the iron dwarf

I dont have anything to compare it with but have no problems

welcome from western europe, im in England I like your work

Hi blackleaf, like the snail! blowers are collect only as they are hard to package so they dont get damaged and im at NN14 1QF so a long way from you, I do sometimes go in your general direction to the area around stonehenge for an event or two, would sell blowers seperatly and have bouncy castle ones at £30 normally and have 1 new side channel at £100. on my forges airflow is controlled by the ball valve

for cheap I use a bouncy castle blower, for better I would use a side channel, I make bottom blast and use a higher pressure than you probably would for back blast

you still wont have the size you need! I recently got sacks full of large rivets 10 and 12mm roundheads mostly 3/8" and 1/2" shanks, I need to find uses for them

some good finds, worn pieces have more interesting shapes and you just need to fix a couple to a heavy mass of steel now like a length of rail set in the floor or on a base

it was welded with a big DC stick welder and 7018 rods mostly, there was also some mig welding there. the anvils are light but ok when fixed down to a heavy stump, I have 3 other anvils all about 105 to 120lb

you have 20cm ( 8" for the americans ) of concrete under the hammer then the cushioning if the hole was 1m ( 39" ) deep, I am no expert but I think you need more concrete under it. a 50 kg sahinler air hammer we had was installed on concrete 1.25m ( about 4 foot ) deep, there was over 2 cubic meters of concrete used for this and lots of steel bars. one thing that will affect it is what the ground is like underneath, we had loosely packed ironstone, in the same building is a recording studio

here is something I make when I get time the body and horn is the working part of a sub soiler or mole plough, the table is fork lift tine, the socket is for my stake tools but later ones were nearer to and fixed to the back leg or to the base

bungee cord, maybe several pieces until the right spring is delivered

a friend has several machines for making rings, some hand operated and some hand, its not hard. 3 rollers, the middle one moves and at least 2 of them driven by a chain drive, adjust the middle roller with a small bottle jack, you can roll a 20 foot length is about 2 mins by hand easily. I have thicker stuff done on an old lathe sometimes if just bending them round a former by hand it is easier to do it cold and the scale flakes off

doing work with you hands will always have value, other jobs come and go, at the moment we are undervalued but when their are problems we can sort them out. in the long term things will always need to be made or repaired, most things are made to last less and less but some people will always value quality

boiled linseed oil, though I might try lice oil if I can find some

for some years I have been making a wax for people here into reenactment, made from microcrystalline wax and white spirit. people seem to like it and keep asking for more. am going to try white spirit, microcrystalline wax, carbon black and BLO for a blackening paste

there are also welding rods with a high nickel content

I have a nickel anode from an electroplating works, probably about 4kg

posting on another forum ( armour archive )

the glass like stuff is clinker, you get that when you burn metal, when you heat the metal and it is giving off little sparks that shows it is too hot and you have burnt it, it is the cause of the holes you have. you need to remove any clinker as it will make a mess of your work. in your forge there are different zones, assuming it is a bottom blast, close to the bottom the fire is mostly oxidizing ( more air than fuel ) here metal will burn away easily, above that the fire is more neutral and near the top it is more carburising ( more fuel than air ). you should be using the upper parts of the fire more and watch for the metal getting too hot

was part of a team working on restoring an orangery, had hundreds of steel screws in cast iron, others tried and got 1 in 10, destroying the rest, I got about 98% out with no problems. placed an 8mm ( 5/16 ) not on the screw head or top of the tread if the head had gone and filled it with the mig, kept a spanner ready to turn the nut whilst it was still glowing, back and forth a few times and then out

on my forges I use a 1" ball valve to control the air, the big forge has 5 of them and another as a bypass and another to connect several more forges to the pipework

yes they work fine on the forges I sell, I also often have the blowers in stock. the better blowers we use are called side channel blowers and are quieter and made to run forever, chinese plastic bouncy castles blowers will not last long with everyday use

both me and Dave Budd were on our own but we both managed a quick walk round but we did not know who you were, we both had out names on display on our pitches

was at an event last weekend with dave budd from here, he shown me some of the miniatures he had made, think the smallest knife has a blade about 1/8" long

here are some of the ones I supply, from 5" od to 11" aprox I also have a couple of big shallow ones IIRC 17" dia and 11/2" deep made from 1" thick stainless, the hole in the middle has been ground now where a fitting was welded in place, 1/2" thick at the edge and 1" at the middle

back home with a much lighter van and trailer, sold quite a bit, met lots of old and some new friends, need sleep next