kpotter

I have anvil envy

I was helping Harold pick this bad boy up and I wasnt sure what he was doing at first so i proceeded to give him a hard time but all of the sudden the aha moment shear genious.

I got tired of analizing all the data I just bought the 16gpm haldex pump I figure it should work out fine for what i am doing. I hope to get this thing going by next month. I have been using my 100 ton press which is pretty slow and I was able to do what I wanted so this should be much better plus I built a better forge, having the stuff real hot seems to help more than the tonneage. I can see where the speed comes on as well.

I have read the book and i thought it was pretty good, I am good friends with paw paws son Jim he lives in Tucson, he is seriously skilled he built his own radio carbon dating system at his house and is doing contract work for researchers and scientists from all over the world it is the most advanced system in the US right now. Another good book is the Story of my life by Frank Vilchek it is about a 20th century blacksmith who comes to america it is a true story.

Pouring that much steel is not going to happen in your backyard end of discussion. But if you really want to do it make a pattern and take it to a foundry, I get stuff cast for my business all the time I dont get very good rates because I am doing a very small run. I have stuff cast in 4140 and it is done by lost wax method I pay about 10-15 dollars a pound which is fine since I cant do it myself and they do great work. An anvil would be best done by sand casting which is much cheaper. I cant imagine it being below 6 bucks a pound though. A 300lbs anvil unfinished as cast will be about 1800 dollars. I might do it just to say I made my own but I will need a spare couple of grand first.

I have made some copper cookwear I used 1/4 inch for the frying pan I got the sheet when copper was 1 dollar a pound. I would love to find some some more but at 4 dollars a pound it is not happening. The stuff that they sell in Williams Sonoma and in France is 1/4 inch thick and they get 1500 bucks for a frying pan. I am surprised that there are no US makers of high end copper cook wear, but I think the market is small.

Back in the day an anvil was nearly a years pay for a blacksmith and most didnt actually own the anvil it was owned by the shop owner. Maybe not a years pay but several months. With modern manuafacturing anvils are cheaper now than they have ever been I have a few and the one new one that i bought was 1650 dollars it is a 275lbs peddinghause. That is not too much to pay for something that you will have the rest of your life and that was not made by poor starving childern in a labor camp. I make silversmithing stakes and am amazed at what people will pay for beat up rusted cast iron stakes, when they can buy new ones from me or southshore smith for less money and they are much better quality. I think it is the old mystique. When I first started making tools I put some on ebay and let them bid on them and they went for about 50 dollars more than I was selling them for in a retail catalog, they thought they were antique because I didnt paint them I left them black from the forge and just polished the face.

I have an H frame forging press that I am still building it has 2 5 inch bore cylinders and a 7.5hp motor I was going to use a 16gpm 2stage pump but have not bought one yet. I have similar concerns as to the 2 stage pump but I figured once you are into the metal the amount of reduction that you will get will be similar as you are not moving very far.

I dont know how to post a link but the name of the site is AT95 it has cool legs and stands and Urban Remains chicago and a site called 20 they all had tools and cabinets and equipment there are others I found but the prices are insane you will suddenly think that those beat up tool cabinets are worth 1000s of dollars. They have lots of nice pics and descriptions but like I said the prices are insane.

I was surfing the web and came across a website that had swage blocks and iron legs from old machines for sale to interior designers, they also had platen tables and fly presses so that you could decorate your loft apt. I even found places that were making reproduction stuff for decorating like a water jet cut swage block brand new being sold as a 400 lbs puzzle for adults. It was a swage block cut from solid steel it looked great but I could not find a price. I have an anvil in the living room and old survey equipment but I might drag in the swage block it would make a great coffee table.

I have run lathes that big and the least of your worries is eye protection the chips that come off will cut your head off. I didnt like running stuff that big it takes for ever to load the part you need overhead cranes and all the tooling is so big that it just tears you up changing it out. Once you start cutting it is not so bad put it in power feed and grab the newspaper and a cup of coffee and sit on a stool with in reach of the oh #### button and listen to it groan away, cuts can take hours on long pieces. I have spent a week hogging down a big shaft, if you dont have helpers shoveling chips sucks real bad the stuff is heavy and sharp. Mistakes are insanely expensive on big parts the material costs thousands of dollars and it is stressful I like parts around 100 lbs the cuts last long enough that you can sit around but they wont kill you if somthing bad happen small parts are a pain because it is constant work they are done real fast, no time for coffee.

I used to work for a machinerey dealer and we would have to appraise shops and for the most part they had negative value, the cost of moving the machines exceeded the value of the machine. I have a whole shop full of WWII era heavy lathes and mills and I know that if I was to attempt to sell the stuff for anything above scrape or half of scrape it would sit. If I were to have an auction the only people who would show up would be scrap buyers. I have a theory and it is my 2 men and a pick up truck theory. If a machine can be moved by two men and a pick up it is worth alot of money if you need a semi and a forklift it is nearly free. If you need multiple forklifts and a crew of riggers you need to pay to get rid of it.

I am a goldsmith and have done what you are asking but I added iron to the gold, a small amount of iron will turn the gold blue but it is real brittle and not useable in any way. I alloyed the gold with 25% iron to make an 18k alloy I used about 5 grams of gold. The blob that was left was like a anodized blue black color I melted it in an electric furnace covered in flux in an oxygen free envioronment. I used to piece as an inlay on a pendant the stuff could be broken by hand it was very week. If you add aluminum to gold it turns purple and arsenic turns it red and copper makes it pink and nickle makes it white and pure silver makes green gold. You can add palladium to turn it white as well. I have done most of these colors with the exception of arsenic. When the melting points are far apart the alloy that is produced it week and usually not usable. Gold will act as a brazing material to steel just like brass or silver. At 1400 an ounce it is not somthing to play with anymore, I did alot of this stuff at 250 an ounce.

I have repaired an anvil with a mig welder a miller 210, it was a wilkenson that had some real bad edges, I didnt preheat because I didnt know about it I did use hard face wire I got a partial spool from the welding shop i had no idea what kind it was. The anvil turned out fine I used it a little and all seemed well then I got a bigger anvil. There was a difference in color of the weld to the plate but I ground it all and sanded it, the stuff was hard and took awhile to grind but the anvil looked good and the stuff didnt fall off when I hit it. I guess it worked.

I was given some advice by a goldsmith who used to get on me about making all of my own tools. He said you can spend your time making tools or you can spend your time making money. I liked making tools better than making jewelry so that is what I do. I buy lots of tools but I make what I can. I make stakes dies and small presses for a living but I made a 100 ton presses for my self since there is no way I could afford to buy one as nice as what I built. I buy my milling machines and lathes since I cant make as nice a one as I can buy, I tried it is a waste of time. My friend has a smithing magician and I said why didnt you just make one and he said why I dont need to prove to anyone that I can make one, just buy one and use it. That is good advice do what you do best and let others do what they do best, I dont forge gates and furniture like my friend I make tools and Harold makes great stuff with tools.

I just finished up this hydraulic press with the help of Harold, who did all the welding. It is a 50 ton air-over hydraulic bottle jack. It is going to a jeweler in Seattle who will use it for coining. Harold did an awesome job welding it up. He's a little bit too modest, but I really think he can weld the crack of dawn. Harold and I have been discussing a tabletop forging version. A 50 ton is way too slow, but a 20 ton works really well.He's got one in the works at his shop using one of my frames. he's going to use a 30 ton Enerpac cylinder and we're making some accessories for it now. It ought to be pretty slick, especially for knife makers. Anyway, here is the video: Thanks, Kevin www.potterusa.com

I got one of those and was real happy thinking that I had the biggest vise on the block then I was at a hydraulic shop and they had an 8 inch bullet vise, now I need an 8 inch. I got a little 2 inch wilton bullet that sits on my shelf and looks cool. I love those bullet vises they are tough. I also have a wilton offset vise I have only seen one other and he got his at the same place as mine, any of you know what I am talking about.

I have been playing with these jacks for a while since I make a line of table top forging presses using these jacks. The foot pedal is no problem I just use a commercially available air pedal you can get them from grainger. The only way I have figured out how to make it cycle like a hammer is to keep your foot on the pedal and open and close the valve manually it will go up and down even though you never released the pedal. Let me know if you come up with something that would be cool. They still work really well even though they dont cycle like a power hammer. I am building a 50ton today it should be sweet.

I have made a couple of hundred damascus steel rings for people I made them from stainless round bar you can buy it from a place in new mexico it is called damasteel it is made in sweden and comes in the annealed state I machine them on a lathe. The biggest problem with them is sizing you have to be right on you cant size them down. The stainless damascus is available in all kinds of patterns and it wont rust it is perfect for rings

I want to get out of my house I have packed so much equipment in my garage I dont think I can get it out. My father just bought an 11,000 sqft industrial building on 2.5 acres with 600amp power and he said I can have a couple of thousand feet for my shop but that would mean I would be in his building and he can be a pain in the ass. My wife wants me to stay at home even though I make lots of noise and mess up the house. So it looks like I am a garage sized industrialist.

I hope I am reading your dimensions right but it is impossible to punch a hole through plate that is thicker than the diameter of the hole, for instance you cant punch a 1 inch hole through 2 inch thick plate. Are you pushing a slug out or are you slitting and drifting a hole.

If I had to choose between a power hammer and a fly press I would pick the power hammer but they make a lot of noise so neighbors are mad now get a powerhammer. i would pick a hydraulic forging press I have built several small ones and now I am building a 50ton. They are relativly quite and cost about the same as either the power hammer or the flypress.

I went to college and got a four year degree in art with a focus on metal.. Art colleges dont teach you how to make a living, I went out and thought that any jeweler in town would be thrilled to hire me. Not, I had to work for free for the first year full time and then I made minimum wage for a couple of years. I learned alot about design and history and got an education, but I learned to be a goldsmith by doing it for 20 years. I would get an education if you can afford it but dont think it will help you get a job most shops wont give any credence to a diploma.

I have a good friend who is mentally ill (really no joke) he works with me in my shop everyday he is a very smart guy he was our class valedictorian and has a degree in astronomy and philosophy. I ask him his opinion on business matters all the time most of the time I might as well be talking to myself but this one day I asked him if he thought I should spend a bunch of money I didnt have on new inventory and machines and he said what difference does it make the outcome is the same, I asked him to explain, he said what will happen if you dont buy the machines and make new inventory, I will go broke since i wont be able to continue my business. What will happen if you buy them and the economy tanks, I will go broke and I wont have a business. What happens if you buy the stuff and sell it. I got the point and from that moment on I have stopped complaining about the bad economy and kept on working harder than ever since the only alternative is failure. You have nothing to lose it is only stuff they will make more.

I found this book The story of my life by Frank Vilcheck while surfing the web I bought a copy from amazon it was first published in the early 1900;s. the book it about a blacksmith from checkolslovakia who comes the US in the 1800s and starts a blacksmith shop. The book is true and he describes how he became a blacksmith and his apprenticship all the way through to him owning a large factory in cleveland. The historical info is great and the descriptions of the life of a blacksmith at the turn of the century during the industrial revolution are brutal, he describes working in steel mills and forging by hand all day it doesnt sound as romantic a vision as many would want to believe. Any way it is a good read if you have the time I paid 1 dollar for the book it was easy to find.