ThomasPowers

Quad-State is usually the last full weekend in September and held at the Miami County Fairgrounds in Troy Ohio, about 30 minutes north of Dayton OH. I try to make it at least every other year but it is a bit of a drive from here in New Mexico---close to 1500 miles with the mandatory detours to visit the grandkids along the way.

Might check with the local smiths, Patrick Nowak is in that area.

Quiet; heavy enough to be useful, light enough to be easily moved, good price == great anvil to me!

Nicely done. Only Some trash compactors have faster screws as a faster take up is the only thing I would have added to that vise. As my screwpress has only a 2 lead screw I well know about using what you have though...

Oh No I love it when people argue if they can post their sources---that's the way we learn new stuff. So can Trip list where he read the bit about blacksmiths and marriages and I'll see if I can dig out the laws about marriages. "Gretna's famous "runaway marriages" began in 1753 when Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act was passed in England; it stated that if both parties to a marriage were not at least 21 years old, then parents had to consent to the marriage. The Act did not apply in Scotland, where it was possible for boys to marry at 14 and girls at 12 years old with or without parental consent (see Marriage in Scotland). Many elopers fled England, and the first Scottish village they encountered was Gretna Green. The Old Blacksmith's Shop, built around 1712, and Gretna Hall Blacksmith's Shop (1710) became, in popular folklore at least, the focal tourist points for the marriage trade. The Old Blacksmith's opened to the public as a visitor attraction as early as 1887. The local blacksmith and his anvil have become the lasting symbols of Gretna Green weddings. Scottish law allowed for "irregular marriages", meaning that if a declaration was made before two witnesses, almost anybody had the authority to conduct the marriage ceremony. The blacksmiths in Gretna became known as "anvil priests". " So the smiths did not have any special legal powers to perform marriages. The marriage laws here in the USA would be on a state by state basis and all the ones I have lived in have required either a JP or other Court Official or a properly certified Priest/Pastor/Rabbi/Religeous Leader. Trip; you're up!

OK started watching I think you need to research more on China as you seem to have been misled by their early work in cast iron without considering the bloomery work done in the middle east. China was not 1800 years ahead of the rest of the world and actually lagged in the use of the bloomery furnace! As far as smithing goes bloomery is much more important a process than casting iron! Also a "typo" The vikings were one of the earliest peoples in the new world"---besides the ones that showed up 20,000+ years earlier? Probably meant to say the first people to work hot iron on this continent, (Inuit did limited cold work of meteoric iron ) Good coverage of use of charcoal vs coal except for coal burning hotter. Coal and charcoal have about the same BTUs per pound. Charcoal is just less dense. The Japanese forge weld their swords with charcoal to this day. Note the wedding stuff is pure BS it is based on a quirk in English law where in England you were required to announce a wedding several times before it occurred---publishing the banns and had to have permission from the parents of the bride and groom if they were under 21 years old. However Scotland had different marriage laws that allowed a form of marriage to be done without parental permission and by the participants themselves announcing publicly with witnesses that they were married. Gretna Green was the first town over the border along the main coaching road to Scotland and the blacksmith shop was a public place with witnesses to hand! The blacksmith served no other purpose than as an official witness. Gotta go to a meeting.

Ahhh why are you not discussing this with your professors? That's what you are paying them for! (and even if you are not taking a class with the correct professor; few will turn down the chance to lure you over into their specialty if you ask them a question nicely!)

True but a very little change in the composition would then provide a similar item not covered by the patent. Lots of the old companies made a selling point of changes that really didn't make much difference; but did allow them to slide by someone else's patent.

My history spiel usually starts with charcoal for the fuel and bloomery iron and simple forges that are blown with twin bellows. Perhaps discuss why pattern welding helped things out in the early medieval period. Then add in coal in the High middle ages and the switch to the indirect method of producing wrought iron. Hit the start of the industrial revolution and the smelting of iron with coke---Abraham Darby and ride that to the 1850's perhaps mentioning the early steam engines and the complaint of their builder that the smiths only worked to the thickness of a worn shilling in tolerance, (Hope to pick up one of those while I'm in the UK), then the Bessemer converter and how it changed smithing from wrought iron to mild steel and a discussion on how the material became the term for the items usually using the analogy of the Linens Department at a store now having *nothing* made from linen in it but that sort of thing *used* to be made from linen so the name stuck. I discuss how the "frontier" in America coloured our vision of smiths being jack of all trades and how the Smiths often did anything they could to survive as the craft waned. Then I usually hit them up with the renaissance of the craft in Modern Times and try to drag interested folks into attending an ABANA Affiliate meeting... Depending on the audience I might also discuss sword making misconceptions or the Blacksmith vs Farrier division---mentioning the *old* B&W westerns where a town had both a Blacksmith's shop *and* a forge at the Livery stable just for shoeing. (But they have to be old enough to remember Regan as an actor not just the President!) Yeah after the first 2 to 3 hundred times it gets fairly trimmed down and fast! Of course medieval and renaissance smithing is my area of interest and having visited smiths in a number of countries I'm aware of how the craft differed in say Europe than the USA. I'll check out the video after work tonight. First Demo I gave was the spring of 1981 IIRC, Medieval Fair in Norman OK.

Yeah---Get to Quad-State!!!!!!! (which I'll probably miss this year with the job change and burning up my vacation going to Wales in the UK...)

Tom Maringer held a patent on the use of metallic glass fused billets for cutlery at one time. I believe he let it go as the cost far exceeded any chance of return on it.

Well I've seen a number of people discuss the "history of smithing" and only cover 10% of it at most---sort of like doing a History of the United states and only covering things since the year 2000. Not wrong just mislabeled. (Back when I lived in Virginia in grade school I had VA history; we learned about Capt. John Smith (of Jamestown) almost day by day but funny we never covered who won the civil war...and yes it WAS over by the time I was in grade school, my Great Grandfather fought in it!) I haven't seen the video yet to tell if they meant "History of American Smithing" or "19th century Smithing" or some other subset or if they really did start at the beginning and follow it up to present times.

My system doesn't seem to get the video from your post is there a direct link to it I could use? I'm very interested in the history of blacksmithing especially the several thousand years *before* the 19th century and can't wait to see how you cover it!

Yup they were top bar's.

I don't know if Dr Feuerbach's book has been published yet. I read her Thesis when it first came out.

FeS2: No close neighbors? Needs to be well roasted to change the sulfide ore to an oxide ore before smelting. I'd think it would be more cost and work as you have to pre-process the pyrite to use it and that will take fuel as well as time.

What did the metal detector say about possible others in the area?

I've seen a lot of re-purposed shoes including the fence application I mentioned too. (as well as tack hooks and even door hinges) I've also seen dead animals left "as is" if they were not close to the house. Anymore info on the site details?

Can you source charcoal locally? No need to wait on coal to get started if you can get charcoal.

First thing do you attend the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo MI? Coming up early May! http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/ excerpt from the schedule pdf: Sword in Hand I: Practical Insights into the Medieval Long Sword Sponsor: Oakeshott Institute Organizer: Annamaria Kovacs, Independent Scholar Presider: Annamaria Kovacs Combat Training for the Longsword: The Efficacy of the Proliferation of Options following a Single Entry into Any Mode of Combat in the Flos duellatorum Bob Charron, St. Martin’s Academy of Medieval Arms Recipes for Medieval Sword Blades Craig Johnson, Oakeshott Institute Specialized Armor for Tournaments: The Nuremberg Stechzeug Josh Davis, Oakeshott Institute There’s No “True Art of the Sword” Russell Mitchell, Independent Scholar Sword in Hand II: But One Art of the Sword: Comparison between Fiore’s and Lichtenauer’s Approaches to the Fight (A Demonstration) Sponsor: Oakeshott Institute Organizer: Annamaria Kovacs, Independent Scholar Presider: Annamaria Kovacs A demonstration with Greg Mele, Freelance Academy Press/Chicago Swordplay Guild, and Keith Alderson, Oakeshott Institute. Also look into De Re Militari De Re Militari is an international scholarly association established to foster and develop interest in the study of military affairs and warfare in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Our society publishes the Journal of Medieval Military History and organizes academic conferences focusing on medieval warfare. If you want to really get into this sort of thing you need to meet and associate with the people doing likewise. Having such friends can get you invitations to examine various museum pieces too!

I just mailed out a custom oven peel to my friend doing renaissance cooking. Her travel beehive oven is quite small so I whipped out a small peel in about 1/2 an hour Saturday. I also repaired a set of brass candlesticks for our church Sunday afternoon so I guess I'd have to say that my hobby crosses over with my life! (now to design and build a tolling striker for the church's bell and get a wok ring done for my stepson...)

A friend had 2 hives on my land; my neighbor has 20 acres in alfalfa... Unfortunately last year we lost the hives (winter of 2010) and he hasn't re-started them. Of course we haven't used up all the honey that was our share yet either. He's doing a top bar no foundation set up.

Thank you very much. I started smithing 31 years ago with only 1 book to go by and suffered a long and painful learning curve. I want to shorten it for others so we all can move on to new and unusual error modes! (Done a lot of weird stuff too checking out hypotheses in historical smithing...forge welding of layers of cast iron and mild steel is "interesting" in a quick get the fire extinguisher sort of way as the cast iron splashes at welding temps!)

Too late I know, I'm offline weekends; but I did buy some blacksmithing books at the Frankfurt fleamarket when I spent the summer over there. I was able to ask about books on old iron work and kunstschmiede stuff. Also pre war guidebooks often had examples of forge work that no longer exists---especially pre-WWI. Note that buying smithing books from the 1930's: they will NOT be on display due to the laws on displaying swastikas--a symbol used in Smithing from that dark era. When I toured Neuschwanstein I was given special permission from a guard to photograph one of the ornate door hinges as none of the shop pictures had a clear example and I really liked it. (Modern of course, that castle was built with a steam crane...) note if you get a chance to get out of town; Marksburg castle above the town of Brauback on the Rhine (near Koblenz) is the only castle along that stretch that wasn't destroyed by Napoleon and then re-built during the German Romantic period. A pretty drive from Frankfurt.

Can you make friends with someone at a machine shop that could add your order in with the shop one and so get it at the shop's rate?