ThomasPowers

About twice as much here as where I used to live and based a lot on the state of the screw. So putting it's location and a picture of the screw would really help!

No need to handle them just check with a file---too easy to file => re-harden, then re-temper; too hard to file => re-temper If you were close I'd say stop by and I wouldn't charge you to do a heat treat run; though offering to chip in for fuel is a nice thing.

Usually that type are real gas hogs designed to be used by factories and schools where the gas consumption was paid for by someone else. Now if you are sharpening jackhammer bits or doing a lot of something that you can stack the opening full...

Looks cool and quite usable, authentic ones would probably be out of his price range anyway...

Visited the local scrap yard Saturday; only spent US$5 for some square tubing used for highway sign supports, an old pitch fork---going to make my wife a spider for Christmas and have it dangling from a set of the xmas lights in a clear plastic tube...so I need 2 of them for the legs. I also picked up a 1" dia x 48" long wrought iron bolt to throw on the wrought iron pile---when I found it it was still on the scales being weighed in. I waited till it was officially "in" and added it to my pile. Finally a 6' length of 3/8 rod in great shape. The sq highway sign tubing nests, is heavily galvanized and has holes on all 4 sides making it easy to bolt together---going to be putting some lengths into my shop floor to have removable fixtures like a bender and post vise, etc. (and still be able to yank them out and get the truck inside to work on it in bad weather or load it for a demo!

Would be sinking into the dirt faster if solid---they get some rain in that area!

The Real Wrought Iron Company, LTD in Coalbrookdale UK sells real wrought iron otherwise you are at the mercy of the scrap stream where you are at---here in rural NM, USA I picked up a 1" round 48" long wrought iron bolt at the scrapyard Saturday---paid about US$1 for it... Has quite visible striations and so is probably a lower grade---what knifemakers prefer as high grade wrought iron does not show much "pattern" in the etch. (Old wagon tyres are a favorite source of low grade WI out here) Repeated forge welding of cast iron to get wrought iron is about as accurate as repeated forge welding of glass to get fiber glass---it's not the way it's done! You could puddle your own from cast iron; however that would make the price probably more than *ten* *times* *MORE* than buying it directly. You can also take iron ore and smelt your own wrought iron in a bloomery for expensive small yields---I've done so many of times to learn a fairly useless ancient skill; but except for bragging rights and hour at the local scrapyard can get me more wrought iron than a week building and running a bloomery! Remember most everything made of iron before the 1850's (Bessemer/Kelly Process) was made from wrought iron or cast iron so old buildings, bridges, ag equipment can all be a source of the real stuff once you train yourself to recognize it!

For a different way to look at things: the smith has the anvil and hammer as their main tools and things like hardy tooling, top tools, drifts, chisels, etc are things that are used *between* the anvil and the hammer. You can also break it down into tools that work by pushing metal around and tools that cleave/shear metal. The postvise is another category of tool as it's not used with the anvil; but is used to hold items and so goes along with tongs. Smithing vs Forging is a tricky one; *I* generally think of forging as dealing with larger changes in cross section by application of force where smithing can be delicate through large amounts of work. Smithing is also used with other tasks: "word smithing", "Lock smithing" I've even seen the term "wood smith" used.

Note that most specialty lumber is kiln dried which doesn't make as quite as tough a handle as air dried wood.

First of all: WHAT COUNTRY DO YOU LIVE IN? Liability may be quite different in China vs South Africa vs England vs USA vs... Here in the USA getting liability insurance may *increase* the possibility that you get sued. As my father once told me "Don't sue anyone that doesn't have any money---you may win but you will still have to *pay* your lawyer!" Most college students are below the "worth while to sue" level, are you? Taxes are extremely location specific as well; however keep a record of your earnings and see if at the end of they year you own anything according to the tax requirements of where you live.

Look up the Robb Gunter method of anvil repair on the net. Note that *many* weldors don't know squat about welding on *anvils* and have often made things worse by not preheating the steel top or by using the wrong rod---many think that hardfacing rod is just the ticket; but they use rod designed to resist abrasion and that spiderwebs when cooling leaving the face covered with fine cracks. When I have an anvil that needs re-facing I cheat! I wait until our local club has an anvil repair workshop and has someone that knows what they are doing do it right---I'm happy to fork in for pre-heat propane, rods and beer! (the last one was a 400# trenton with a lovely flat face---in between the air arc gouges where the weldors at a mine used it as a fixture when working on heavy mine machinery! The repair workshop was 150 miles away but was done by a fellow who is not only a fine smith in his own right, he also teaches welding at the local college.)

yup we need a description or *your* process and where the warping is happening. For me if the warp happens in the hardening process I will immediately reheat, straighten, normalize (if it's an alloy that profits from normalization) and then re-harden. Hardening a blade with the edge too thin also increases the likelihood of it warping. Heating the blade too much in the final clean up grinding can cause warps,... *Details*!

Note that I don't see any adjustment on the pitman so it doesn't have a wide range of different thicknesses you can work---not a problem when working sheetmetal as even 1/4" difference is a BIG difference in sheetmetal thickness---however in blacksmithing you may want to work 1" stock down to 1/4" and doing that by switching out how high the lower anvil is is not a lot of fun. Building a hammer that doesn't work well for your needs is a rather expensive and time consuming folly.

The chinese had one style of duplex sword that was stored in a single sheath and when drawn was two blades---but they were never fastened together and the handles were not that great for using as they had to be flat on one side to "stack". Such trick swords are more movie and book fantasies. (And like many such fantasies your opponent would probably just kill you while you are fiddling with getting your blades apart...) Using a trick sword in a formal duel would be grounds for the seconds to kill you. (even the set trigger of the pistols used in the Burr-Hamilton duel were not know about until they were x-rayed in recent times leaving the winner in opprobrium back in day...)

It the handles burned out they will have lost their temper. Charcoal was the fuel used by blacksmiths for close to 2000 years before coal was used; however we are talking about real, lump, charcoal and not briquettes. A camp fire and a blow drier *is* a forge and can bring the steel up to critical temperature----easily determined as at critical temperature a magnet will not be attracted to the steel---note you only want to have the cutting edge up to that temperature and the rest of the tool cooler. Quench in a sizable amount of vegetable oil---used fry oil is fine, a couple of gallons is suggested. Pre warm it to around 140 degF but not above tempering temps. I use a chunk of hot metal on a steel wire to preheat it and a cooking thermometer to judge the temperature. Note than when red hot metal goes into oil it will flame up---use tongs or a long wire and don't jerk the oil container over burning down any structure it's in---happened to someone I know. After it's cooled in the oil take it out and wipe it down with rags and place in a kitchen over at about 350 for an hour. Season to taste Let it cool and check the hardness. Remember there may be a decarb layer form the heating in the fire and go below it with a file. For a hewing implement you want it to be sharpenable with a new sharp file. If it's too hard place it back in the oven and raise the temp 25 degF. Repeat until happy. If it was not hard enough you can re harden and try the over at a lower temp, say 300; but in general this would indicate something is wrong. Biggest help is to go to a local smith and get their assistance. We might be able to suggest someone if we knew your *general* location.

As that sort of trivet is used over hot coals to allow heating of pans without legs I would assume the wax gets fried off long before a hot pan contacts it. If it's used only decoratively then it's not an issue. (As I'm making renaissance kitchen "tooling" I've made several of these based on the Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 1570---and need to make more as I had a request for smaller shorter ones recently now that I have the ones done for the 10-15 gallon pots done. I tend to rivet the legs on and then forge weld them in place smoothing off the top of the trivet in the process.)

You are ignoring the fact that they did not make many of them; that combined with natural attrition over the last century or so can make them rare even in the county the factory was in!

But look at all the fun they had in the 19th century trying to cast the largest cast steel ingot! (Mention of this can be found in "The Arms of Krupp" including Krupp cutting a chunk off an ingot that was accused of just being cast iron and forging it as cast iron *doesn't* forge...) Two *very* *good* lines that bear repeating! "wrought iron is not "a" material. it can be all sorts of materials varying in carbon and silicates and other impurities. whilst smiths may have been sad at its demise engineers must have celebrated the coming of mild steel."

I'll be doing the demo for the October SWABA meeting at my forge. It's making a fairly simple natural sculpture using worn rusted out wood bits that are forged flat and developed on the anvil with a ball ended hammer. They come out looking like common native plants out here. I came up with it when my younger siblings dogs were destroying all my mother's garden plants---so I told her I'd make her a plant that the *dogs* would be the ones in trouble if they messed with it. Even if they urinate on it will just speed up the rust patination on them. How did I design it? I had seen ones made from rebar; but felt they were a bit off---then I was at the fleamarket and a fellow had a coffee can of old bits rusted past recovery for $2 and I saw in my mind what they would look like heated up and flattened. I tend not to keep everything straight and flat as I pound them out like I would for a knife blade as the "natural curves" make them look better (more natural) than bending them afterwards. Another exercise: look at something someone else has made and figure out how *you* would make something similar with the tools and materials you have to hand and with any changes to it you think would make it better!

Lots of different aspects to this. I believe some is innate as well as some is learned. In some ways it can be like learning to play jazz---you need to internalize what your skills can accomplish with your instrument and then learn to set it free. I find that I tend to design things to use the tools and techniques I know *and* the materials I already have to hand. My Grandfather was a tinkerer and my Father an engineer so I learned growing up that I *could* modify things to suit myself---it's almost part of the definition of being human! Being cheap helps---if you have to save your "allowance" for a month to fill your propane tank; you learn that your scrap pile is your friend---as is the scrap yard. (I always check the scrapyard before I proceed on to the steel sales place.) Anything you can build from just your scrap pile is "free money". I often will go when folks scrap out a garage and buy nuts and bolts---getting a dollar bolt for a penny is a great investment as I don't have to drive into town and spend the money to buy one when I need one. So for training exercises: look at your scrap pile and try to figure out something you can make from just items in it---and make them!

What he said! Source your handles *first* and make your drift to fit them with minimal time spent on modifying the handle! (remember that time will be money for you!)

OA can cut 2" and larger!

"Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity", Rehder, has plans for a "fool proof" bloomery in it's appendices. You can make steel by starting with iron ore and smelting it in a bloomery, (note that the tatara is one type of bloomery furnace). You can also start with "mild steel" and make high carbon steel from it using the blister steel process or even a crucible steel process. I was part of a bloomery team for over a decade using early medieval european methods and while it was great fun the amount of work involved makes such wrought iron and steels quite expensive. If we knew where you are we might be able to suggest someone near you who is currently running a smelting operation every now and then---I know a half dozen or so people in the USA for example, PA, MI, NM, OH, ID, MD,...and these are only my friends! I know one fellow in Eastern Canada as well.

One aspect of drilling larger holes is getting the speed slow enough and the pressure heavy enough. Running to fast without enough pressure tends to draw temper on the drillbit *and* work harden the stock in front of the drillbit! Equipment designed to drill wood generally won't do a good job with metal. OTOH I have drilled 1/2" holes in 1/2" thick steel by hand---as in NO POWER using a hand cranked Cole drill.

"Early American Ironwork", Sonn; has an example that he describes as Pennsylvania-German and mentions that that style of candleholder was common in Germany and the low countries. (plate 316 vol III IIRC) Again no mention of the sobriquet "Courting Candle". I'm getting the feeling that that name for it was pushed back on it by someone trying to sell their reproductions and wanting some "fluff" to pad out their description and other folks started using their fluff as "documentation".