the iron dwarf

I will try to make this, not got much in the way of smithing skills but I do have something I can bring to the event.

they are add ons I dont need or want but unlike some packages costing thousands, this costs IIRC about £20 ( $30 ) with the extras or free without. I wanted simple and I found it http://www.qcad.org/en/

QCAD installed and working fine, have managed tonite to draw 2 items for laser cutting, seems to do all I need and a lot more, can find the tools I want mostly and have not looked at the online manual or tutorials yet. the basic free edition comes with 3 extras to make it the pro version that you have to pay for, the extras only work for 15 mins each session as a demo but all the time if you pay for them, when you remove the 3 extra demo items it saves a lot of messages coming up as they shut down 15 mins into a session. it is simple enough even for me so most people should have no trouble after an hour of playing with it

checked out megacad and it looks like it cost a couple of grand, found QCAD which seems simple enough and is free, will report back when I have tried it out.

thank you for the replies, will look into it tonite

downloaded freecad and have spent a long time trying things, had something simple to draw and on the 4th attempt got it not bad but im spending hours trying to find things for the most basic drawing in there. maybe I should hunt down something simpler.... I dont need all the architecture stuff or ship building dont need 3D as it is for getting things laser cut from flat plate need to draw points and join them, rectangles, squares, radiuses, circles and ellipses, stretch things maybe, need to know the coordinates and dimensions im creating and need to be able to save as a DXF. anyone know what is the simplest and easiest to learn (and ideally free) thing I can get to do the job before my head explodes have also asked a few friends to look into this and if I get suggestions in other places I will repost them here just in case others are have the same problems

you have done well, I am no expert and could probably make the same but not much better and that would take time. your forge looks good and seems to work well. there is plenty of help available here if you look for it and if you cant find it just ask. you may want to add your location to your profile then people who in the future have not read this thread will have an idea of where you are, they may be in the same area, often just the country helps.

will maybe do a 'have a go' this saturday afternoon as I have a customer coming round for a forge

nice work blake :)

can you measure the amount of current taken for something like your last video here, it is really impressive heating that 1/2" round on 120v

Dave Budd and John B on here are the people to ask, im a long way away in the east mids and use forge breeze from KG Smith near northampton

im here but from another part of the country

only 1 visitor, Justin Lee Baker, maker of English wheels came round for a bash

most of the larger compressor tanks I have cut up here have been at least 1/4" thick, have one in the workshop that is not in use that is 6 foot long and about 18" diameter and to heavy to lift even one end by hand ( it may get cut up soon for something

here a stone is 14 pounds so 4 stones is not a hundredweight a pound is 16 ounces these days most people here have gone to kilo's though here when weighing people pounds and stones were normally used rather than just pounds like you lot over there use

I would do a test on any unknown tank to double the working pressure, and known tanks I would make sure are tested each year as well. compressed air has a lot of stored energy and will explosively decompress if given the chance, this is why tanks are hydraulicly rested as there is no stored energy that way and at worst you get a little jet of water when something goes

im at kettering, anyone interested?

I just thought we would go over the top a bit on the rebar and studding, I would always over engineer things rather than under as it is much cheaper to do it too well the first time than have to remove it and do it again, the block was 6' long and just under 2 foot wide IIRC. rebar and studding was no closer than 3" from the edges

thank you for the explanation DSW, I knew a little of it but not all. when I installed a hammer we went down 4 foot, there was IIRC about 14 pieces of 16mm studding, each 4 foot long with a 90 degree bend about a foot from the bottom, a template was made from square steel tube with the holes drilled to within 1mm of the holes in the base of the hammer and nutted above and below, a cage was made from 25mm rebar with 4 rectangular frames going front to back that sat on the bottom of the L shapes of the studding and a few cross pieces, a few small welds to hold things in place and it was dropped in the hole. then 2 cubic meters of concrete was poured in to fill it to ground level, we had about a foot of studding above ground because the makers of the hammer said to sit it on wooden railway sleepers ( think you call them ties ). we left the concrete for a month and then dropped the timber on the studding and put the hammer in place, it all went on perfectly. this was for a sahinler 50kg air hammer ( 120lb at a guess )

im sure Iron Woody could commute daily :)

i know he is a good distance away but vampire archer on here is looking to learn, he is from watford i think, see the introduce yourself section here

I do this 6 days a week and make tools from the finds, I stock 5 types of rail at the moment and each in various lengths, lots of wear parts from excavators and agricultural stuff, lots of bearings and parts of bearings and much more

am thinking of making a belt sander to use some scotchbrite belts I can get cheap, on the lookout myself or going to make some

i use forge breeze by kg smith, seems good to me and pay 9.75 for a 20kg bag

would have liked to go to this but it is the same weekend as another event im at, maybe next year