jayco

Hello Rzrbak........welcome to IFI! There are links on the 'Home' page to help you find your way around this site . IFI is a great big place with lots of different sections........lots of nice folks........and lots of metalworking information. Enjoy!

I don't have any 'unusual' preferences ' in smithing hammers really. I just have the usual ball piens, cross piens, straight piens, and a couple of sledge type hammers I use. My main hammer is a 1.75 lb. ball pien,......so old and worn it probably started out as a 2 pounder. It's not evena 'good' hammer........I,m just very used to it. Something I've learned just lately is how much the feel and impact of a hammer can be changed by modifying the handle. I make most of my own wooden tool handles . I started making longer and skinnier handles for my forging hammers. For lack of a better name, I call it a 'slim taper' style handle. I have short,fat fingers, so the skinnier handle feels better in my hand......and the longer handle seems to give me more ......power; leverage, or 'whallop. I am gravitating toward a 16in. overall handle length........but i haven't totally decided yet (I,m still experimenting with handle length a little) I have one old straight pien in my shop that I rehandled some years ago but never used much , because it felt 'funny' to me,......if that makes any sense. I had inspected it more than once and had been puzzled as to why I didn't like it. The hammer looked ok.......balanced well enough......the handle looked ok. I didn't realize what was wrong until I sighted down the handle toward the head. I had whittled down the the 'eye' section of the handle a little crooked. So the hammer head was not on the handle straight. It was just crooked enough to throw the whole thing out of balance. This one gets a new handle!

Hi Black Ink.......I see you have the spirit of experimentation. These 'bricks' you speak of probably would indeed make a fire,but whether or not you could forge with them is another matter.....and unknown to me. As far as the mess.......well, that could be a problem. Think of what happens with burnt potatoes or bacon in the skillet......a lot of smoke and an unpleasant odor. Storing the bricks might be a problem , especially if there's any animal fats involved. Back before cholestorol was discovered, we used to cook with 'lard'.....rendered animal fat. If it wasn't refrigerated or salted down properly, it acquired a unique odor after a few days. It turned rancid and smelled unpleasant to say the least. If the 'grease' you speak of is vegetable oil, you might just use it for finishes and as a quenchant for some things......... Do your experiments safely!

Before 1980, there were still lots of country folk around here who heated their homes with 'house coal'. We burned it ourselves in 'coal grate' fireplaces,pot-bellied stoves, and regular coal stoves. This was before 'the environment', the EPA, and 'pollution' were commonly known terms in rural areas. Heating the house with coal made white curtains and white ceilings an impossibility. Every time you opened the stove door to add more coal, or to remove ashes, a cloud of coal dust issued from the open door and settled on everything in the house. (Sort of like living in a blacksmith's shop........all the time!) From that time, I do remember having the coal stove 'run away' (burn uncontrollably) a time or two. Other folks also reported similar occurances occasionally. Whether these 'run away' fires were caused by coal tar in chimneys.......I cannot be certain. As far as cresoate fires are concerned, they are caused by buildup of cresoate on the walls of chimneys........(burning wet or green wood slowly , often with draft controls closed and/or dampers closed. Incidentally, the rise in cresoate fires seems to correlate with the rise in popularity of the 'air tight stove'. (Which allowed an eveh slower burn.) If we had had air tight coal stoves back then, coal tar fires might have been commonplace. This might not be correct, but it does seem plausible. After all, when you think about it, coal and wood,charcoal and coke, and cresoate and coal tar are not so much different from each other.

One of the problems of 'pricing', ( in my opinion, anyway), is that old traditional capitalism is largely a mechanical system.....based on numbers and measurements. It doesn't take into account the 'beauty' of a hand forged element, but is rather good at breaking things down into pounds, gallons, inches, etc. The original tenets of capitalism would hardly recognize much difference between a pound of 1/2 in. rebar and a beautiful handmade rose that weighed one pound. Much of that kind of economic thinking is still with us. I guess the larger question is: How do you put a price on Beauty?

clever idea Larry! Removing some stock from the 'face' side should help make the hammer better balanced. Especially important when you use the 'cross pein' side.

Here's another one........I think I saw a version of this riddle in a Charles McRaven book. I'm not sure.......... An old 'penny pincher' brought 5 sections of chain( 3 links in each section),and wanted the blacksmith to weld all the sections together to form one chain. The blacksmith didn't have any stock to make any extra links.......and the penny pincher didn't want to pay for extra links anyway, so it was decided the smith would cut and reweld some of the existing links to make the chain. The smith charged 50 cents for each cut & weld...........so how much did the old penny pincher have to pay?

I thought about standing on my head with a card in my hand; facing a mirror, to test the 'up-down' part of this question.........but that would be silly.........and there aren't any pictures to prove I did! The best answer I can come up with is that: Mirrors don't really reverse any image. It is we who reverse the image when we turn it toward the mirror. So maybe.......we trick ourselves......... I even began to theorize that if I were to face away from the mirror......and use another mirror to view the image in the first mirror.........the card would read correctly from left to right. At this point, I began to get a headache................. I'm stumped!

My son got a computer a little over a year ago. He had used one in school a bit, so knew a little about them. After he got everything set up, he said "DAD! You should try it!" So I just started by 'pointing and clicking'. Also had to learn to type............ I only learned what 'copy and paste' really meant.......a few months ago. And yeah.......we're on 'dial-up',.......out here in the country. At this point, I don't have any strong points to my 'puter' skills. I guess I was 'dragged into the 21st century' I'm not sure I came into the 20th century voluntarily............

M brothers.........I can't say what you should do since I've never really named my shop. I'm torn between two possible names for my shop. I want a name that's simple,yet unique......that's not always easy to do. 1st choice: Flannery's Forge (my name.....and it has a certain 'ring' to it.) 2nd choice: Hog Branch Iron Works ( where I live......but not so catchy ) (But.......a snarling pig with a hammer would make a great logo!

INcreasing the mass under a London pattern anvil won't make the horn or heel any stronger.Using a larger hammer and/or hitting harder might cause breakage of either of these. In fact,increasing the mass and making the mounting of the anvil more rigid might make the horn and heel even more vulnerable.

Habu 68.........the farmer probably figured it would be impossible to give each of his sons fractions of horses, so instead 'pretended' he had 18.......making the dividing much easier. He gave the 3rd. son 2 horses(1/9 of 18) He gave the 2nd. son 6 horses(1/3 of 18) He gave the 1st. son 9 horses(1/2 of 18) 2 + 6 + 9 = 17 horses And what about the 18th horse? Well, there never was an 18th horse..... It was just a 'pretend' horse!

Skunkriv, you got the 'Fox,goose, corn' riddle correctly. ( I never thought of the 'moonshine'!) Keykeeper......your alternative answer certainly saves some steps! Never thought of that one either! Habu 68......at my house 'pi r round-cobbler r sq. The 17 horses riddle? I'm still working on that one! It's a tough one!

Here's an old time 'thinking puzzle' that might be fun to work through. I only know a couple, so feel free to post a possible answer .............or maybe you know of a different riddle or puzzle we can work on. Fox,Goose,and Corn A farmer had three items to take to town to sell. A fox, a goose, and a sack of corn. The only way to town was to cross an old rickety bridge. Because the bridge was so rickety, he could only carry one thing at a time across the bridge. To further complicate matters,he could not leave the fox alone with the goose, for the fox would surely eat the goose if given a chance.Also, he can't leave the goose alone with the corn,because the goose would eat the corn! The fox will not eat the corn. So can the farmer get all three items across the bridge?....Safe and sound?.........And if he can how does he do it? Have fun!

Philip,we,ve heated our home with wood for many years. I like heating with wood........but....there is a certain price you pay when you heat with wood, and I,m not talking so much about the initial cost of buying or building a stove and the costs associated with installing a flue or chimney. If you have experience with burning wood, you already know that you must be eternally vigilant: that stoves, stove pipe,dampers,and the wood itself, can surprise you. I've been surprised(scared) a few times in my life while burning wood. Late, one very cold night I awoke to a sound like a train or something and realized I had a cresoate fire in the flue. Luckily, I had an in-pipe damper which I closed quickly. Our house could have burned that night. Once when I was just a kid, we had a fire in an open fire place one windy March day. Apparently, wind came down the chimney and blew sparks onto a cloth chair a few feet from the fireplace. My mother and I were outside and just happened to notice smoke billowing in the house. We quickly dowsed the fire with a couple buckets of water. To all firemen who read this: yes I now know that our actions were probably not the correct one to take. Let me sum up by saying there are a lot of hidden dangers to heating with wood. I've learned NEVER to trust the fire completely, but constantly checking stove,flue, pipe, etc. I never leave the house or go to sleep with a large fire in the stove. Be careful!

Happy Birthday!

Welcome to IFI triw! There are lots of friendly folks here........blacksmiths and bladesmiths. The opening page has links to help you get started and also navigate this site. Enjoy!