ThomasPowers

Yup every smith should have at least one bigger anvil---150#+ if nothing else it will make them appreciate having a smaller one to move around and travel with. I'm getting too old to be picking up my 165# PW and walking with it---though I do enjoy the looks on the 20-somethings faces when I do it; like when they learn why there is a series of sledge hammers with short handles...

Hmm time to send the Pinkerton's after Jim...

I prefer to hammer such that I don't need a flatter---I have a 1500 gm swedish cross peen with a smooth rocker face that I can pretty much leave a very good surface ready to file for bright work. I call it my bulldozer and many a student's gnarly first S hook taper has magically become smooth and even from one run with it. However if you have a striker flatters can be a big help

OUCH!---what the heck did you put hot medium to high carbon steel in water for? Yes quenching it in water would harden and make it brittle or even crack it just quenching it. This is something I cover in my first smithing class. As an example I have an elegant bowie blade forged from buggy spring that didn't harden quite enough in oil so I tried with water and now keep the pieces in my show and tell stuff to warn folks about the dangers implicit in heat treating items. WHY COOL IT except for letting it cool in air normalizing it??? Any quenching from critical temp makes steel harder and more brittle neither of which a froe needs. I sure hope you IMMEDIATELY drew temper on the piece you quenched in oil---around 500 degF at the minimum. Froes need to be tough not brittle. I also strongly suggest you research working higher carbon steels BEFORE working them! These are very beginner mistakes showing a total lack of understanding of what you are trying to do. As for the other piece. Any part of it that was at critical temp and quenched in water is extremely suspect and probably should not be used again. Any part that was not at critical temp when quenched should be fine. Except as mentioned for micro crack possibilities from a very old fatigued spring---at least I hope that Bronco had a long and lively life! Finding a spring shop and buying drops of the unused metal or finding a place that does lifts or lowering and getting tossed out un-or-lightly used springs is a better method. I work a lot of higher carbon alloys and generally will NOT have a bucket of water in the shop! The oil quench tank has a lid too. Most smithed work will just be cooled in air or tossed on the floor out of the way to cool. High carbon items will be left in the propane forge to anneal, left in wood ashes to anneal, hung from a wire to normalize or be properly heat treated. (which for knjves will be several normalizations---if the alloy profits from them, followed by a heat and quench IN THE PROPER MEDIUM!!! Followed *immediately* by drawing the temper!) COMPLETELY ignore all TV, Movies, fantasy books and games where the smith quenches everything in water every time he turns around! *Please*

However they usually break at the horn-body weld, quite unusual to break away from the weld but close enough that it would have had the breaking force applied to it.

"might be handy around the forge" Many of the anvils in the entire world for the last 2000 years have not had horns by design and they were found to be useful! Horns and heels are often missing on old london pattern anvils as they were forge welded on and a weak weld and errant sledgehammer hit can take one off. I love anvils like that as they are often sold at a steep discount yet are still extremely usable! I have a Powell missing the heel; but with a smooth flat thick face and a fair horn, over 120# and cost me US$40 One of my favorite anvils for new students working on projects that require heavy hammering. I also have a Vulcan missing the horn; but it's just kept to show extremely bad casting defects that they sent it out the door with, (that caused the horn to break off in use). It was a gift when I found my friend a cast steel anvil to replace the Vulcan. I have to agree that that looks done on purpose---not the usual breaking place and it's been neatened up Perhaps it was used as a weight and trimmed to fit a location...we may never know. All we can hope is someone will buy it and put that face and hardy hole back into use!

or soaking overnight in vinegar.

Are you familiar with "Savouring the Past" 'The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789' B.K.Wheaton; not as good for physical culture to reproduce but a good discussion on the rise and dissemination of french cooking and includes recipes. It is well footnoted to; so if you come across something interesting you can follow it back to the sources. Anyway to get a USPS flat rate box across the border? I can find wrought iron about a ton faster than I can use it...

A brand! (of course I'm sitting here with one from a rasp a new smith was holding with the wrong pair of tongs...)

general run of the mill hot rolled is most likely to be A-36 not worth the effort to forge for a blade. 5160 is often available and will make a good axe

Spark testing will give a very general carbon content but the gold standard is the "Heat Quench Break" Remember that higher carbon alloys are only used when they are absolutely needed by manufacturers as they are more expensive to buy and work.

Brass melts a whole lot higher than lead and has it's own issues---burning off zinc. HOWEVER no lead solder works a lot like lead and is non-toxic, most of it is tin. If you want cast weights no lead solder would be a good way to go. Even 100 year old blacksmithing books suggest pre-riveting tricky welds to hold all the pieces together in the fire and at the correct orientation on the anvil With a good forge weld you won't see any sign of riveting afterwards anyway, I generally rivet the legs to my trivets before forge welding them on. Not being afraid of forge welding will really help doing historical reproductions as they often used the process. Are you going to do it in real wrought iron?

As both my currently in use propane forges use firebrick stacked to provide the front wall/working opening making a set of "Hot Brick Tongs" was a big help to reconfigure on the fly or to close up the opening when annealing, or to pick up bricks knocked to the floor, etc. I also forged a set of Ti tongs as the heat doesn't transfer up the reins as fast as with steel ones.

Sorry that's not an ASO, that's an anvil. ASOs are things you can't use to pound on as they breakdown too fast---the best example being cast iron (NO steel face!) anvil shaped objects sold by Harbour Fraud.

Remember to test the "possible hammer steel" for hardenability before doing the work on making a hammer from it---though having a soft hammer around is a handy thing too.

The Frederic's cross could be done so that the center hole is sized for riveting the upright through though it would be a bit fussy getting it just right. Perhaps this is the project to practice your forge welding on...

I see old lincoln tombstones on craigslist for cheap$$$$ (and I'm all about the cheap! and so I mean cheap---under US$200 and sometimes at $100) One of those will outfit a dozen shops with tools and jigs and never break a sweat. Not that hard to learn to use though, like another craft, practice is the biggest help at improving. (and that massive version does have a removable anvil---just takes a good sized angle grinder!)

Icohedric---since you live in Antarctica; your shop will need to be massively insulated and probably sunk into the icesheet; I mean since you live in the Amazon Basin your shop will probably be a pole building with an overhanging roof and no walls---Oh since you live in the desert Adobe walls will work well and help keep the shop usable during the heat... You get the idea? Asking us for suggestions WITHOUT a location is a waste of time. Where I live high winds, (80 mph gusts are often seen during the spring,) High heat, (a week of 112 degF last year) and very little rain, (and NO SNOW) are the controlling factors. I built a well anchored pole barn---utility poles sunk 5' deep and concreted in. with 10' side walls of used metal roofing and a peaked roof with the gables left open for ventilation. It has 2 10' x 10' roll up doors on opposing ends to allow the wind to go through when it's hot. It was also cheap as almost everything was scrounged, used, etc and in a rural area building codes were not an issue. Almost the complete structure is metal (only the utility poles are wood and some PT buried in the dirt to enclose the sand/gravel floor) My local soil is pretty much adobe in the raw. I went to the local arroyo and dug out 5 gallon buckets of fine silty sandy/fine gravel to fill in the pt frames and soaked it with the hose to get it to settle tight and be firmer under foot.

Just skimmed the plates in Scappi (1570) and while he shows a smoke jack and a very nice wind up jack that turns 3 spits simultaneously I didn't see a dangle spit even in his camp kitchen. Just an odd factoid. They are mentioned and a couple shown in "Irons in the Fire" Rachael Field (warning there are several books with the same title but very different content. Rachael's is the "a history of cooking equipment")

Forgewelding the blade to the socket would be very traditional in wrought iron days. At a historic forge in germany that specialized in making agricultural tools (now a museum) they had a video of one of the last smiths making a hoe, He started with 2" sq stock and heated it and then used a large board drop hammer and squished close to half the end of it off to the side in 1 blow and repeated for the other---leaving a bit thicker ridge in the middle. Then he use a water driven air hammer to draw out and thin the side protrusions till he got the thickness and shape and then used the powerhammer to draw down the neck and forge out the socket material. Simple! (at least with 4+ decades of experience making them and all the neat tools...)

I hosted the local smithing group meeting---at my church as it has the shade, land, shade, parking, shade, and good shade! To help people find it I put out a few anvil signs---traced from my anvils onto scrap plywood and cut out and painted black---you follow the horns to get to the site, did it the night before. Well I had a fellow show up that night to find out about the anvils---he was a competitive Farrier and did some smithing as well. So he showed up the next day and wowed the group with how fast and nicely he worked and donated a bunch of old farriers' rasps and I had one of the new guys forge a rasptlesnake from one. Just got home and unloaded the stacked over the cab truck and am about to assay a brown pop!

Practical Blacksmithing, Richardson has a whole chapter in Vol III on plow making but glancing through it I didn't see a mention of using a special anvil for it. Back a dozen years or so at a SOFA demo we had one of the older members demonstrate pointing and laying a plow as that had once been his bread&butter and none of us had seen it before. He used a regular anvil as I recall. I would have thought that the German anvils with the slanting off side would be more useful than the American ones with the diagonal face edge at the front.

Around here not too bad a price; where I used to live it would be considered quite high. Where you are ????? How well does it crank?

Nope for the collar: a small discrete tig weld someplace not easily visible. I'd go with the pin and rivet the top and file it flush and then restore the surface with another go through the fire.

wow my scrap dealer only charges me US 20 cents a pound...and I decided that it was a fair price considering that the meth folks have already scoured the local tracks for scrap. Anachronist58 Last time I saw that method used by anyone but me there were mules on the pulling end of the rope!