Randy

Are you a member of the California Blacksmiths Association? http://www.calsmith.org/ Check them out as they should be able to help you.

Has anyone tried the on line stores like Etsy? What was the out come and what stores did you use? What did you sell? Any recommendations?

"Strike while the iron's hot" "Forge a head" :-)

Great post! Very interesting! My original business name was RAM's Forge, RAM being my initials. Used that for 24 years. I still have the RAMS4G tag on my truck. (4G meaning "forge"). In 1998 I changed it to Dragonfly Enterprises. This was due to writing my book as publishers and dealers like more of a business name, plus I was adding a laser cutting service and was being open to whatever else happens. The name and my logo of a dragonfly with a dragons' head came about due to a railing I was working on. The client wanted a section of railing with cattails and rushes and then a dragon in the mix. I told him the scale was all wrong to have a dragon in there, so I made the dragonfly with the dragons' head.

I just "brazed" some stainless to brass. At the welding supply company they suggested a silver solder instead of braze rod. The chart had a stainless steel listing of 50% silver. I got a 1 ounce roll for $27, but it worked great.

It's funny to see this. I just did the same thing in order to make the 2 sides of some bird heads I had to do for a bridge railing. Punched into a hollow block and cut off the half round to make half of the birds head. Quite the time saver.

It's definitely a Mouse Hole as it is marked ARMITAGE as the upper stamping. That's from the M&H ARMITAGE MOUSE HOLE. There's a great book about these anvils written by Richard A. Postman, called "Mousehole Forge". I've used these for over 30 years and love them!

Some are just mild steel that I harden, but if they're thin they won't hold up. Most are 4140 that I harden and temper. Punches do heat up pretty bad, but the 4140 is tough stuff. A hot cut in mild steel won't last long as the edge smushes (a tecnical term) over as it pushes back into itself. Having a 60 ton I even had to make my flat plates out of 4140 as the mild steel ones were denting and scarring up with hot metal being pushed on it.

Here's my 248 pound Mouse Hole on an ash stump. It's 30" into the ground, too. I get more work done this way as the hammer is pushing the hot metal not making the anvil and stump vibrate. Each hold down is a different design bent over the anvil feet.

In order to get rid of the smoke put up a good chimney. The hood is a pain in the head and not required to remove smoke. 12" minimum diameter and 24" higher than the peak of the roof. Plus after the first 5 minutes or so of starting your fire you shouldn't have any smoke anyway. Then you should only be burning the coke from the sides, not putting green coal on top.

I remember seeing a photo of the meteorite anvil years ago. It was a ring type with more than half buried in the ground. Tom Bredlow of Tuscon, AZ, was making something on it. One of the things he's known for is doing some gates for the National Cathedral in D.C.. Top notch smith!!!

Here you go: "DIES, Their Construction and Use for the Modern Working of Sheet Metals", Lost Technology Series, reprinted by Lindsay Publications. There's a lot of press work even showing the machines and of course the dies used. Great drawings, too! I'll also ask: What tooling have you found is handy for your press? Fly or hydraulic press. And how do you attach it to your press for quick exchange?

I use AutoCad LT for all of my drawings as it is a "simple" 2D program. I have also used TurboCad with good success and a lot cheaper. I'm also hearing a lot of good things about Google's SketchUp, but haven't looked into that one yet. As far as scrolls are concerned I don't like the mathematical formulas for it. It seems too expanded and too open to me. I was taught to use nature as a basis and a snails' shell in particular. If you note on the photo and my drawing that what happens is you start with a center point, whatever the scroll terminate will be. A snub end, ribbon end, hay penny end or what ever, then from that the scroll grows out from there. Look at the negative space. The space that's not the metal. This will gradually increase as it spirals around. So each red line from the center will keep getting slightly longer as the scroll increases in size. In actually forging this style scroll you start with the end close to the far edge of the anvil as you hammer it down to start the scroll and each time you bring it back to this point you put it farther past the edge. Just like in hammering, the best way to learn how to draw a scroll, free hand or on the computer is to practice it, a lot. I use 3 point archs to create a scroll on AutoCad and once I have a good one you can keep copying it and scale it to what size you need. The last photo is a job I'm working on now where I have to copy some old scrolls from some fencing in NYC. Same deal.

Here's my 60 ton hydraulic forging press, but what tooling have you found is handy for your press? And how do you attach it to your press for quick exchange?

Presses are great, but they are only as good as the tooling you have for them and how you go about switching the tooling. Attached is my stand and what tooling I have so far. Sure is good to get the tooling up off of the ground and in sight. What tooling have you found is handy for your press? And how do you attach it to your press for quick exchange?

Currently I have a 4-1/2" Dewalt. The last one was a cheapie and I got a year out of it. I usually find a top brand names cost 2 or 3 times more, but lasts 5 or 6 times longer. I like the higher amps, like 10, better than the cheap grinders. Biggest complaint I have is the size of the bodies. By time I've wrapped my hand around one of those things for a couple of hours my hand hurts for the next 2 days. Why don't they make a handle that attaches over the cord and into the body so they're easier to grab?! It would be safer, too!

Frosty, thanks for sharing your design on the forge. I like the concept and using the scissors jack. Clever. I am a draftsman by trade and use AutoCad LT, but I like what you were able to do with Sketchup. I'll have to look into it. I have a few questions on the forge. What is the table size? What keeps the top bricks in place? What keeps the burners in place? Why use the soft brick compared to the hard bricks and are you using them every where? Can you forge weld in it? I have so much to learn about gas forges. ;-)

WOW!!! And they said it couldn't be done! Beautiful! Well, originally when I started forging titanium they told me that it couldn't be forged. I didn't know any better and did it any way. Thanks for sharing!!!

Frosty, I've got 4 different gas forges. An old Mankel, or so I've been told, a small forge with adjustable clam shell, a Jymm Hoffman that I built this year and a Steve Gensheimer burner in a freon tank. The last two I can forge weld in. I'd love to see your Variable Volume forge.

This is my seventh shop in thirty-seven years of forging. It’s not my smallest or my largest, but it works well. The floor plan has changed with the addition of some more equipment and getting rid of other pieces. Seems like there’s never enough room, but with my focus on using the Nazel 1B power hammer and the 60 ton hydraulic forging press I have plenty of space to create whatever I want. Besides using my coal forge I have been experimenting with different designs of gas forges. It looks like several are required to achieve the type of heat and size depending on what’s being made. More pictures are on my website www.drgnfly4g.com .

I made a ti sword, but only as a process and a challenge to figure how to do it as there was no way for me to do any welding. Now I did this as a strictly art blade. After it was completed I donated it to BGCM for their auction and for publicity I did a YouTube video showing the blade and used modeling clay to show the process. So far over 300,000 people have viewed the video. That's amazing to me. There was a lot of controversy over it, too. Lots of comments. So then I did a second video of actually forging the titanium to make a knife. One reason I did this video was because of so many comments about the sword, saying that ti is too brittle. I don't know where they got that from, so I put the blade in the vise and hit it with my sledge hammer and watched as the hammer just bounced off. I've been forging titanium for about 25 years and love it for its texture from forging. It's tougher than stainless while forging and when it starts to cool down the hammer will all of a sudden just bounce off. Knife or sword wise, as has been stated, it's very tough, but not good for an edge. BUT the edge has a sawtooth to it so works well that way. Divers use ti knives because of the lack of weight, it can cut a rope and it's tough for prying. Oh, and it's corrosion resistant. I hope this and the videos answer some of your questions and maybe bring up some more.

Here are some sites where they sell hydraulic presses: http://home.comcast.net/~eellis2/EllisCustomKnifeworks/hydraulicpress.html http://www.dfoggknives.com/Xpress.htm http://www.carolinaknives.com/getcategory.php?cat=8 Hope it helps.

When I built my first smithy back in '74 I did a lot of research by seeing old shops and talking to old smiths about what they used for their floors. I saw a lot of wooden floors that were all warped with nail heads sticking up and spent the day tripping around the shop. That's what a lot of them had. One smith had a wagon shop with a dirt floor that his great-grandfather put in, but not just dirt. Here is the process they used: rake up the dirt floor to make it loose and level: add a fine (no lumps) wood ash from a wood furnace or wood stove: rake that into the dirt: (that prevents mud puddles when it gets wet): then use a watering can and sprinkle the floor with water: after it soaks in good use a flat plate with a long handle welded to it and tamp down the whole floor. I ended up trying this in my first shop and it was very comfortable, my feet didn't get cold and I really liked it. There is mainenance to it though. Every several weeks it starts to dry out and that's when you get dust, or you get paths from where you walk to and from the most, so you just rake it level again, water, wait for it to soak in and tamp it down. I've worked in shops with gravel floors and it was awkward. Hard to find a comfortable place to stand and hand tools disappeared. Plus it was hard to keep anvils and the like sitting level. The gravel dust would work better if wetted and tamped down. I've also worked on brick floors and they tend to move after a time and corners stick up and you're back to tripping again. Also they can get uneven and that's uncomfortable to stand on, too. All of my shops have had concrete floors since that first shop because it was already in the buildings. My current smithy has a concrete floor and my feet get cold quick and I feel it by the end of the day in my legs. The best shop I had with a concrete floor was built like a bank barn where the back was built into the side of a hill. This put the floor several feet into the ground and it kept a constant temperature of 55 degrees. If I could build a new shop I'd work that into the plan some how. I could work in that shop all day all year around and it was always comfortable temperature wise and comfort wise.

"Build Your Own Hydraulic Forging Pess" by James L. Batson. One place that you can buy it is at http://www.americanbladesmith.com/store/s-pages/ABS_Store_Forging%20Press.htm which is the american bladesmith association