy content, tempering (or lack of), shape, attachment points, etc. Wrought iron anvils are famous for their ringing sound, yet contain almost no carbon except for the face. Cast iron anvils have 2%+ carbon content, and have almost no ring. The 'T' shape accentuates the sound. Attaching a magnet as close as possible to the tip of the horn or heel maximizes the dampening effect. I use Superquench on the corners of my mild steel dinner triangles to make sure that they ring. Suspending them from a loose metal ring sustains the tone, a leather thong and a choker knot dampens it. For tubular wind chimes, the attachment point should be about 22% from the end. For bells and kinetic sound sculptures, end attachments seem to work best. Temper and heat treatment affects the molecular structure, and that affects the tone. Non-Destructive Inspectors use ultra-sound to check batches of parts for heat treatment, as well as cracks. And yes, all other things being equal, a higher carbon piece should ring more than an identical low carbon piece.

I do declare, if it ain't Foul Weather Fowl from keenjunk. Those are nice. Pecan is closely related to walnut, and can be hard to tell apart if stained dark. Here in the carolinas, we have deer stands waaay up in pine trees. We bring a pee-can up with us. Saves climbing up and down. If you can see the tree from the stoop on your singlewide, and it is next to the gravel drive and the dog lot, "That thar is a peek'n." If you can sit on your house's porch and see it next to the detached garage and paved drive, "It is a pecan." If you can see it from the veranda of the mansion, and it is between the carriage path and the servants quarters, "Why gracious me, it is a pah-kawn."

Ian, small is relative. I work for one of the largest welding colleges in the Southeast USA. We don't buy that much metal a year. But again, they are mostly welding small coupons.

Pipe beading and swaging machines have been around for 150+ years, starting with hand powered units for tinplate. Every muffler shop has a light duty one to do tube end work. This was done on a production scale with a hydraulic machine. Like everything else, they come out of China now.

At the risk of sounding like the grumpy old geezer that I am, here goes. Anvils are not hamburger, you can't buy 10lbs of an anvil. The price per unit is $$$/anvil. Anvils are like women or cars: the better the face, plus the better overall body condition, plus the better the family (brand), plus the lighter they are, plus the relative scarcity (real or imagined), plus the relative number of interested buyers, equals the higher the price. Subtract one or more factors and the price goes down. Just like women and cars, the used price is still pennies on the dollar for what a new one will set you back. And like women, your peers will hate and envy you if you have more than one at a time. I have seen 400lb no-name anvils in great shape get passed by for abused "Name" anvils half or a quarter their size, when they were plentiful at farm shows. And multiple bidders go crazy for the *one* crappy 70lb cast iron anvil at an estate auction. Rare colonial anvils regularly get passed over because they do not look like what the public sees as a "real" anvil, ie: suitable for dropping on roadrunners. Shameless plug: there will be plenty of blacksmiths tailgating at Madison, GA May 19-21, 2011. http://sbaconference.com/

If it were mine, I would make some holes in the feet to pin it securely to the ground whenever possible. The design is top-heavy and narrow, making it likely to topple if bumped. The tower shape is fine for straight down hammering on the face, less desirable and stable for working on horn, heel, over the side, twisting, etc. I have found a tripod 1.5+ times longer and wider than the anvil to be more stable, especially on rough ground.

Celtic and other early axe and adze heads were often socket-style mounted with handy tree limb forks, easily replaced. They are still done that way in the third world. Here is a modern repro from someone who posts on Don Fogg's forum.

Held in odd numbered years. The NC affiliate chapter of ABANA is the host this time. Hope to meet a lot of you there. Madison, GA, May 19-21, 2011. Original site of the anvil shoot heard 'round the world, 2001. Official website now online. http://sbaconference.com/

Armand, I have been dealing with desktop computers at work for almost 30 years now. Just about the time you get comfortable with a system, it changes. My advise when stumped, do what any of us does who was born under a flag with 48 stars: ask someone with facial piercings for technical assistance. Children and grandchildren can be helpful, and are more easily press-ganged than the IT folks at work. I consider it payback for years of assembling bicycles and tree-houses. http://www.oldworlddistributors.com/soldering-iron-heater.html Warning: it ain't cheap, it's a professional's specialty tool. They want about $300 with shipping.

Three words of advise: Google image search.

No. Not even close. Not in a reasonable manner, more like digging an escape tunnel with a spoon. The average 120V/140A homeowner machine probably has @ 20% duty cycle with .025" solid wire, which means that you can only weld flat out for two minutes, then break for 8 while the fan tries to cool the unit before the innards fry. .035" flux core wire would run hotter, but you still are limited by duty cycle. The useful limit of the machine is autobody and muffler repair, unless you are *real* good or really desperate. A 240V/300A (light industrial) 100% duty cycle machine running .035 or .045" solid wire might work with just short arc MIG, and could certainly do it with spray arc or flux core. For a 480V/500A industrial unit and big wire it would be a cakewalk. If you have to ask what any of that means, then you are not ready to leave the temple, er weld shop, Grasshopper. Only when you can snatch the Tweco tip from my hand.....

Had a strapping lad today trying to use a letter set and 2lb brass hammer to make an ID# on a weld test pipe. He just would not strike hard enough to get a good imprint. He kept trying to put the stamp back on the same spot to make it deeper, and it would bounce around. So I took the hammer and stamp, swatted it just once, hard. Then I told him, "You only get one chance to make a good first impression." He had no more problems with the stamp set. And he passed his weld test. :D