ThomasPowers

I'm with JM, never seen a pallet marked as to content and have seen pallets with 6 different woods in them! I found that the pallets for heavy stuff were the best ones for good wood. I roofed my shop extension in OH with oak form 12' lone pallets the sign shop near my house got their metal on. Also sheetrock pallets are usually strong. I found that I could remove about 1/2 the nails with a good hammer, the rest would have the tops break off. So I would heat the shafts with a propane torch and then pull them out with a large set of vise-grips and a block. I remember once I had a project where I didn't want oak or hard rock maple but something light; took a while to get the number of tulip poplar 4x4's I needed. Also dunnage boards for large pipe, (metal, concrete or plastic), are often good wood and a lot fewer nails and where I used to live the dunnage boards were generally dumped in the trench---I would ask and get a pickup load *given* to me!

Well it is listed under direct process category in the Directory of Iron and steel works; so I guess I'm learning something new today! I knew some throwback bloomeries were used in the south during the ACW but I didn't know any bloomeries were still commercially viable in the north at that late of a time.

Said nothing on how they determined it was a bloomery. But they are right that a bloomery is more suitable for small localized production. I'll see about contacting the people mentioned to see if they have more information. Of course I'm offline till Monday.

One suggestion for "next time" put in a notch on the backside of the blade for opening beer bottles, smile....

On thing to think about: is your end goal to forge steel or mess around with burners? Both are worth goals; but you don't want to confuse the two upstream.

OK start sourcing an inert atmosphere heat treating furnace with computerized controllers as most of the HSS have very exacting rates of temperature change over time requirements---you won't be able to handle it with a thermocouple and manual regulation. With some of the HSS very small differences can make the difference between success and scrap metal. Get real good forging regular steels, reading the temps, great hammer control, *patience*, mad skills in moving metal around. Then pick an alloy and read up on it's forging and heat treating requirements; when you can say "no problem" I can hold those values while working it---go out and buy some! Good Luck! (and have you thought about something like D2 rather than HSS? I've forged a bunch of D2 and had it heat treated by pro's!)

You must forgive Frosty, you know how in blacksmithing we often think that bigger is better? Well once he took a sauna and instead of beating himself with birch branches he decided to do it with the tree instead... Thomas who's day job is as a software engineer...and only has banging his head on his desk as an excuse...

It's blacksmithing!---"easy" means "No hospital visits were incurred"

"Calorific Value Btu/lb dry basis" is what it says on their website. Good catch as there is probably an imperial vs metric infarction---though BTU is a rather old school measurement too...

Now if you don't want the curve in it you heat it up to a nice high red/low orange place the spine on a flat section of the anvil and tap the edge--I do it with a hammer but some folks use a wooden mallet---or baseball bat or chunk of firewood---until the spine is flat on the anvil and the blade is straight. This really works. Do you plan for this to be used for cooking? If so bone is not a good handle material, micarta works better for things that get washed a lot. Also pitting on the blade holds gunk NOT A GOOD IDEA FOR COOKING TOOLS! If it's just to be a show piece then no problem.

There is a difference between smelting and melting. Smelting you start with ore and get metal. Melting you start with metal and get metal you can pour. Smelting is not a cost effective way to do things. Some smiths have used the bloomery method to smelt iron from ore but it's more a bragging rights sort of thing than commercially viable. Melting for cast iron can be done at home using a small cupola furnace---see Cupola furnace in wikipedia for an nice example. Note that personal protective gear is MANDATORY. Molten metal is far more dangerous than hot steel! Note that cast iron can't be forged in a blacksmith's forge. melting and casting of steel is quite a bit more expensive and complicated than cast iron and is not usually done on an at home basis as it's just so cheap to buy the stuff than spend more than a car costs to make a pound of inferior stuff. Note the smelting of iron in pit furnaces used charcoal not coal! Smelting of iron using coked coal didn't start until the 1700's with Abraham Darby. Now if you really want to smelt iron ore and get wrought iron there are plans for a nice small bloomery in "Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity" Rehder. Also search on Bloomery and Tatara (a japanese bloomery furnace) As for background I have been smithing for over 30 years and have been part of a bloomery smelting team for about 15 years and then on my own for 5 years...(I'm also off line on weekends)

1831 - 1890 is VERY LATE for the bloomery method; are they sure about that? (I've done bloomery smelts for over 15 years now as part of a smelting team) Where is that article from? As for the piece I would test it for greenstick wrought iron fracture vs cast iron fracture Unfortunately the spark test doesn't do a good job separating the two for many people.

"Can anyone tell me what the bowl and stand are for?" Well it could be for melting lead, it could be a forge, it could be a spoon rest for cooking, it could be a washstand. I have a car with 4 wheels can you tell me what make and model it is? Kind of hard without *DETAILS* like size, any markings on it, what it's made from...why we often suggest pictures. Now I have been smithing for over 30 years and I don't know what you mean by "swage forge 250 plus lbs" Is this a swage block or a tool for repointing rock drills? Or a powerhammer with a set of swaging dies? The difference in price may be a *factor* of 10 depending! You will definitely want the auction publicized to all the Blacksmithing groups in your state and surrounding ones. Best prices are when the folks attending *want* the stuff! www.abana.chapter.com has a listing by state.

HSS steels will need fancy and expensive heat treat equipment as well as fancy and expensive forging to get the best out of them. You do know that hardness and brittleness are strongly correlated so do you want the blade with the ultimate sharpness and edge retention that shatters like glass when dropped? There are some ways to help with that issue---like San Mai or applied edges; but again the High alloy steels can be a pain to work with. 1 years seems an awfully short time to work up to high alloy steels without a mentor working with you.

NOTE when you change *ANYTHING* of a documented working burner design you should assume it will not work! It's like going into your car engine and deciding to change a valve or piston---would you expect the engine to work? Unless you are willing to spend a massive amount of time figuring out how to make things work after making a change you should NOT fiddle with the design *unless* you have a solid background in how they work so that you can make reasoned changes.

When I got my fork lift tine I had to saw a 1.5" rod in two---by hand! (Bandsaw blade mounted on a bowsaw frame) It's the mate to this one http://www.marco-borromei.com/fork.html so you can see the rod I cut and how they mounted theirs. It's generally a good idea to keep a basic tool kit in your vehicle for visits like this: 3# hammer, hacksaw++, large cold chisel---old rusty bolts are often best sheared than wrenched, a couple of good sized wrenches and a ratchet wrench set, something to wrap rusty/oily stuff in if you have a car rather than a pickup... Now as to the no-scrounging rule: often put in place for safety/liability reasons---*however* the folks that work there can sometimes be suborned into your agents---get them interested in smithing and you may start getting *too* *much* steel to recycle. Sometimes just a dozen doughnuts now and then will have them throwing stuff in your truck *safely*! Finally 1 solid rule of scrounging: *never* expect something to be there when you go back for it! Stuff that I've seen every weekend for years in a scrap yard will mysterious vanish when I decide I can use it! (Sometimes entire scrap yards will vanish between visits---bought out and scraped down to bare dirt...)

Yes we need to see what you are doing. If you have the open ended bell are you sure you need holes in the pipe? None of my burners have them.

Clay is also used in some briquettes as well as anthracite...

The longer you make the edge before welding the bit in, the longer a weld you have to get *right*. Also the thinner the stock the more likely to damage it by overheating when you do a weld if you are not an experienced forge welder.

Note that historic old buildings containing real wrought iron have been destroyed in certain locations and salvaging such stock may be possible!

Here are the details on what is considered to be a top smithing coal in the USA: Source: Penn State Coal Sample Database Seam : Pocahontas No. 3, Type : Low Volitile Bituminous (lvb) Ash : 7.44% Sulfur: 0.64% BTU :14542 Volitile : 15.70% Carbon: 92.42% Reflectance: 1.85 However I'm with Phil it may be easier to get good charcoal than good coal in your location.

Well a good heavy chunk of steel is far better than a railroad rail which is better than a cast iron ASO and usually far cheaper. If you use a campfire---transfer the coals to a forge (I made a shovel out of a piece of gravel shaker materials so I can shake out the ashes and small bits and only move the big stuff over to the forge.) As far as good and cheap forging steel automotive coil springs are generally free or cheap if you buy them as *scrap* and not as "parts" but it's easier to learn on lower carbon stuff---which is expensive at Big Box Stores but a lot cheaper at steel stores and cheaper still at scrapyards and may be free as scrap pieces from companies that use steel. I go to my local scrapyard first and if they don't have what I need I got down the road to a Windmill Supply place that sells steel on the side about 1/3 cheaper than the lumberyard in town!

Forges are a heat balance: heat in vs heat out You tweak them by adjusting either (or both) parts. So using a more insulative box would reduce heat out. Using a blown burner with the fuel adjusted for a neutral burn puts more heat in. Just putting more air into it can *cool* the system as cold room air that is not needed to burn the fuel just cools it down and adds an oxidizing atmosphere. A Saturday spent with a smith that knows what they are doing can save you *MONTHS* of fiddling around on your own. I'd check with the closest ABANA Affiliate and see if there was anyone close to you that you could visit.

Wrought iron *or* cast iron. Foundry generally made/used cast iron a Finery or puddler would have taken cast iron and made wrought iron from it. Note that cast iron isn't forgable.

This is one of the items where the swageblock can be handy so you can round off the underside while flattening the top side to make a hand friendly grip