Borntoolate

That pile of post leg vices made me sad. Like an above ground graveyard. But to each his own.

That's an overwhelmingly impressive collection. It's a shame that all of those tools are just sitting there, doing absolutely nothing.

Yeah, that seems a real waste to me. I don't get it. BUt I guess if someone really wants an anvil they can get one. If nothing else just fork over the change to buy new.

The guys at Grizzly seem to like Green paint for tools... A lot! Of course they are not big on blacksmithing. They do sell some anvils

you could probably get the tight part of the scroll done with a short heat and small diameter pipe and then as long as you have some length on your flat bar you could make the longer more gentle bend cold/warm as long as you hold the metal far enough away from where you want the bend. Too close and you're more likely get a kink. Then to reverse the bend just wedge it between to bars that are an inch or so apart and gently, without kinking reverse the bend. move the bend inside the two bars so that you don't kink one spot. heat will make it less likely to kink. Basically just two bars in a vice sticking up, an inch apart or whatever makes sense (bending fork). if you have a 2" pipe or so you could use it like the horn on the anvil to make some gentle tweaks to the bends with a hammer, done either hot or cold. Cold could make unsightly shiny hammer marks on your work. You might want to locate and drill your hole first since doing that after bending will be a little more complicated... maybe.

I like it well done , However , a bit more time and it could be a bit smoother on the pin even with that it is a nice piece .

Sam

Interesting thought came to mind. When I look at work done by others I actually like the rough or imperfect parts of the work. When I look at my own work I see the rough parts as somewhat ugly or a result of poor technigue/skill. They stand out as glaring problems and somewhat ugly. I just found it interesting that I am more critical of my own work than of others. I beleive I could make a broach very similar to this. BUt if I did would I just see the imperfections? Probably...

Ratstomper said after reading - "I shall live tired, but I shan't retire." Leave it to a buncha blacksmiths to argue about correct technique when such an inspirational gem of craftsman philosophy pops up. ;)

Sorry I messed up the quote text...

I am with you! First I plan to live that long and second I plan to be able to do Blacksmithing and all sorts of other things long after his age.

Things like: fishing, Pool, Reading, Walking, a few chin-ups, Dressing myself, feeding myself, climbing nimbley into the back of a pickup, jumping out of that same pickup!... And so on!

This is nothing short of inspiring. I love it when the older folks prove to us youger 48 year olds that there is lots of useful life and time left regardless of how high your anvil is or where you hold your thumb! There is more than one way to live to be a productive 100+. I think one of the main things is to stay active and have something you are doing and something you are learning. Gotta keep both mind and body active. Teaching, learning from and being around the young also helps!

On this particular job we had to rebuild a bunch of air flow tubes 30 feet in the air, cahanging all their directions, etc. How are we gonna do this? TRIG...Try In Git It Trig he replied. Before long a plumb bob from those exposed tubes (outlines) we determined the original dimensions and some.7071 calculations for the angles to get the latitudes and departures. Some here will understand that .7071 is a mathmatical proportion to that very same triangle. Go look it up if you do not know. So that man and i as a young helper installed many thousands of dollars of new tubing, ordered from a supplier, and everything fit...with the use of a prybar and alighnment tool.

Carry on

You just explained actual Trigonometry. 0.707 is the Sin and Cosin value for 45 degrees. You were correct in that all Trig is is the mathematical proportions of a triangle. With trig you can just look up the proportions for any angle you choose or happen to know. BUt I agree with the rest of the post as well.

Me too. English major.

the easiest math is no math at all, just build it.

It is a potent tool for a good many things.

Any smith who won't use trig and geometry is absolutely doing things the hard way. (Whether they know it or not is another topic.)

I shortened the last quote above. Lots of good points about practicality, "getting it done", over thinking as opposed to just getting it done... Actually I resemble all the above. So there is a balance between "engineering" something and just doing a more simple direct action that get's you to the same place sooner.

I can get frustrated with myself when I try to overthink things. I think that is partially why, as an engineer, I have gotten into woodworking and blacksmithing. I try to combine some engineering skills with some practical skills to actually produce something. Then there is the combination of the mental and the physical. That is one thing that some engineers miss. In my day job there is little physical work so at home I have the shop for that. And what could be more physical than pounding hot iron! But also there is a huge mental, thinking, planning, eyeballing aspect that is very absorbing and enjoyable. Then the feel of it and the use of the object when it is done.

So what is my point? I am not really sure sometimes... but I think it centers around the general joy of using knowledge, experience and physical effort to produce something of value. but also on a thought that... Some folks are all practical / common sense. Some folks are all analytical and want to calculate something on paper. IF I had to pick between the two and it was all or nothing I would go with the practical / common sense. But. Since I can have my druthers I prefer to try to combine the two. I am convinced that if the Engineer and the worker on the floor can combine their knowledge and work together that a great deal can be accomplished. If either totally rejects the other than we are all diminished.

Measure from the floor to your mid fist or knuckle. Subtract the height of the anvil. Cut a stump to the remainder. Worked fine for how long? Or bury it in the ground with the anvil at knuckle height if you have a dirt floor. KISS.

Yo, I am curious how you finish your stump such that it lays flat on both top and bottom. Just with chainsaw or what? My main anvil is on a stump.

Trig, not just for anvil stands!

that stove is Freakin, Godfrey Daniels Awesome!!!!

Agreed

the best part about having angles from 8 to 10 degrees means that the length of the leg is. ..for blacksmith purposes...the same measurement as the height...unless you wanna cut a silly millimeter.
this is one step before rocketeering. I do however appreciate the well designed example.

Carry on

Agreed! Absolutely. And the math at 0.99 and 0.98 support that!

I will still persist that for us do it ourselvers that some trig is learnable and valuable. We can always mock up, lay out, use mutliple people to hold things at various angles and so forth that get us out of using trig but there are times when it is... well.. A simple blessing to know. I also see it in many of the old blacksmithing books.

I am thinking that Trig was a blacksmithing basic perhaps back in the day? The nice part is that it is not nearly as hard as Rocket Science!

i like you rusty would like to hear words of wisdom re filing sharpening. an art/subject in its own right...

Well I am not Rusty but I will reply. Well, maybe I'm a little rusty.... Whatever!

In regard to sharpening which is probably getting even more off topic... what I have learned is that it is all about the burr. IF that makes no sense to you then you might probably stuggle with how to sharpen a tool. Unless you have a fancy sharpening system that takes care of the for you. I expect my wood chisels to be shave my arm hairs sharp. It's not hard to do or maintain once you get some things right. And you can do it faster by hand "of course!" than by fancy system. On the other hand maybe understanding the burr would help make your "system" faster?

IF you can get the previous post ingrained in your head you will have just completed a near full semester of Trigonometry. Don't get in a rush. It looks hard but isn't that hard. And can be really useful. THough a lot of times you can eyeball and do many other things to avoid it.

All us "shop type build it yourself" types should learn some trig. The pic below is the basics. It looks greek (well maybe it is actually greek....). BUt once you learn 3 things it is just simple math.

1. This will only work if the angle at bottom right is 90 degrees!

2. Need to learn how to get the Sin, Cos, and Tan values for the Theta Angles. Theta is the name (greek) for the zero symbol with the line through it. So Sin is the value of the Sin (Sine) at the angle of .

Sin 90 degrees is 1.0
Sin 45 degrees is 0.707
Tan 22 degrees is 0.404

Punch in 45 and press the Sin button to get the value of 0.707.

You can get these values from windows calculator as described above. You can also get these values from many calculators or you can get them from look up tables in books.

These are pronounced Sin = Sign, Tan = Tangent and Cos = Cosign.
Spelling is Sine, Cosine and Tangent.

3. You always need two of the four things shown (A, B, C or ) in order to be able to calculate a 3rd one. This will require that you either get a list of all the various ways you can re-arrange these equations or learn how to do it yourself. You can get this from books, google etc... OR ask a high schools student with decent grades. THis is the hardest part. Don't give up.

So if you know one thing (height of anvil stand) and you want to cut a support bar to weld and you specify the angle to be 8 degrees then you just need to know the length to cut it to. You want to know the Hypotnuse length with side B = Anvil Height and angle 8 degrees from the vertical which is 82 degrees from the horizontal! So = 82 degrees not 8 degrees!!. Then "Hypotnuse = B (anvil height) / Sin 82 degrees" Sin 82 degrees = 0.99026. At 10 degrees or 80 degrees from horizontal sin 80 = .9848 I realize that at this small angle you could take anvil height plus a "lil bit "and you would be fine. BUt when the angles get to 70 degrees then what?

Learning some trig can be very useful.

I suggest a 4th step. When you calculate take a look at the answer and see if it makes sense. Make a simple drawing to work from don't just try to imagine it in your head. This can be just a sketch with wax pencil on the floor. If the calculated answer is wrong then YOU made a simple math error. Figure out the error and move on. You can get by without this but sometimes it is very very useful.

my first mistake was thinking I could make and progress making round things. Then I learned first to be square, octagon etc... I was clueless.

see pinned post " how to search IFI"

as I look again, after hitting my own tonight I noticed that at roughly 1:00 it looked like you were drawing out / refining a point in the middle of the anvil. If I see it right I think you should do this off the far edge just where your anvil is radiused. The point you are making is pointing right at where you should do this. You start here earlier in the video, working the far edge, tapering... but then at 1:00 appear to be working the final point in the middle of the anvil. Make sense? Or do I see it wrong.

I love a forging project put to music!!! Well done. And the simplicity of this project, with the musical entertainment, could help others realize just how powerful blacksmithing can be to make something so useful, so easily and appealing how could anyone resist the appeal. At the same time also get a glimpse of how versastile and creative one can be. Fabulous!

my shop is half in my shop and the other half is out the back door with a lean too type roof to keep the weather/sun out. Beyond that is a large back yard which provides additional space beyond anything I need. I just move into the yard, a second anvil, a work bench.... whatever.

I saw some rebar that had been twisted. The ridges and so forth on the rebar can look pretty decent with a twist. Something to consider for you next project. I like twists! AND super easy to do

We did a steak turner. IT came out great. He was pleased with the result and felt he got a good wiff of what blacksmtihing is all about. NO pics sorry. Thanks for the info.

Frank, I agree just doing "drills" is boring!!!! :angry: IN my opinion there is no reason to do a "drill' without incorporating it into making something useful right off the bat. Which we did! It was a good partial day in the shop.

Got to promote the art of blacksmithing... We'll see what happens to those seeds in the coming months. As he was leaving my second visitor arrived who needed 1-1/8" holes in a 3/8" thick angle iron. My Plasma cutter had been quite lonely for several months and so WE were both happy. FIrst we have fun with heating metal to 2000F plus and beating it with a hammer. Then we have fun heating air and melting metal at 20,000F plus :)

My problem is the that roof is not very high but it is sort of connected/associated with the shop building and it's roof that I think I am going to need to extend the chimney above the actual shop roof. Thus it will extend a good 15' above the roof at the forge. So it is not hanging from above but being held from below with a good 15' above the roof, at the forge. I also would like to keep the rain out of the smithy both at the roof and at the top opening. So just canting it in a hole doesn't work for me. Rain in Louisiana is often Torrential! I guess some sort of chain and hinged cover would work for that top opening. I don't want rain pouring down into the forge. I can make all the hardware I just don't have a good idea how to mount all this or even how to get 200 pounds of 20' long stuff into the hole. I am pretty sure I can figure out the getting it up there part. BUt the mounting of it is pretty sketchy in my mind so far. Pictures of peoples own mounting or sketches would be fabulous!

Maybe a pre-mounted bracket at the right height on the flue. Once inserted into a hole in the roof it stops and sets the flue in place. Maybe set this bracket at the angle of my roof. Then brackets and guy wires in 3 directions to keet it from tipping? Seal up the opening and done! NO MORE SMOKE!???

In the above pic you can see the overall shop partially with the lean too roof where the forge is. THe shop roof line and smithy area roof line are being pointed to by Brians head. Yes, I am shamelessley sticking a Brian pic in here. And no I am not saying that he has a pointy head. Brian of course is the one with the plaid shirt! <_<

On your budget you can buy a 20 ft piece of steel culvert pipe, 12 inch, like used under driveways. Hang that over the fire. Pictures of Brian Brazeal's shop show this exact setup with no hood.

you can see it in the background of his picures
https://lh6.googleus...03/PA090034.JPG

there are a lot more to look at if you want
https://plus.google....bums?banner=pwa

Phil

Been forging now under a short roof out the back doors of my shop. No vent. Very smoky. I like the 20' steel culvert idea. Does anybod have any guidance on how to mount this. It would need to go through a roughly 8' high sloped roof and then be mounted securely. I live in Southern Louisiana so it needs ot be able to withstand some inland hurricane winds. Here is a pic that might be helpful.

Any and all advice on how to get rid of the smoke with my set-up is welcome. I might even consider building a brick forge and stack. But I would like to get this done sooner than later. Also, how do you manhandle such a large item. I have a compact tractor that might be useful to somehow strap it too to ease it in place.

Half hammer blow? for shoulders, not points.

See my second response (with the long list) under the iforge iron thread, Common Beginner Mistakes. It may help a little with what you are doing.

Thanks, I guess I better review Brian's hammer blow sketch and get my words right. Thanks.

I have been teaching for about 5 years, and the "controlled hand forging" abana download is just superb, I downloaded it, printed it, and put it into a 3 ring binder with plastic sleeves on each page, I take the students through the first several projects, and let them take more and more freedom with the techniques as we go. Make sure they have a drawing tablet so their own ideas can manifest directly from the teachings. Also the project "miners candlestick" is a great guage as to when to let them start taking thier own path, if they can complete that one on thier own, they will need little supervision going forward.

I'll look into that, sounds great! Looks like a lot of files. It would be nice if there was an all in one link for the whole shootin match.