VaughnT

Just to prove that I do, indeed, function test my openers...... Iron City - the blacksmith's beverage!

Apply some chalk/flour/baby powder on the side to highlight the writing. Not many makers used the "warranted" line.

Oh, no, Mitch. That was only one bottle, and I'd be a poor smith if indeed if I didn't use a sample size large enough to be statistically viable. I'm thinking it will take at least a dozen similar tests on a variety of bottles to be sure that the design is solid. Wouldn't want a customer to get a shoddy product, now would we? ;)

Got one finished. Not sure where I first saw the design, but I liked it and always intended to try making one. At least, now, I know and the next ones will look better.

Definitely an interesting design. I get the impression that the wooden body was intended to serve as the shipping crate, too. Much like cavalry forges, you pop the top and get to work. Value? If you found a museum that wanted it for a display, you might get them to buy it for a hundred dollars, but that's absolute top dollar. It's not a very good forge design and it's not something a hobby smith could keep outside without the wood rotting away in a year or so. That, and it still needs lined before you could use it.

Jim, mild steel doesn't have the carbon content to harden like a knife blade does. As Frog mentioned, general doodads wouldn't benefit from a heat-treat process. I can say, though, that a dinner triangle that's been quenched in water will have a far nicer ring than when that hasn't. I don't know what's going on in there, but the resonance change is noticeable to me. Engineers and Machinists are a special kind of insane. There's no way I could last a week with all that mathematics flying around!

I think a lot has to do with the alloy you're using and how it handles high temperatures. Steel is a fairly poor conductor of heat, so the heat at the tip of the punch isn't going to be quickly radiated to the rest of the tool, thus preventing the tip from overheating. Instead, the majority of the heat will stay very localized. My punch's tip changed colors after getting stuck in some red-hot iron that's only around 3/16" thick. It was only in the hot metal for maybe 20 seconds, and it has a pretty thick cross section. That it would change colors right there at the contact point shows that the rest of the tool wasn't wicking away the heat to keep the tip cool. Then you have to worry about worrying too much. Can we possibly quantify the various levels of goodness in a punch or chisel? Is it good enough to work for the next dozen years, hardened or not? We're blacksmiths, not some NASA types that need to know the quantum structure of the dylithium crystals in the reactor core. If it's working for you, go for it. :D

Honestly, Frog, I don't know the particulars of metallurgy and what dictates loss of temper. Here's a photo of my kit from the other day. The opener's design requires a square hole through the stock, which you can see is less than a 1/4" thick. Punching out the slugs, the punch got a bit stuck and by the time I got it out and into the water can, it had discolored. If I had done this to a knife, folks would be saying that I ruined the temper of the knife. The punch was made from medium-carbon utility pole guy anchor, normalized and not hardened or tempered. In its softened state, it goes right through the hot metal and there's no chance of spalling off a chip from either end. What would I gain from going through a heat treat process to harden the working end when the soft end works, obviously, just as well? Does the discoloration mean that I would have ruined the temper of the piece? I've always assumed so, but I could be wrong.

A punch needs to be dead soft, Ausfire. Heat treating the end will only get ruined when you start using it on hot iron.

There's nothing wrong with your anvil. Vikings were making great works of art with anvils that were far less than what you have. The london-pattern anvil that you seek to emulate has only been around for some 200 years, and there's zero reason to think you're limited or handicapped because you don't have similar features on your post anvil. Look at the youtube videos of third-world smiths making great blades with nothing more than a sledgehammer head for an anvil. It's the singer, not the song.

Curly, buy a whole bunch of railroad spikes off ebay or the like. I know the import duties would probably be very high, but you'll be the only smith in the land that has stuff made from that "fancy foreign metal". Imagine the wow factor when folks see items crafted from spikes you had to import for some mystical far off land! It'd be like getting a knife with a damascus blade, only not so much. Just a thought. :)

Got some more practice with my arc welder and actually laid down some not-too-embarrassing beads. No, I won't post pictures of said beads! Also took a few minutes to rummage through the scrap pile and was able to repurpose some old mangled sheet to become a pair of jaw covers for my vise. Been needing some for ages but always procrastinated. Now, no more need for excuses!!

Thought I'd comment on an interesting situation I had happen the other day. A guy I know on FB posted a pic/link of a forged bottle opener that was a completely new design for me. Never seen anything like it and immediately latched onto the idea of trying to forge one and said so on the guy's post. Well, him being a bar owner and knowing that I smith a bit here and there, he said, "Hey, if you do, we might be interested in a few of them." The first thing that hit my mind when he offered to buy some from me was, "Dude, you can buy them for $30 right through the link you just posted!" Needless to say, I didn't take the guy up on his offer. It was simply too close to stealing. Things would have been completely different, though, if he had simply posted a picture and I had no idea that they were for sale somewhere. I would note, too, that I've not yet been able to duplicate the opener.

I hadn't thought of using flat stock stood up. That would definitely give me the strength on the vertical plane.... The customer loves the "old fashioned" look and doesn't want to buy brand new hangers because they look new. Of course, he's also balked at the ballpark price I quoted him, apparently thinking that 36 feet of steel and a couple hours of my time can be had for pennies. "I wouldn't mind you using rebar if it will bring the price down." If the project goes through, I'll definitely be doing a simple weld to join the forks to the back plate/s.

Buy it if you can. It looks to be in nearly new condition and certainly good enough for another hundred or so years of forging on! Nice edges, great size, no signs of welds.... definitely worth $2/lb or more. I wouldn't feel bad about getting that anvil even if it cost me $500. A new anvil of similar quality and size is going to be a lot more expensive than five bills.

It definitely pays to put your best foot forward, or in this case, to only publicize work that you've done your level best on. The customer that saw my hooks on another forum (and bought a slew of them) just dropped me an email and wants some racks to "hang up my rakes n shovels on the side of the shed". Of course, I'm very happy with repeat business, but he's kind of blindsided me with the specs for the racks. The email'd drawing shows just a flat back plate with three pairs of prongs coming off of it at an upward angle of a few degrees. The only absolutes he's given is that the back plate is to have bolt holes drilled on both 16" and 24" centers so he can mount it to any of his walls. And the prongs are supposed to be sixteen inches long. From day one I've been thinking that he just wanted something to hang a few tools on, but now it looks like he's needing mass storage for an industrial/professional application. While I don't have any problems building to this standard, I'm worried about the strength of the long forks under a load. I was thinking one or two tools per fork, not a half-dozen or more. I'm planning on a 50" back plate made from 2"x 3/16" stock. I don't see extra thickness being necessary because it will be lag-screwed to the wall in at least three places by a pair of screws. Sizing the prongs, however, is giving me worries. Initially, I thought either 3/8" or 1/2" hot rolled round stock, but now I'm not satisfied with that. At 16" of length, that's a lot of room for a lot of tools to get stacked up. Am I wrong for wanting thicker stock? Worrying too much? Would thick-walled pipe be a better option?

I've never been able to get a striker to work once it's been tempered. Files are a great source for high-carbon stock if they're old enough to not be case-hardened, but every striker I've ever made has failed to work when tempered. You're right that the spark is actually a super-heated sliver of steel being scraped off by the stone.

Your theory sounds spot on, especially if there isn't something sitting down at the bottom. On the locking collar, word of caution. Two choices, either use Loctite on the bolts to make sure they stay put..... or get ready to cuss up a storm when they let loose and start rattling around where they're not supposed to be. Ask me how I learned this lesson. ;)

There's a good chance that your hand-crank is just gummed up from a hundred years of oil dying in it. I'd strip it down as much as possible and hit it with a ton of carb cleaner or the like. See how easy it turns after it's been cleaned and lubed again. Mounting an electric motor to the handle shaft is entirely possible. The only caveat is to be careful of the RPM's being delivered to the gears in the casing. Hand-crank gearing is designed to greatly increase the speed a human can turn the impeller. Hooking that up to a motor that's already turning 1200 RPM's would have the fan turning @ 50,000 RPM's, depending on the gear ratio and pulley size. That could be an instant disaster! Another idea is to hook the handle up to a foot treadle. A piece of quarter-inch round stock going down to a 2x4 would be more than enough to get you spinning and leave your hands free to rake coal and hold long stock until you can make a stock holder.

If you can't braze or find someone to do it for you, consider JB Weld. Just clean the area really really well and slop on the JB. It'll seal the crack so you don't lose the oil.

The teeth on those gears don't look bad, and I wouldn't bother with them until seeing how the whole thing operates once you get the slop taken care of. As you said, it was running smoothly until "all of a sudden" it let go and started stalling after you let off the handle. Whenever something just quits working that means something inside broke free. If the two gears now have enough slop that they can slide sideways and disengage from one another, I'd look down in the muck at the bottom of the crank case to find the part that just let go. You can buy what's called a locking collar (or clamping collar) that you can attach to the shaft to fill the void. Bronze washers are always a good idea if you can get the shaft and gears free of the assembly to install the washers. If not, go with the locking collar and a good lubricant to keep the gear teeth from rubbing too hard against each other.

Excellent work, Spanky. I'm a big proponent of using silicone caulk instead of magnets simply because it works better and doesn't collect scale, but at least you're up and running!

Flint-n-Steel fire-making is my all time favorite way to go. I've got a super cool bow drill set up that I like, but nothing beats striking a spark into some charcloth. The interesting thing about making fire with a steel is that it really opens your eyes to how wrong 99% of the old books on camping were. I can't count the number of times that I've seen an illustration showing someone striking a shower of sparks with the back of a folding knife, with the sparks just raining down on the tinder bundle. Anyone that's ever even tried it knows that doesn't happen! I've never been able to get a decent spark from tempered steel. Hardened as hard as you can get and temper only those parts that don't actually strike the flint. Harrow tines? I really need to get some of those to try out. Lately, I've been using pieces of car leaf spring to make them, but it's a bugger of a job because there's so much metal to move. That's excellent work, Nick. When I saw that RFI post, I immediately thought you were the man for the job. You really should set up a tutorial so we can see how you're laying out the steps to make the odd shapes.

Excellent production, Frog. I was just working on a pierced opener this evening.

Sweet hammer! I can't wait to see the video of her up and running!