ThomasPowers

Since your set up *MUST* be just like mine---out building with steel walls, roof and trusses, I wouldn't worry about it. (Else you would have provided the necessary details right? and note if this is attached to your house FOLLOW THE CODE! to keep your insurance in force! They will be happy to collect your money and then say you didn't meet code and so they don't have to pay out---sometimes even if your forge had noting to do with an electrical fire in the opposite end of the house...) I just stuck a piece of spiral seamed duckwork through a hole. The spiral seamed duct work was 10" in diameter and 10' long and cost me US$4 at the Re-Store when they were having a sale. I bought a couple. The local scrapyard has ductwork too but they wanted US$10 a piece... Many HVAC companies also have a bonepile of old ductwork as well

I use melted pine rosin. Modern fletchers use a heat activated glue.

Frosty you are not related to Durkon are you he seems to have a phobia about trees....(and it seems you *should*)

In the US military Surplus only goes back a bit over 100 years; however in places like the UK it goes back *centuries*. Funny but I have 2 7# sledges marked with the broad arrow and date stamped: one 1943 IIRC and the other 1982 and how the 1982 sledge turned up in Southern NM at the flea market within 30 years of issue must be a story in itself...

It's great that they are going to a good new home!

Ahhh generally *ABOVE* knuckle height not below. Depending on how you are built and what you are going to do with it I prefer about wrist level for knife and delicate work and lower for heavy sledge work. Anyway it should be high enough you don't lean over it while working and so preserve your back!

Beautiful to say the least!

OK; I did not perfectly discern your description. Out here in the desert I have seen some heavy anchor chain used to clear land I believe strung between two bulldozers

I've only been smithing 32 years myself....including a year working fulltime for a professional swordmaker back in the early 1980's. Whhich is why I defer to Frank Turley who is a SME on post vises.

can you get a piece of pipe that will hold the solid piece and sink *that* into the ground and then drop the solid piece in it?

There is a similar on on chain making including shots of chain being tested as the British Admiralty required 100% test as I recall

Well I do know of a fellow who started smithing by running a tig up and down a bar of steel till it started to glow and then hammered on it...

An anvil wants to buy Sussex? *SELL* Sussex to it! (Anyone want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?)

Somewhere I have the recipe for Hrisoulas' "steel glue" flux; got a lot of different stuff in it to work at various temps, etc. I'll try to dig it out and post it. The ammonium chloride is a soldering flux and so works at the lower temps---much like the zinc chloride used to solder with. Can't address the chemical process but killed HCl by adding zinc does work for soldering.

I'm in the low lands, near the Rio Grande, in Lemitar NM; only 4800'; but from my front door I look up at 10,460'---you can see the Magdalena Ridge Observatory like a pimple on the mountain ridge. It's a great hike up to it!

Carbon arc torches do NOT burn acetylene! They do use carbon rods that are becoming difficult to source. They make a rather intense heat in a rather small area. I'd think it would be quite a lot more expensive to run than a well tuned propane forge.

55 pounds it pretty light for a smithing anvil too. As cast iron it's worth as an anvil is probably 50 cents a pound and so their nearly $3 a pound is on the outrageously high side.. Last time I bought a 55# ASO I paid US$28 *new* at the HF store----we made it into a camp stove to take to Quad-State; the face drilled like *butter*.

NJANVILMAN; perhaps you missed the post that said "From time-to-time there would be "Gondola" cars on that siding, loaded with the cast iron "Barrel Links" that are often incorporated in that sort of anchor chain." and assumed I was referring to your post? I'm a little late to the party as I was able to drive up and see my wife and my apprentice showed up from CA so we forged 3 dishing hammers from R R bolts and a hardy for his anvil from a wire handled cold cut---got to use the 9# sledge and the 515# anvil to work the shank down! Didn't spend a minute on the computer till I got back to my domicile of exile...

Take a look at the iforge section over at anvilfire

A lot of my vices are probably columbians plain legs, simple screwboxes, No markings---save the one marked 100 and it weighs that. I do not see signs of forged welded jaws on them. Some of the other beveled leg vices do show a colour change near the jaw face. In general none of the faces feel very hard to a file Note my oldest and smallest post vise does show welded faces; but they are less than 1/8" thick---almost paper thin in places-3" jaws and Mr Turley examined it and said he thought it predated 1800! I still use it but *gingerly"

Sincerely doubt cast iron was used in any critical item with tensile stresses applied.

Boiling linseed oil was an old method to start it polymerizing faster. Now days they do it by adding things like cobalt to the oil. Check you linseed oil bottle it may be "boiled Linseed" already. If not; well sunshine can help speed up the "drying" action though that works better out here with a HIGH UV index than at sealevel...

Decorative hinges, straps, corner brackets, pierce work lock plate, etched plaques, dates, animals/people outlines If you are ever in London, UK, check out the iron work collection at the Victoria and Albert museum!

Welcome! And now's a great time to start using the jargon better---remember Longfellow's poem? Under the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands THE SMITH a mighty figure of a man...... Smithy is the building, smith is the person. Like calling a mechanic a garage... I've done a complete smithing kit once that fit in a 5 gallon bucket---except for a stump to place the anvil on.

any retired aircraft workers around?