tomhw

I've branded and castrated calves but not horses. An old guy told me that you had to be careful when branding horses because they tended to lean into the iron and get badly burned. I am just reporting....

About branding irons J. Frank Dobie, a friend of the family, discussed branding iron traditions and examples in several of his books. One, "On the Open Range" (1951, Southwest Press) discusses some humorous examples of brand tampering and the owner's counter e.g. original brand IC, tampered into ICU, and ended with ICU2, and another: B4, B4U, B4U2.

I have just joined my local smith's guild and we are doing an annual demo for little kids this week. I am hoping you all may have suggestions on what to show the kids, what bits of history should be mentioned what type of item I might forge to show some actual technique.
All suggestions are welcome and the demo is set to be 20 minutes long.

Thanks.

It takes practice. For simple lap welds instead of hammering the rods together you might try squeezing them in a vice- no spitting out liquid metal.

Stormcrow, it looks like the eyes on both hammers are well centered on the steel and perpendicular through it. The plug on the last picture indicates that you drove the counter punch exactly. Well done, sir.

When I was a farrier I built a trailer using an old skip pan from a construction dump. It was about 5 feet wide ten feet long and two feet deep. I made the tongue out of "T" shaped elevator guide rails and the axel was the front axel of an old Ford pickup.

On the starboard, aft I made a forge out of a 55 gal. Drum. The hearth in the middle of the drum- the top half was the hood with a hole through the top for a removable chimney. I cut a door in the side to give access to the fire, and smaller door opposite to admit long stock.

I built a wooden box to house tools and on the forward corner I fastened a broken leg vice. The leg was broken of just below the lower jaw pivot so I made a bracket to hold the bottom of the vice to the side of the skip pan.

The port side was given over to a framework to hold stock and the middle of the trailer was for storing the anvil and stand. I made simple fenders out of sheet steel to cover the tires and provide additional shelf space.

It served the purpose well but the tongue was so short that it was a nuisance to back up for any distance. The trailer was open so it had to be covered with a tarp when not in use.

Built this fireplace tool set as a silent auction item for a local fundraiser party. Its my first project complete enough that I'm hoping people are willing to spend money on it lol.

Edit: resized pics. Thanks K. Bryan Morgan

money

"Outside of dogs books are mans best friend. Inside of dogs it is too dark to read." Groucho Marx

The founder of the Girl Scouts, Juliette (Daisy) Gordon Low, was a talented blacksmith [http://www.juliettegordonlowbirthplace.org/contents/view/51/139/collections/art-work-by-juliette-gordon-low.html].

About the incomplete weld- shrink a steel collar that overlaps the weld by at least 3" on either side of the cold shut.

Well, the last few weeks have been really good to me. I have acquired an old Singer Leather Patch machine with stand. It really looks worn out, but works quite well. I just got it serviced and the guy was quite impressed with how the timing was. I just have to learn how to use it effectively now. Eventually, I will purchase a better leather sewing machine, but for now, it beats hand stitching.

I also purchased two post vice. They are both complete. The screws and boxes on both are in excellent shape also. One of them has a bad forge weld on the leg. I am undecided if I should just get the stick welder after it or try to redo the weld. What do you guys think?

I was also able to pick up two pair of Champion tongs. They are in good shape and should be of immediate use.

The gearbox on the Champion 400 is perpendicular to the fan.

Do not use a torch on the fan housing halves. Submerge the entire thing into a vat filled with your favorite bolt loosener for a day. Remove the outer pan housing and then the fan. Next, remove the screws that attach the inner fan shroud to the gear box. If you have to use heat to break the rust use a soldering copper or brass rod heated almost to melting temp directly on the screw or bolt. It may take several applications of heat but you won't crack the thin cast iron blower parts.

I like automotive torsion bars for tools. You don't have to un-wrap them.

Hay! I am old now. Maybe I could get a good deal on a striker.

The cheapest and fastest way is to fill the pipe with pea gravel, crimp both ends (do not seal!) and heat in the forge. Bend as desired, let cool, and saw off the crimped ends. Simple.

"Decorative Antique Ironwork" by Henry Rene' D'Allemagne, Dover Publications (1968).
This soft cover book has 415 pages of black and white photos with a paragraph describing the many objects on each page.

This is a reprint of a 1924 catalogue of "Le Secq des Tournelles Museum a Rouen". It is a catalogue so the pictures are a little grainy and the descriptions (in English) are minimal and unsatisfying. That said the pictures are of sufficient detail to impress one with the mastery of the medium to our craft's ancestors from the late medieval to the 19th century.

The book is divided into Architectural Iron and Small Iron and Steel Objects. Architectural iron work includes grilles, locks, door knockers and knobs, hinges, signs, and "objects of repousse' or chased iron".

Small iron includes steel jewelry and and Berlin cast iron jewelry , toilet accessories, boxes, shears, scissors and sewing accessories, religious objects, iron furniture, fireplace and kitchen equipment, lighting fixtures, table utinsils, chests, and iron mounted wooden furniture.

If you are interested in antique, decorative, or domestic ironwork this book is a must have.

There are some wonderful photos of 15th-18th century locks, keys, escuteons, and other parts in "Decorative Antique Ironwork" by Henry Rene' D'Allemagne, Dover Publications (1968).
The locks are impressive, inspiring, and intimidating displays of mastery of the craft of the locksmith.
If you are interested in antique, decorative, or domestic ironwork this book is a must have.

A properly managed coal fire results in the coal turning to coke as it migrates towards the firepot, with the end result that you are forging with coke either way. Forging with "green" coal is not the goal of a properly managed coal fire.

Before I found a good hand-cranked blower I tried several kinds of air pressure devices. I found a drawing and brief description of a two chambered cylindrical blower in my 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica (Vol III, Pg 706). I guessed about the measurements and used canvas instead of leather. I built an awkward and inefficient device that worked well enough until I traded for a good blower. Despite my incompetence in design I think that the cylindrical bellows offers sufficient improvement over the pear shaped, hinged, bellows to be preferred. Some day I would like to try the roots supercharger, originally developed for the same purpose (see ibid, pg 708).

I like manual control so I will hold to my Champion 400 until I find something that can do as much as it can.

I prefer coal but supplies are always a problem so I usually use charcoal. I get "Royal Oak" at Wal-Mart. It has large chunks that have to be broken into a useful size but it is clean and makes little smoke. To keep a small fire soak it in water a day before using it.

A half cup of rubbing alcahol starts charcoal or coke from cold without making smoke.

flour pot/ fire pot
When I was in graduate school I was away from my shop and lived in a down town house with a small yard. I made a take-down forge using a bowl-shaped, red clay, planter that was about 15 inches diameter at the top and about 6 inches deep. The drain hole was about 1inch diameter so I broke the hole wider- about 3inches diameter, admitting a 3 inch pipe connected to a flange (inside the planter) and a "T" fitting below/outside the planter. The pot rested in a concrete block and the air came from a hair dryer. The bowl cracked in several places so I epoxied wire around the outer circumference to hold it together. The forge worked well enough for a stop-gap.

A general rule about building good drafting chimneys is that they should extend about 2ft higher than the highest part of the roof.

I made a bic-iron out of a heavy truck spring. I cut the leaf at the bolt hole and fullered that end to fit my anvils. Next, I split the opposite end and opened the legs to about 6 inches of the hardy, describing a short 'T'. Then I drew out each leg- one a tapered round cross section and the other a tapered square cross section. Each leg is about ten inches long, sharing a short flat section at the hardy. I gound out all the hammer marks and polished it. I did all of the forge work with a 5 1/2 lb hand hammer. It was a lot of work but a good tool. That much steel and a heavy hammer kept the thing at a working heat longer than my stamina lasted. I forged at a yellow heat and reheated the steel slowly so I could recover before the next bout.

It looks like a boiler-maker's hammer for forming and shaping plate. I have a 3 1/2 pound steel faced, wrought iron, hammer that I got in a flee market.