T-Gold

I use propane, but I share Ed's concerns about grinding, welding sparks, etc -- also hot scale which goes everywhere. Not too bad, but if it gets into a mouse nest or something... Anyway, I just wanted to say that things like space heaters, over-wattage light fixtures, etc. are probably equally worthy of concern, if not more so, again, as Ed said. :)

If you have a gasser that you can close up completely with a scrap of Kaowool or some hot brick, you can anneal to a reasonable degree any piece of 5160 that will fit inside. Just put it in, wait for it to get hot (nonmagnetic... just go for a nice lemon yellow heat), seal the opening with the kaowool or brick, and shut off the gas (quickly!). You should probably also cover your burner intakes if you are using a venturi burner setup -- I dunno how well this would work with a blown burner setup, maybe you could fully close the choke or something. Anyway, this is how I do it, and I know that when I do this, the pieces come out drillable soft. :)

I know how to thread and use a block and tackle, but that's it... I think I could calculate the advantage/ratio. Also, post hole digger, y'all mean the kind that's like two shovels hinged together? If so, I've been there.

LOL, Bruce! That's pretty cool. Hmm... I don't have pictures, but a floor washer chassis followed me home recently, with motors and miscellany still attached... heavy sucker, too. Let's see... axle, shocks, rims, and disc weights from the local Goodyear's dumpster. Loads of stuff from UH including scrap steel, kiln shelving, Duraboard, and other goodies. One time 13 computers followed me home from school. That was fun. (No, I didn't steal them... they were being thrown away) Hmm. A lot of other stuff, for sure -- mostly from dumpsters, but other places too.

Those who polish usually do so with a buffing wheel and felt compound. Personally, I don't "believe" in polishing knives... I also don't believe in making knives that aren't "using" knives to at least a reasonable degree. Polishing comes after grinding and sanding to probably 1200 grit for most steels. Woolridge, ever tried osage orange for a hammer handle? Is it too stiff?

I'd just like to point out that the valve on the tank is designed to go off when the pressure in the tank gets to a point where it will soon be too much for the tank's physical structure to contain. This is usually when the tank gets very, very hot, such as when someone leaves it in an enclosed car on a sunny day. I would say that this is probably around 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, farriers with tanks on top of their forges aside, how often does your tank get up to that temperature...? I'm pretty sure mine never has. Drawing propane from the tank will cool it, as well. HOWEVER, that is no reason not to keep the bottle outside while you're using the forge! Because it's just safer, for a lot of reasons.

You can see some pics of my shop on this thread... I've been organizing it since then, though, so it looks a little better now New pictures are coming.

Good idea. I will pop out a few more and take pictures :)

DB, are you using gas or coal? If you'd like, I can post a more detailed description of how I did those. I've done 'em from steel too, and I have to say, for me the copper was a lot easier.

Mike, honestly, I can only hope that that's the case. And that if it is I don't end up hating it, although from my current point of view I don't think that's possible. You can see pictures of my furnace glass work here. I have made some other stuff since then that I need to take pictures of and put on the web.

If you have some, I would love to see pictures of the portable fire hydrant. Sounds like another pretty cool piece of work.

LOL. The "stack" is a piece of galvanized flashing that deflects hot exhaust gases from being sucked into the venturi -- that's all. Sadly. This is my first forge so I wasn't using any advanced technology The burner is right behind it, and it's held on with a big ol' hose clamp. I had problems with "huffing" when I was running this forge in the glass shop; there was no prevailing wind and the exhaust would go straight up and get sucked into the burner a bit. Right now I run with a fan blowing across the mouth of the forge, and I could probably get rid of the shield, but it ain't broke. 8)

Those are perty dang cool. Good work, Jr.

Just took some pictures that I wanted to make available for folks to look at. These are some copper hairsticks inspired by the steel hair stick design on ifi.net. I think they took me about 10-15min apiece, four heats/anneal cycles each, plus filing/sanding the tips. These are some parts for a brick kiln that I'm building for some friends. They will have holes drilled for threaded rod so that they can be used to clamp the bricks together; they will also be connected in places by brazed parts to fix the whole kiln together. Just a shop built light fixture. In this pic you can see my setup in the garage -- the yellow barrel is full of water, and the acoustic tiles clamped to it are acting to make it difficult for the neighbors to see my setup if one of them should chance to be at home. My forge is on the table, my anvil is in the foreground, and my small anvil is on the left. You can see the back of the garage, full of stuff. The compressor is in the wooden box in the middle.

Right now I'm moving my shop stuff into our garage, so it's not as organized as I'd like it to be. Also I'm installing more storage-related stuff (shelves, hooks, etc) than I had before. Right now it's not so much a mess as it is very tightly packed, I hope that having shelves will help me out in that department.

LOL, Ed. That's pretty hardcore.

In a glass shop, lots of things catch fire that you don't expect... Often you'll have some not-so-bright character sweep up hot glass and drop it into one of the "dirty glass" trash bins with some newspaper... whoof! Melts a hole in the bucket, too. Or when someone is doing a hot cane pickup, and their assistant brings out the piece of 1/2" steel plate (on a fork) and rests it on the bench rail, which is 1/4" angle iron backed up with WOOD... starts to smoke perty fast, gotta keep spraying it with water. If I think of any others, I'll be sure to post 'em, I'm sure I've set a few things on fire while I was over there.

Rich, think you can tell us a little about your browning process? Beautiful knives, by the way. I really like the ironwood handle/oosik spacer. Looks like you put as much care into the handle as you did into the knife.

I've had very few "dumb spectator moments" because the only places I've done anything remotely like demonstration have been at a hot glass shop and at a campout where everyone knew what was going on. The best one for me was when I had just welded together a set of jacks (glassworking tool), cooled off the weld, and handed them to a female friend of mine who fiddled with them a little, handed them back, and then shrieked "My hands smell like metal! Xxxx you, Tyler!" I, of course, laughed my behind off. The point of this, of course, is to get y'all to share your Stupid Spectator Tricks, because I so love to read 'em. So if you've got one, post it!

I agree with Bruce... With regards to the two 45s, you're going to have the potential for problems anywhere you have a wall penetration... that's life, unfortunately. I don't know what you're sheathing with, but I'd say, apply loads of silicone caulk and forget about it unless you have a problem. Of course, I'm no expert. :wink:

Hmm -- what I would do is cut an oval hole in the wall where I was going to put the forge (I would be likely to put it in the middle of the gravel area to make heats on bar centers easy...), put one 45 degree elbow on the hood itself (definitely side draft), put a few feet of duct on the elbow til it makes it outside, and use a second 45 degree elbow to shoot the chimney straight up. If this doesn't make sense, let me know and I'll draw something and post it :)

Okay... I know you guys who use coal forges generally use coal dust for punching lube. What else works? I've heard beeswax, Nevr-Seize, grease (?), graphite dust... I was wondering if sawdust worked, since that seems kinda conceptually similar to coal (carbon + volatiles, right?), but is there anything that I'm leaving out?

You may want to make a provision for adding a booster fan in case it's necessary -- sounds like you could do this by using a tee instead of an elbow on one of these right angles. You may also want to think about using 45 degree angles instead of 90s -- I don't know what your setup is like, exactly, so I don't know if that advice is worth anything or not :)