fciron

Your material sizes are not that out of line. It should be quite possible with a bit of practice. I take the opposite approach from Drewed, I get the large part up to welding heat first and then make the small bit catch up. It is easier to keep the large piece at or near welding temp without burning it badly. I've been in the middle of the same thing and I'm using an approach similar to the Mark Aspery video that Southshore posted. I would suggest practicing the welds with some scrap first to get the feel for it. I welded up a bunch of trial leaves and test pieces to make a sort of 'mutant' tree-branch to prove the concept to myself. I weld the stems of two leaves together and then I weld that slightly larger mass to the drawn down end of a larger bar, weld a couple of those together and then to the drawn down end of a larger bar. By making the pairs different lengths and varying the tapers and angles that they open I can disguise the pairs. Sometimes I pair a doubled pair with a single larger bar to get some smaller bits coming off. Good Luck and Have Fun. Lewis

Turn of the last century?! I guess it's not old-timey then. Thanks for the reference, I'll look it up.

There was a similar one bolted to the wall in my shop. I have no clue how it works. Sorry. They do look all cool and old-timey. B)

Old Ben didn't try it and neither should you. B)

I can totally see chain welding up if struck by lightning, the contact area between the links is relatively small, so there would be more resistance and heat there. Just like when something arcs on the layout table if there's poor contact. Dang, a thunderstorm just ended here. :lol:

I'd worry less about an anvil-shaped object and more about getting a big solid hunk of steel. The whole horned shape is a relatively recent western European development. I've got a piece that's 2x4x12" that makes a better anvil than my similar weight homemade anvil-shaped anvil. Or you could use your 150 lb. ASO as a base for your smaller anvil to try and give it more effective mass. I'm only half joking. ;)

Phil, Trees certainly take damage from lightning strikes, so wet wood can't be that great a conductor. I believe much of the damage actually comes from water being explosively vaporized inside the tree, which is pretty cool if it's true. Less water inside an anvil stump, so the current might travel over the wet surface, well beyond my pay grade at this point. Who's got a big field and some anvils to run an experiment? :lol:

An anvil on a wooden stump is unlikely to attract an anvil strike, because it is insulated from the ground. If you really want a lightning strike you'd need to put it on a metal stand in the middle of an open area. Lightning rods are connected to the ground in order to allow electricity to pass to the ground without damage to the structure. They are mounted above the highest points on a building and they have sharp tips to encourage the concentration of the static charge. Aside from a sharp tip on the horn, your anvil is quite unlike a lightning rod. Heat is generated when electricity encounters resistance: iron is a much better conductor than the wood stump, so in the unlikely event of a lightning strike to your anvil I would expect the stump to be damaged rather than the anvil. Iron and steel are relatively poor conductors compared to aluminum or copper but I think the anvil would be alright. In addition a larger diameter wire has less resistance than a smaller wire and an anvil would be a very large, but very short wire. Induction heating is the result of high frequency variation in a magnetic field, a lightning strike is large pulse of electricity actually passing through the anvil, so it's not quite the same thing. Resistance heating is likely to be a larger factor. My guess is that the anvil would be fine.

Gonna be a heck off a road trip if all you eat is pure cane sugar and snack mix. Have fun. My parent's dragged us and the dog all the way across country in the same blue and white bus (but the pop-top camper set-up) in 1978. Aaah, memories. :P

The 'New' category specifically includes hand-made items. Wouldn't surprise me at all if it was made in a workshop where they made a batch of them. A lot of 'build-ins' were organized then the same way there are tire-hammer workshops now. $800 bucks is about what they sold for in 1991 too. :P

Well, the rivet in a pair of tongs has much different requirements than a rivet in a structure, so the parts to rivet relationship will change. In tongs there is only a single rivet and it is loose so it will be relatively larger than the multiple tight rivets in a structural assembly. Tongs are a very special purpose rivet and may be the worst example to generalize from. Old Machinists' Handbooks and engineering books have rivet formulas for lots of different situations. That's where I'd start for formulas. Here's a link to one in google books: http://books.google.com/books?id=4Q8LAAAAIAAJ&dq=Colvin%20%22American%20machinists'%20handbook%22&pg=PA315#v=onepage&q&f=false

They must like steak well done. At our house, we'd brand both sides with an iron and call them ready to eat. Combine Scots, scotch and a branding iron and they'll all want one to mark their friend's with. You missed a marketing opportunity there. ;)

Especially since pennies have not been made out of copper for several decades now. B)

That's pretty clever, Steve. Is he gonna be able to get a whole batch of steaks branded or will he have to slap each one on that part of the grill? (Ha, marketing opportunity: custom grill patterns by someone with a plasma table.) Does your father-in-law have a lot of BBQs where there is a danger of people getting branded? Can I get invited? ;)

I'd go by weight. You know the volume of your blade ( 30" long x 1/4" thick x 1-1/2 wide = 11.25 cubic inches ) and steel is about 0.283 pounds per cubic inch (Thanks, Google!), so you need 3.18 pounds for your finished billet. Add for losses to scale and welding and snipping the messy ends off and I'd probably shoot for 4 pounds of cable to start with. Hit the yard sales and pick up a cheap kitchen scale to weigh your cable. There are table which show the actual area of the cross sections of various cables, but that requires knowing what cable you've got.

The mosquito larvae are air breathers, so the dishwashing liquid breaks the surface tension and drowns them. I'm usually not that organized, so if I have a tank full of wigglers I put a hefty squirt of WD40 over the top. I always have some of that in the shop and the oil smothers the little buggers. I bet there's even some biodegradable vegetable oil I could use if I checked the kitchen. (Oh, once I'm in the kitchen I can borrow some dish soap.) I have also used the mosquito cakes with no ill results.

My little riveter's forge was cracked when I got it. Found a fellow to weld it up for me at the Quad State Round Up (1992 or 1993). Ken Sharabok said if I came for both days he'd find someone to weld it up. Sure enough, we were standing at the back of my little truck and some guy walking by sees us looking at the forge and the welder and he declares that he'd rather weld than eat. (It was about noon.) He ran back to his truck for a hood and proceeded to do the works on my little forge, preheating, skip welding, all of the official cast iron stuff, telling me the whole time what he was doing and why. Next weekend we dug up a bunch of red clay from the creek at my friend's farm to line it and a week after that I lit my first fire. ...and the forge cracked. About 20 degrees off from the first crack from one of the bolt holes at the tuyere right out to the edge. I drilled a couple of holes and bolted a strap across it. It's still that way and works about as well a riveter's forge can. :D

Grant, I tried to unscrew the leg off of mine and it wiggles but won't turn. (I find the thing too tall and thought it would be wise to protect the 'collector's value' by substituting a new, shorter leg while losing the original somewhere in the back off the shop.)

Jack, that is interesting to know. I've also been told not to make a completely closed shape for a branding iron for livestock. Thanks again for the pats on the back. I've never had issues with branding irons before, especially if they're just for play or display. Folks are usually only concerned with what's on the end and a pretty or interesting handle is a bonus. I suppose I should have taken him up on his offer to draw it for me; I know I was feeling a little rushed because I had the gas forge running the whole time we were talking and because he wanted it before his cousin arrived the next day. I am not sure that would have kept him from worrying about the thickness of the edge going on to insult my integrity and competence. I've noticed that once people get into criticism mode it can become impossible to please them. I didn't have a problem with making them the way he wanted. I can understand the attachment to a childhood memory and I'm happy to work towards that. I hadn't gotten enough information on the phone the first time around and that was my fault. I was in a good mood and about to start his new handles when I got the phone message that sent things downhill. The problem was his continuing insistence that what I made the first time was wrong or inauthentic and implying that I was trying somehow to cheat him in the process. Yes, that might have been avoided if I had a drawing before I ever started. That starts to turn 'lunch money' jobs into real jobs, which starts to raise the price, which starts to drive off the lunch money jobs. I think I will start insisting on drawings.

Clever. If you could find the kind with springs, then your light would have a suspension for impact protection. Now I can add bike seats to my list of things to pick out of garbage cans while walking the dog. I bet they'd be handy for a few things.

These three guys said everything I would have said. The upper die in both my 25lb LG is held by a key that tapers along its length and along its height, so the die only shows a dovetail on one side. It's kind of a pain to make a new one, but they work well and if your luck both of yours will be held by the same wedge. Sid at Little Giant sells an 'oversized' top die that should have the same size face as the lower of your drawing dies. I bought new dies last year and I'm quite happy with them. Lewis

Ain't that the truth?! :D

Thanks, not much additional harm last week in loolville Seems like it's been flood warnings and high winds for the last month. Steve and Mark, thanks for the sympathy. You've cured my fuming, which is why I posted. Anytime you're in Louisville contact me for the historic blacksmith shop tour. (That applies to everyone else too.)

Got in an argument with a client today about branding irons. I figured this would be the ideal thread to complain in since it backs up my side of the story. Sorry about the long rant, I'm more upset about this than I ought to be and I need to put it out somewhere. Guy calls up, his cousin is coming to visit in a few weeks and he wants to give her a present of an iron like the one from the family farm they hung out on as kids. Just a plain old "Z" and his cousin is flying in to visit so hers needs to be short so it will fit in a suitcase and he wants a second one with a regular length handle for himself. I tell him that a socketed handle will be a good way to make a short, but still authentic branding iron and thirty inches is what I've always used for a handle length. I give him a low price since it's a simple brand and it sounds like fun. I've had a shortage of forged work for a few years, so I like it when I can get some. It's still more money than he expected, but he says ok. I do it just like I was taught and forge down the edge of some 1/4 inch flat bar and bend up some Zs, I even upset the ends a little for a serif. Since their wall hangers I make them a little prettier than something that's gonna lay in a toolshed 364 days a year. Nice forged socket that tapers all the way down to the brand with an old piece of a rake handle whittled down to fit and a nice little scroll on the loop for the other. Comes in to pick them up yesterday. (Has to come into the city to find a blacksmith, that's ironic.) I hand them to him and his face falls. He straight up ignores the socket-handled one and then tells me what's wrong with the other. OK, he doesn't want a branding iron, what he wants is an exact copy of his childhood memory. Well, my big mouth got me into this so I guess I'll try and straighten this mess out. Basically he wants it to look like a cut-and-weld job and he wants the brands bigger and he wants them to be "more authentic". I hold my tongue and just say that we might not agree on what is authentic and can he describe it a little more so I can make him what he wants. He just wants a plain loop handle and offers to draw it for me. I'm pretty sure I know what a circle looks like so I decline, politely. His cousin is coming this weekend, so he's gonna pick them up today after another appointment. I apologize for the misunderstanding and off he goes. Today I get a message on the phone, he was up all night thinking about it and he's worried about that thin edge. "It will burn right through to the bone." The edge should be about a quarter inch thick. He suggests that since we might not agree what a branding iron looks like maybe he should draw it and he can mail one to his cousin later. I figure I ought to catch him before he leaves for his appointment, so I call right back. I say he's obviously got a very specific thing in mind and a drawing is a good idea: give me some stock sizes and a full size picture of what you want the brand to look like. First he's offended because I didn't accept his offer of a drawing yesterday, then he doesn't want to complain about my price, but for what he's paying it ought to be done right. Then he starts in about the thin edge cutting right to the bone again. He's implied that I'm incompetent and that I am ripping him off on the price and I am in no mood to explain how the radiant heat from the iron makes a larger burn than just the area of contact and I don't think he'll believe me anyway. Fool that I am, I'm still trying to salvage this. "Sir, I don't want to argue about authenticity. I'll make what you want." "I don't want to argue about it either, but why did you make the edge so thin?" I tell him I've seen branding irons, I've held branding irons, and I've made branding irons that were used on cows. He interrupts asking why I didn't make his right the first time. I tell him to find someone else to make his branding irons. The couple of hours (if that long) lost making the irons isn't that big a deal. I'm pretty upset about the insult to my competence and my integrity. I actually put in a little more effort to make them pretty, and it not only went unappreciated but he insulted that extra effort and then went on to prove his ignorance by asking for thick edges. What really chafes my britches is that I am certain he got off the phone with me, turned to his wife and asked why I didn't just make them right the first time. Thanks for letting me rant. Lewis

Looks good. Glad to see you had a canine safety spotter for your boy in the hole. A month! Waiting a week for the pad for may lathe nearly killed me. Larry, I agree about paying people. I poured a little pad for my lathe (shop has a dirt floor.) and by the time I got around to it, and did it I'd spent a month with a hole in the floor and I aggravated an old injury, so it cost even more time. All that time is money.