VaughnT

Really bad to tease us like that, Dutch! $25 for a ready-to-go anvil stand is quite a good price, in my estimation. Even if you got a free stump, you'd burn up a lot of time and energy making that stump square and level. Using dimensional lumber would be even more costly. Very interested to see this perfect anvil stand.....

Excellent results. She's a beauty, no doubt. I've seen belt sanders like that before, always shop-built. The angle of the belt determines how narrow a gap it can get into and it's definitely great for cleaning up welds and such.

Fantastic. There's nothing more satisfying than being able to use your smithing skills to pay for more smithing tools!

That's what happens when you offend the grammar gods, Damion. It should be noted that I never stated categorically that you were unintelligent, only that your writing made you appear either unintelligent or lazy, and made reading your text a lot harder than it needed to be. As of yet, you have not made a compelling case for breaching the rules of grammar. If you know there should be a comma or apostrophe, yet refuse to install one, why? What did you possibly gain from not using one? How much time did you save over the course of your lifetime? When I had a mobile phone and was sending texts, I made sure to spell everything correctly and to use decent punctuation. Why? Because not doing so saved me no time at all, and made me look like an ignorant buffoon. And I was using a standard keypad to do it all on. Am I some great maestro of the english language? Nope. I just believe that the rules are there for a very good reason. Developed over hundreds or thousands of years, people have found that this way of communicating is greatly different The difference between can't and cant is pretty big, and while I can rely on context to identify the definition meant, why in the world would I want to have my reading made even more complicated than it already is? As I stated earlier, your lack of punctuation actually slowed down my reading because I had to backtrack and confirm each and every sentence. So, if it doesn't help in any measurable way, and has a negative impact on the end use, why do it? Or, why not go for the whole hog and simply do away with periods and capital letters to signify the beginnings of sentences? Why put that silly double space between two sentences? Have you made your punch holder, yet? All this talk about grammar is getting mighty tiresome and we need to get back on topic.

Charles, using pipe caps is pretty dang brilliant! I would never have thought of that. The one thing I hate about making ladles and bowls is having to cut out the blank to start with. Pipe caps solve that problem very nicely.

Since the top crossbars are simply bolted into place, you can do a lot to lesson the amount of metal needed for the upper die. Weld a piece of half-inch round stock on to the strike face of the upper die, and you have a ready-made fuller. You should make these fullers in half-inch, three-quarters, and one-inch so you have different radii to play with. With a kiss button welded to the top die, you remove the need for at least an inch of metal in the main body. If you use a 1" thick kiss button on the top, well, that's at least 1" of body length you don't need. Just remember that you do need some body to keep everything oriented properly.

Um, no, Damion. You don't get to pick and choose when you throw out the rules of grammar. SJS is spot on the money. The problem with your position is that there's no command structure deciding what gets thrown out and what doesn't. You might want to get rid of the comma or semi-colon, but others don't. Who is right? Your lack of punctuation in the last entry only served to make you look uneducated and/or lazy. I can assume that you did it intentionally, to drive home your point, but I can't say that for certain. That's the difference between inference and implication. It also made reading the paragraph far more difficult that it needed to be. Please give us an example of when a "rule is only a rule because of tradition".

Sean, you should mail that t-slot table to me. I'll see that the table is given a good home and well-cared for. I'll even send you photos of her every once in a while.

I don't understand how you can forge iron without a london-pattern anvil? :blink:

Find two more pieces like that, hoss, and you'll have a perfect set of table legs. As for the why someone forged it out and curved it, no telling. The curve could actually be a function of wear from whatever it was doing in its working life. Maybe it got accidentally bent on the jobsite and was thrown out.

I don't see anything that needs doing to that anvil other than working on it. If there's loose flaky rust on the sides, you can knock it off with a hand-held wire brush like welders use. Other than that, forge some hot iron on it and enjoy knowing that you're doing the same thing someone was doing a150 years ago. My main anvil was cast in 1882 and every time I forge on her, I'm reminded of the footsteps I'm following. It's a powerful thing.

You can do it, Kette! I have confidence in you. And don't fret the hard-facing. It will definitely make the anvil better over the long-haul, but I don't think you'll be hurting any if you don't hard-face that portion. Cut up a firebrick to make a dam for the holes and get to welding.

Billy, it's whatever you want it to be. As long as you have a .5" shank on the tool, it will fit in the holding arm and be held rather steady. As it's set up in the picture, it's for making countersinks on some of my hooks. Trying to juggle the round bar and a hammer and a hand-held punch was impossible even with the help of a spring-loaded hold down I made. And since I had just finished making a "godzilla" type of guillotine tool for some fullering needs, I just made an arm to hold a punch and bolted it in place. The arms are removable and somewhat adjustable for height, so it wasn't any problem to make a holder and I just happened to have a handful of .5" roller bearings that needed made into something. When you have an order that requires forty countersunk screw holes, and there's no power hammer in sight, you get motivated to come up with something to help out.

I use a guillotine tool to hold my punches some times. It's a swing-arm design and works well if you stay in a limited range. Like you said, having a third hand to hold the punch while you align the work and swing the hammer... very handy if you work alone. The downside is that they are problematic if you are trying to get through-holes in something unless you specifically design around that. If you're always changing chisel sizes, you need to change the base plate so the pass-through isn't too large or too small. If you're using chisels and punches to to rudimentary decorative work, it can be a great aid. Just be sure to do all of one step before switching out the tool. Otherwise you'll be jumping around like a chicken with it's head cut off, and that's never a good thing. Here's a shot of my punch arm set up with a round-nosed punch for making countersinks and divots.

That's a very slick bit of construction. Your welds certainly look better than mine! I've been meaning to make a guillotine, but just haven't gotten around to it. Consider your design stolen. ;)

The cracks aren't too much bother, as others have said. A lining with some clay (kitty litter) to better distribute the heat and create a shallow fire pot will make a rivet forge really work wonderfully for small work. Your bigger forge with the fire pot isn't problematic, it's just a matter of learning how to use it. The deep pot means you have a nice bed of coals between the air coming in, and your iron. This makes for less scale developing. Ideally, you'd have a similar amount of coals above the iron, creating what's called a "neutral environment". The NE is that sweet spot where the air coming in to the fire has plenty of time to burn off before the O2 hits the metal and forms scale. This is especially important when working thin metal, like a knife. It sounds to me like you're heaping the coal on to the forge table and watering the perimeter to maintain shape and size of the hot zone.

It's amazing how you guys can string a bunch of english words together and manage to create entire paragraphs I can't understand one jot of. I thought this was going to be a simple plug-n-play operation, but I'm sensing that it's just not worth the hassle for a layman.

That hornless anvil is just begging to be used for a home-built power hammer!

Flat rate USPS boxes are the way to go. I like to get tracking and insurance on everything I ship, and my customers like it, too. There's nothing worse than a box getting lost and you losing money. I would definitely think about listing the tongs on Ebay. The decorators that frequent ebay pay crazy money for tongs, so you could make your money back. I watch the price on tongs simply because I'm always interested in adding more tongs to my collection, but I can't compete with what those people are willing to pay. I know for a fact that no working smith is paying $55 for a pair of rusty tongs when they can simply go to one of the supply houses and buy a new pair for $40. And if you bundle a few pairs together, all the better.

Sounds like you've got the insulating part figured out. Wayne's good people and a one-stop shop for all your supplies.

Ever since reading Robinson Crusoe as a kid, I've been keen on learning how to do things with my hands. Green woodworking of all sorts, trying to work through the Ashley Book of Knots, braintanning hides for leather, flint knapping, the list is endless. I like basket weaving but don't have a source of good european/british willow to try making proper wicker kit. Dabbled in pine needle baskets once or twice and really enjoyed the meditative state it brings. And it doesn't smell as bad as tanning hides does. And who could forget shooting. I love traditional archery but haven't practiced in a decade or so. I really got into shooting modern boomsticks and would spend my days off at the range making tiny little clusters of holes with my Remington 597. I even built a custom stock for it so I could shoot from the bench more comfortably. Cheap, fun, and very meditative. Lately, I've got a real hankering to get into bowl-making. I don't know why, but I think my house would do well with a few big bowls and dough troughs sitting around. Of course, that will mean forging a few adzes and chisels. Don't have a wife to share the fun with, but I do know a bit about the depression thing. I think that's why I choose hobbies that keep me isolated to one degree or another.

That's a pretty brilliant idea. I almost bought a toaster oven the other day, but was disgusted by the complete lack of insulation in the thing. Not a single one on the store shelf had so much as a gasket around the glass door to prevent heat from escaping..... and the gap between the door and frame was a solid quarter-inch or more. Using the guts from one, though, would definitely be "easier" than building from scratch.

Is there nothing you can't do, Frog? The use of newspaper in the oil cups is ages old. It does just like you were thinking, metering the oil flow and filtering out any solids that might get in. Like anything else, you have to jam it in tight, getting it into the orifice. Otherwise the oil will just flow around it.

Would rust work like powdered metal in a can-weld?

Benton, for light hammering, a mild-steel poll will be fine. Even if they hammer on the occasional bit of metal, like a wedge, it will be a long time before mushrooming is a factor. Most all hammering I've ever done with a hatchet poll has been on wood, and even mild steel is lots and lots harder than seasoned oak.