Jmercier

For one your temp is far too high for 1065 if you're quenching at 1800f. 1065 should be normalized between 1550 and 1600, and hardened between 1475 and 1550. this should result in around a 62 RC hardness as quenched, which is about as hard as you're going to get 1065

New England Blacksmiths are having our spring meet this next weekend in brentwood. Pretty sure there's day-of registration that doesn't include the food. Should drive on down, there's a ton of great people and great demonstrations and you'll meet people local to you. There are a few specialized groups in the area too, like for bladesmithing and the like.

Bob Menard, one of the members of the board of directors for the New England Blacksmith's is out of Portland ME. You should be able to find him in the yellow pages as Ball and Chain Forge I believe.

The short shelf is typical of many older peter wright anvils. I would not repair the anvil unless you find that the flaws in it are hampering your work. When you do, there are several knowledgable people about anvil repair locally who are members of the New England Blacksmiths. ( New England Blacksmiths we're having our spring meet up in brentwood NH the weekend after memorial day ) I know Ed Cannon who lives out by the cape, and John D'Abate who lives in Rhode Island near me both have done multiple anvil repairs on various types of anvils. I believe that Ed uses 11018 rod for his anvil repairs. You have to do the welding in just the right manner to prevent from pushing heat around and causing delamination of the face, or destroying the overall hardness of the face.

It also depends on what you're sharpening, the DMT sharpeners are excelent for general and field use blades, but completely inadequate for a straight razor for example. For straight razors, I'd talk with Howard at The Perfect Edge to get some good stones for that. In general he's a good source for stones of all sorts, DMT, Norton, etc.

My shop is in half of my 2 car garage, and i've squezed a very large amount of equipment in a small space. Once I can get my brother to get his convertible out of my garage I should have a whole 2 car garage =) Tharkis' workshop !

Just for a good measure, a 30 gallon trashcan holds 200lbs of bituminous coal almost exactly, so you're looking at about 300 gallon capacity to hold a ton. That's not too much bigger than an average heating oil tank.

This last weekend I had a discussion with a person who deals with getting tool steel made and selling to bladesmiths and the like, and he told me that the info that he had received was that it wasn't actually the demand from china that's been raising the prices lately, trade agreements had been made which alleviated the large price jumps due to Chinese demand around the turn of the century. He said that it's been the demand from Turkey and India driving the price lately, with an incredibly huge amount of the steel that those two countries are buying from the US being turned into re-bar and resold to Iran who can not buy directly from the US.

I've always been enamored with blacksmithing, several years ago I got talking with the fellow demonstrating at the King Richard's ren faire near me, and he said to just come in some sort of costume, pay for my ticket to the faire and I could spend all day with him learning whenever I wanted. I didnt have any costume at that time other than a suit of chain mail I had made, so i strapped on my kilt and a baggy shirt, and started going to the faire to learn to smith. 25$ to enter the faire day after day may have seemed like a lot, but it was literally nothing for a day's worth of blacksmithing lessons. I learned to forge wearing a kilt, and sometimes still do so today =P Hey kilts are comfortable !

I get my stencils made from TUS Technologies, and I use a Lectroetch VT15-A power unit for my etching

My shop is kept clean (sort) mostly by necessity. I've got too little space to move around and get anything done if I dont keep it reasonably tidy. I know what you mean by the $$$ aspect though. I'd love to have a hydrolic forging press, a power hammer, a digitally controlled heat treating oven, etc, but that all takes $$$ which I dont have =)

They're only different shaped if you want them to be different shaped. Joe Szliaski, ABS Master Smith, recommended that you actually dont want a "hawk shaped hole" for user hawks anyways because if you're in the woods and your handle breaks, it's far easier to use a square or round hole to secure the head on a makeshift handle than it is to try to carve a piece of wood to fit the typical "tear drop" shape you see on many hawks.

Mike, when you get to working on the hammer, let me know and I can drive down and give you a hand if you want. You've had the darned thing for a as long as I've had my shop and it's always been a "future project" for you, but now I'm impatient to see it up and running ! I'd love to have a "project hammer" myself, but my treadle hammer and fly press will do for now till I can get a power hammer. Also a 2 horse motor should be sufficient for the 40lb helve at least from having watched other hammers go for sale. I've seen a couple 50lb helves being run by 2HP motors, though they were not bradleys, but I'd imagine that it takes around the same to run the bradley as the others I've seen.

I'm pretty sure there has been a thread like this around before, but for the life of me I cant find it using the search function. So with Glenn's other Show your XXX threads, how about one to showcase your whole workspace. I'm going to cheat a little here and give a link to the virtual shop tour I just finished and put online this weekend on my webpage. But.. I'm intrested in seeing where the rest of you work and what major tools you've got ! Tharkis' workshop !

Nice, how many horses is that band saw?

From what i can see of it, I agree, it looks like an electric punch press, good for fast repeatable operations, not so hot for general forging because it needs to run the full stroke length with every rotation (That's when you'd want to get a fly press instead)

Mystery steel is fine for a flint striker provided you know it's a high carbon mystery steel. If you've never seen someone trying to strike a fire with a flint and a mild steel striker, you've never seen someone swearing a lot and taking a very long time to do what should be a fast task =P

Yoshindo Yoshihara is a person to look up if you are interested in Japanese blades and their forging edit: for those of you who speak german YouTube - Forgiatura Nihonto

Just a hint if you want an extra sturdy angle iron stand... use old bed frames for your angle iron. You can get them free on the side of the road all the time, and they're a mid/high carbon steel rather than mild.

This one being so small (i say that after i just about killed myself moving it) i'm not sure if it's got enough "oomph" to effectivly use / make dies like that, but it's still amazing how much power is in a little (relativly) machine. Someday when I get more shop space and more $$$ I'll have to look into getting a larger press for more heavy work.

So I finally got my fly press all set up today and able to be used. I've only got one tool for it, and need to learn to weld to make more since I've fabricated a bunch of tool blanks to fit the die receiver. This thing is great, I took it and just to do something, used 1/2" square, cold, and ran two parallel lines down the side, like you'd do getting ready for a fancy twist. Normally just veining 2 lines like this hot with a chisel would take me a couple heats and not be nearly as straight and precise looking. It took all of 60 seconds to do it cold with the fly press, vs maybe 10 minutes + by hand, and it looks better too. This is only a really small fly press as far as they go, if you go by what they sell at oldworldanvils or pieh tools, it'd be somewhere midway between a #2 and a #3, but even at its small size, it packs a punch!

A sign that every blacksmith should have in their shop and wherever they do demos should always be "If any part of my shop OR myself is on fire, please let me know, it is not part of the demo, and just because you see it, doesnt mean that I see it."

Blasphemy! that's not a knife, that's an incredible anvil! stand it on end and you're golden !