ThomasPowers

Well if it's real wrought iron you won't have complete control of the materials as wrought iron is a composite material composed of iron with a large number of ferrous silicate spicles in it---can be several hundred thousands per sq inch of cross section. If melted you lose that.

One thing JoAnn has done is to spin with a chest mount magnifier so she can see the yarn being created---from across the room I can't see it! As to dedicated; she spins in church, she spun while in labour, she's spun at Quad-State.... We used to get down near Altus as my Mother was born near Humphrey's gin. and we still transit OK on the way to the kids/grandkids in NW AR as well as a passle of kinfolk around Fort Smith and Van Buren. Perhaps some Quad-State?

Yet about a 100 to 200 years ago the ads show a large number of "non-london patterns" as being currently made and available.

You know I believe that folks have a "given right" to be fools---IFF they are willing to abide by the consequences. However when I post I will generally over emphasize safety precautions that I may not follow as stringently myself to help some of our younger members to continue smithing until they can get old and tired and grumpy and can yell at the young'uns---"Get off my scrap-pile!". Been at this forum stuff since it was bulliten boards, rec.crafts.metalworking, for example. Learned to let most stupidity roll of my back like water on a whale. I do get bothered when folks advise otherfolks to what may be their detriment. I still teach smithing even though I know that *most* of my students won't be doing it 2 years down the road; but that's OK they might take it up again twenty years down the road---or their kids; or they will at least understand the fellow two houses down that's hammering steel on a chunk of forklift tang...

do either of those cut outs leave a piece sticking up that you could modify to slip a RR spike driver head over and rivet it in place as your horn?

There are a number of "Steel Wool" couples out there; I know 4 or 5 sets personally including one where the wife is the smith and her husband spins... My wife specializes in the very fine and even spinning characteristic of earlier times---lumpy, slubby yarns are very much a modern thing and actually have their bassis in the same Arts & Crafts movement that gave us hammer dinged smithing projects.. However she teaches very hands on---in fact when I go to Quad-State she usually goes to the Yellow Springs "Wool Gathering" and often gets roped into teaching her rather well known plying class if she has let slip to the spinning guilds out there that she will be in the neighborhood... When I was looking for a wife; I wanted one with a passion for a craft; so she would understand mine. But I wanted for a different craft so there was never tool contention. We've lasted 29 years so far.

Funny, my wrought iron vise from *before* 1800 had steel faces forge welded on it's jaws---how much earlier is yours? It has the tenon method of mounting and the screwbox was brazed together form a number of pieces as was typical of old postvices rather than the recent ones made since the 1850's?

What he said: if you are forging a blade you would prefer to heat only what you can work before it cools off. Heating more than that cayses grain growth, decarburization and scale losses---not what you want for a blade! I'd cut that at least in half in length.

As mentioned many post vise jaws have steel faces forge welded to them and build up may be more appropriate than removal---with appropriate preheat for welding on higher carbon steels. Often vises get torqued from overtightening with a piece way out on one end of the jaws. An easy way to prevent this is to make a graduated set of spacers for the other side. Getting a short section of commonly used stock and sawing down the vertical axis and heating and folding the tabs out makes an easy spacer. I stamp the size on top of the tabs and keep them in a coffee can near the vise.

Just a quibble, any one with a Blacker powerhammer will see an anvil used as the bottom die anytime they go by it. (My main shop anvil was such an anvil!) But this is more the exception that proves the rule and shows that the makers of the Blacker were not constrained by the scads of other powerhammer designs that *don't* use an anvil for the bottom die. It's rather funny that if you look all around the world over the past 3000 years or so you find that the London pattern anvil is the least used design for an anvil; yet so many people, predominantly in the USA, are hung up that it's the *only* design.

Check what's allowed by your zoning too! Kind of hard to claim your forge is a hobby if you have a business set up for it...

*PLEASE* remember to mill the bottom of the anvil parallel to the face before flipping it over to mill the face! Anvils were generally freehanded under steam hammers and are often not parallel face to bottom. I have personally seen several anvils ruined when they were milled "flat" and ended up goping all the way through the face at one end or the other. (and another where the face was milled too thin to use) In general I feel that milling the face of an anvil is about as good an idea as cleaning the Mona Lisa with a belt sander And please check out the search function as there are probably a hundred posts on the subject of "anvil repair" and the proper rods to use.

My wife has a friend with a museum piece walking wheel that needs a new real wrought iron spindle---the old one has worn down several inches in length. This may go higher in the queue as they were astounded to see how my wife was spinning on it at a museum demo recently and it may get a lot more use coming up. She's been teaching spinning for over 40 years now and is getting known for her "strange spinning problem" solving. I think the weirdest thing she has spun is artic fox under coat.

Naw my retirement shop dreams more resemble a cross between a blimp hanger and Hearst's little place at San Simeon

Q&D and based on what people expect; blame popular media going back to Victorian times! Why folks thought that skilled fighters would use equipment with built in neck breakers I'll never know (actually it was based off of several *bronze age* finds of ceremonial helmets in scandanavia) Also the bumpy unplanished dishing. Armour was pretty much on the top of the socio-economic ladder and so would you expect your Lamborghini to come from the factory with the body looking like that? However it's a great take on popular culture and very appropriate for a halloween party---our living history group used to do a "come as you aren't" party where everyone parodied popular perceptions of medieval dress and physical culture. We had a *hoot*!

Remember your eye Dr is up on eyes but may know nothing about blacksmithing and confuse it's hazards with arc welding. I had a friend who was an opthomologist *and* researched the specifics for smithing---and gave me a good talking to when I was a young smith.

I thought I had finally gottern rid of doing spinning hooks by foisting them off on my apprentice---paid job!----then he graduated and moved away.

not me but a lot of folks at Quad-State took photos; I still remember Clifton Ralph's expression when his wife told him to go look at it

The odd (and sometimes *very* *odd*) metal job for her spinning has usually not been a problem. Cudgelling my brain for my high school german years later to try to explain niggling details to improve a person's plying at a craft fair in Germany hurt! Funny that my german teacher never covered words like twist ratios, balanced yarns, counting as you treadle, etc. Forced was I to apply an internal painkiller the German's are justly famous for, oft described as "Dunkle Doppelbock" I have been able to duck the requests to build hatchels for hackling flax by finding antique ones in good condition at cheap prices

We turned one into a propane stove for blacksmithing conferences. Drilled a longitidinal hole in it from the heel end to by pass the hardy and then drilled cross holes to meet that longitudinal hole and tapped and plugged them. Then drilled a gridwork of small holes from the top of the face into the holes. Put a mixer into the open end of the longitudinal hole and presto an anvil stove. I forged a hook to fit in the hardy hole and hang a coffee pot over the face. Drilled like butter!

My wife is a spinster, "SpinOff" once had a quesdtionaire where one line was "How much fiber do you have on hand?---A a peck, B a bushel and a peck, C a million billion tons?" I kept looking for D.....(She's off picking cotton this morning...) I've always had a high fiber diet, mainly wool though...

what he said!

The "paddle"? why would it mess up the composition if you chose it to be part of the composition? I often start out a billet with one piece being longer to provide a handle

Are you doing it freehand or with a jig?

I've noticed that most of my students tend to gravitate towards too light a hammer or too heavy a hammer when given the choice.