ThomasPowers

Don't know squat about them but they claim to sell buttress threads: http://www.indiamart.com/rolexengineers-pune/search.html?ss=buttress I've usually not bought vises without good threads as that's a deal breaker for me. (Though I once bought a good screw and screwbox that was in a trashed vise; ended up trading it as part of a deal for a 400 pound anvil...)

You could make round swageblocks from them. I saw a huge round rotary swageblock at Quad-State once

You can buy square thread and nuts for it and just weld up an assembly. Making your own allows you to lathe the pieces to look like the originals.

297 is the weight. If I had Anvils in America to hand I could tell you the brand as the weight to the left and serial number to the right is distinctive as I recall.

My original shop has *no* wood in it: concrete floor metal frame metal walls and roof. My dirty shop extension has 4 telephone poles of creosoted wood as uprights and then everything else is metal save for the dirt floor---I had to pay for the extension myself and so it's all used/scrounged materials save for the purlins and screws which I bought new. What kinds of things do you like to forge?

Well you can set your "buy it now price" to 200,000,000 for a used toothpick so perhaps that's not a good thing to base it on. You do know that the largest annual blacksmith's conference is in Ohio this weekend with close to 1000 smiths attending? Probably where I would try selling it.

Note that price can vary by at least a factor of 2 depending on location just here in the United States, I haven't clue where you are---South Africa, England, Australia? In general prices are based on Condition, Brand, Model, Size and Location and range from scrap price of the metal up to around $6 a pound with the higher end very rare for used anvils. So far you have told us "I have a 4 door car---can anyone tell me what i got and ball park what there worth"

Climbing the pile at the local scrap would get me tossed out and banned; bribing one of the workers with a sixpack delivered at closing time to use the crane to get it; is positively *encouraged*. The random dozen doughnuts dropped off on the way to work in the mornings with a discussion of the type of things you are hunting for can lead to amazing results! Having the Scrapyard crew look forward to you stopping by is *priceless*!

What powers the magic? What Limits it? Unlimited magic means no conflict---"You are attacked by a FGHJLKHG" "I drop an asteroid on it killing it and cracking the world's crust, I then cast a spell killing all who oppose me..." *done*. If your rules don't make sense you lose your audience. There have been long discussion of this---some even predating computers---even Eniac! May I suggest you start by writing the rules for each society and things like magic. How do they get food? What kind of behaviors are accepted---and what kinds of rebellions against the norms are allowed? How do they interact with other cultures? Can they speak each other's languages or do they have a pidgin of sign language? Does magic only work on inanimate objects or organic ones---or metal ones---"flying carpets have to have metal threads woven in them..."? Tolkien is still the 'touchstone" for this sort of thing because he *did* work out the entire history of his "world" with races, languages, cultures, even mythologies

HW: As I recall the 13th edition of Machinerys Handbook is the cut off for a lot of the smithing info...Jock over at anvilfire knows the details...

As we move towards winter in the Norther hemisphere I should mention to not let a cold postvise conduction quench a hot blade! either warm the post vise jaws with a hot piece of steel clamped in them and/or do not let a blade sit in them very long and be sure it gets reheated afterwards.

Sorry they are not "very old" probably only 19th century at most, for blacksmithing tools 18th century starts to be very old---a lot of use use 100+ year old tools every time we smith! If you want to sell them may I suggest you post them on an armour making site like armourarchive.org (and yes they use the british spelling)

Medieval----where and when? Got about 1000 years and a slew of countries often having different styles. I'm not a big fan of the Mastermyre tongs. (I was lucky enough to find an old set of tongs at a fleamarket in Ohio that were spot on with a set I saw in a Roman Museum that I have in my Y1K forge kit)

Firstly: If you have *not* calibrated your gauge it can be off by as much as 50% with no signs of damaged. I'm always amused when people post about "my burner runs at XYZ psi" using an uncalibrated gauge. (Ever go though an ISO audit?) Mine lost it's faceplate and had the dial crumpled and the needle bent when a student knocked the bottle over and it hit an obstruction "just right". It doesn't leak; so I don't worry about it as the pressure is not important---it's that the burner runs correctly and so when it worked the set pressure was just a "suggestion" and I would dial in the correct air/fuel mix from there by "ear and by eye". The burn is loudest at a mix where all the fuel is burned and you are not running rich and the flame impinged refractory is brightest when you are not running rich *or* lean. Of course you adjust depending on what you are doing: for bladesmithing I generally run a bit rich to cut down on decarburization; for large mild work I'll try to run close to a perfect mix to get the most heat out of it and I have even a time or two run at a very oxidizing mix to produce excessive scaling that was then knocked off to leave a bumpy texture on a dragon's body I was forging.

Not ignorance but "traditions" can be not a good thing as many traditions in many cultures can be downright bad! I'd like to see them keeping up their traditions but perhaps with more PPE.

So are you totally missing the screw and screwbox or just have the screwbox or have both but they are worn out or damaged?

Sounds like you did check it out some *before* using it. Always better than spending the time and effort and then posting a plaintive "How do I harden this lovely mild steel knife I forged?" post. (Of which we have seen a more than gracious plenty of over time...) My opinion is that if one is not using a knife grade alloy they are NOT "familiarizing themselves with the processes" as high carbon steels get forged within a limited temperature range compared to low carbon steels, forge differently---harder under the hammer even hot and need more care with conduction quenching, etc. If you need more experience in *basic* forging you should not be doing knives! You can practice hammer control, drawing stuff out, etc on any of the myriad projects that will result in you having a slew of Christmas Presents ready to give. As i tell my students "Everything you do to make an S hook is directly applicable to making knives" (and it's a lot harder to mess one up!) Forging mild steel blades is sort of like learning to ride a bicycle in order to familiarize yourself with driving a car IMVMNSHO As the common automobile spring---leaf or coil is *generally* a decent alloy for blades and they can be sourced *free* pretty much everywhere, I strongly suggest people do *not* practice on mild steel or A36. For one thing you need to practice heat treating and having a lot of the same alloy around lets you dial in your process for that too!

Note that a postvise is a great way to show you the status of your bevel as a good one will have parallel jaws and you can put the piece blade up in it and see if the edge tends toward one side or the other.

Next comes refining of metals; save for the very few metals that occur in native form (and generally fairly rare at that!) ores will need to be processed to produce metals. In general this processing will require heat and carbon monoxide---both of which are commonly provided though burning of fossil fuels or charcoal. You do need to exhaust the fumes though to keep from dying yourself. (In many bad fantasies volcanic processes are used---except in real life such processes often involve large amounts of sulfur---very bad for iron smelting and a problem for many other metals as well.) Note that iron was smelted exclusively with charcoal all the way up into the the 1700's! (Abraham Darby figured out how to commercially use coke to smelt iron; I've visited the ruins of his furnace in England---as well as smelted iron from ore using early medieval technologies) If you are going to use magic you *MUST* make it consistent throughout or you lose "the willing suspension of disbelief" that fantasy requires.

"primitive skills" this cries out to make steels for flint and steel sets

There is a reason we've exported a lot of nasty process work over there...

Good point about De Re Metallica---it's *full* of pictures of Renaissance tech for moving air in a mine pumping water, even simple things like how to build a wheelbarrow or a water powered lifting system for people and ore. (and a lot of the people could pass for dwarves with a little modification...) The stalactite: it wasn't the growth but the dripping and while they will vary as mentioned some will be quite uniform for much longer times that early clocks were good for! Now if they could just figure out how to trade their waste rock for grain...road gravel for barley? They will need to trade with the outer world or eat rock or mushrooms grown on dwarven night soil...

Yup you can take it from the heat treat to the sharpening stone *IF* you are good! Most beginners have too rough a hammering and too thick a decarb layer to make that a good idea. Several hundred years ago they had the saying "If a good blade you will win you must forge thick and grind thin" to deal with those sorts of issues---and they wanted smooth shiny surfaces...

Ah the question was "titanium MM2 steel" not titanium. I'm a little worried that we don't have the correct designation: a M2 steel can be a bit of a pain, much harder than drilling titanium! Or that it might be something like "Neiko 3-Piece Titanium Step Drill Bits Set M2 Steel" So a titanium nitride coating on a hardened M2 high speed steel... I'd get more details before I pass on that info!

Not wall sized but handy!