ThomasPowers

An excellent idea; of course just the PPE needed will cost over what you can buy a brand new anvil and the costs of a tool steel foundry and the classes needed to profit from it will probably run you more than the cost of a brand new pretty nice car. A member of these forums had some anvils cast by a foundry in high alloy steel and he was selling them for $13 a pound IIRC; Jymm? Don't forget that what you melt may not be what you pour; lots of issues with atmosphere/flux. And no pottery clay will not work and may end up in the death of you or one of your helpers. Doing it piecemeal: were you thinking of casting the next piece onto the the previous ones or casting them and then welding them up? Casing a piece onto the next can be done. I expect it will take you over 100,000 $US to get good at it and several years of experimentation---you will need to heat the previous up to around forge welding temps I would expect and pour through a flux layer or do it in a vacuum. Casting and welding up pieces would be much easier though the welding costs will be quite high---much higher than buying a new anvil would be. I'd look into having the expensive tricky and DANGEROUS melting and pouring done by professionals and concentrate on design and pattern making.

BLACKSMITH GUILD of CENTRAL MARYLAND MD bgcmonline.org BLACKSMITH'S GUILD of the POTOMAC MD www.bgop.org

Serial number on the front of the foot.

Air supply pipe should not get hot enough to matter. Blackpipe used for natural gas is preferred and they make fittings for it as well so even if you used galvanized pipe the fittings right at the forge pot can be non-galvanized---like 2 floor flanges and a nipple. Coal/charcoal forge pot? line it with clay. Fireclay is best, there are recipes online on the mix to use. Me I used clay from a local creek. Take a look at the Tim Lively wash tub forge made from a galvanized wash tub lined with "adobe". If you have money to burn, stores can provide instant gratification. If you want to spend your spending money on other tools get used to thinking about: What can I use, where can I find it used or discarded, what can I re-purpose? Also talk with people; when I was much younger, about 30 years ago, I was building a coal forge and needed some 2" pipe. It was before re-store and I was not up on doing things cheap so I was at a plumbing supply place finding out I couldn't afford to buy it. But when I was explaining how I was planning to use it, a plumber standing at the counter next to me bought it and gave it to me to encourage my smithing!

Coal/charcoal forge? line it with clay. Fireclay is best, there are recipes online on the mix to use. Me I used clay from a local creek. Take a look at the Tim Lively wash tub forge made from a galvanized wash tub lined with "adobe". If you have money to burn, stores can provide instant gratification. If you want to spend your spending money on other tools get used to thinking about: What can I use, where can I find it used or discarded, what can I re-purpose? Also talk with people; when I was much younger, about 30 years ago, I was building a coal forge and needed some 2" pipe. It was before re-store and I was not up on doing things cheap so I was at a plumbing supply place finding out I couldn't afford to buy it. But when I was explaining how I was planning to use it, a plumber standing at the counter next to me bought it and gave it to me to encourage my smithing!

Did you trade it for a lifetime of free refills?

I can't address most of your questions as I avoid going to expensive stores as a general thing. Did you try a Habbitat for Humanity re-store? I purchased a section of stainless pipe at a local one for US$10. For my stand I used a junked gas grill stand replacing the grill part with a metal plate---made a profit as the Al shell sold to the scrapyard for more than the piece of steel sheet cost at the scrapyard. How about a demolition used materials seller? Did you call places that install pipe for restaurants about used or drops? For the blower did you ask a furnace repair place about the exhaust blowers used for high efficiency furnaces, used off the bone pile of course. If you use galvanized and line it well then the shell shouldn't get up to vapourizing temps. We once made 20+ gas forges using scrapped oxy cylinders from a place that did hydrotesting of such tanks---they gave them to us with the requirement that we cut the tanks up on-site! And provided the OA to do so---we had to supply the torch. My current forges are made using discarded He "party balloon" tanks. My last one cost about US$2 for the entire forge save for the burner, hose and propane tank.

DSW; WHY? forge welding the pipe to the basket is a very purist thing!

You are *never* too young to learn the business of being a business!

Wow they were *LUCKY*; they made off with their lives. I wouldn't want to annoy the big guy!

I had a big cutting job once, cutting apart the mangled sheets of wrought iron from the old Ohio pennitentiary water tower---I believe it was Byers bi directional rolled plate, my local dealer would spot me tanks too. I had to have a deposit put on my credit card but in the end he just charged me for the gas used. A *BIG* help when you needed big tanks over a bunch of weekends.

NO the line between different alloys is NOT a hamon. A hamon is a line reflecting different hardening in a single alloy due to differential hardening.

Use 1/8"; have you seen the ones where the basket is made with pre-twisted lengths? Put tinsel inside it when you are done.

The size of the tube should not matter that much you need to compare two burners with the same BTU output. I could build a blown burner half the size of an aspirated one that used twice as much gas and produced twice as much heat! This is what makes comparisons so difficult. You really need to test how much fuel is used to raise a standard size test piece to a standard temperature in a standard time in the same forge. *That* would be a measure of efficiency.

I have a friend that has a helve with the rubber bumpers which I thought was an odd design choice for an environment full of oil/grease and fire!

There is no standard size for hardy holes, there is a peak in the statistical distribution around 1"; but I have 3 anvils with 1.5",. one with 1.25" a bunch with around 1" and even a 7/8" hardy hole. I also have a hardy that has a 3/8" stem on it---I think it came from a "vise-anvil" thing. (it's cute) Also anvils often have punched hardy holes and so due to punching slop may be too big, small or out of square. (Your Fisher would have been cast and so one wonders about it's issue, though I've had casting problems myself before... It's up to you if you want to size the hole to suit yourself or to customize your hardy tooling

You *always* have a choice. You can buy books sight unseen---works better if you have money to burn. You can avoid reading books at all---a popular choice You can wait till you visit someone with a copy or can look over a copy at a conference. I'm sort of like Erasmus: " 'When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes."

Not that brand; but there were several different guided helve hammers made in the USA according to "Pounding out the Profits" including at least one with the leafspring on top as I recall.

In the USA, most libraries can Inter Library Loan, AKA ILL, books from an amazing number of other libraries. My small town in NM had 90 other libraries in their association including a bunch of University ones. It's a great way to preview a book you are thinking of buying---especially when the price is over US$100!

What does the uinderside look like? HB have an indentation that's bounded by a rim that follows the edge of the anvil base, Trenton's may have one that looks like a caplet.

Look at the "metal match" system where you could drill a hole in the tang and mount the removable sparker

Do you wear gloves? They look a bit hard on the hands for a no gloves smith and great gripping for gloved work. "Go not to the Elves for advice for they shall say both Yea and Nay" and blacksmiths are even worse!

Tip: always mention the alloy and heat treat when asking for knife tips. (I assume you already know about draw filing and how soaking the as forged blade overnight in vinegar and washing the scale off in the morning will make your files last longer...) Tip: this time of year a lot of people buy gallons of peanut oil to fry one turkey in and then discard it---makes a great quenchant for many alloys!

I find it a lot more "fun" that if I need to practice a certain technique I find/design a project that requires a lot of that technique and do it and so at the end I have something I can show off or sell rather than a pile of bits to be thrown back on the scrap pile. Also an old blacksmithing trick is: if you need to make a bunch of "identical" items; make a few more and then select the ones that match the best---the others can be used for another project where being identical is not so important.

Definitely a hold over from the old days. It does not make it denser but is trying to restrain grain growth by renucleating new crystals from dislocation rich areas. This was a problem with some of the very early steels; however if you are using anything made in the last 100 years or so it's not needed as thermal cycling will do a much BETTER job of grain refinement on modern steels. Also modern alloys often have elements in them to reduce grain growth and we tend not to work our steels at as high a temperature as they did when all smiths were used to working wrought iron. So it's like a mechanic telling you you should repour the main bearings of your car every 5000 miles because that's what you did with model T's. Note that production values of videos have more to do with the skill of making videos than the skill of making blades! And, unfortunately, a lot of the profit margin in selling stuff can be the hype you surround it with. "Forged in the dark of the moon and quenched in blood" sells for an extra hundred dollars or more to certain folks who believe that makes a difference than "forged in a dimly lit smithy and quenched in brine". There are some makers who take this to extremes and tend to get laughed at by folks with more of a background in metallurgy and less of one in hype.