ThomasPowers

Well rattlesnake can be rather tasty if fixed correctly. I prefer grilled to let some of the grease drip off... I would think dingos would be rather gamey unless they were *baby* dingos being eaten... I got a set of twin grandkids that I think could chow down on a dingo---they will be 4 years old next spring and I think their Father is considering getting them "Baby's first fully automatic rifle" as a birthday present...

Since mild steel and higher carbon steels have different working properties learning on one rather than the other is rather like learning to repair diesel engines because you want to work on your car's gas engine. Yes there are similarities but the details can cause problems. Working on mild steel is a good way to get your hammer control trained but you should pick projects out that have a better possibility of success during the learning period. I tell my students making their first S hook that *everything* they are learning is directly applicable to making a knife---but they are almost assured of producing a useful and ornamental S hook suitable for a Christmas present rather than the start of a pile of messed up knife attempts... If you want to jump to knifemaking at the start---which is usually a *slower* way to learn to forge blades than to learn the basics first and then go on to the "advanced" methods---get a piece of automotive coil spring and cut down opposite sides resulting in a dozen or so ( shaped pieces all of the same steel, all of an alloy suitable for knives. Make all of them into knives and practice your heat treating and destructive testing as well as forging/filing/grinding/hilting/patience/...

Acetylene tanks are filled with a porous material that is saturated with acetone, Acetylene is then dissolved into the acetone---acetylene is really really suicidal and you have to jump through hoops to keep it from going boom---even without the presence of an oxidizer! (or to put it nicely it wants to exothermically disassociate). Some of the oldest acetylene tanks were stuffed with asbestos. The newer ones have a sort of diatomaceous earth cement. Either type will still have lots of acetone buried in it as ER trips seriously eat into forging time and the cost of even a simple one would probably pay for buying less hazardous tanks *new*; please just avoid scraped Acetylene tanks. (actually the local scrapyard throws a fit if they find out you snuck an acetylene tank in with a load, even they of the caviler safety standards considers them an active hazard!)

US nomenclature: Hollow shaft from Transmission to differential: drive shaft Solid shaft from Differential to wheels: axle axle is what you want...

I've had a lot of people tell me that they can't get the good deals as they have spent all their money on the bad ones! Often it's far better to wait building up the cash while looking for a good deal than to run out and pay twice as much for a bad deal and then not have any money when a good one shows up. (there are situations where Soon is more important than Cheap though) Get something like one of the "christmas savings accounts" at the bank and dump $10 in it a week and then when a great deal shows up you may have the money to cover it just waiting!

My favorite hammer has a peen that looks like someone welded a chunk of 1" diameter rod to the hammer to make the peen---(it was forged that way) It's a straight peen to boot and great for drawing out with no cold shuts to be worried about---especially I can use it standing point on to the anvils horn and use the horn at the same time---flip the piece every time it goes in the fire to keep it even. I have a fairly rounded hammer face I like to use on knives when I need to pinch an area that's hanging back along the edge---far better to pinch it out than to grind the rest of the blade down to it!

I tell them "Hit it like you are driving a 16 penny nail". But the bad habits are engrained deeply in them and you have to keep working with them. That and I get a lot of college students who never did any construction! (and they want to be engineers!)

Good wouldn't want you all steamed up! gone for the weekend!

What you don't cook with the white hot end? How very odd...

Somewhere there is a "tourist" map of Australia annotated with all the deadly creatures in the various locations. I remember "baby eating dingos" on it.

In the older versions of those sheers the blades were inlaid with high carbon cutting edges forge welded in place then the bulk of the shear was soft steel or even wrought iron. You can see examples of this sort of shear dating back into at least renaissance times especially WRT armourer's shops. example

Try a place that sells motorcycles from Japan...

Perhaps he outgrew the piddly little 3" stuff....

Sort of thing folks do for fun at a hammer in or might be able to arrange to do it at a meeting *if* the proper equipment was available---I was able to use a 200# Chambersburg hammer at one of the local ABANA Affiliate meetings to do some heavy hitting on one of my projects.

Got a plasma cutter available? Most scrapper use a honking big hydraulic shear for such items

Hardy tools, swages, top tools, bics, hot cuts, hardies, tongs (Ti for one set), scrolling tongs, twisting wrenches, forges (coal/charcoal/propane:blown and aspirated), wrenches, cooking tools (medieval through modern), knives, chisels, froes, replacement parts for vices, hammers (including armouring hammers), guillotine fullers, nail headers, hook rules, Anvils (stake and cube), punches, drifts, slitters (in S1 and H13)....hard to remember them all; done a lot of special or even 1 use tools, even sharpened a jackhammer bit for a neighbor on a holiday weekend.

ILL a copy of ""Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries" Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N. Y.), Leydi, Silvio, Godoy, Jose-A, Negroli, Filippo, Pyhrr, Stuart W. ISBN 0870998722 / 0-87099-872-2 Not only will it blow you away bigtime if you read it they were doing repousse in medium carbon steel!

Considering how far they are stretching the Hobbit to get that many movies from it, I'm sure they will include pretty much everything they can and then add in a lot of BS to pad things out. I plan to read my grandkids the Hobbit over Thanksgiving if they will stay still long enough....

Ah yes the differentiation between "a blacksmith" and "a *good* Blacksmith" Or a "Professional Blacksmith" or a "Master Blacksmith". I tell my students that as soon as they are manipulating iron hot they are a blacksmith but it may take them the rest of their lives to be a *good* blacksmith.

I got a friend a deal on a massive old shaper vise---they loaded it with a forklift. The sort of thing where you don't need it very often but when you do *nothing* *else* will do!

anneal and cold working are typically used to shape brass as is casting. If you have one of the few hot working alloys heat to barely red in a dark room and hammer, copper and silver you can work hotter but brass is fairly low temp. Backwoods were you working silicon bronze?

I figured the stars were added by a previous owner myself.

Weed burners are often suggested in non-blacksmithing sites as they seem to think a propane burner is difficult to build. If you think this too; build a blown burner as they are dead simple to make. The major issue with weed burners is that they tend to make a very oxidizing forge and so particularly bad for doing small or thin stuff due to scaling or blades due to decarburization. Even worse most of them are not designed to allow for choking of them to modify the burn to be more neutral or reducing. For smithing you really want a tunable system!

Oil it before spinning by hand so that spinning will distribute fresh oil into the bearings. (nb if the oil caps are clogged with crud it may behoove you to clean them before trying under power!)

Most of the big toys for smithing do not overlap their use cases well; so it's quite possible to need a Powerhammer, a press *and* a rolling mill and use each one for what it is best at. If you can have only 1, a larger powerhanmmer is probably the most versatile.