jason0012

Why did McDonald not want a link to his website? They did not link to McD they linked to "another smithiing site" that has informed us we MUST delete any links or referance to them. Ask Jock why, his orders to delete them.

I would expect die alignment to be more certain and repeatable with dovetails

I had a rough time with craft fairs until I upped my inventory. I would take at a minimum $10,000 worth of inventory to a show. I have sold out a few shows and its not cool to sell out and not have enough income to make the trip worthwhile! I considered any show where I averaged less than$2000 a dayto be a bust. It takes a lot to pack up and go set up at a show and there are only so many weekends you can do in a year. I would only set up at jurried shows, and my booth fees were usually $350-$700 for a three day show. Back in the begining I did demo at the shows. While that is a lot of fun it is a lot of work and makes it pretty hard to watch the booth and entertain the crowd. I never did very well sales wise when demonstrating even with booth help. I always found that it seemed to be too much distraction and too much hassel. I would never set up to demo at a show that did not at the very least wave the booth fee. I was in business to sell ironwork and not to provide entertainment at various events. I also found that any event where the crafts were an afterthought such as music festivals were not good venues. I spent about ten years living off of various fairs and shows. The above are my rules for picking shows, but the last one I exhibited at was in the spring of 04 and was a bit of a dud. I noticed then that people just werent spending like they used to. I'm not sure if things have improved or not but many of the artists I used to exhibit with have gone on to sell through other venues.

Rob Gunter has one, or at least he did when I saw his shop.

As I recall , wasn't Hofi's hammer based on a design by Freddie Habberman? Did Habberman get any royalties from Hofi? Almost any idea in a field as old as ours is simply built on the ideas of others. Twenty+ years ago blacksmiths shared ideas quite freely. The philosophy was that we all owed those who taught us , and were to repay their knowledge by passing it on. All that seemed to change in the late 90s. And how XXXXXXX would one get any claim to pattent a ladder pattern? 1000 yr old examples exist so ___________ invented it last week? As absurd as all the folks I have met who claim to have invented damascus steel, or rediscovered it.

I have forged some Titainium. I have no idea what alloy, as it was scrap I bought at SOFA. A 1/2x1/4 piece moved about like 4" square under my hammer! I managed to forge a leaf and bell for a windchime out of it but it was pretty awfull. It moves wierd and reacts to heat wierd. Every hammer blow left a black spot that remained until it went back in the fire. Wierd when I am used to buiding heat back into a peice with every blow. I have heard other smiths claim that Ti is easy to forge so it may be the alloy I had. The stuff also was near impossible to machine. I burned through a half dozen solid carbide drills making a 1/8 hole in a thin part of one of these forgings. Grinding it was exciting too, plumes of white sparks four or five feet long . Im not sure what the sparks were from , after four belts I had barely scratched the burr I was trying to grind off.

I have forged monel 400 a few times. It seemed tough as any other stainless. A bit harder to move than 3xx but not as bad as ATS34/CPM154. Didn't come close to H-13 either. I was working with a 100# Bradley and the 1 1/4 square didn't seem to be a problem for it. The scale is jett black and near impossible to remove, but it does polish well. I have welded some thin stuff into damascus as well. Welding seems a bit touchy but provided you don't let it scale it works about like nickle. The absolute worst material I ever tried to forge was T-16 tool steel. A couple peices found thier way into a barrel of 4130 drops I bought, all 1 1/2 round about 3 inches long. The 100# just bounced off of this stuff! Quite the nasty surprise when I was forging through all that 4130! Work kind of hot and use power, figure like any stainless your hammer will be about half as effective as it would be on a normal steel. Working by hand it would probably be kind of discouraging. In machining it tends to eat up tools too . The special coated carbide tools were developed for this sort of material.

Does anyone know if the Nimba anvils are still being made?

It shouldn't be too terribly hard to turn a new part out of steel. I have twisted the bolts off of mine a couple times but never seen one break. I think its more common for the strap to break, or get way out of round. I have had some trouble with that part on my hammer.

I think 2" is kind of optimistic for real capacity on the 25. The biggest stock I fed my 25 was 2.5 round of 4140. It was WAY underpowered for that! It did chew through that 4140 but it was not fast. Hank Knickmyer used to forge damascus billets that were 4x4 under a 25# LG. The issue with capacity is how fast you need to get the part finished. If you arent forging for money and the clock isnt running a 25 will do nicely. If you have clients who are paying a shop rate based on time you have to look at it a bit differently. The other concern is time at forging temp. will effect the grain in the forging. The Little Giant was not a manufacturing machine. It was intended for the small blacksmith shop. A big industrial machine like the chambersberg,nazel,bradley,beaudry ect were all rated more realisticly. In a small shop you can get by with a smaller hammer since you wont likely work material of large size. Most of us probably dont often forge material as big as 3 inch. Running an ornamental shop I found that I only rarely forged material for a client over 1.5 inch. I see the rating of a hammer as the biggest material it can work really efficently and keep hot while forging. The 25 is hard pressed to put heat back into stock over 5/8-3/4 square.

A 25# hammer is far better than no hammer at all. I ran one for years in production work and it really is underpowered for stock over 3/4 square. I forged some big stuff under it , but it was all I had at the time. If you intend to make money at this a 50 would be a minimum, a 100-250 ideal. Unless of course you want to get into a big hammer, and big forgings. The 25 was great when texturing stock and forging all those tiny things out of 1/2-1/4 stock, but my 100# does as well and and has the power to forge more serious stock. As for control, put a break on it and it will behave.

Is there a link anywhere to a diagram of that valve set up? I havent been able to find one, and it looks a lot better than the Kinyon set up.

I was kind of hoping there would be some good sugestions on this one. I do bladesmithing part time and don't even try to sell the things. At my shop rate I shudder to think what I would have to charge for a knife. I hate the idea of turning them really production so I avoid trying to sell them.

Why on earth would anyone cut it in half?

I once had a 25# that did that. I drilled the broken part, reassembled with a 3/4" dowel and two 5/8-11 cap screws. Then veed out the crack and filled it with Ni rod. lots of grinding and I had a die back in and the hammer running for a few years more. I replaced it with a 100# hammer but the repair held as far as I know.

I once dumped mine and found a lower die for the hammer. It was a taper die for sharpening breaker points and I had been hunting for it for over a year!

I was at the flea mrkt the other day and stumbled across a set of old ironwork catalogs, or at least that is what I assumed them to be. For $1 each and all four were there I figured it wouldn't hurt to take them home. When I got home and started reading through them, they arent cataloges but part of a course on operating an ironworks buisness, from 1968! They are actually an amazingly usefull looking set of books on the economics of operating a shop. Has anyone out there heard of R.J. Cunningham Designs? I have never heard of them, there is a phone listing though I don't think its current. I thought it was interesting to see that thier shop rate in 1968 was $5.50 an hour!

I remember how Clifton's 250 leaned from subsidance under the foundation. If you watch the videos you can see the hammer leans forwards. He said the problem was the wet conditions, and quantity of sand in the soil. His hammer sat right at the edge of the foundation and all force was on the front edge. As I recall he said that the foundation should have extended two feet or more in front of the machine to stabilize it.

Try moving the idler to the other side of the drive wheel. Then it will be turning the right way. Bradleys as well as most other belt hammers have provision to do so.

I believe it was in Donna Miliech's book that I saw an illustration of the "old" way of doing this. The process was similar to inlaying gold or silver in engraving, with the brass spine being forged onto spines chisled out of the blade. The ends were also dovetailed if I recall corectly. I would try just brazing or even more blasphemous, MIG welding a nice bead of brass down the back side of the blade. This sounds far more decrative than funtional anyway.

$95,000 seems a tad steep, I am pretty sure I could build one cheaper

I feel like I am stirring the pot a bit, but have to disagree with some of the opinions here. I have done this cold at the anvil. I don't see why it would possibly hurt the machine, I have done this task by hand and know quite well the forces involved. If you have a hammer use it, that's what its for. I rather liked the look of the Anyang hammers but are you saying they break when they hit stuff? I run a 110 yr old hammer and while it shows lots of wear, all the failures I have experienced were when forging hot stuff on a production basis. Try this, does it hurt the hammer to hit cold tooling? My tools are 5160 and 4140 and a few are H13. They are considerably harder than cold HRS. Knocking corners down takes very little force as does most texturing . I would expect most any hammer to be able to handle this work. It is a job that small fast hammers are perfect for. 16mm stock is kinda small too. It is far harder on a hammer to hit nothing than to hit die to die. Die to die is really hard on the dies, the hammer has to withstand the forces of the dies getting smacked together every time it gets used. Hardened dies have a nasty habit of chipping or worse when smacked together. The dovetails and frame ought to be stout enough to handle the forces of the tup hitting the anvil. If not, the hammer needs to be redesigned in a big way, since this is the very operation it is intended for. What I have seen of the Anyang It at least appears to be quite sufficent for this sort of thing and it would surprise me if it suffered any damage from this operation.

It cant hurt the machine. It is a hammer, it is meant to hammer! What can happen is the cold stock can groove out the dies. Hot forging will do this too, just takes a whole lot longer. Anyone using a hammer ought to learn to hold stock level anyway so the "hard on the smith" is kind of relative. Just think, you wont burn any gas or be standing in front of the forge- that makes a difference when the shop averages 112 degrees in the summer. I always thought breaking the scale was actually an advantage of cold texturing, the client I did a lot of this for painted everything, and often neglected to sandblast. I descale most of my own work anyway, even for indoors applications. I don't like to think of big chunks of scale flaking off at some point down the road.

As I recall he was trying to find a way to produce inexpensive copies of forged blades- complete with hammer marks and on some, file teeth. D-2 was necessary to compensate for loosing strength in the casting process. There was a company casting blades in 1045 too, but I don't even forge blades out of steel that cheap!(I think they were located in India)

I had two kitchen knives I forged from 440-C. Both were excellent for edge holding, but the stuff is awfull to forge! Up there with H-13. Sadly, a house guest a few years back stole one of them!!!! If your blade is not holding up it is either heat treated improperly, or made from one of the lesser 440 series. Many cheap knives are made from 440B or 440A which aren't the same steel at all.