T-Gold

Woolridge, ironically, my hair is even longer than my girlfriend's so I can describe the process pretty well. 1) Tie off hair with rubberband somewhere on the back of the head. 2) Grab the end and twist it til it starts to kink. 3) Roll it around its own base. Should form a nice cylinder... maybe. 4) Stick the sticks through it. I usually use a rubber band to hold it together -- works a little better, and I don't have any 'manly' hair sticks... yet. If you're really curious about how this works you could probably nail a piece of braided nylon rope to a board and try it.

I did a pair of these out of copper -- BIG hit. Don't forget to texture the shafts.

Ralph, heat rising. Top mounted burner means as hot exhaust flows up and out of the mouseholes it gets sucked into the burner -- side mounted it would have to flow down and around Meco, glad you got it working! Now you can pound some iron :)

I scored two rotary-vane vacuum pumps today -- just the pumps, not the motors. These are exactly what I needed for a project that I'm doing, and they retail for $400 each or more. They were in a dumpster, to be hauled away for scrap metal. Same dumpster that I have gotten thousands and thousands of bucks worth of other vac equipment/misc from before. Dumpster diving ROCKS! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Woah, Jr! Thanks! That answered a lot of lingering questions that I had.

From what I understand, joints between things like this that are intended to act as anvils need to either be through-welded or lapped to fit. I don't know the allowable tolerances, unfortunately. Don't suppose you might want to sell one? By the way, you may want to drill and tap before you do the cutting/welding if you're concerned about machinability.

If that wee wheel inside there is sharpened it would make an excellent letter opener. :)

I third what Thomas and Woolridge said. As I said, use a fan to blow the exhaust away -- don't mess with sealing the door, waste of time... and in general, it's best to bring burners in from the side, so that A) they don't huff their own exhaust (kinky!) and they don't get super super hot when you shut off the forge (chimney effect).

This kind of problem is typically caused by the burner "rebreathing" forge exhaust, in my experience. I've seen it on a variety of forges, in a variety of situations. My suggestion is to aim a desk fan so that it will blow the dragon's breath away from the burner intake. Good luck!

Looks like some kind of leather punch to me.

Also, a Reil burner can generally be relied upon to heat 300 cubic inches to forging heat or 250 to welding heat. Assuming you have a decent regulator, that is.

There are many smiths in MA... just gotta look. I know several myself, all the way from Hawaii!

I'm not much of a forge welder yet, but I'm starting off with faggot welds as described -- I like to test them by grinding or cutting off the "hinge" and putting the welded-on part in the vise and hitting the "original" bar. So far, so good... :)

Mr. H, lots of jewelry companies (such as Rio Grande) sell powered rolling mills that usually have 8" wide rollers. You may want to look into these... though they run around $8-10,000 apiece, if memory serves. If you need further help finding 'em I'll take a look around.

Very nice forge, Newlad! I think it's quite a piece of work. Looks just about professional I would probably have run it a bit differently, but that's me. I'm really enjoying following your progress on here, but could you please use a few periods in your posts? Reading them is leaving me breathless :)

By the way, Michael, the C-clamp needs to be parallel to the direction of foce applied... IE, clamp through the top of the I-beam rather than through the web. Better off welding it, probably... and finding some RR track or something. :)

Thank you Woolridge! I've been looking for a pic of the Brazeal Brothers' anvil for ages! Much grass. Resizing looks good as well Thanks again. Now to find some heavy plate... :)

Archie, re: gases, they're being burnt, don't worry. It's only a concern when you're not pumping, and your air source is higher than your tuyere. I use a gas forge to prevent backfires and whoomphs. As far as prevention there goes, I built a good burner and mounted it securely, and I am careful how I treat the gas ;)

LOL. Wow, I feel awful big for my britches, having Glenn post a pic of my anvil on this thread! Mine's the one with the vise clamped to it. Ben, I would suggest that if you have trouble finding a "real" anvil (after the newspaper ad route, the ask-all-your-friends route, and the guild route), that you go to the local scrapyard and find a hunk of solid steel (Note: don't let 'em sell you a transformer core!) weighing as much as possible. You may have to make a rather interesting stand, as I did, but my anvil (weighing in at 143#) has almost as good of rebound as the 200# Arm & Hammer that I learned on! This piece cost me $40, I think, and it is stainless, so I don't have to worry about it rusting (side benefit). The large cutout is great for bending flat stock on edge, among other uses.

Just a funny note -- I recruited a temporary striker not too long ago for a little bit of work, and I found that a lot of this "dialogue" is fairly instinctive. Five taps is long enough to be attention getting, tapping/striking where you want your striker to hit is pretty natural. Very fun, too! (Even when it was me swinging the hammer )

Convenience. Without a doubt. I have consciously and continuously worked to set up my shop so that every tool that I like to use is available within one "step" -- whether it be opening a toolbox, pulling out a drawer, reaching behind something, etc. With tools available like this I am more likely to use them, and to use the right tool for the job. I like to have materials arranged like this too, but it's much more valuable to have the tools set up this way for me. It is definitely worth my time to build racks, shelving, etc. to make my tools available like this.

Also, how cold do you let it get? Coming from a glass shop, I work hot hot -- and when the piece turns orange or red, back into the forge without delay. On a good gasser I sometimes spend as much time in the forge as at the anvil, going back and forth rapidly, and keeping the piece at yellow or above. Just like good glass artists usually work very HOT... because it is much EASIER except in certain situations. :)

Archie, hammers with integral handles are A) awfully hard to forge without a massive hydraulic press/drop hammer and appropriate closed dies and awfully hard on your hands. Why would you want to do a painful thing like that? :)

Swages, mandrels, fullers... the list is endless. Any hardy tool. What do you need at the moment? :)

Claw hammer... dangerous. Hit anvil -- hammer bounces -- claws go in your face. 2.5# is a good weight for a hammer in my opinion -- a little heavy if you're just starting out, but I can swing one for hours and I'm not in the best of shape (just skinny).