VaughnT

I would love to get an anvil like that! I'm pretty sure that's a connecting pin from a large piece of machinery. The hole in the end is for a cotter pin. As an anvil, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better one. All the mass is right under the hammer, so all you need to do is make a nice stump for it with some dimensional lumber. Or you could save yourself the hassle and just ship it to me!

That's exactly what I'm talking about, except you can't blame it on Corp. America. This is all the doing of the politicians and the corporations are pretty much doing what they have to do to survive. Combine this kind of stuff with a hundred other little things, and you get the snowball effect in full force.

It's interesting to see the ramifications finally manifesting. People often talk about ripples in a pond, but I think this is a bad analogy because ripples fade to nothingness as they get farther from where the pebble splashed in. More accurate would be the snowball tumbling downhill, growing in size as more and more snowflakes are picked up, eventually turning into an avalanche that destroys everything before it. One little change, a new regulation, doesn't have any measurable impact in the first year or two. You don't see anything wrong, and you forget that the regulation was ever enacted. And that one little change might never actually amount to anything.... if it existed in a vacuum. Sadly, when you have a hundred little changes and they all impact various aspects of the culture, you get a snowball growing out of control. Things that don't appear to be at all related to the subject at hand actually play a very big role and can have dire consequences.

I'm having a real hard time understanding what you're describing. I agree that the spare tire design is less than optimal, but it seems to me that it's a compromise to allow for a very small footprint and easy parts to source. Like JHCC, I'd love to see some photos or diagrams of your hammer design.

This cannot be stressed enough and it's something I often try to get across when people encourage new folks to forge their own tongs. The notion that a smith is supposed to make their own tools is just silly and can really hurt a newbie when they get demotivated by their inability to do complex movements to a suitable level. Tongs, for example, make a big difference in how comfortable and safe the forging is. Bad tongs hurt the hand and let the metal slip around. Why encourage that out of some false sense of propriety? Buy as many tongs as you can, buy them brand new from one of the many supply houses, and use them to practice building your skills on easier projects. Samuel Yellin was a master of the trade by anyone's estimation..... yet he didn't make all of his own tools. To the OP, I don't think that all the recent exposure will mean much over the long-term. Some people will be turned on by the idea, but they will quickly look elsewhere once they see how much labor is involved. Of the 1% of the viewers of that want to get into it, less than 1% will actually try to cobble a smithy together and even fewer will stick with it for any significant length of time. I'd like to think that there will be a big uptick in people wanting to buy my Iron Goodness, but that doesn't seem reasonable. It's possible, sure, but you're looking at a small percentage of the viewers being shared between all the active smiths in the country. Even if there's an uptick in sales, the amount per smith isn't likely to be much.

Love it, S! I'm always looking for projects that keep folks working on the basics. Too many people think they can fly before they even know how to crawl. I always ask, how can you expect to make a sword when you can't even make a decent hook? This will definitely be a challenge since I've never attempted to work anything so small. But, there's a store right down the road that sells horse stuff and I can see me picking up a box of nails in the near future.

Okay, I'm lost. You have a cylinder of steel that you want to cut grooves and depressions in to act as a swage block. The cylinder is 3" in diameter and a foot long, and currently mounted horizontally. Did I get that right? Do you have a welder? Do you have a drill press? Tap and die? To make a dimple or groove in the side of the cylinder would actually eat up a lot of the metal pretty quickly because you need to get down below the crown (Top Dead Center) a good bit before you'd have anything workable. If you slice off a 2" chunk of the cylinder, like a slice of bread off the loaf, you can heat it up in your forge and pound in whatever depression you need. That still leaves you with a 10" cylinder for doing anvil duty. Depending on what type of depression you're needing, you can probably fit two on a 3" face. Some types of depressions can pull double-duty for various functions -- a long groove can be used to shape a leaf or support a piece of round stock so it doesn't deform. Since you've said that you're not in a pinch for a lot of different shapes, one slice would get you by until you find another chunk of iron better suited to the task of making bottom swages. To hold the swage in place, you can bolt it down to the stump. You're pounding hot iron on it so you don't need too much mass. If you've ever seen smiths forming leaves and bowls on wooden stumps, smoke billowing like crazy, you can understand how even a wood "anvil" will get the job done. If the slice is thick enough, you could drill and tap the underside to accept a hanger bolt (aka: dowel screw) that would hold it down real nice and not get in the way.

Welcome aboard, Beaver. Massey are good hammers by all accounts and there's quite the following here on IFI. They seem to be pretty popular in Australia so I'm sure one of our members from down under will chime in soon. She looks really beautiful and I look forward to seeing videos of her running reals soon!

Nice save on the hammer. Sometimes a heavy hitter is just the thing you need. I love sledge handles for their beefiness and usually use them for all my hammers. I've found that a thick handle gives me great control and i don't have to grip nearly as hard. If the hammer's over 2 pounds, it gets a sledge handle just as soon as I can make it happen. Very comfortable things!

The japanese style of hammer is definitely appealing. It has a strong industrial esthetic that's hard to beat, and the leaf spring definitely gives it a sense of power and majesty that you'll never get from a dorky coil spring. From what I can tell, the entire frame could be built without a welder. In photos, you can see the older ones put together with rivets, so I don't think it'd be too much of an issue to use good bolts and lock washers on a modern build. Better to weld, obviously, but if someone lacks a welder, all they'd need is a good supply of drill bits and some patience. I daresay that you could purchase the all the angle iron and flat stock needed for the same price you'd pay for just the 6x6 heavy-wall tube main column like used on most tire hammers. What I'd like to know is how much adjustability there is in such a design. How time-consuming is it to adjust the head so you can maximize the performance if you're driving a punch through a 2" hammer blank and then switch over to forging a few thin knife blades?

Congratulations. What you experienced is what a lot of folks go through. They see an old-timer doing something and think that's they way it's supposed to be because, surely, the old-timer must know something after having been doing it for ages on end. It's a logical fallacy that applies to a lot of things in life. You struggled and cussed for years, and when you finally got fed up and changed things around a bit.... you saw that the old-timer didn't know diddly. Like the saying goes, just because you've been doing it for decades doesn't mean you're doing it right, only that you've been doing it for decades. Enjoy your new forge, friend.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you need a bottom swage for a particular thing, just cut off a 1" slice of the round stock and hammer the indentation in just like conventional swages are done. There's no need to have all your swages in one place since the whole thing would be small enough to fit on an anvil anyway. So, make individual swages to fit your hardy hole. This allows you to save the majority of that chunk of steel for something else, if it ever comes to that, while also getting into easy to make swages.

The #1 myth of blacksmithing. I hear it all the time, and I just don't understand why it holds such sway with folks, especially the guys that have a ton of experience. You should never feel like you "need" to make your own tongs. It's a valuable skill to know simply because you might need a set to finish a weird movement, but smiths have been buying tongs as long as there have been tongs available to buy.

While I'm on the record as being wholly against making your own tongs until you've got the skills to do it in a timely fashion and know you'll end up with a quality product that rivals what you can buy new...... there is a middle ground. Companies like Quick and Dirty Tools offer "tong kits" that are cheaper than their fully-made tongs but have all the big work done for you. You get to forge the jaws to shape and set the rivet, but don't have to worry about drawing out the reins. I keep a few "kits" on hand for those times when I need a set of tongs for some weird maneuver or just don't want to wait for them to get mailed. When I needed a set of ring tongs for a quick project, I grabbed a kit and had the tongs made in about ten minutes.

Already have a yard light, Frosty. And, to be honest, that base is just too sexy to be leaving out in the weather to rust away to nothing. I'm not sure how I'll use all the tubing since it has a taper, but I'll figure something out. The narrower ends will probably get cut into some short lengths to become small bins for organizing desks and such.

This is where I get confused on the issue. The Dragon's Fang is pretty unique and I spent quite a few hours searching the internet to find examples of them. I fully intended to borrow ideas wherever I could, or move in a different direction from whoever else was making them. Imagine my surprise when I couldn't find a single example of something similar!?! There are a ton of teeth made from resin or wood, but nothing in Steel. And I have been asked on several occasions to make one of those GoT slave necklaces. Where do you draw the line? Since Cergol is doing such nice work with decorated hammers, does that mean nobody else can use similar shaping and marking techniques without infringing on his "copyright"? Is it okay to do the chiseling or butchering, but not both? As for casting them myself, I don't see that happening. With the set-up costs, I'd have to sell a whole lot of brass teeth just to break even -- and just how many guys out there want an 8" dragon's tooth?

Not sure how to do screen shots of those message boxes since they're so small. I did, however, copy and past them to a file on that Google Drive place so I don't have to worry about them disappearing. Looking through them, it's pretty clear that he didn't "commission" the piece. He did specifically ask for permission to try casting one in brass for himself, and was very clear that he wasn't trying to sell them. I agreed to casting a single one because he phrased it as a simple experiment to see if he could get all the fine details of the root portion. All told, I think I feel pretty good about where things stand right now. Going back over our correspondence was a good idea and I don't think he's been anything but honorable to date. I will, however, look into that copyrighting thing just to make sure the Fang's are protected since I seem to be the originator of something new to the world. Whodda thunk that'd ever happen?!?

All of our correspondence was via PM's on FB so I'm sure they're still there. I'll definitely have to go through them again to see exactly what he said, but I'm sure it wasn't a commission since all of our initial talk was about adding a tang to it so he could fix it to a handle to make something scepter-like. Maybe some mention of casting-for-sale was there and I'm just not remembering it. I'd be curious to hear what your lawyer friend has to say on the matter, especially since there was never a contract written up by either of us.

I kind of figured that I wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on since I didn't file any kind of patent on it. I just made something that I liked, just like any other smith. Here's the original just before I boxed it up to send to him. I hated to see her leave, but.... I can't seem to upload the image he posted on FB, but you can see it here: 12143250_1293800263968164_7642871355560926533_n.jpg No real worries, I guess, unless he starts selling hundreds of them! I sincerely doubt that there will be enough money in it to fund my power hammer build, but it's nice to dream!

Some time back, I posted a photo of one of my dragon fangs on an FB page and the guy that runs the page fell in love with it and had to have it. I'm really glad that it spoke to him, and the transaction went smoothly. He's a happy customer and I got a few ducats in the bank, so it seemed like a win/win situation. Now, though, he's posted a photo of a brass model that he made from my fang and sent me a message that he'd like to buy more that he could use as models to cast in brass and sell to folks. While I'm always glad to work with folks, I've not run into this situation before and am not sure what I can do on my end to protect my design. It seems to me that he's the owner of the fang and can do what he likes with it. On the other hand, it seems like he's using my intellectual property or something. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. The thing that caught my attention was when he said that the cast fang is a model of a steel fang that he commissioned "from someone". He didn't commission the work (purchased outright after it was finished), and he didn't give credit for where the original came from. If he goes on to sell a dozen of those brass copies, do I have any right to remuneration for the use of my design? Since his decision to cast and sell them is after our transaction has finished and I had no knowledge beforehand, am I just SOL? There is plenty of photographic evidence around the internet to show that the design originated with me, but....

Had a good haul yesterday. My brother calls me up out of the blue and says, "Hey, a customer found all this big steel in the weeds beside there house. Check your email for pics and let me know if you want it." Like there was a question that I'd actually want it! The crushed end of the light pole shows that it's not cast iron, which makes me really happy. The thing has a very gentle taper, so I'm going to use the base portion for a pedestal mount to use with my little 6" grinder. The plan is to marry three 6x6 timber chunks to create a wide/heavy base, then bolt the light pole to it. Haven't figured out what I'll do about mounting the little grinder to the pole, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. The other stuff is a seriously thick tube that's also tapered over it's length (soon to become a pick up arm for my dad's tractor), and some thick flat bar that was once welded to the tube. That flat stuff is about 3/8" thick and 2" wide, and I'm sure it will come in real handy when I build my power hammer! Oh, and there just happen to be a really thick chunk of steel that says it wants to become a pair of striking anvils. Not sure when I'll get around to that, so it will sit on the floor as an upsetting block for the next little while....

Price-wise, you can't honestly compare a $40 hammer to a $400 custom-made hammer. One is made in a factory, a hundred at a time, by machines, and has the economy of scale working in its favor. A smith working in his little backyard shop can't make hammers nearly as fast, so the price has to rise accordingly. If you look at the working parts of both hammers, they're pretty much identical -- nicely shaped faces and a comfortable handle. When it comes to pride of ownership, I work on both sides of the line. I have some "antique" hammers that I've picked up over the years and I really love them. They have a story to them. The patina of age, the mystery of all the things they've seen and done, just makes me enjoy using them. I love the idea that i'm keeping them from an ignoble end. I do have a custom made $140 hammer. It's unbalanced and the handle is far too thin for my tastes. Looking at the head, it's a great piece of work with wonderful lines. The nature of the handle, though, makes it very uncomfortable and hard to control. Soon, I'll replace the handle with a section of sledge hammer handle, and I'm sure she'll be a dream to use.

If you want a power hammer, there are plenty of designs on the internet that would allow you to make your own. Even living in Cyprus, it would be rather easy to find the metal needed and assemble something that would get the job done in a professional fashion.

Anything less than 40" can be worked with, and you can't have too stout an anvil/sowblock for your hammer.

My take on it is simple: You don't save money by making your own tongs. You can buy brand new tongs for $35, or you can burn up that same amount in steel, fuel, time to end up with a pair of tongs that aren't nearly the same quality. Good tongs have a nice balance and are easy on the hands. They also hold the work securely. All of that is very important and it's a rare thing to find someone new to smithing that can accomplish all of that when they make their own tongs. Maybe you're one of those guys, I don't know. V-bit bolt tongs will generally hold one size down, too. That means if you buy a pair sized for 1/2" stock, it will also do a great job holding 3/8" stock. So you're getting two pairs of tongs for the price of one. To hold flat stock, box jaw tongs are great because they completely surround the work. And, again, they will generally hold one size smaller. The average hobbyist smith only works with a small variety of stock sizes - 1/4", 3/8", 1/2", 5/8", 3/4" and 1" - in various combinations. That's just three pairs of tongs for holding round and square stock. Maybe add another three pairs for holding flat stock. While spending $200 on brand new tongs might sound like a ton of cash, it's a very small investment in some tools that will pay huge dividends very quickly. If you have decent flea markets around, you might find some antique tongs for cheaper, but you still need to factor in the time it takes you to find them. Look over the projects you've made and buy tongs in the size that you really need. Then work for a month until you can afford to buy a few more pair. In a year or three when you have some hammer experience, you can forge some tongs that will work and look professional.