IronAlchemy

I have done a few dozen tire hammer dies in S7. I tack weld the S7 to the mild steel plate with the pieces preheated to 550 F. MIG welds should hold fine as long as you do not let the assembly cool below 400 F. You should heat treat the assembly after welding if you want a fully hard die. I like to make them pretty hard, R56-58, so that they do not get dinged by top tools easily. You cannot get them that hard using air cooling. Air cooling only gets you to R38 or so. You need to oil quench and then temper at 450 F. I would be happy to provide a more detailed protocol if you want to go this route. Doug

Unfortunately, these are the same dates as the ABANA national conference for the US folks. Sorry I can't make it across the pond for it. Doug Wilson

Good summary ptree and I concur with your cautions. The only thing that I would add is that the literature that I have read suggest that it is not just the elevated temperature of the arc in welding that causes formation of Cr(VI) but the oxidation of chromium by ozone (O3) which is produced by the electric discharge and UV radiation generated in the arc. The production of Cr(VI) varies significantly with the welding process used (TIG, MIG, stick) but also with the weld conditions including shield gas used. Doug Wilson Ironalchemy

Excellent advice. I have a collection of old socket chisels and can confirm that historically socket chisels were forged both ways; integral socket and separate socket forge welded on. With 5160, I agree that actually welding the closure on the socket is probably overkill functionally. With old wrought iron chisels, I do see the forge weld of the socket closure separate if the socket has been abused by striking it directly with a hammer without a handle in place. Welding the closure is also something that you could easily come back to do if you find it necessary after some use. Please post back your progress for us to see. I always like seeing how these things turn out. Doug Wilson Ironalchemy

I can second Bish as a good source. My wife takes me every year on our anniversary. :D You can also try J&D (http://www.jdrecyclers.com/) just west of Durham. They might be a little closer to you. I'll check with my contacts closer to the Raleigh area and post back if I find any other options. Good luck, Doug Wilson

We temporarily moved for about 6 years to put the kids into a better school district. I set up a shop in a 10x20 canopy structure like you describe. I used both a gas and coal forge. I used mine all year around using sidewalls. My coal forge was positioned to put the side draft chimney outside the structure and I used guy wires to stabilize it. I noticed at Forging on the River in Memphis that they were using a forge on a trailer under a tent with just a slot cut in the top to pass the chimney. I have a few melted spots around the bottom edge of the side walls but still use it for metal storage back in my original location. I have to keep after the snow on the top in winter is the biggest hassle. Good Luck! Doug Wilson

I just wanted to follow up on my last post about the effect of having the back of tire hammer dies flat. I took two sets of dies for my tire hammer, flat and 3" radius, and flattened the backs on a large belt sander. I also filed the tire hammer anvil and hammer to be sure that they were perfectly flat. I have switched out the dies probably half a dozen times over the last month and put at least 20 hours of hard forging on each pair. With the flat backs, neither set of dies came loose at any time as compared to hourly checks of loose dies before. I'd say that is evidence enough for me that tire hammer dies should have flat backs. I'll be flattening the rest of my die collection today and building all future dies with flattened backs. Doug Wilson

Dave, Welcome to the world of stainless. I love using it. If you are trying to match a polished nickel surface, the closest common alloy is 316. I mostly find 303 or 304 stainless in the metal yards around here. The 300 series alloys will be non-magnetic. In some industrial areas, you may find hardenable stainless alloys which are magnetic. It can be hard to tell the alloys apart without a spectrographic analysis. Let us know how it goes. Doug Wilson

It was a great event and well worth putting on your calendars for 2015 especially if you are in the Southeast. For those who could not make it, I have posted my photos on Flickr. There are lots of good pictures of Ernie Dorrill's demos and a mixed selection from Steve Williamson depending on how I jumped back and forth between them. If you are interested in Ernie's work, check out my photoset from his class at Campbell Folkschool earlier in the year. I have detailed pictures of more of the chasing tools used in his SBA demo in that set. https://secure.flickr.com/photos/ironalchemy/sets/72157633544667144/ They are in chronological order but check the tags to select for the demo you want to look at. Doug Wilson

I think that the supplier closest to you will be Grace Fuel in Asheville. You can also buy coal or coke by the bag at Blacksmith's Depot in Candler just outside Asheville. If you find another good source, let use know. Good luck, Doug Wilson Ironalchemy

I have a couple of comments on the comments so far in a good discussion on welding tool steels and dies. I don't think that you will see much difference in ultimate strength between a MIG weld with ER70 wire and 7018 rod. The 7018, in my hands, is easier to get set up and get good penetration but if you set up the MIG for spray transfer, you should see pretty similar results. I think that there are reasons to bevel the edges of the tirehammer dies for the weld. However, remember that this is designed as a fillet weld. with proper settings and good technique you should have plenty of weld area to hold. The failures I have seen and that I hear about are from improper technique and settings for the weld and the weld failing at the boundary, not from the filler metal cracking. You can surely compensate with more weld area as many have correctly pointed out. One reason to bevel is to keep the same weld area without the fillet interfering with the bolt holes for the die. Depending on the alignment of your anvil and hammer head, the bolts may need to be very close to the die. Sometimes you have to grind off a seat for the bolt if it overlaps the weld. You can achieve the same results by not doing a weld all around and having no weld in the bolt area of the die. I see plenty of dies that have held up well with this approach. When doing our build of tirehammers, I went back and forth quite a bit with Clay about the welding and cupping of the baseplate of the die. His opinion was that a slight cupping of the dies was beneficial in that it provided some spring that kept tension on the bolts and reduced the tendency of the bolts to come loose. I am not sure that I see that in practice and would tend to support the comments of others that flat is good. I'll be doing some testing of the difference over the coming months. Macbruce has a good point about using SS for the weld. That is indeed one of the recommended approaches to welding tool steel to mild steel. I think that there are two main reasons for this recommendation. The SS tends to be more ductile than a high carbon filler. It also has a better color match to tool steels like S7 and H13 so, if cosmetics matter, it makes a real difference. It is definitely not a stronger filler but, I think, is more forgiving. I'll be giving this a try and comparing to my ER70 welded dies. Good discussion. Thanks. Doug Wilson

Small world. These have also been my frames of choice for many years. I have never broken a pair but the original lenses do scratch up. I have a special near vision prescription for forging put in them at the optometrist. So if you still love the frames, you could consider replacing the lenses. I do have a spare unopened pair waiting just for this day so I have some time to find new frames I like. Please keep us informed on where you end up. Good Luck! Doug Wilson

Anvilstrkr, I have built a few dozen tirehammer dies. We did have a few failures among the first few dies we welded. It was not a disaster any worse that the bolts for the dies coming loose which happens to me every time I use the hammer. Actually, I have never seen a hammer of any make that did not have the dies loosen from time to time. Re-welding properly seems to have fixed any problems. I attribute the failures to too low a temperature in the preheat for the weld. You really need to keep the temperature of the assembly between 400 and 600 F. I know of no metallurgical reason that the heat treatment would cause a problem. We have been using S7 for dies. 4140 is quite a bit more forgiving. Did the individual who expressed concerns to you give you any specific reasons why they felt the heat treatment would cause problems with the weld? Regs, Doug Wilson

These devices are expensive but also pretty complex. If your business depends on knowing composition, then $20-30k is a reasonable investment. The rest of us pay someone else to do the analysis. The hand held units are very cool and work well within the limits of the technique (see caveats below). They are not only used in scrap yards but for identification of lead in houses and tableware, and even quick clinical measurement of heavy metal poisoning in patients. The following is probably everything that you did not want to know about X-ray fluorescence. :-) How it works: The unit contains an xray source, typically a vacuum tube that bombards a copper (Cu) foil with accelerated electrons to produce Cu x-rays primarily at 8.048 KeV. The Cu xrays strike the surface you are analyzing. The xrays are absorbed and knock out electrons from atoms in the sample. Outer orbital electrons of an atom collapse to fill any inner orbital vacancies created. Energy is given off that is the difference between the outer and inner orbital energies for that atom. This is specific to the element and orbitals excited. This energy is typically in the xray region, thus this is xray fluorescence. Xrays are absorbed and xrays re-emitted at a different energy. Some of the xrays emitted strike a detector in the analyzer. The detector is usually a doped silicon chip that produces a current pulse proportional to the energy of the xray that strikes it. The current pulses are collected and sorted by size to identify what energy xrays struck the detector. The xray energies observed are characteristic of the elements present so you can identify an element. The number of xrays observed for an element is proportional to the amount of that element present so you can determine concentration of the element. Caveats:The xrays produced will only escape from (typically) a few microns below the surface of most metals. The rest are absorbed within the sample. Thus this is a surface analysis technique. If you have a plated surface, for example, it may give only the composition of the plating. At the same time, the technique can be used to measure the thickness of thin films by measuring the absorption of the underlying metal signal by the surface layer. Lower energy xrays are absorbed more than higher energy xrays as you might guess. Low atomic number metals like Al and Mg produce lower energy xrays which are absorbed more, produce a weaker signal and therefore take longer to analyze. Quantitative measurements also tend to be less accurate for low atomic number elements due to weaker signal and larger absorption correction factors used in the analysis. Very low atomic number elements like boron, carbon and oxygen cannot be easily measured with hand held instruments since their xrays are significantly absorbed even in air. For carbon and oxygen, surface contamination makes quantitative measurement a challenge even in a vacuum. Don't expect to measure any element below Mg in the periodic table using a hand held instrument. There are very significant interferences in the xray spectra for elements we are interested in. For example, you can sensitively measure phosporus in iron but not in aluminum due to the overlaps in their xray spectra. Note that these units are mainly designed for sorting, not accurate quantitative analysis of trace elements. They can give you accurate measurement of the major components in an alloy but not the kind of trace quantitation you would expect from a lab analysis. You can get false positives due to analysis artefacts that require some deeper understanding of the technique so interpret trace readings with caution. If you want a more detailed and graphical description, the linked presentation is excellent, licensed under the Creative Commons and therefore free for your use. http://www.asdlib.org/onlineArticles/ecourseware/Palmer/ASDL%20Intro%20to%20XRF.pdf FYI, I used to do xray analysis and wrote xray analysis data correction software for a living. That took me to the dark side in IT. ...now I'm a blacksmith.

Hey Frank...any more details on the class? Westminster is within striking distance of me in central NC. I am still getting good mileage out of the cane bolts I learned from you up at Yesteryear Forge a few years back. Thanks, Doug Wilson

All good ideas. I have used the gasoline treatment successfully. However, I did have a nest close to the well and did not want to risk contamination with petrochemicals. I used several gallons of boiling water at dusk when they were all in the nest. That did the trick. - Good luck! - Doug Wilson

We have a great quarterly meeting of NC ABANA on Saturday at Bill Brown's and Nathan Blank's shops. Bill and Nathan were very gracious and informative hosts. I learned a lot and would like to share a bit of what they did. You may have seen the video posted here on iForge of Bill and Nathan forging a leaf on Bill's Nazel 5B. http://www.iforgeiro...-on-a-5b-nazel/ I have posted my photos from the sessions on Flickr. There is some pipe forging, big abstract leaf, and a series showing the production approach to leaves that they use. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ironalchemy/sets/72157631553944293/ Enjoy, Doug Wilson IronAlchemy

HillBilly - Thomas has given you the core information so I will only add a few pieces. The colors that you get from oxidation of the surface are interference colors. It is not an accident that they are the same series of colors from straw to peacock for all metals. In fact, many bird feathers have the same colors, like peacocks, because the color comes from the same mechanism. Anything from soap bubbles to oil slicks to titanium gives the same colors. The color is a function of the thickness of the oxide coating and the refractive index of the oxide. At a higher temperature, you get a thicker oxide and a different color. Likewise, at any given temperature, if you hold the temperature the oxide layer will thicken with time and the color will change. Have a look at this earlier thread that has some useful links and discussion. http://www.iforgeiro...ors#entry255109 - Doug

Judson - I love the look of the stairs with the stainless and mahogany together. I am doing a personal house addition at the moment that will use Corten panels. Seemed appropriate for a house for a blacksmith. :-) I have a few test panels out weathering now but did not use any surface treatment for the initial tests. From looking at a number of other houses in North Carolina that used Corten, they seem to eventually weather evenly over a period of years. However, it would be nice to have things looking a bit more final more quickly. Any advice as to what the variables were that affected the finish? Was it primarily the temperature and humidity? Also, what grit did you use for the sand blasting. I assume you did that before installing the panels? Did you try any with muriatic acid (HCl) and peroxide? That is way more aggressive than bleach and gives immediate surface oxidation. It might be more controllable. I have not yet done HCl/peroxide tests on my panels but it is on the list to do this fall. The deeper almost purplish color of older Corten seems to only come with many years of oxidation. From the many examples of Corten that I have seen, I think that that there is a risk that the lower parts of the exterior wall will show rust stains if any water runs off the Corten from rain or condensation. It looks as if there is considerable protection from the overhand so maybe the problem is mitigated. The stains show less on a darker wood exterior as well. The stainless would be toast though. Hope all goes well with finishing the job. Thanks for sharing. - Doug Wilson

It was a fantastic trip to South Dakota. Wow. Now I understand why people choose to live out west. It was great to see new people and ideas at the forges as well. Thanks to all the folks who worked so hard to put it on. I primarily shot pictures of the Gallery items. I am not a professional photographer but I do take it seriously just like I do my blacksmithing. I learned a lot about shooting product shots so I am happy. Next time I will be more prepared and, I hope, produce better results. I posted my pictures to a collection on my Flickr account linked to below. I am still annotating them. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ironalchemy/collections/72157630931258072/ - Doug Wilson

While it would be fun to setup and make one, they seem to be available from what I can see. Angele (Angele.de) sells a straight pein, 3 kg. You might try John Elliott at Blacksmith Supply. He imports a number of the Angele products. - Doug

Thanks for the pointers. I have had an email in to Finney for a week now with no response. I'll have a look at LiveCode. I had not heard of that product before. I was planning to use SuperCard but that is a fairly expensive product so it would be nice to have an alternative. I do have a couple of leads from other sources that I am chasing. If I finally make contact, I'll let folks here know. Thanks - Doug

Kudos for giving it a go and thanks for sharing back with us. Nice idea to just use pipe as a handle. Since there are a number of us who have used similar froes for many years, let's look at what could be the issue here. I think your material is on the small side. 6 x 50 might give you better luck and would be closer to the Imperial dimensions some of us were likely thinking in. Clearly, there is too much stress on the blade connection to the pipe. It looks as if the wall of the pipe failed, not the weld. Since the froe is used to rive using the handle as a lever to pry the wood apart, this area takes a lot of stress hence the rolled eye design in traditional froes. Looks as if you would need a heavier walled pipe to take that stress. What kind of material are you splitting? A froe works is free splitting woods like oak or pine. There are definitely woods it will not work for like elm or sweet gum. I also use a fairly light maul, maybe a few pounds max. It should not take much effort. I'll make one up with these lighter materials in the shop this morning just to confirm that I am not just talking through my hat. - Doug

Thanks for the offer. Unfortunately, the stack with the Yellin job cards was not distributed with the system by Apple. It was a separate stack put together by Jack Andrews for his book. - Doug

Yes, Hypercard was distributed with Mac System 9.