DanBrassaw

Fun game! It reminds me of a time a few years ago, when a friend of mine was over for dinner with my family and he thought we were crazy because we interrupted dinner for 20 minutes arguing vehemently over whether or not a stand alone unit in the kitchen was level or not. These things happen in a room full of engineers and carpenters.

Great idea, I like the look.

I've only been blacksmithing for a year, so take this with a grain of salt, but going off my experience so far: As big a building as you can afford. As Stewart said, we do tend to be accumulators, and the more space for storage, temporary equipment repair/holding areas, the better. I've got a 20 x 40 shop, and about half of it right now is filled with odd bits of building supplies (that are supposed to be used for repairs on my shop), scrap, and random storage for equipment from my too many other hobbies. Also, 20 ft seems a bit narrow after working in some other shops. My equipment gets too spread out in the long direction in my shop, and the mess/clutter quickly creeps in from either side. My roof is single sided, 9 feet at my forge, and running down to 6 feet or so at the back. It feels a little claustrophobic, but it used to be a chicken coop, and they are much smaller than even me, so I'm sure they were fine with it. If I were to build a dedicated shop, I would do full eight foot walls, a roof pitch somewhere around 4/12 with some loft space and some open ceiling, and DEFINITELY a clear span. I have posts running down the middle of my shop, and they are a pain in the butt. I have a concrete floor in my shop, and aside from the 50+ years of heaving making it a little lopsided, I like it for ease of cleaning (HA! Like I do that...) and not having to worry about losing a hot chunk of metal under my forge. I would stick with that. I'm not sure what you mean by floor anchors, and I don't have any experience with cranes or hoists. One other thing that immediately comes to mind is lighting. I'm a big fan and promoter of natural light. To be honest, I've mostly been able to be in my shop at night, but the few times that I've been in there all day, I've enjoyed the brightness from my large windows with the exception of the one that's unfortunately positioned right next to my forge. Lastly, one modification that I've been wanting to make to my shop for a while now and haven't gotten around to is a dedicated grinding/filing station, with curtains around it to contain the mess. I don't mind the dust and debris that comes with most operations, but that grinding dust is miserable and I would love to contain it to the best of my abilities.

I don't know if anyone else has posted this info on this site, but on most of the old blacksmithing books I've looked at on Google Books, on the left side it says "Get this book in print" with a down arrow. If you click that, and then click "On Demand Books" it will take you to a site that lists sellers that own on-demand book printing machines, and most of them will ship, and the prices are pretty cheap (around 10 bucks for the few I've checked on). I haven't ordered any yet, so I can't vouch for the quality of the material or printed images, but I thought I'd throw this out there in case anyone was interested. I know I hate reading books on my computer screen.

They haven't quite "followed" me home yet, but I just got an offer for half a dozen or so marble slabs, 3'x3' and a few inches thick, out of an old building being gutted. Luckily the guy who salvaged them owns a backhoe, so loading them shouldn't be too painful. I'm not sure what I'll use them for yet, but they'd make some killer table tops! Of course, I don't own a power hammer, so forging legs strong enough to support them may become a workout.

That looks great!

Great idea! Have you thought about using peel and stick felt? You can get it in sheets that you can cut to any size.

That was a great video, thanks for the link. I tried making one your way today, rolling the barrel then cutting. It was a disaster. Well, it wouldn't have been a disaster if I had done as you'd said and filed to fit, instead of trying to hammer the middle barrel down in size, requiring me to redrift and realign and re... you get the point. Regardless of any setbacks, I've been having a blast making these hinges. I'm going to complete the ones I need for the sawhorses in a uniform style just so I can get one thing down and learn to do it quicker (three in two hours today!), but I look forward to experimenting with different styles of hinges and different design elements afterwards. Also, I need to get better at hacksawing in a straight line . Thanks again.

Nice score! I watched that one show up the other morning, then it was gone by the evening. Hoped it was snatched up my someone who would put it to good use. What do you suppose the dimple on the heel was caused by? Welcome to IFI!

Yeah, that was my notion. If it only cost 15 bucks, I might add it to my "neat junk" shelf, but I can't see it being useful for anything. The only anvil/vise combos I had seen before this one were the squatty cast ones, and this one caught my eye. I like how they went a step further with the "swiss army" idea, and added a grinder attachment to the outside of the vise. Just think, if you tacked a forge on one side, you could smith without ever leaving one spot!

When you use the side set (pretty sure that's what it's called, correct me if I'm wrong), do you mark in someway to your finished depth and work to that with the side set? Or do you go less, and bring it down to size with a set hammer? I've only done tenons once, and I had barely any tooling or knowledge at the time, so I did them on the edge of the anvil with lots of sloppy hammer work and then did a lot of upsetting and cleaning with the monkey tool, and they certainly did not end up sharp and clean looking.

Pretty neat! http://www.ebay.com/...vectorid=229466 Here's another one, with the attachments that are missing from the one on Ebay: http://blacksmith.org/forums/threads/1282-Stewart-Handy-Worker

I'm making a set of sawhorses that requires 10 hinges, and figured I might try to make them myself. These took about an hour per, but there was a bit of fumbling around and a few pieces ended up in the scrap bin. Hopefully by the time I'm done, I'll have them down to a reasonable rate. I hacksawed down the center two inches, split it on the hardy and the anvil corner, then kind of upset down to try to get a nice flat "T". It seems to work fairly well, though I did have one that split right open on me, which was wierd since it was still hot, so I'm going to pretend that was a defect in the metal and not my fault. At first I tried splitting them over the horn and leaving a nice round opening, but I couldn't seem to get it to work out to be remotely symetrical. Though, I bet if I took the time to figure that method out it would be faster than flattening into a T, because that took a few heats. Or maybe either way is fine if you learn to do it quick enough. I'll stop rambling now. Any suggestions? Any thing you guys do/would do differently? Oh, and they're made from 1/8"x1" bar stock, finished 8 1/2" long, with a 3/8" rivet.

My forge is built out of 1" tubing legs, 1/8" plate, some bed frame angle iron, and a brake drum. Given, I've decided through use that the firepot is definitely not deep enough, but it's worked with few other complaints for about a year of part-time forging. With access to a welder, and if you're concerned about funds, fabricating one might be a better option (the welding practice was the kicker for me, I still need a lot of it!) My bellows were built for nothing as well (scrap and giveaways from the local lumberyard and auto shop), and they perform pretty well, though I do plan on building a proper set of great bellows when I find the time. I don't have a picture, but I followed these plans to some degree: http://cd3wd.com/cd3...ths_bellows.pdf . Tangentially, I must say that after looking at that picture, I had almost forgotten that I started with a trolley rail anvil and a craftsman bench vise as my ENTIRE setup. I even made functional items with that! Still beats whacking at metal with a rock, on top of a bigger rock...

That all makes sense. Thomas, I was thinking about using my coal forge, but I have concrete floors and wooden walls, and figured it would be safer to build a sandbox in one corner dedicated to casting, and cover the walls with something flame retardent. Where I am going to position the furnace lends itself well to double as a forge for where my hypothetical second work station will someday go. I'll build this one fixed vertically, and I can always change it later if the need arises, or build one specifically for forging. Thanks for all the info guys!

I've been reading my butt off on casting aluminum, and have the first few gingery books, and plan on building the lathe. I have about 30 100# propane tanks sitting in my woods burning a hole in my pocket, and plan on using one for my furnace. My question is: why are all the furnaces I've seen vertically oriented? A sideways one would not only be able to double as a forge, but it would eliminate having to switch tongs for pouring. I must be missing something, what is it? Thanks!

So I do plan on attempting this as an exercise after I complete just *one* of my many other unfinished projects, but I have to second freek's question. I've made a few hardie tools out of 1 1/8" inch axle stock, and just fullered them down to 7/8" square, then upset and finished. Why bother with the taper? It seems like a lot of unnecessary work, especially if you're sans power hammer.

Right, that would make more sense than what I said. I used a round drift anyways, which did correct the slant issue, then squeezed it back into oval. I'm not sure if I'll clean the eye up with a round file or make an oval drift, but I should probably go the drift direction since I'll need one in the future at some point anyways. Thanks for your help!

Just as an update, I'm going with a seperate slit and drift, just because that's the how the scrap I had on hand worked out best. Finished the slitter tonight, and made the slit in the hammer stock. It was a little crooked, and I think a tiny bit off center, so I'm going to make a round drift as JNewman suggested, to hopefully accomodate at least the crookedness. As I said, it's 1 1/16 round I'm working with, so I'll fuller out on either side of the eye before I drift it, then round the ends for my bowl shaping last with the grinder. Conveniently, I just finished the bottom fuller to match my friends top fuller he got at Quad State! Tools to make tools to make tools.

So I'm going to attempt my first small hammer head, and I've read a lot into how to slit and drift it, and there are a lot of ways to skin that cat, apparently. I think I'm going to try a combo slitter/drifter, just so I only have to make one tool. A lot of people have posted saying they make them with the intent of making seperate handled tools later. Is there a reason that having a seperate slitter and drift is advantageous? I can already guess why having a handle might be nice . Also, I've seen slitters with both pointed and convex ends. I'm inclined to make mine pointed since I can more easily just find a center punch mark with it, but again, I was wondering if there was any other functional difference I was unaware of. Lastly, should I have a straight section at the top of the drift at all? I thought it might be handy to have while I'm forging the taper, to act as a guide where to stop, but since I plan on drifting from both sides, I'm unsure it would be necessary to the function of the tool, or if it would even be detrimental (allowing it to get stuck when I slam it in too far). I have 1 1/16 axle stock I'll be starting with, long enough that I don't have to worry about tongs until I put the taper on the striking end, and this is also what I plan on making the hammer out of. I got a swage for Xmas, and I've been having fun making small bowls with the ladle forms, but I don't like the texture I get using the ball pein, so I'm going to make a hammer with different large rounds on either end. I haven't decided on the eye size yet, so any recommendations there would be appreciated as well. Thanks!

I tore up an old one speed, one direction 1/2 horse corded hand drill a while back, just because those things are too dangerous to use, and I figured the bearings out of it would come in more handy than the drill would. The chuck out of it had a 1/2 in shaft that fit right in my post drill, after grinding a flat spot for the set screw. If you have an old junk drill, that might be worth trying. If it's too small, you could always make or have made up a bushing to allow it to fit.

I've only done a few beveled cutting edges, and I did them this way. It makes sense to me, the reason being that there is less material to remove through grinding, even if your hammered bevel is rather rough. Are there any other reasons to do it this way? Or just the hammering-is-faster-than-grinding reason.

That's a great idea! I made the stock stand from the blueprints section: ( http://www.iforgeiron.com/page/index.html/_/blueprints/original-series/bp0007-stock-stand ) since I had all the materials on hand. I'm working on a second one with three legs forge-welded on, just for the practice. Oddly, I've only used the stand at the anvil and vise, I still hold my long pieces in the fire. Sometime I miss the forest for the trees. :P

I share that quirk. My friend that shares my shop with me likes to clean at the end of the day, but I like to work right up until I hit the wall, drop my hammer, and go inside. Then the next day, I can drink my coffee, clean up and think about what I'm going to take care of that day.

That is pretty slick! is the decoration part welded to the frame in addition to the riveting on the left? If so, where? Spot welded from the back? Also, what's the finish?