Jeff Seelye

Thanks for the replies!

Completely agree with your standing on PPE. I do a considerable amount of woodworking, and have had an education in arboriculture, so safety is key. Fully intend to wear goggles, gloves, boots, and long pants/sleeved shirts when working. I've purchased several basic books that go into detail about technique and tool crafting, and I want to find a group at some point in the near future, woould either of you know of any in southeastern Massachusetts?

Thanks again for the help, by the way. I'll stick to pracicing with rebars and cheaper scrap before I try anything complicated!

Kael, The best advice I can give you at this time is... give yourself an education before you play. Join a Blacksmith group, get some good books (many have been on the book review here on IFI) Start yourself off with mild steel. See how it works. Leave alloy and higher carbon steels (example: leafsprings) for later.
That, by the way, is a good question. Heating it will not make it explode. Working it at the wrong heat can make it break. Quenching it wrong can make it shatter depending on Carbon Content or alloys. Or nothing may happen until you make a tool with it and it shatters in your hand because of the stress. Stay with mild (low carbon) steel for a while.

Hey Ngneer, You will love this site. It's almost as addictive as beating hot metal. Welcome!

Glad to see you on here, finally :-) See you at the next MABA meeting! Nice pictures

I am sure he did answer them fine and im not arguing. I Kind of want a general all purpose machine as im not sure what i will be making as projects ussually present themselves as tooling is acuired. mostly i will be making tooling and whatever kind of widget i might need. I dont really think i will be doing knives as i just dont get the knife thing but one never knows as i may catch the bug. i would like to try some axes though. not looking to make ornamental type things but more usefell items to actually be used. I dont know if that adequatly explains what i want to do. I dont know If I can expalin it.

as far as (tup) weight i know im a newbie and i dont know much about this. acronyms like tup really dont help me and need to be explained a little more as i have never heard that term. I understand hammer weight but what does the tup mean?
I did take the reply to the rail axle kind of condesending. A rail yard? yea like I hadent thought of that. The railroad dosent deal open to the public. they are in the scrap business themselves and salvage all their own equipment. when surplussed it is usually sold under a very large contract. It actually amazes me that this individual found one for and anvil. makes sense though for a perfect anvil. anyhow just wondering if there was a source that i hadent heard of or if the salvage yard he got it from maybee had the railroad contract for the scrap.

I am stuck in a location where all I can get is dial up. searching for information is a very long painstaking process for me as most sites are now so laden with photos that mean nothing and its barely all i can do with dialup. if i seem unwilling to reaserch its not that i dont want to its that i am doing all i can in the time i have avalible and it takes hours to weed through all the junk.

Some wrought iron delaminates if it is worked too cold. Steel may have seams from flaws in the ingot it was rolled from but it will rarely open up when it is forged.

i was forging a knife out of a railroad spike and as i was working it i noticed striations in the metal. they would split off kinda like failed welds in pattern welded steel. i am just curious as to what may have caused this. they were there before i started because i took took a wire wheel to the rust, and the lines were revealed as the rust was taken off, so i dont belive that it was me. of course i could be wrong, but i would like to know what caused this.

That's a great project!

If this is the bolt that comes off the manifold, I have tried many methods. Sometimes the penetrant works, sometimes the "weld a nut on" works. Two times I have ground the bolt flush with the manifold (both sides)took a small tip in my cutting torch, heated the bolt shaft and blown the inside out. Then I cleaned it as best as I could and ran a tap thru it. It worked both times. If you think about it, You can cut steel but you can't cut cast. Worst case scenario at this point would be drill the cast and put a regular bolt in it.

Thank you for the link. The part about how they made the threads and tapped the nut was cool. I had never seen it done that way.

Praying for you both!

The biggest problem was first catching the slugs. Usually beer in a saucer was employed. But of course fine high quality anvils came from the finest of slugs which had different methods of procurement. The Peter Wright slugs were usually lured with a nice Dom Pérignon and perhaps Brie and crackers.

At one of our monthly meeting, I was watching the demo when I noticed that his quench tank was on a stand and he didn't bend over to quench, I'm guessing around 33". It also had a drain on the bottom side that a bucket would fit under for draining. It looked like it was made from SS from the food industry. If a screen was added to retrieve small lost parts, I think it would be ideal.

Bob Thomas of the NWBA told me this a couple years ago, When you first walk in the shop in the morning, squat down low and have a sniff. One never knows if the propane or acetylene didn't get turned off last night.

Welcome Andrew! Always good to hear from another victim of this site. If you've been lurking, and still joined in, you need no other warnings other than what Thomas Dean said AND "if you build it, you gotta post a picture of it"

What is a good way to get rid of mice in the smithy?

I think the Tee maddog is talking about would be a 1 1/2 x 1/2 x 1 1/2 it should be common for fire sprinkler use. The first two numbers are the top of the tee (the straight through hole) and the 3rd number is the leg or the 90 degree hole. I used to do industrial pipe work and had to have the right numbers on these things to get what we needed. Hope this helps a little
Rob

I really appreciate the kind words.

Thanks guys.

You can lead a horse to water but you cant make a duck wear a saddle.

Definition of stress:

"The conflict created when one's mind overrides the body's temptation to slap the stuffin' outa some jerk that desparately need it!"

anonymous

one way to use it up.

Glad to have you here! Come back and visit us in MI sometime too!

Basicly, how do you figure out a quote. I have been asked to do some jobs and need quotes and i want to know how to do it accuratly

That is COOL! What are your plans for it, or the set? I see a lamp or candle holder or a fireplace tool holder or a hat rack. or ...

Been there! I would find a suitable object to set my plate on with enough room to tack my legs on underneath. This allows me to adjust my height to what I desire. If using a mig, then I would position my leg beneath the plate and tack it on, repeat on all 4 corners. They should all hit the table and you will only be off by the amount of warp you put in the plate when you weld it. OR you can do the same thing by finding a suitable object and weld the legs together and then attach the plate to the finished legs.
I think this is what ianinsa is doing to stabilize the plate so it stays in place while you weld the legs on.