Mainely,Bob

That is one sweet looking set up. Looking forward to seeing what you make with it. Easy to see the craftsmanship in the restoration. The work that comes from such a fine tool will be only limited by your imagination. Well done sir!

As someone with extensive experience in manufacturing and heavy fabrication I would suggest you look very closely at what type of machine you would want to be involved in an accident with. We are talking about the difference between one that mashes fingers or one that eats arms and more. We are also talking about the difference between a machine that will bite and relase ( a press/power hammer) as opposed to one that continues to drag you in even after the kill switch is hit (think inertia of moving parts). I have seen some really fine examples of home made/modified machines and have great respect for the folks who built them but even the most safety minded among us usually stop the process short of proper guarding and other safety concerns. Sooner or later it always comes back to bite us, literally. I have a big ugly scar across my right kneecap from a Skillsaw that had it`s guard pinned back by another co-worker who failed to remove the wood wedge or tell the rest of the crew about the modification. I was lucky I didn`t lose function in that knee. If you`re going to make your own powered rolling mill please seriously consider designing it so if something goes wrong it`ll spit you out rather than drag you in.

There are rules that make sense in the real world and then there are rules that make sense on paper. Sometimes the two look very different, but those of us with several decades experience all understand that. Our local code enforcement officer comes from a prominent local family and was promoted to the position after he failed as dog catcher (animal control officer). Enough said. <_<

Know what worries me? Folks who say; " I`m not worried about the danger aspect". Too often that translates into "I really don`t care enough about being responsible for my own actions so when things go wrong someone else, who wasn`t even part of this (like my family), will take up my slack, possibly for a several years or decades to come". I personally feel that folks who say that sort of thing ought to have their words engraved on their tombstone so the rest of the world can fully understand the mindset that put them under that stone. I just have a hard time understanding how any responsible person can say " I have limited welding experience" and then go on to post pics of what is basically a time bomb backed by massive amounts of hydraulic pressure. This is exactly the reason why there are properly trained welders out there who make a living doing what they do. All I I can say is good luck to your friends and family, they`re gonna need it. If this sounds harsh it`s because I feel, when it comes to safety, harsh is sometimes what`s called for. Maybe it`ll wake someone up enough to think about both safety and personal responsibility. Feel free to click on my profile and contact me directly if you`d like to talk about some of my personal experiences cleaning up after people who do things like this.

A good way to start is to contact the people who`s work you admire. If they have the time and are willing to talk then start a conversation about this with them. Second suggestion would be to locate where the nearest blacksmithing guild or club meets and attend meetings. Third suggestion would be to ask someone who knows more than you do if they would like to be your mentor and then remember that a realtionship like that is supposed to be a partnership and should be a two way, not one way, street. Fourth suggestion would be to practice, practice, practice. If your scrap pile only growing and not turning over then stop spending so much time looking for metal and spend more time pounding it. Fifth suggestion would be to look at the Blueprints section for useful things to practice on. Sixth suggestion is to plant the seeds of patience and tend to them on a regular basis.

If you`re looking for a power hammer then this IMO aint the right place to start. As Mac said, too little stroke,even if you were to strap a linkage onto the ram. I personally would put the cash into buying enough material from the scrapyard to build a powerhammer rather than cobble something together from a start point that misses the mark by such a wide margin. If you have need of a punch press then buy the finger eating monster but if what you want is a forging press or power hammer then I`d keep looking for something more suitable.

Noah will be in our thoughts and prayers.

The Phrase "good enough" was apparently cut out of your vocabulary a long time back. That table base is over the top. Thanks for sharing it with us.

What`s wrong with you Mark! Tools like that don`t belong in the living room! Put it in the kitchen like the rest of us do with our old machinery, that way you can share your good fortune with the one you love most. Once moved to the kitchen it will get used every day for things like beating eggs, mixing dough and grinding herbs not to mention drilling holes. Being close to the sink will allow you to keep it clean, shiny and looking like new more easily too. So wheel it into the kitchen and show your wife how much you really care. Then go out the the shop and forge the egg beater, dough hook and other attachments that will continue to make both your lives easier. Why just the other day I cobbled together a combination tool post grinder/knife sharpener for the flat belt lathe we have in our Machine shop/kitchen. My wife nearly swooned when she came in and saw it working. she was thinking about how she was going to best put those freshly sharpened knives to use, I can tell. You just can`t put a price on a love like that. :)

Grant was the definition of the word "sovereign". He knew who he was and exactly what he was capable of. He took a very sharp mind and then honed it to an even finer edge thru commitment to his craft and building his personal skills and knowledge base. You may not have liked him personally or his approach to some things but you sure had to respect him. Grant lived life on his own terms and refused to suffer fools. There are many among us who think we do the same thing. I would have to say one of the things that set Grant apart was his ability to see the potential in both people and process. He may knock you down a few pegs if you were talking out your butt but then he`d most likely stop, take a moment to see if and how you intended to get up and if he thought your efforts were honest and worthwhile he`d wait for you to dust yourself off, straighten yourself up and then he might open the door into that incredible storehouse of knowledge he kept inside his head if he thought it would further the craft. He was the real deal. Someone who could both tell you how to do just about anything involving hot metal and then take you out into the shop and show you with heat, steel and machinery what he had just explained in depth. But you better be paying attention because he moved quickly, expected you to keep up and was only going to show you this one time. I have no doubt that Grant is both showing the Forge Gods a thing or two and continuing to pick fruit from the Tree of Knowledge daily. He was someone who was never satisfied and always looked for a better, smoother, safer way to distill the best out of the craft he loved and devoted his life to. Here`s to a master of the craft, a true Master Blacksmith in this world. We all miss him and are better craftsmen for having known him. Thanks for reminding us and starting this post Larry.

WOW, That is some nice work Tim. You have every reason to be proud of them.

The one fish that hurt the most was a bone stock Vincent Silver Shadow (running) for $1500 that I passed on to buy a Harley instead. Found out the seller threw in a sidecar when someone showed up with cash. Many years later I did pick up a stock 58 Harley panhead(running but needed a top end rebuild) a chopped 62 panhead Harley (running) and two KHK motors (complete) as well as a pickup load of chopper parts (to include a near stock rigid frame) for $2500. I sold one of the KHK motors for what I paid for everything so I guess I can`t complain too much about the Vincent. Sure do wish I had bought that bad boy and hung onto it though.

It never ceases to amaze me what a determined nimrod with a torch or a grinder can find to damage. Looks like your new find has unfortunately experienced both. Still a nice find Tim.

That`s a really sweet bit `o kit there Beth. I think you nailed the flower and love that spiral wrap in the center as well. It`s gonna make somebody VERY happy and hopefully they`ll hand you a check that will make you very happy as well. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Really glad to hear from you Larry. If there is anything I personally can do please don`t hesitate to let me know. You have my email address. Sometimes downsizing is the best thing, not the least painful but the best. I know how I felt after they had to start cutting on me and I knew I wouldn`t be able to keep up with all the things I used to do or use the gear I was used to toss around. As others have said, it`s not the tools so much as the skills that keep us moving forward and you`ve always impressed me as being a progressive kind of guy. We sure did miss you though and worried about you as well. Be and live well, brother.

The functioning settings are largely made with the regulators (high limits) and should be adjusted to an appropriate setting for the tip you are using. There is far more to these rigs that just scanning a pamphlet or posting questions on the internet. These things can ruin your day and test you homeowner`s and life insurance policies. Go to the place you get your tanks from and ask when their next safety course is being taught. Keep the valves on both tanks tightly closed until AFTER you complete that course. Once you fully undrestand and can properly conduct a "leak down test" then you can think about proceeding with the things that follow it. Right now I`m betting you don`t know what this test is or does. SAFETY FIRST!!!

Larry, anyone lucky enough to be your apprentice will surly be a great addition to the craft if he grows into being even close to the same kind of smith his teacher is. Here`s to you, your giving nature and your passion for the craft.

Grind the scale off of it and then polish to the desired level of shine.

Any person who openly disrespects a stone mason or a blacksmith is a plain and simple fool. Both, by nature, can hit hard, fast, accurately, know how to get a job done quickly under tough conditions and can work at whatever`s in front of them all day (and part of the night) if they feel the need to with no rest beaks until the job is done to their satisfaction. No a good idea to be less than respectful with someone holding those qualifications. Bet that hockey player never thought he`d be going to "blacksmith`s school".

Stellar work, thanks for sharing the pics. I very much enjoy being able to see the detail in top notch work like this.

My most off the wall inquiries have come from "conceptual artists". They all seem to think that if they can dream it then it can be easily (and cheaply) made. One of the more interesting orders I got was to roll up a couple of rings for an armillary ( a type of sun dial) where the customer would supply the material. The guy showed up with some rusted and bent facing from the rails of an old marine railway. When I told him I`d trade my new steel even up for his old scrap and the labor would be cut in half (no straightening and grinding involved) if I used new steel he couldn`t understand why I`d do him such a favor. He couldn`t understand the difference between steel and wrought iron (what his thick, wide, lightly rusted flat bar was), but I understood just fine. We both came out of that deal smiling.

Happy Birthday to an incredible blacksmith and craftsman. Here`s to many more years working at the forge and anvil, promoting the craft.

This post reminds me of the tourists we used to get that would come and look at us working on the most recent boat we had hauled out on the marine railway at the shipyard I worked at. They`d ask questions like. "How long is that boat going to be here?" If I felt like responding they`d get answers like "110 feet"(the total length of the hull) or, "right up until the day we`re done fixing it". Some days you just don`t have the strength to worry about both the ignorance and the boat so you just concentrate on fixing what produces a paycheck and let the rest walk on by.

Here is what I can tell you about metal that is subject to corrosion/oxidation and having that process turn it and everything around it into a single solid mass; There`s expansion involved and if you think a heavy wall pipe will not be affected you`re wrong, it`ll deform and sooner or later blow out somewhere. Usually near a weld as that`s where the most stress is concentrated. Think about how that capped pipe assembly would react if it was hydraulically tested to failure, that`s what you`re setting in motion with your composite assembly bonded thru corrosion here. It`ll deform and fail,the question is not if but when. Once corrosion/oxidation has started working the only way to stop it is to remove all traces of oxidation completely and seal the piece from any further moisture. folks have been trying to do this for centuries with not much luck if you live anywhere except a desert environment. These observations are based on real world experience of over 2 decades dealing with corrosion and it`s repair in shipyards. The other thing that strikes me about this overly extended conversation is that Mud is cherry picking in his facts and engineering and continually fails to acknowledge, never mind see, the big picture. The hollows in the anvil/frame castings are there because physics, engineering and characteristics of the material used demanded it at the time. He`s been shown pics and videos of how to make concrete based hammers successfully and yet he holds fast to this iron/steel/rust bonded theory. It would appear he doesn`t want a real world solution, he wants us to agree that his idea will work. Tel ya what Mud, build it, use it for 15 years and then compare it to the ones in all the videos posted here even though they will have far more mileage on them by then. If yours is still as viable as they are then I`ll be the first to shake your hand and buy your a beer to celebrate your success. I had a co-worker who wondered for years why some cast iron flat belt pulleys had curved spokes and some had straight. He went thru dozens of theoretical solutions to this mystery in his head and shared those theories all with us whenever we would allow it. After a several years I just couldn`t stand it any longer and in just a couple of days I found the answer for him. The curves spoke pulleys were older than the straight spoke ones. When they first started casting these pulleys the ones they tried casting broke thru the spokes because of the stresses and shrinkage involved between the heavy hubs and rims and the weaker spokes. So they went to curved spokes to allow the spokes to flex a bit rather than fracture. As the process and technology of post casting heat treatment progressed and the materials were developed to better meet the needs of industry they found ways to cast straight spoke pulleys because they were easier to make patterns for, quicker and easier to cast with less flaws and rejects and more importantly used less raw material. Amazing what you can find by doing open minded and objective research, asking experts who work in the field such as engineers and lab techs at universities (just like Thomas suggested) instead of wasting all your time theorizing,eh?

Get ye back to school! Look for the nearest metalworking instruction center and sign up. Nothing beats one on one instruction with an experienced hand as a mentor. You ain`t gonna learn what you need to know staring at this screen and we can`t spoon feed it to you over distance. The only way you learn how to produce acceptable welds is by getting the training, welding and then destroying what you welded to see what made it fail. I`ve seen beautiful looking weld beads that didn`t hold any better than hot glue once you took a hammer to them and Mig is the worst offender I`ve seen for this type of stuff. Invest in your future and safety and make your first purchase a training course. The investment will pay for itself in time and money saved on consumables and material and possibly medical bills. Getting to use the equipment at a school will also help you sort out what you personally really need so it`ll save you money by keeping you from buying inappropriate equipment, getting frustrated and selling that lightly used equipment at a loss when you get frustrated and lose interest. Now step away from the keyboard,pick up the phone book and start talking to a real live expert and make arrangements to meet him face to face. Best advice I can give you or anyone else backed by over 30 years experience as a welder and fabricator. BTW- Aluminum may be cheap but it`s not an appropriate material for every project. You never said what you intend to make prototypes of so aluminum may be an entirely inappropriate material to begin with. If you`re just trying to prove a theory and refine a design then many of the folks I`ve worked with make initial prototypes out of materials like plywood, disassemble the working prototype, then use the parts as templates to transfer the now proven and refined design into the most appropriate metal or composite. They can also hand some of those templates off to subcontractors and have them make the things they aren`t properly geared up for. Sometimes the most cost effective way to do something is to hand off what you can`t or don`t want to do so you can be doing what you are good at and can make money at. To quote one of my mentors; "If you try to be good at everything you`ll only diminish your chances at being really good at what your true calling is".