dbrandow

Good stuff. From the picture, it was hard to tell.

Well, its no Lazy-boy, , but its not as bad as you might think. The seat and arms are really good, the back takes some initial adjusting to make sure your spine isn't hitting anything. My wife keeps threatening to put cushions on it. :)

Well, I suppose bitter is definitely overstating it. Disappointed, dissatisfied, might be a better way to phrase it. I'm still relatively pleased with it, I suppose, but perhaps the best way to explain it is that whenever I make something I have an intricately detailed picture in my mind, and I measure my success or failure based on how close it came to that picture. This one is considerably off the picture, there are all sorts of places where things don't quite line up, particularly matching the left side to the right side (except the "wires" in the back, which were intentionally asymmetrical).

Definitely a ton of work and a lot of different techniques. A lot of the jointery techniques I'd never put into play on anything like that scale before, nor had I tried to construct anything that awkward before. I definitely built up some more muscles hoisting that thing up to the forge table to get heated up and then back down again to get hammered on, that's for sure. My best guess is that it was in the neighbourhood of 85 pounds or so. Makes me think I should break down and get a torch one of these days. Some day when I'm less bitter, , I might put up another post on this thread on how the process unfolded so others can learn from my mistakes. :P

Very nice. If I might offer a suggestion (which I'm sure you've already thought of), you might consider having a more tapered handle with knobs below the head, in the middle and at the end. This, in my personal opinion, makes it less likely that the hammer will slide around in, or out of, your hand. Of course, its easy for me to say, I get my father to make mine for me. :-)

I'm thinking that the 'Best in the Business' are probably too busy making money and doing real work to go on a TV show. :-)

Latest pictures... (as you can tell, picture composition is not my strong suit) I think I've pretty much given up, oops, finished, I meant finished (other than the wire brushing, sanding, applying vinegar paste, cleaning off vinegar paste, applying three coats of primer, applying three coats of paint, ...). If nothing else, this was an excellent learning experience on a number of fronts.

When I'm not demonstrating, yes, I always start with one on, anyway. I usually use a cartridge respirator, but occasionally I just use a cloth dust mask. Depending on how it is and how hard I'm working, I will occasionally shed it after a couple of hours just so I can breathe normally again. I suppose wearing one is a little paranoid given that its just a hobby, but I figure that lungs and eyes are a lot harder to replace than skin.

There's an explanation/justification up on http://www.anvils4sale.com/

Yup, I was pretty sure it was wrong and almost certainly dangerous, I was curious as to what it was. It was magnetic, which would seemingly rule out lead, so I'm going to assume it was galvanized, as has been suggested.

I'm sure this is a stupid question, but I'll ask it anyway: I grabbed a random piece out of my scrap pile last night (round tubing, roughly 4 inch diameter) and started working on it, but it gave off a very strange colour and incredibly vibrant blue flames. It gave off a white discharge when struck. It was rusty on the outside, with some paint remnants, but not very much. It definitely didn't look galvanized, at least on first glance. I shut it down pretty quickly, wasn't worth gambling on until I had a better idea of what I was dealing with, and I was wearing a respirator, which I usually use out of paranoia for the coal smoke. Any thoughts as to what I was likely dealing with?

What follows is a short quote from one of my favourite series: The most important man on the farm, aside from Faldor, was Durnik the smith. As Garion grew older and was allowed to move out from under Aunt Pol’s watchful eye, he found his way inevitably to the smithy. The glowing iron that came from Durnik’s forge had an almost hypnotic attraction for him. Durnik was an ordinary-looking man with plain brown hair and a plain face, ruddy from the heat of his forge. He was neither tall nor short, nor was he thin or stout. He was sober and quiet, and like most men who follow his trade, he was enormously strong. He wore a rough leather jerkin and an apron of the same material. Both were spotted with burns from the sparks which flew from his forge. He also wore tight-fitting hose and soft leather boots as was the custom in that part of Sendaria. At first Durnik’s only words to Garion were warnings to keep his fingers away from the forge and the glowing metal which came from it. In time, however, he and the boy became friends, and he spoke more frequently. “Always finish what you set your hand to,” he would advise. “It’s bad for the iron if you set it aside and then take it back to the fire more than is needful.” “Why is that?” Garion would ask. Durnik would shrug. “It just is.” “Always do the very best job you can,” he said on another occasion as he put a last few finishing touches with a file on the metal parts of a wagon tongue he was repairing. “But that piece goes underneath,” Garion said. “No one will ever see it.” “But I know it’s there,” Durnik said, still smoothing the metal. “If it isn’t done as well as I can do it, I’ll be ashamed every time I see this wagon go by—and I’ll see the wagon every day.”

My understanding is that British smiths typically don't use flux. Personally, I would think that it would be better for beginners to use flux, perhaps moving on to not using flux, if desired, once they are more proficient. The more things working in your favour the better, at least while learning.

Good stuff, excellent set of instructions. You may find the following interesting as a different way to create a heart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aut-E4xsqxA

I'm just a hobbyist, so take what follows for what its worth, but I did write an article for the Iron Trillium a few months ago on hold downs, here it is:

There are two main issues for chisels, strength and hardness. Unalloyed titanium is softer, not harder, than hardened steel, and by a wide margin. Titanium carbide and titanium diboride are both harder than hardened steel, though, apparently, for what its worth. In terms of strength, titanium is stronger than steel by weight, but by the same token, aluminum is stronger than titanium by weight. But of course having a really strong giant chisel isn't really of much interest, what you care about is how strong it is by volume, in which case steel is the big winner. I suppose if you wanted something with a very large profile but wanted it to be light, then titanium might be your choice. Again, though, I can't imagine needing a very large, very light chisel. There are blacksmiths who use titanium, but presumably that is primarily for aesthetic reasons, not structural ones.

Pretty off-topic, but I recently saw a movie poster for the upcoming movie Thor, and its ridiculously oversized hammer. I did some rough estimates, and I figure that the hammer is about 4 3/4" by 4 3/4" by 13.5", which would put it (very) roughly at 86 pounds. Good thing he's a god, I guess, I feel reasonably confident I wouldn't look quite as graceful carrying an 86 pound hammer. :P

I can certainly agree with that point, not all common usage of words are correct. Many incorrect usages do replace correct usages over time ("lock and load" might sound cooler than "load and lock", but its pretty difficult in practice). In this, though, I would say that even in relevant metalworking industries and experts, "heat treatment" would be considered to be an intentional process with a defined purpose, not an accidental one.

To chime in with my two cents, I've gotten into numerous debates with people over terminology in the past, mostly in other areas of human endeavour, and my basic conclusion is that it is best to accept a word's meaning in the way that it is actually used. When someone says that a piece of metal has been heat treated, I would definitely argue that for the vast majority of people they mean "the controlled heating and cooling of a metal in order to change its properties", as Frank puts it. Could it technically be interpreted differently? Sure, absolutely. But since the purpose of words is to convey a shared meaning, we'd likely be better off going with the meaning most people are using.

Its a good point, and I agree with it, I may tinker with the arms and back if I get ambitious. I'm going to focus on getting it closer to completion and then we'll see, of course. The only caveat with the arms is that the forearm resting on it is straight, but I can definitely see your point, even more so about the back. No worries, I always really appreciate getting advice, even when I don't take it. :-)

Just a quick reminder to everyone that pre-registration for CanIron VIII this year in Fergus ends May 31st, so if you want to save yourself $25, make sure to register before that date. For more details, check http://www.ontarioblacksmiths.ca/CANIRON8/register.html

Another update, primarily so that I can log this for future purposes. Its not going particularly well, as you'll see, I think is project is just a little too far outside my skill set, but I'll keep plugging away at it. Front view: Side view: Closeup of the leg: What the back will look like, although its missing a lot of the "wires":