ThomasPowers

My last rummage through the local rural scrapyard turned up a PEXTO stake plate in mint condition, less than US$10 too

Thanks for the great laugh! 99% of the armour archive is NOT "period accurate". They are modern people using modern tools and alloys to make modern interpretations of armor---exactly what you were asking. Still the best place to ask. Now if you want to get into "how would they have done it" there is a historical research forum there and wrought iron weirdos like my self will start to chime in; but in the general section you will find more info on making Ti armour than on wrought iron armour!

Banding material VARIES, the stuff for light duty cheap items is not the same for a critical duty multimillion dollar item. if you don't know what you have I would suggest spark testing and the quench and break test. Saying that "banding is alloy XYZ" is misleading at best... As to not finding any bandsaw blades: what did all the machine shops tell you when you called and offered to buy their trashed blades for a pound for a couple of them?

Put it on a scale---what it weighs is it's weight!

Looking at the ratios for the lever action --- that one looks like it will eat your leg (you will need to exert a lot of force to get the head to hit)

I have a lot of weird and oddball tongs and hammers that generally sit quietly for *YEARS*---until they are the *perfect* tool for some weird or oddball job and get the heck used out of them for a day or two and then go back to lurking. I have the space on the racks, they are not in the way and they didn't cost me much either---but sure save me a lot of time and effort when they do get used. Whenever someone tells me you should get rid of anything you haven't used in a year I ask them if they did that with their Fire Extinguisher. Some things you expect to use only sporadically; but they still are a good thing to have handy all the time!

optimize for what you'll be doing the most of and then make arrangements for outliers---I once needed to box fold 3/8" plate several feet long so I dug a trench forge in my back yard---in the city! and built a tuyere from a piece of blackpipe that would give me a 2'+ working fire. Had to clamp a piece of RR rail up on some 4x4 uprights as the "anvil" and got the folds done to make a firebox for a replica of the Santa Maria.

Yup that's definitely not CP 1 or 2 Titanium; I bought a chunk of unknown Ti at QS too and ended up selling it on at cost to my apprentice as he loves a challenge; I love forging the CP alloys as I'm all by hand right now.

Look into Neo-tribal metalsmithing; they will be doing hobby blacksmithing for far less than US$100---and some of them are selling blades in the close to $1000 range! Yes it would take serious money to try to duplicate my current shop---but I once built a complete beginners set up: Forge, blower, anvil and basic tools; for less than US$25 And it was a good forge too it was my favorite billet welder for several years. Also the most complex tool I used to build the set up was a 1/4" drill! Now it didn't have a london pattern anvil BUT YOU DON'T NEED A LONDON PATTERN ANVIL TO DO BLACKSMITHING. So all the posts on how much a good london pattern anvil costs are not germane to the discussion---why yes there are cars that cost over a million dollars but you can buy a car that will get you places for less! I have a lot of pretty toys most bought on a strictly limited budget---I used to get US$15 a week to spend on all my hobbies and vises---I'm up to $25 now. That allowance + various windfalls that happen when I sell something or do outside work that accrues to me and not my day job that supports the family has bought the Anvils, swage block, cone, screwpress, postvises, vises, hammers, etc. I have hardly ever been given anything free but I have bought everything CHEAP! It has been a long process finding it all and the "hunt" is a big part of my entertainment. Who needs a detective story on TV when you can be tracking down a rumour of a triphammer being sold for scrap rate somewhere in your county! Just about a week and a half ago I was stopping at a rural scrapyard next door to where we take our trash and found a PEXTO stake plate buried in the dirt, mint condition and it cost me less than $10---made me happy all week!

Brush/bonfire wouldn't work and I doubt you would get much luck trying to fine with your forge fire---probably spend more in time and money than it would cost to just buy it from the sellers!---including shipping... One issue is that you are trying to decarburize the cast iron and most of the forge fire where it's hot enough is reducing not oxidizing. You also lose material in oxidation and in a coal fire pick up sulfur which makes the resultant hot short. Most of the puddling methods separated the cast iron and the fuel using reverberatory furnaces to help lessen sulfur transfer to the metal. Earlier methods---like the Walloon method used real charcoal instead of coal/coke and so didn't have that problem. I am all for you trying the experiment however; just beware that the resultant material may cost more than silver... How about putting some cast iron in a crucible and using the propane forge as a puddling furnace? Just remember to wear proper PPE as you will be staring into the furnace a LOT and so eye damage is more of a problem than in just forging. Also Kelly (whose experiments predated Bessemer's) used refractory lined barrels to do his experiments with making cast iron into steel, so a fairly small scale run should be possible though hideously dangerous as it's a quite exothermic process and molten cast iron does not play well with others. As for WI collection: I have braved the rattle snakes to pull out the 1/2" dia WI bracing rods from a rotted out and collapsed wooden RR car now a low pile of rubble in the desert. I once pulled a large wagon tyre out of a dumpster down the alley from my house in inner city Columbus OH---a local florist had used it in a window display and when they were done they trashed it. I have been given a wagon tyre at the trash transfer place (I'm rural so we have to take our trash to a place that consolidates it and hauls it to the dump). The guy who runs it lets me go through the metal pile there. I also have bought a buggy tyre for US$5 from the scrap yard next door. What I have found is the plain metal tyres sell cheaper than if *any* wood is left associated with them at all. (I also look for the hub bands as they are often Wi too and a nice size for projects.) As wagon tyre was a common source of metal for other projects "back in the day" I look for short pieces that have been re-worked into something else---they sell at scrap rate often as they are just bits of "iron" in the junk pile. Once our church was helping a lady move as her 1880's adobe house was scheduled to be bulldozed, while loading up my pickup I noticed that the disused above ground cistern was being held together by 1" diameter rods and got permission to scrounge them (before iron went so high) 115' of good quality wrought iron! They were installed after the cistern cracked in the 1906 Quakes here in Socorro. Even after 100 years being exposed to the elements I was able to back the nuts off the threaded ends of the rods with a regular adjustable wrench and no penetrating oil! And of course there is my tale of buying the WI water tank from the old Ohio Penitentiary when they tore it down 3/16" and 5/16" WI plate---the WI cell bars they wanted way too much for as "decorator items" but the water tower I bought at scrap rate. As for transporting it home; back in the 1970's I once carried a 90 pound carry on onto the airplane as they weighed suitcases but not carryons! I had run across the ruins of an old cabin around 9000' in the Rockies on Vacation and asked the Ranch owner if I could have some of the scrap from the pile nearby...

The issue is paying Mercedes prices for a Yugo anvil. Not a good idea, also if someone misrepresents an anvil like that how much do you trust whatever else they may say about it?

The general rule is only stainless on stainless. Are you in a high rust area? I never coat any of my anvils with oil and don't have any problems here in NM. Back in Ohio I'd get flash rust but that didn't hurt anything and was easily removed the next time I used it.

So they went right by me on their way to you---I can see I25 from my house. I had suggest the fellow selling them put them up on the SWABA page as I wanted them to stay in NM because we have such a drought of smithing stuff! Great that you got them.

Then you probably don't want to do it with charcoal. Wanting one forge to do it all is like wanting a vehicle that will seat 16 people, haul 2 tons of coal, handle sportily and get great gas mileage!

You might search for examples of lively forges as a starting idea but with the capacity to pile charcoal deeper on it. Is welding going to be a common goal for your forge? Getting a good reducing fire is partially a factor of fuel size as well as air input. Rehder in "Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity" has a bunch of info on biomass fired furnaces and in his experiments the reducing zone in a bloomery was about 12-13 times the mean fuel diameter so there is a balance between charcoal so small that it burns up too fast and charcoal so large that you can't get a reduction zone. Note that the Japanese size all their charcoal to about 1" cubes for use in smelting and forging.

Did you pick up that pair just recently sold in NM?

May I commend to your attention armourarchive.org a set of forums dedicated to making medieval and renaissance armor (and yes they use the British spelling: armour in the URL) Probably a much better match for your question than a blacksmithing forum.

Will the bell be swung? If so how did they calculate the ultimate load? Just weight or weight and motion? (I'm on the "keep the church bell working" committee at our church and sprung for the expensive high grade bolt instead of the cheap box store one for our 1880's bell now in it's second building, same church.)

How flexible is the metal? Need a different glue between a rigid piece and a flexible one.

And the old "Black Diamond" files (ones not stamped Nicholson) were 1.2% carbon and so great for juicing up a pattern welded billet where repeated welding and drawing out tends to *decrease* the carbon content. (There is still the myth that you increase the carbon content doing this--which is why the japanese can start out at nearly 2% carbon and end up at 0.5% carbon after many folding and welding cycles!)

NO! do not design a charcoal forge as a larger coal forge! Since all the charcoal contiguous with the forge fire will burn you want to keep the amount not actually in the using part of the fire down while increasing the depth of the fire as much as possible. When I use a coal forge for charcoal I build up side walls from firebrick to make more of a trough forge keeping the fire deeper and not having it spread to the sides where it's putting off heat and burning up fuel but not being useful. One of Alexander Weyger's books had a picture of a charcoal forge he had seen in his travels that had a large adobe V shape built into it to funnel charcoal down into the firepot but control it as well. Charcoal also does better with a hand crank blower or bellows than electric blowers. I started with home made charcoal back in 1981 and still use it for medieval LH forging.

and *that* is really what counts not some name on the side---so stamp *your* name on it to mystify future owners! (and foil thieves and yes I have had a 200 pound anvil stolen before)

Hope to meet you at the June SWABA meeting! I'll be driving up from Socorro and can give you a ride if needed---though my 22 year old 3 banger pu doesn't have air conditioning anymore... I'd really make a push to take Frank's class if you can! "The June SWABA meeting will be on Sat June 2 at 9am at Aaron Craig's shop at 4363 Center Pl, Santa Fe, NM 87507-9706 (aaron craig . Directions on Yahoo! Maps; Directions to: 4363 Center Pl, Santa Fe, NM 87507-9706 on Yahoo! Maps: http://maps.yahoo.com/#q=4363+Center+Pl%2C+Santa+Fe%2C+NM+87507-9706&conf=1&start=1&lat=36.06358116957895&lon=-100.9326383471489&zoom=9&mvt=m&trf=0&q1=Albuquerque%2C+NM&q2=4363+Center+Pl%2C+Santa+Fe%2C+NM+87507-9706 Bring you "Iron in the Hat" and "Pot Luck" to the meeting."

Don't paint/oil/wax any surface that will come in contact with the metal you are working even if you are cold working it. Alexander Weygers has an entire chapter on making a bang-up anvil from RR Rail in "The Complete Modern Blacksmith" including how to heat treat it! If you live in the United States of America you should be able to ILL a copy at your local public library.

Most of the alternative forms of flooring allow for easy removal of a section and excavation and seating of a log for an anvil or casting a pad for a powerhammer---much easier than having to cut out a section of a concrete floor to allows a powerhammer pad to be cast! When I'm happy with the placement I will bury several feet of stump for an anvil making it much more stable than currently it is sitting a top a concrete pad in the old section of the shop.