Jason @ MacTalis Ironworks

thanks guys... just assumed from the design and oil drain plug that it would be a "bathing" in oil thing...

OK, I've ripped my blower apart, and got everything clean and happy, but have a problem or 2, the first is that I am missing one of the gear adjustment plugs that thread into the bushings that hold the central gear in place. I don't have any clue what they are called or where I might obtain a replacement aside from a machine shop. It looks like a set screw with a single ball bearing embedded into it that presses into a second ball mounted into the end of the gear shaft. Anyone know what this kind of setscrew is called? The second is the shaft that the fan rides on confuses me, it has ball bearings, one side is held on by a snap ring, and the other has nuts that thread on. I am at a loss for how the hell these would seal enough for the crank casing to hold oil. Each side has a cap, but they don't fit anywhere tight enough to keep in oil, and there is a hole in the one on the fan side for the shaft to slide through. I also found it odd that the upper gears would be on bushings and the lower is on bearings... might this be a custom aftermarket modification? Any thoughts guys? I can get pics up later if you guys need them.

Just pulled mine apart, and was also a taper pin... use a pin drift to knock it out.

Admiral Steel in Chicago carries it in sheet form, and you can also go manufacturer direct with uddenholm... The have several US plants, fortunately for me one of them is in Cleveland, so I can just jet over there and pick up what I want. Uddenholm provides it particularly for bandsaw blade manufacturers, so they tend to stock it in all sorts of convenient strip forms.

Thomas, good summary there. I was of course speaking in generalities with a heavy focus on blacksmithing in particular. I am well aware of the principles in your post. I've always been amused when someone new in the shop stacks up a bunch of clean, polished metal and then leaves it there for a couple weeks, they often need a sledge hammer to separate the bottom few blocks, as they have begun to weld due to the pressure of the stack and the clean surfaces of the metal... I've seen the explosive welding done on the television, but never had the opportunity to see the results first hand. If I manage to take the shop tour of the US I am hoping to, I'll be sure to stop by your place and make you play tour guide... LOL

Thomas, Billy welds at the proper temperatures for his steel... alot of those odd alloys he works with weld in the 1600-1800 range, some even lower still. The more "stuff" you introduce into a substance, the lower it's melting point is: High carbon and high alloy steels have much lower melting points than plain low carbon steels, hence they weld much cooler. As far as slinging flux off of your weld, it is a good practice to get into, though alot of my welds make that impractical, but I do often brush or tap a weld on the anvil just beforehand to do the same thing when I can. Alot of my welds tend to be smaller stuff, so the heat loss is too rapid to expend anytime. I also do a fair bit of welding IN the fire with a pair of tongs. Ask me about the 200 welded 1/8" x 1-1/4" rings I made for a friend's trebuchet project sometime... LOL What I mean to say isn't downplaying Billy or Dorothy's welding skills, it is just to say that what they do isn't at all out of the norm for those of us who weld ALOT, Watch Mark Aspery sometime welding leaf bundles together sometime, drop-tong after drop-tong weld... and he rarely misses a weld. Welding IS NOT difficult, anyone can learn to do it if they pay attention to the conditions you need and most importantly BELIEVE they can weld. Confidence is the most important factor in welding, I don't care how perfect you prepped, heated, and hammered the weld, if you believe you can't weld, you won't get it to stick. Don't believe the hype about welding being the hardest thing to learn, it isn't, it is by far one of the simplest things we do. And..... I'm rambling.... again....

As you gain more experience, you will be able to eliminate the temperature check with the prod, as you will just know what the proper temperature is, Also, as you gain skill and confidence, you will be able to get your welds solid with only 2 welding passes. Sounds like a similar method to how I teach welding though. One of the things I'll do when demoing welds, is to heat brush and flux 2 pieces of stock, then pull them out at heat and bump them together on the anvil, no hammer involved. This demonstrates just how willing the steel is to stick to itself when the conditions are right. Sounds like you are well on your way to mastering welds, keep at it and you may soon find yourself thinking it is too much trouble to walk across the shop to the MIG welder like I do most of the time... LOL

Hey BadCreek, I am over in the NE, with WRABA, and I just did a class on forge welding. If ever you feel you want some further guidance in that particular operation, feel free to show up at one of our open forge nights, and I'll be more than happy to help you out with it. Forge welding for many seems to be a mental block, if you approach it with an attitude of "this is hard", you will have one heck of a time getting a weld. It really is a matter of confidence more than anything else. Of course, clean steel, proper temperature, and light blows are also important, but those are just the mechanical end of it, the art to it is all in "knowing you will get the weld".

Vegetable oil on a terrycloth rag applied hot is the finish I use. Just like seasoning cast iron. This is the same finish Brian Brazeal uses for alot of his work. You do need to watch the temperature of the steel, as it will burn the rag if too hot. Dab at the piece until you see the steel blackening and smoking a little. The finish acts somewhat like a semi-gloss paint, and is applied like a paint, wiping over and over until you get a good black finish. After it has cooled too much to take any more color, you want to cool the piece then buff it with a "clean" rag (no oil). These oil rags work best when the oil is well "seasoned"... at first, they will finish a dark grey, but in time, they will start finishing a nice black. I've found one shortcut to aging the rags, if you have an old toaster oven, you can bake them in it at around 300-350 or so, being sure to turn it often and not allow it to flare up. I bake it at the temperature where the oil JUST begins to smoke. I am guessing this causes some sort of transition in the oil, removing volatiles or something. It takes an hour or so at this temperature to get it nice and happy. The rag will feel almost waxy rather than oily when it is baked to the optimum.

You also might be able to find a smith in your area willing to give you a hand with making one or showing you how. I make them all the time for the local club, but I require that the guy I am making it for strikes for me so that he sees how to do it for himself next time.

Phil, WRABA has a demo going on for the Apple Butter Festival in Burton, feel free to come up, swing some hammers, and chow down on some apple butter. Second weekend in October at Century Village in downtown Burton, OH.

I took my 12 yr. old daughter to quadstate this year, and while I saw less demos than previous years, I think I had more fun this year. We entered the forging competition and finished our set of tongs, mind you while everyone else was "cheating" with sledgehammers, she and I finished with only a 4.6# and 2.2# hand hammers. I managed to drop the hammer on our touchmark as the 0-second was being called. It gave me a great feeling seeing all my fellow smiths coming up and congratulating her. She is so stoked on forging with me now, something I've been trying to inspire over the last year with little success. Guess it just took the encouragement of all you other great guys. All in all it was a great quadstate, and the kid has been jabbering away about "next year at SOFA".

Phil, I am up by Cleveland, no clue where you are, but if you want to learn to forge weld, I can teach ANYONE so long as they are willing to learn. Too many people make too much of a deal about welding. it is honestly one of the easiest things we do as blacksmiths.

My daughter and I will be there Thomas, leaving Friday morning from Cleveland area. Takes us about 4 hours to make the trip. All us I-forgers should have a meet and greet sometime Friday or Saturday evening... Maybe all get together by the Big Blu booth at a set time or something...

Just to chime in... I by default set up an anvil with the horn facing right (I am right handed) as there are a multitude of advantages to working from that side, but I will often also simply walk around the thing if I need access to another spot on the anvil. The only really important thing is that you nail the dang thing into the dirt and give yourself plenty of space to walk around it. As Mr. Brazeal says: "I'd rather work off the face of a 6lb. sledgehammer properly mounted than a 1-ton anvil just sitting loose". If you haven't mounted your anvil to it's base and the base to the floor, you are loosing an incredible amount of energy. Working alone I can easily get a 300lb. anvil rocking, and when you think about just how much energy it takes to move a mass that large, it really amounts to alot of lost time. When I mounted my anvil, I saw my speed dang near double. I am actually kind of surprised that Brian didn't chime in on this thread with his list of reasons for having your horn to your hammer hand. Most people know about the hardy thing, but there are about a dozen other advantages to having it that way: When you lay your hammer on the anvil, you don't cover your hardy or pritchel hole, when drawing on the horn, you will naturally swing into the mass of the anvil as opposed to swinging toward the tip of the horn, when using half hammer face blows on the near side near the step, your hammer handle and hand clear the anvil more naturally, when working with a striker, you are in a more natural position to place him closer to your hardy hole which improves his accuracy by not having to swing over the horn, and there are a few others which I forget at the moment. But as I said, the REALLY important thing is to mount your anvil down down to the earth so you don't lose all that work.

How very convenient... I had lost the link to that thread, and couldn't remember where it was. I was just thinking about how to find it again a moment before I hit this thread... are you guys playing psychic or something? LOL. Thanks much.

I actually recommend a larger 4# + hammer, smaller hammers require you to whack endlessly away at a piece of steel at a million RPM, while a bigger hammer moves more metal with considerably less effort and RPM, although there is some technique to it for sure. I WAS a fan of smaller (2#-ish) hammers before I learned the methods used by Brian Brazeal, and after switching to his styles of moving metal, I am more and more of the opinion that anything less than a 4# is almost useless for general forging. I am also a huge fan of rounding hammers these days, but I still find occasional use for a crosspien. Large hammers seem to be getting a bad rap by those who use them improperly or inefficiently these days. You don't drive a big hammer full force from the end of the handle as most tend to do with smaller hammers, instead you tend to hold them loosely closer to the head, and only wind up when you need to set something down hard, but that is still low RPM blows. In the end, it really is a matter of just trying every hammer you can beg, borrow, or steal, until you find ones that do what you want them to do and are comfortable for you to use. Heck, I have a friend who made a hammer from the ram off a 25# LG power hammer who uses it for welding 25 layer billets of damascus by hand. It really is all in what does the job you want it to.

And, keep in mind, sparktesting is really only useful to get a ballpark idea of the carbon content, other minerals in the alloy can bugger spark tests all to heck. I use spark testing only to get an idea if something is high or low carbon, from there, I make a sample about 1/4 x 1 x 6 or so, cut it in half, and first quench in oil, checking for hardening with the file "skate test". If I don't get hardening, I try brine, then water. Once I have hardening, I put my sample in the vise and give it a good rap with the hammer to check it's brittleness, trying to break it. If it breaks, it requires tempering, if it doesn't, I find it is usually fine for most tool applications at full hard. If my sample broke, I then quench the second sample in the appropriate quenchant and run my temper up the piece and again play with it in the vise to see which temper point seems to be most suitable for my application. I know this method isn't new or anything, but just figured I'd put it out there again...

Beautiful work as always...

OK Alec, you need to get your rear back stateside, and come spend a couple weeks with me in my shop... LOL Tell Mum and Dad I'll even feed you...

At the rennaissance faires when folk are complaining about how hot it is, we often offer for them to step up to the air conditioner, as we have it cranked all the way down to 3500f. Our front-man, Satyr has a number of tales regarding blacksmithing that he tells with our "aid" one of them I'll share in it's condensed version, feel free to imbellish it: Once there was a king who was bored and decided he wanted to know who was the greatest craftsman in all his kingdom, so he gathered up his lackeys and sent them out to round them all up. When they were all gathered, he asked them "who among you is the greatest craftsman?" (shouts from Lance and I "Yo! Right here!") Well, the carpenters, thatchers, pavers, and on and on tell about how they make this and that, and how they are the greatest, when finally one humble dirty man stinking of sweat, steel, and brimstone walks in and begs pardon for being late, at which point the king ask "and who are you?" "why I am your blacksmith my lord" to which the king replies, "away with you, you are stinking up the place" Well, the smith goes home, shuts down his forge, and lays down his hammers and tongs, and settles down for a wee nip of scotch ( at which point I show off my giant tankard and label it my scottsh shot glass) Well, soon, the carpenters have no nails, the thatchers have no scythes to cut their thatch, the masons have no chisels, etc. and the king comes to the smith and begs him to fire up his forge and once again take up his hammers and tongs for none of the other craftsmen can work. At which point the smith is pleased at finally being recognized, and the king goes away happy knowing that he has found the greatest of all craftsmen.

Looks like a firm called OSI owns the area.... might get ahold of them and perhaps broach the subject. If we could find some experts with the stuff, maybe we could get it all going again and make it the IFI Clubhouse...

The only headache with rebar is it's inconsistency, sometimes even over the length of the same piece. When it is being made, there is little to no work done to control the specific alloy or carbon content, so it is one of the worst mystery metals out there. But, for free, if you just plan to use it for screwing around, and you don't mind the inconsistency: Free metal is free metal...

Just a thought here... A2 is rather exotic to be making a punch from... Personally, I'd use either 1045 or maybe 5160, and both are just fine with an "eyeball" heat treat.

After spending the weekend with Brian a few weeks ago, I think I can say that the angle of your grind is far too steep for using with thin stock. The grind needs to be about 1/3 or so of the thickness of what you are punching. The grind is just there to keep it tracking straight, and to help it plow through a bit faster. The grind you have is making it act more like a chisel than a punch. Brian's Punches are pretty much a traditional punch but with a very shallow angle to the grind. If I had my camera handy, I could take a few pics of the ones I have made based on Brian's tools. Oh! And on a side note: Brian, I have almost completed duplicating your coffee can of punches you brought up to the WRABA conference... Now I just need to make me a big hammer like yours. Don't suppose you want to lend me one till I can get down there this winter to make one with you? LOL.