Jmercier

The issue with natural gas is that the supply lines to your home are not usual high enough pressure for most of the purposes needed for forging and other shop jobs. Usually it's rather expensive to get the proper high pressure service you'd need for forging.

There's a reason they call it upsetting =P

Very good photo Plop, That's a great example of how it was just weld bead on the outside, but the actual surface of the bar itself was never actually welded to the other bar / frame, more held in place ala hot glue.

Welcome aboard! Ulm is a gorgeous city (even when it's -15c and an ice storm so I wasnt able to go up the church tower) and that whole area of germany around Blaubeuren, Stuttgart and M

Oh man ! I want one, (and was just thinking about your anvils just the other day even) but my hot water system died, and my income tax return is going to go into repairs / new system instead of tools this year =( My question is, are you still going to have made any of the hornless colonial pattern that I know you've had made before? If so, I know what i'm saving my pennies for in the future =)

I typically forge my blade, leave it in the forge when I finish to let it aneal, do my grinding, go back to the forge and normalize three times, and then after my last normalizing cycle bring it to tempe and quench it, going straight to my pre-heated toaster-oven tempering station after. Because of the process that I use, yes, I normalize after grinding.

The one in the bottom left corner looks like a boilermaker's set, technically not a hammer. I've got a large boilermaker's set myself, and yours looks like a more fancy version of what i've got.

I've got a whisper baby and 2 home made propane forges. The whisper baby is a LOT of forge for it's size, and it's the most frugal forge I've ever used, i can run 12+ hours on a 20lb grill tank. If you just want to buy a small portable forge that doesn't need power or anything and that you can just pick up in one hand, grab a tank in the other, and go, a whisper baby is a lot of bang for the buck. Is it less expensive to make your own? sure! but for some of us , time is money and the time saved in buying pre-made is worth the money =)

Unfortunately forklift propane cylinders are designed for liquid service, not gas service and you really dont want to be dealing with LP hoses and the like near your forge, where there's not the built in safety systems, OPD devices, etc of a normal LP Gas tank. It would cost you more to make a forklift tank "safe" to use than it would to just go out and buy a new LP gas tank.

P.S. Thread necromancy isnt very polite. Please please please check the dates on a thread before reviving 3+ year old threads (particularly contentious ones)

A layout table is a luxury the space of my garage wont allow... until my brother gets his '76 Triumph TR6 convertible out of the other half ! The most unique layout table I've seen however was one with a pivot point so that a whole end of the table would rotate to the side for laying out stair railings where you could set the angle of the table to match the rise and run of the stairway being worked on. It was quite neat.

My treadle hammer hits wicked hard, and it doesn't have a solid base, it's got a 6" tube with a solid block on top of it (with a 1" hardy hole in the center) I think the 15:1 or 18:1 (depends on who you ask) anvil to hammer ratio is really a power hammer guideline more so than a treadle hammer. http://www.tharkis.com/images/shop/treadlehammer.jpg http://www.tharkis.com/images/shop/treadlehammer2.jpg

Vulcan anvils certainly aren't as good quality as fisher anvils, but for the most part if you find one, they're still better than the harbor fright stuff that many people are using these days. The small 70 and 80lb vulcans actually had the opposite problem, in that their face was many times too hard, and badly chipped edges are very common on the smaller size Vulcan anvils. That anvil you have is a nice one, BeverDam, and I wouldnt worry too much about the spot on the horn, if you need to bend something in a small radius, use a bickern instead.

Ooh, seaxy

The reason why it looks like a weld line around the top of the anvil is because that's exactly what it is though not in an electric weld bead sense. The bottom of a fisher anvil is cast in place ontop of the heated tool steel plate to get a complete weld of the face to the body. Depending on how the anvil was dressed this can be more or less obvious on various fisher anvils but has no impact on the useability of it (and the other cast body tool plate anvils such as vulcans)

I love the Yater blocks, i hope to get the one i'm missing (3 cones on back) sometime this year, but I'm also probably going to get one of the small New England blacksmith's swage blocks precisely because the Yater ones are so darned big that it's half impossible to move them

Heh, I've debated using part of my income tax return for a mig/tig welder. I just this last weekend started to learn to weld stick (I've never used an electric welder before, just forge welding) and so far i'm just blowing holes through pieces of metal... sure I'm getting 2 pieces to stick together but they look like swiss cheese after. Maybe I should take a class instead of just trying to figure it out on my own =D

In hindsight my swage block stand should have been built mobile, instead it's almost a solid block of wood >_< I made it big enough to hold a complete pair of the WM Yater swage blocks, even though I've only got half of the pair, and it's a "brick" of 2x4s laminated together, with a slot in the center to hold the blocks vertically as well.

Benders like that, like hossfeld benders are very nice. If you're interested in one, right now harbor freight has on sale their hossfeld #1 imitation for 50$ which is far cheaper than I could build one myself (I picked one up) Harbor Freight Tools

Man, all these pictures are making me want to forge a cannon =)

When you need a swage block, it's invaluable, when you dont need it, it's always in the way of things =) I've got one of the 2 wally yater swage blocks (still keeping an eye out for the mate to it) and I use it occasionally, though not all that frequently overall. I figure if I get the matching other side, then I'll never need to get another swage block again because i'll have more forms than i know what to do with. EDIT: Apperantly centaur forge sells the Yater pattern blocks now having bought the rights, I need to make sure the size is still the same and then consider buying the one i'm missing. The one i have is signed WM Yater and was hand finished by him, so it's in excelent condition. I'm not sure what effort goes into finishing one of the centaur blocks to the same quality.

Angle seems to be a matter of prefrence. Personally I like a hot cut hardy that has one side that's flat, straight up and down, with the other angled, which allows me to get straight end cuts on bars depending on which direction the hardy is in my hole. My current hot cut hardy is mild steel, but when I make a new one i'm going to use a tool steel for the added toughness and edge retention. If you dont have the best hammer controll a mild steel hot cut would be best so it doesnt marr the face of your hammer as much when you accidentally strike it, but since you should never have the hammer hit the hardy in the first place (or use a different hammer for hot cutting anyways) I wouldnt be worried about the face of my hammer

I'd recommend making yourself a pair of jaw inserts to cover the jaws. You can face the inserts with copper too if you want an even softer surface to prevent any maring.

It all depends on the rivet. If it's a small rivet and it's anealed, I'll do them cold, if it's a large rivet, I do it hot. You dont need to upset the end of the rivet that much for it to hold two pieces together. The key when doing it hot however is to just have the end hot, not the whole shaft of the rivet, otherwise you end up upsetting the rivet inside the hole on your tongs and they wont open and close because it's now too tight, and your tongs shouldnt be so tight that they dont open on their own when you let go of the reins.

Yes, I told her that I found their site from here at iforgeiron.com =) I always try to give credit where it's due.