ThomasPowers

Hammers look quite serviceable. Do those handles suit your hands though?

So are you going with a period set up? Otherwise why would we laugh at your anvil?

The holes are handling holes used with special tongs to grab the anvil while working it under a steam hammer. Pretty much all forged anvils have them, how many and where can be used to help identify some anvil makers. I'm not a big mousehole maven but to my eye the sharp topped feet and fat waist look very much like a mousehole---however Postman has identified over 200 different English Anvil manufacturers and *many* of them made anvils that were quite similar, often because the people who ran/worked for one manufacturer would go off and set up their own. Here in the states mousehole and peter wright were among the most common imported anvils from England so if we were going to guess Mousehole would be a pretty good one. In the UK you have the full gamut of them and so it's only a "possible" without better markings.

Friends don't let Friends play Russian Roulette!

Do you plan to make the billet yourself? Do you plan to make a LOT of them before you get one you can trust? Or are you planning to design your own parachute and test it by jumping off a plane with it? Could you cover the I need it "exceptionally hard AND tough yet machinable" I read that as similar to "I need it exceptionally heavy but very light!" Which one are you going for? What are your skills and equipment? You can machine extremely hard materials with EDM that a Bridgeport wouldn't touch. Why can't you heat treat it after machining? Send it to a pro! You will have so much time and effort and materials in that that quibbling over the cost of professional heat treating is like sending your Maserati to a Yugo mechanic to save a couple of bucks... Note that pattern welded material can be weaker than homogenous steels "strength" doesn't particularly come with it---especially if you have no experience in making it. Think of 500 layers with the possibility of a bad weld, inclusions, decarburization, etc at *every* layer boundary. To me this project sounds like a "in 3-5 years I want to be able to do this" and not a "want it done by Christmas" project. Do you have the time to get good at a bunch of different things *first*? As for steels you might look at what steels are currently used to make slides and then tweak your mix to be similar in carbon content to those. To get good contrast I would use something like L6 with an appreciable Ni content over 5160 and a plain carbon steel for the other.

I know folks who would maim for an anvil like that! Nice features, *great* condition and *great* price! Unfortunately most of us ID anvils using "Anvils in America" which is a extremely light on European anvils not imported into the USA in any quantities. The trademark looks clear enough to use if we can get any European Anvil mavens onboard.

Screwpress is nice for flattening a ring after it has been pulled around a jig. I do it hot. Of course for small rings you can bend them pretty roughly and then true them up on the cone mandrel/fly press after you weld the overlap. Some of it depends on how much hammer work you want to show. I rather like having the entire outer edge of the ring to be nicely hammered.

Coal makes fewer sparks than charcoal. Dry charcoal makes fewer sparks than damp charcoal. Some types of wood make more sparks as charcoal than others. Here in the USA Mesquite is very bad about sparking due to high levels of resin in the wood.

Well y'all are on a "small island" I know two folks here in NM, USA that use 750# West anvils and I was on the track of a 1000 pounder when I had to move 1500 miles further away.

Most of the knifemaking supply companies handle it like: http://www.texasknife.com http://www.knifemaking.com http://usaknifemaker.com etc.

Can you pay for an appropriate plug to be put in for your hammer?

But generally a fairly small stone grinder will take care of tooling no need for a monster

Hmmmm reminiscent of king kong snatching planes out of the sky...

What did you draw the temper on the file back too? Files are too brittle as they come for knives; but you can draw them back *before* doing any other work and they will do fine. As for shaping the leather most folks I know use belt sanders and other tooling like a shoe repair shop will have.

Put your full length 20' sticks of metal in the bottom sides as you have a long enough building to pull them out and put a set of shelves in front of them. If you have the fab capabilities make a set of shelves with deeper ones on the bottom and smaller ones on the upper reaches. I'm collecting wire milk crates for my storage and they come in a double length size too so you could do a set of shelves to hold stuff in milk crates with the big ones down low and the regular sized ones on top. In general the most "usable" storage for me is from my neck height to my waist and it's used for stuff I get into a lot and top and bottom storage is for "once in a blue moon" stuff.

Or he could be speaking of a check valve to prevent the bellows from sucking small bits of burning fuel into the bellows body. A double lunged bellows may not need one as the part connected to the tuyere is *always* pushing air out and so is not involved with the inhale and has a set of valves preventing involvement in the inhale in the center board anyway. (The "may" is if you have done a sloppy job of construction that leaks a lot, then the first inhale after a full stop can cause this issue.) Single action bellows do have this problem and it can be solved by a check valve/flap or by using them in pairs and careful alternation so the outblast overcomes any inhale effects.

NJanvilman; I was pointing out that some anvils can be dated by their markings/features that may not be a "coded date". Like lack of a pritchel puts an anvil pre 1820's in many cases. I'm sure Fishers had some features that were used only during certain times and *you* probably know them as "they didn't use the foot lugs before this date" or some sort of thing. It's not a coded date it's just a timeline of markings and features and when they were present. I don't know them for Fishers which is why I was speaking in generalities.

as for the steel designations: here's a nifty chart 10 series means its pretty much iron + a bit of manganese for sulfur control + the carbon indicated by the last two numbers, nothing else save for "tramp elements"

Stewart----play nice!

No without specifying the steel they both could be the same alloy! Like hot rolled A36 is pretty much the same as cold rolled A36. Cold rolled has prior work hardening but as soon as it's come up to temp in the forge the work hardening is gone and the unscaled surface is gone too. Now if you want something to last longer go with stainless steel---however it's a pain to forge, eats abrasives during finishing and costs more to start with. Most smith have a substantial premium on making stuff from stainless to cover all this.

I certainly would have worked you a WHOLE LOT for a vice that nice!

Funny how localized scrap can be---we have lots of old rock drill shaft and mine trolly rail from the mines and very little lumber mill scrap where I am at.

"The most I could tell you about blacksmithing is that it requires $$$, brains, and a whole lot space." Actually you have two out of the three *wrong*! I've built a complete beginner's set up for under US$25 including forge blower anvil and basic tools---good forge too it was my favorite billet welding forge for several years. The most "fancy" tool I used to make it was a 1/4" drill. I forged for 15 years in inner city Columbus Ohio; had a 100 year old house with a brick road in front of it and used a detached un powered garage from the 1920's as my smithy. Not a whole lot of space. One student ran a forge when he lived in a *dorm* in college As for how big is a one fire brick forge. It's one *soft* firebrick wide and long so one example would be 9” X 4 1/2” X 2 1/2” the working cavity is of course smaller. I used to use the one I made in the basement of the previously mentioned house as it got COLD in Ohio! I used it to forge the 40 nails needed for my mastermyr chest repro, I hot forged a bunch of silver penannular brooches in it too---back when silver was $5/oz...and I forged small eating knives like the self hilted squirrel knives. 1/4" stock was fine 3/8" stock was probably the upper limit with my cheapo torch. As I mentioned the forge, torch & small propane tank, anvil, hammers and tongs all fit in a 5 gallon bucket. As you are in the USA you can go to the local public library and ask to ILL "The Complete Modern Blacksmith" which will get you started pretty much for peanuts. After you learn a bit of blacksmithing I would then suggest you read "The Complete Bladesmith" Also look into the local ABANA affiliates where you live and start attending meetings---it will shorten your learning curve a LOT over trying to learn it off the net! (as will good books; why some folks believe that a dozen web pages written by who knows who replace 200 pages of a book written by a master of the craft...)

Large band saw blades being over 1 foot wide; or large bandsaw blades being over 1" wide?

School here mainly just uses C4 for their welding