ThomasPowers

about 30 years ago I once went on a plane with a 90# carry-on. I had discovered an old scrap pile way up in the Rockies and they weighed your luggage but not your carry-on. Of course this was way before the air travel scares...I have taken coal back from a conference in my checked luggage. The duffle full of tools and metal was more of a concern than the duffle full of coal...

Quick put some googly eyes on the green part---3 of them

Roping is traditionally done after rolling the edge on armour.

tuyeres: did they have a smelter around there? Smelters need much larger tuyeres than a forge does but may need water cooling as well---of course depending on the type of furnace used... And that does look like a Hydraulic ram pressure tank note the stout flange with largeish bolt holes on the base.

In a hidden pocket of a canvas bag of Items I have forged is the remains of a blade. An elegant bowie forged from buggy spring as a gift for my SiL who does single action shooting. Unfortunately when I quenched it in warm oil it didn't harden as much as I had hoped and so I rolled the dice and quenched it in water, (actually brine) as many of the earlier steels were water quench. In the quench tank I heard/felt the dreaded *tink* and the elegant bowie blade came out in 3 separate pieces. This gets drug out when I'm talking to new folks who have rather odd ideas about quenching often wanting to take shortcuts---or wanting to use scrap metal for blades, (I do it myself at times; but I know the risks I am taking and how to mitigate them a bit!---the next buggy bowie is going to get Parks 50! not oil, urine or blood...or worm water, radish juice...."Sources for the History of the Science of Steel" has a renaissance list of suggested quenchants that are a bit odd to say the least! Most of them I have tried did not have the effects claimed for them either.)

OK what does the bottom look like? HB's have a very specific indentation compared to A&H or Trentons.

Most of the smithing groups I have been a part of you could tell a person's status by the heckling they received. Folks that were new or not liked very well had a very polite audience. Folks with long tenure and were considered friends would get it with both barrels---and generally could catch it and throw it back sometimes faster than it came!

That's what a lot of blademakers use.

What a great garden piece to be coming up out of the soil!

A lot depends on your heat treat process. You definitely do not want any deep coarse scratches around for fractures to start; OTOH if you use salt pots or inert atmosphere systems you may get very little oxidation at all. I've even had fairly good luck turning my forges into muffle furnaces and heating in a close ended tube with a layer of powdered charcoal along the bottom of them.

Be a long toss to hit Ian with one....I like the top one too but I could see where the others might be just what someone is looking for for specialized jobs I like the variation in handles too---but expect a request to have "bladeshape XYZ with handle shape QRS". Did you keep a tracing of the blade before handled for your records?

If it's steel and if you got it at a decent price it is well within spec for a "lower class anvil". If it's steel it should work harden over time. Drilling a pritchel isn't a problem with those and drilling will also give some indication of what it's made from. You can shim that hole to 1" with a bit of sq tubing. Slice an inch of two down the diagonals and then heat and bend the flaps out to rest on the anvil face. drop in the hardy hole and the more common tooling will fit! I personally don't own one as I anviled up when I lived 15 years in OH---the blacksmith's Happy Hunting Grounds. Only have bought/traded/been given a couple more since I moved out here as I feel embarrassed by my anvil wealth and haven't turned on the "seek anvil" function much to let others have a chance...(112#PW, bought, 165# PW traded, 66# Swedish cast steel, given---also found a bridge anvil sitting in the desert that the local university wouldn't turn loose of; so I made sure it went to a friend's Fine Arts classroom for use---and I made my own stake anvil)

So can I interest you in some *NEW* Peter Wrights???? Tempting to find one cheap clean it up and stamp every name in the book on it just to confuse things; maybe mill the base to have both hourglass and caplet....

Good looking set; my quibble is that fillet knives tend to get dropped in water during use and to clean the gunk off the knife and that handle material might not "weather" it well. As much as I avoid the synthetics there are times where they fit the use case perfectly.

I'm expecting that sometime I'll see some that have been gussied up and with forged stamps to try to pass as "originals". The ball bearing test and watching out for traces of the seam will still alert the wise smith... *However* a lot of these are sure better than the HF ASO; unfortunately they are usually priced like a "real" anvil.

Have you tried to wear a wrist weight on your off side when you are not smithing? Might help even things out a bit.

Here is an example of the anvils we see coming through here from Mexico: they cast it from a "real anvil" I suspect this one was a PW if those are ledges on the feet. Notice the lack of a pritchle hole and that the casting seam went right down the middle of the face and horn. It also hasn't been fettled very well. These range from pretty good alloys to terrible ones---it's whatever is left in the ladle at the end of the day. They are also never heat treated

The anvil is very renaissance too, so we get painting style, content armour & anvil, painting subject *all* to be renaissance (or later) Doesn't look like a Hals though Mars is headed that way...

Hey he's killed hundreds if not thousands of those Sons of Birches and *burned* *their* *dismembered* *bodies*; of course they put out a hit on him! As for liability: a lot of countries don't have those laws; wear out and damage your employees and so what? Plenty more where they came from!

How big a circle? would a rolling mill be more appropriate?

Not a greek spock but a greek pot and a separate image of Spock. As an allegory this painting looks like another Venus at the Forge of Vulcan example with Mars being the guy in armour and cupid getting ready to mess things up---I'm sure you know the classical myth: Venus was espoused to Vulcan and had an affair with Mars and they got caught by Vulcan and much classically bad behavior resulted

Tempering ASAP after hardening is often a requirement for knife steels. I have a friend who once hardened a blade late at night and decided to temper it next morning. When he got back to it the next morning it had broken into 3 pieces just sitting on the workbench. For knife work the kitchen oven *WITH* an added thermometer often is in the correct range, (all puns intended). If you want to go higher an immediate temper in the oven will help "hold" the blade until you can draw it at a higher temp later. Note using vegetable oil(s) as a quenchent can often help the "abuse of kitchen appliances" argument with an SO.

Pretty much any of the 'spring based" powerhammers will not have much fine control of the stroke length. Now the big steam and air hammers a skilled operator for a particular hammer could get quite good indeed! (the old transfer oil from the face of the top die to the crystal of a pocket watch trick.)

Cleaning is what I do when I have the urge to work in the shop but not really the time, so I will go out and re-set a hammer head on a handle or clean and re-arrange---and then when I do have time I can jump on a project without the "where's waldo" moments...

That's worth of being made from 4140 and heat treated for long life! I too have the too many anvils in use issues; but a couple are pretty much the same I hope (2 165#ish PWs) so I may get one done anyway.