ThomasPowers

For scrollwork often a clamshell type forge will work in gas And I'm sure he meant an "ABANA type" group as South Africa and "North America" are rather antipodean...

Good point about temperature effects! Charpy testing was one of the fun labs in my MatSci class!

I was going to suggest helping a friend frame a shop building...

Did you take the Repousse class at the Gunter's school in Moriarty as well as get the hammers from them? As I recall they are using tin blocks now to avoid lead issues. Sounds like you needed a different formulation of chaser's pitch too. More oil if it was breaking on you. Anyway very nice looking work and excellent design for the entire piece!

Heat transfer and tradition. When using a gas furnace you can swirl the heat around the crucible from the bottom and have it go up. Also when using solid fuel crucible furnaces vertical is the orientation you get with the crucible nestled in a pile of fuel---easier to add fuel around it to. I use my coal forge for my casting needs.

I'm trying to remember how many years my veggie oil has been in the tank---it doesn't stink---yet. Been a couple at least. Keeping a lid on it helps---less oxidation and keeps the critters out of it. Climate may make a difference too. I'm using a very similar set up to what you describe, tank bottom, one thing I did to make it "safer" was to build a wooden holder for it. Scrap 2x6, two lengths on their sides and then two cross sections on top of that cut to fit around the tank---makes it much more stable and makes most of the dripping or boil over caught by the easily replaceable wood instead of the hard to clean floor. Make up a pre-heater too, simple slab of steel with a heavy steel wire with a hook on the end attached to it. Heat in forge, drop in tank with the hook holding the rim and getting the heat to transfer in the bottom of the tank rather than just the top. Due to a student who didn't realize that heating the quenchant hotter than the draw temperature for the alloy would be a bad idea I have also picked up a thermometer to measure the oil temp. If you are really worried about it turning get used fry oil from a fast food place and switch it out often.

I have a 410 pound we believe is a Trenton. Owned by a copper mine that did their best to mess it up---air arc gouging, crush injuries. It went through an Anvil repair workshop, Gunter method, and is now sitting there humming to it's self in it's awesomeness. Unfortunately all markings were ground off at some part we are mainly identifying it by shape and the depression on the bottom. Oh yes I have about US$200 in it---traded a fellow a 125# PW, a screw and screwbox for a postvise and $100 boot. He wanted a lighter anvil to cart around and I had recently found the PW wile doing a test drive on a car we ended up buying. (Wife would not let me go and buy the smithing stuff till after we bought the car....)

more in the German style---you know you've got a good vise when you have to dissemble it to get the pieces light enough to load by yourself!

For what? I have 2 burners on a 5 gallon tank; fairly small burners; but it's my main gas forge.

"work hardening" were you cold working it rather than hot? When I forge silver hot coldworking doesn't see to be a problem---making sure it doesn't melt in the forge is the problem!

Well since it is riveted on you can always remove the rivets and replace it with a thicker one! Note: when overlapping plates I would do it so that they don't channel sharp points *into* the armour but rather shrugs them off: so the Dome overlaps the outside of the Face and the top section of the face over laps the bottom section. This is based on most strong blows being swung overhand rather than coming up from below. Also front to back as well but it looks like that was done. I once did a spangen helm where I forged all the metal out too. Nothing was made from stock but made by hammering out thicker material into thinner. I feel that mine ended up too heavy as I didn't have access to a powerhammer; but it was practice for doing one all out of pattern welded material---I have some of the billets welded up and a trial plate I did using someone else's powerhammer but it's waiting till I get mine finally online.

Large weird shapes: For one offs or rare occasions: 1 take a section of kaowool and roll into a large tube. Tie a couple of pieces of bailing wire around it and stick a blown burner into it. Close up ends with stacked firebrick---with a layer of kaowool on the inside if possible 2: stack up firebricks to make a forge shaped for your odd piece. stick burners in where appropriate. Cover with kaowool or other insulative board. If it's something you do a lot of you need to build a dedicated forge for it.

Revere ware does have an appreciable thickness of copper. The cheap copies have just flash plating in my experience. I use Revere ware for my camping pots and buy them used and have NEVER seen a true Revere ware pot that has scratched or worn through the copper!

My A&H (clearly marked) has a caplet depression and a serial number on the right side of the front foot when looking at the horn. No sign of a weight stamp on the other side though and it's in decent shape there. Have to flip the 410# "trenton" (all marking obliterated---I really need to haul it to Q-S and have Postman give it a gander. It's just that it's a 1500 mile trip each way and I'd rather haul 400 more pounds *back* with me...)

Why stop there? I find my 515# Fisher to be a great main shop anvil!

Had a knife I whipped out of coil spring during a demo that showed a crack in the *spine* after heat treat last weekend. Fatigued springs, wasted work! (Oil quench too.)

2---10--11!

Have you thought of using air powered tooling? When we toured a smith's shop for a SWABA meeting and he was just finishing off a major commission, (I've owned houses that cost less!), with a lot of repousee work a lot of it was done with air powered tooling---taking an impact gun and making rounded tools for it.

Note that if you don't want the shape of a drilled hole for your rivet head you can drive the hot stock onto a ball bearing to get a more hemispherical one. (or pre-drill and then "drift" with the ball bearing)

I learned a variation of that for taking a vise on the road---A full sized 55 gallon open top drum with a piece of 2x12 cut into an arc and lagged through the top edge to provide a place to bolt the vise too. Fill with water and you have a 440# vise stand, a quench tank and enough water to hand to make demo sites relax about possible fire issues. At the end of the demo, unscrew the bung near the bottom and let the water out and now the barrel is light and easy to move! I generally stored the vice inside the drum along with scrap metal for when it was moving in the truck. As I was often on soft surfaces I use a tamper plate to hold the acorn on the foot of the vise and a tentstake or two to keep it from shifting if I was hunkering down on it.

Same way you get to Carnegie hall: Practice Practice Practice! Some people are more strongly "handed" than others but even severely handed folks tend to be able to switch *if* the dominant hand is injured and unusable. I sometimes switch off a bit if my right hand gets tired and I have a job I need to finish. I am not as good with my left but a lot better now than when I started! Smithing teaches you to use your other hand/arm actively and that is one of a problem new smiths have as they are not used to doing different controlled things with both arms simultaneously. Now I would advise using a soft hammer to practice with as it will be "hammer control, what hammer control?" all over again. (I had one student who was doing really badly on hammer control---such that I asked him if he was using his dominant hand?---he replied that he was trying to train to use his other hand and I explained that as good as that was he should mess up his own equipment learning that and NOT MINE! If it wasn't in a class I might have set him up on a hard faced anvil with a soft hammer and let him suffer.)

I recently picked up a lab thermometer at the fleamarket for my oil quenches after a student listened to me tell him to preheat the oil to just above "can touch the side of the tank" and then found that he had heated the oil up to boiling and wondered why his blade wasn't hardening correctly---the oil being above the tempering temperature will do that... Now I can tell them a set temperature for the quench oil and live with the whining about overshoot/undershoot as they try to get it *EXACT*, Sigh. Those optical pyrometers are the bee's knees!

Well it's obviously too close together; or too far apart: depending on what type of work you will be doing---which you didn't say. As to positioning WRT walls, take a piece of stock that is the longest you would generally have cause to use and move it from station to station at both the near and far end and see if you hit anything.

Did you call all the boiler repair places? They are more likely to help you out than the dealers. (Also remember to ask the dealers if they have any broken bags they'd like to sell at a discount!)

I'd worry more about the chain giving way than the curl getting bent! Mild steel, normalize, no other heat treat. If you are worried about it then make it from leaf spring---do proper pre and post heats for the arc welding and then normalize the entire piece.