gypsy

wondering if anyone has done any serious metaphysical studies in smithing & if so is there any written text?

hey guys, i just got a good paying job rehammering jackhammer bits & until now i never even knew what steel they were & no one at work knows a darn thing, seems thier old smith wandered off & never bothered to tell anyone how. i found only one relevent page on the web so any input would be apriciated. THX!!!:)

thx i woulda worn myself out trying to grind that stuph off!

hey i got a question.... i been making some horse shoe coathooks & candleholders but i got a bunch of shoes that have these bumps welded onto them & whatever they welded them with is extremely abrasion resistant anyone got experiance with this stuph? even with a fresh 9" 24grit wheel on a right angle grinder its too tuph to grind! :(

LOOKS GOOD! keep it up, theres $$$ in blades every now & then, i managed to scape by on 'em for like 10 years. to be honest i like your horseshoe knife better than the ones ive done :)

one of the tricks that has saved me lotsa greif & time is the mounting bracket & saw table i made for my 9" right angle grinder. just a peice of 2" angle iron mounted to the right side of the grinder with a bolt in the hole were ya screw the handle on & a hoseclamp around the body & now the grinder can be mounted in a vice. add a flat plate with a bolt in the other handle hole & a couple nubs welded on to keep the plate from turning & now its an abrasive tablesaw. (be careful its alot easier to run yer knuckles into that 24 grit rock when yer holding the work & not the grinder!). OWWW! that & the $20 "weed burner" from harbor freight. its a big propane torch used by roofers & stuph but if ya look at it right its not only a big tempering torch for swords & stuph but also can be modified into a forge burner, its 6' of hose w/fittings, needle valve, jet & a half finished ventury all for less than $20! :)

I've had good results with different oil over the years but I really prefer to use vegtable oil (most everything I make is 1050-1095 or 5160) and the real benefit for me isnt metalurgical. I usually harden 10 or more sword blades or 20 or more knives at a time so by the time I'm done I'm covered in it. Petroleum oils stink badly and are hard to get off you & your clothes, the veggie oil just smells like you've been in the kitchen & washes off easy. It also makes a nice black finish for wrought iron stuph. For me the "big thing" isn't so much the hardening, its really the tempering that makes the difference. I'm a firm believer in "triple drawing", like with alot of things the old timers knew their stuph & the old tools that really impressed me were the ones that had "triple drawn" stamped in the steel. It didn't take many destruction tests on my own peices to see the difference between other methods & triple drawing.

sounds kinda like my first forge, i called it the turbo-hibachi. it was an old cast iron habachi with the vents chipped out to fit 1" gas pipe wich was then ran together & to a 2" pipe that held an old hairdryer for the blower. nowdays i just use the standard tube gassers, you know, big pipe wrapped with ceramic wool. i generally build them outa the little military oil drums or any metal bucket.... ive even made miniture ones out of a coffee can & a "turbo-torch" brand plumbers torch.

it's good too be here i make everything from swords to jewelry. more later. gypsy