fciron

The Lindsay reprint is the Bacon book, not Harcourt. They have a very similar look to them. That original is a nice find.

I don't think the end would have been scarfed like that it if it hadn't been intended to be welded. In the first picture, near the end of the overlap you can see an area where the two surfaces match, probably where they were inadequately welded.

DKforge, when I look at the list of projects that you want to move beyond when strikes me is not the need to move more metal. It looks to me like all of those projects are made from a single piece of metal. One of my personal measures of advances in smithing is learning to assemble projects from multiple parts. Instead of four steak flippers, make four scrolls and use collars to assemble them into a trivet. Look around, see how things are put together and how you can expand your repetoire.

If it's a planishing hammer, it would be for sheet metal. It would help if the photos documented something other than it being adequately supplied with grease nipples.

Wesley, someone just messaged the KY blacksmith FB page looking for an anvil. Bring 'em!

Some of you may be aware that following a long period of moribundity there was a meeting in January to attempt to revive the KBA. The first step seems to be to get some people and some forges together on a regular basis. My apologies for the short notice for this invitation. I will be hosting a hammer-in at my shop in Louisville this Saturday, 30 March 2013 at 11:00 am. I'll give a tour of the shop, do a short forging demonstration and then there will be some open forge time and general socializing. My place is the Fred Hutt Blacksmith Shop, 853 S Seventh St. Louisville, KY 40203 http://goo.gl/maps/iTYLj https://www.facebook.com/events/630329126980424/

Not only to prevent tweaking the vise, but it grips better if the jaws stay close to parallel.

Glass blowers work in an oxidizing flame, more air than blacksmiths usually use. (Too much air increases scale on the metal.) A typical blacksmithing fire is a reducing atmosphere, which can change the color of the glass. Something else to experiment with. :-)

You really need to give us a lot more information than "It's smoky in here." to get any meaningful advice. How big is your shop? How big is your forge and flue? What other ventilation is there in the shop? One common error: If you're buying your stovepipe at a local big box or hardware store it's probably too small. The biggest stuff I can find there is usually 6" diameter, about half what you need to vent a forge. Because you are burning coal with additional forced air you need a much larger flue than you would in a similarly sized fireplace. Even for a small riveting forge I would want at least a 10" pipe. (Which will have more that three times the volume of a 6" pipe.)

Will do. Thanks.

My (Lewis Meyer) bad there. I did not get out the emails to everyone on my list. I'll try and do better on the next one and post here as well.

I'd sure try to get a punch in there from the bottom. You could bend the punch to pass the foot or hammer on a second bar laid across the punch. If it's wedged in from the top, so some impact from the bottom might be just what it needs.

Sam said no guessing. Any luck with google's patent search?

Hmm, just got caught up on this thread. Plenty of good information. A couple of thoughts for Rick: at the beginning, you can draw a box the size you need and then draw the scroll to fit it. That way you only need to focus on getting a pretty scroll, the size will take care of itself. Sometimes you can get a longer heat in a small fire by moving the bar back and forth through the fire to heat a greater length. The kink you got when you tried to bend into the cold part of the bar was because the metal follows the path of least resistance. The hot part is softer, so the hard cold metal acts as a lever and pushes the hot part away from the form and into a sharper bend (allowing the cold metal to remain unbent or less bent). Sometimes this can be corrected by pulling the bulge toward the form with a bending fork while unwraping the cold part of the bar ever so slightly. If the metal is held tight to the form at the end of the head heat (with a second fork or a clamp) you can then bend the hot Cold part. HOWEVER, the form must be stronger than the material being formed, so if you try to wrap your 3/8" stock around your 1/4" form the metal had better be hot. Edited to correct sleepy typing. I shouldn't post after 11. I probably shouldn't even be online after 11.

If I need to use a template multiple times and want to preserve accuracy, I will transfer punch through it rather than drill. The transfer punches don't wallow out the holes the way that a drill bit will.

Sorry to hear it too. He's the guy that talked me into going to my first blacksmithing conference.

I guess that's good for CO and CA. It will be a good while before I get that option.

Actually, the OP's bender is a pretty slick copy of a DiAcro bender. LarryM's bender is a pretty slick copy of a Hossfeld. Both makes have instructional booklets available online that can give all sorts of ideas for homemade dies and fixtures.

Hmm, they showed a hermit crab when they needed a coneshell, but otherwise excellent. I'm booking my tickets now.

At least you have the right saw for the job. Most of the alternatives are only more tedious.

Scans from a book of photos I found: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fciron/sets/72157594209313077/

Clean it out, stuff a light bulb in the upper canister, and put it out by the road with your house number on it. Give it a couple years and some crazy blacksmith will try to buy it and complain on the internet about your lack of respect for old equipment. Lewis

V out the cracks. Preheat the whole thing and Ni rod with the arc welder or braze if you prefer. I always like to know why things broke before fixing them. If there was some kind of one time crash that caused side thrust I wouldn't try to re-engineer anything. If the crack is from overtightening a set screw in the boss next to it I would think about some way to prevent that; either reinforce the crack or use a dedicated wrench that is too short to get the leverage on. If it's just age and time, maybe 50 or 60 years is pretty good for a power hammer, fix it and go.

I didn't realize the color was thickness coded. I just figured they had the black gloves because they looked tougher. I use the gloves when I'm getting greasy/oily or to keep paint stuff off my hands. Big thick gloves with long cuffs for scrubbing the toilets or messing with acid. :-)

Glad to hear you're ok.