bruce wilcock

for small to medium coal fires,up to shoemaking and jobbing size, a side draft well made takes some beating ,but big coal fires it doesnt seem to work as well coke fires need a full hood and a grit arrester hood is the best ,with big coke fires the amount of air blown in will send not just grit but coke with fire in up the hood and if there arent grit arester ledges in the flue the grit will be raining back down onto the hearth filling the shop with grit.

all this talk about warming anvils no -on speaks about working on big anvils that have taken up a lot of heat , its no fun the anvil got too hot to touch by 9 oclock and the rest of the day to get through ,the strikers can get away from it if you are working with a change of strikers two on, and two of, but the smith is stuck over the , block, and the day warming up

most of my anvil stands are cast iron ,i have made plate stands i make them the same shape as the cast ones with shaped sides to let you get your feet up to the anvil , then i fill them with cement and then put a thin pice of wood on the top under the anvil, the sheffield cuttlers used a block of sandstone, and the first shop i worked at all the anvils were on concrete stands ,and the cast standswere thrown out in the yard, and the shop turned out a lot of work ,not a welder, drill ,no grinder,no shear, just anvils and vices and a masive whetstone that ran in a trough and you stood over it, so they thought that was the way to set up a anvil in a shop.country shops used a oak stump i have worked on them at shoing compertitions ,but have never run home and cut down a oak tree.

yes HW has it ,we have other things to talk about,and do, and we are all getting older by the minute,pitty to waste it

poke the gas cutter in give it a wiff of oxy 1/2 min ,

if the coal is lifless and and you have a lot mix a small amount of anthracite with it ,if it burns with a lot of flame and no heat mix coke ,if it burns into soft white ash use it in the house fire ,and if it spits and crackels all the time even when its warmed up, make a road ,give it away ,just get shut of it ,

my name is Bruce Wilcock, 60 years old , blacksmith from school and still doing the same type of work ,masons tools and shoing ,less shoing now and more toolsmithing, i like to take the longbow out and se if the new set of arrows i have made group better than the last, wife Brenda and two lasses one lad ,the last thing i want for christmas is a anvil, a card for the camera is more my line now, :lol:

One rod the anchors we forge and weld are 1/4 ton aprox the last one 6 cwt ,if you give me a post adrress i will send you a dvd of last years ,the ones filming olways seem to disappear when we need them but thay got most on film, alot of that work is like watching paint dry,and we used some local fiddle music and that is a good excuse for going deaf,the idea of the dvd was to help pay for the coal ,

,rail spikes were used in the uk for quarry and light railways,i saw some last year at the Vivian slate mine in north Wales, but the rail spring clips holding the flat bottom rail in the chair, will make knives, and most of the small hand tools you will need as well, scrap yards in the Doncaster area will fit you up . lads come up here every year from Yorkshire anchor forging so i keep in touch ,there will be a anchor forged around Easter,this year,if you can use a hammer,

i make a lot of stone masons hammers, and after fitting the shafts and wedging up,all the shaft ends are finished on a belt sander, never the grindstone my father worked at knife fettling ,and they had heavy leather sheaths that they slipped the blade into whilst they finished the handles, and later he if he was making a turnip knife for the farmers he would wrap strip leather tight around the blade,to work on the handle he never held a blade without, he told me he had seen too many knife and razor grinders in the Sheffield trade with fingers of

my resolution is simular to Nolano , tho i am not so modest,

in Shetland its the wind chill ,minus 1 with a 60 mph N wind and after a day or so it feels like 20 below,there must be a way of working out the wind chill, all i know is it gets cold

Strine if you are trying to get us jealous, its working,,,,, the way to warm the anvil is to make a set of cart horse shoes and leave them on the anvil whilst you go in for your breakfast ,

Of all the tools the one likely to cause comment ,is a angle grinder an sheet steel ,and brass finishing , in a empty shed . On still frosty day my son says he can hear the heavy hammer working ,across water 3 miles away the other side of the bay, and thats in a stone building with slate roof ,we have no background noise to lose it in, often i get folk in the smithy ,say ,you were hard at it last night ,and i know they live a way of On thing we can forget with a lifetime working in the smithy,is that the bulk of the population have hearing like Bats,

brought the grid down, when the shock wave hit the Hoover dam,and they had to lower the water to look the wall over,still thats in the past,and i did get all the point dressing during the shut down whilst the damage was repared, to this day they still think it was

nice to be a simple forging smith life is so uncomplicated, :)

the short answer is you will have to temper , but you might get away with as forged,for tools in light work,hoes and small trowels, spades you will have to harden and temper out to get them to stand up to work

Merry Christmas to one and all from over the pond,

just ask , or you might be getting plenty of hammer practice on the stone pile ,and those chains have got to be a nusance to work in :cry:

on big fans i close some of the air intake side ,mesh over inlet and tape a pice of leather to close of some air

of all the blades that hold up , the blades made out of big power hack saw blades seem to be as good as ones we have spent hours making , as regards holding a edge, the 24 ins hack saw blade is a thick thing to start with,pitty they wont stand bending,

you have a friend praying this side the pond

the one and only time Locktite has ever been used in my smithy was to fix a bush in place on a roots blower ,that was well done, i used locktite grade for fitting bushing ,and that was at least 12 years ago and it runs nearly daily and the job has held up, Now it will proberly atomise tomorrow morning,

as long as the clinker lets the air through its best left well alone ,if the clinker hasnt a hole through it and the air has to go under the clinker and makes a fire without a center ,use a slice and make a hole in the clinker and carry on ,when we weld anchors the clinker fills the bottom of a wheel barrow when we have finished and got it out, when men start digging holes in the fires ,cleaning the fire at nearly every heat,when up with me learning , i see red,and turn into a monster, thats when i get out the pics of chainsmiths working with great piles of chain at the side of them ,and ask the man thats just dug a hole in the fire for the fourth time in a hour, did he think the chainsmiths cleared the fire at each weld ,on small chain, and if they did ,haw did they manage to make all that chain, most of the problems are working with thin fires and too mutch air. sorry for going on but to se men digging holes in fires brings the best out in me,no ones walked of on me yet ,but thers time yet

7. as tight as a goldfishes backside, and thats water tight, Edit: words changed without changing the concept.