ThomasPowers

Are you in a thickly settled area? Will your forge be a dedicated set up or will you be moving it around a lot? You can mount anvils to quiet the ring; but most such mountings make it harder to separate the anvil and the stand if you need to move it on a regular basis. If you are in this situation I would strongly suggest a Fisher! If you will be setting things up and not having to move them around than any good brand in a silencing mounting would work. Hay Budden made a great anvil as did Trenton, Arm and Hammer (not to be confused with Vulcan!), Peter Wright, the Swedish imports, ...

As the Roman Gladius were forged from generally very heterogeneous bloomery iron a colour mismatch would make it look more authentic!

Nice score! I find that having both a big vise and a small vise close to the forge is handy---small for small work and the big for big work---you can suck all the heat out of a small piece in a big vise just getting it closed and trying to twist 2" stock in a 4" vise is hard on it!

Wilkinson would not be marked in pounds but in CWT So it's most likely an American brand though some Swedish anvils were marked in pounds for sale in NA

For nearly 1000 years a typical weight for an European sword for battlefield use was around 2.5 pounds. Even Great Swords, Zweihander, Doppel Schwerts, etc were ridiculously light compared to what people *thought* they were. The basic problem is that, besides being able to swing one for hours in battle, *heavy* is slow and *slow* is *D*E*A*D*. I tell people that I would love to face them with their SLOs using only a 6" knife as all I have to do is to dodge their first slow swing and then I am inside their guard and then they are helpless. Some people get confused by "bearing swords" Ornamental wall hangers used to show off the power of the owner by being carried before them in processions and parades and NEVER use in battle. If you want an oversized piece of spring steel you can buy a nice straight one from a spring maker with no possibly bad forge welds or fatigue cracks in it. Yes it will cost money but the TIME and Frustration it will save makes it well worth mowing lawns or washing cars to pay for it!

Lose the spikes on the tail end of the handle---all the flesh they will impact is *yours* (too short to use with a butt spike) Weak points where you drill the handle to rivet. Can you make those sections splinted with a piece of pipe? Make the handle longer for that size it would be a two handed weapon---take a look at halberds And again---hard to hit normal to point of impact and prone to twisting. See if you can turn up a copy of "A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor: in All Countries and in All Times" (ISBN 10: 0486407268 / ISBN 13: 9780486407265 )Stone, George Cameron Better known as "Stone's Glossary" Get to know what folks have tried and use that as a spring board for your designs! (Note that Stone is not the most rigorously correct source but a LOT of fun to page through and if you find something you can then research it further elsewhere.)

Some coal *needs* soaking to coke well. Others I never touch water when I'm using it and fire control is handled by the rake and slice. Training my students that coal is not a unified item and they will have to experiment and judge what works for a new batch of coal from a new source is part of the "joy" of working with the coal forge.

I think I shipped 50 or 60 pounds of old files when I moved from OH to NM---and glad I did as the local NM fleamarket doesn't have many and at several times the OH price. It was funny in OH as I sort of cleared the fleamarket out of black diamond files as I would buy any that met my price point---some dealers noticed this and jacked up their price only to find there was no elasticity in my price point. I would happily *not* buy any file over my price point---and having a pile of files back at the shop had no need to "pay more"

My first thought was "Digger Chain is NOT the right alloy for a first try" As to it being free, I guess all the extra time, fuel and frustration cost you nothing? Sometimes "Free" is a lot more expensive that "bought"! (And I am a notorious scrounger who never buys new if he can avoid it!)

One thing to check is what kind of oil is in the blower? Many people use too heavy an oil and that makes a blower hard to turn *ESPECIALLY* in cold weather! The other is was it cleaned of all old oil sludge before re-oiling?

I once did a pattern welding demo for a fellow at his place using a chunk of rail, a claw hammer, charcoal sifted from desert bonfires and an improvised firepot. Only "real" blacksmithing tool we had was a hand crank blower. Oh yes one other item: *decades* of practice allowing me to work with an improvised set up.

Get a chimney for a side draft system. Life is much nice when the smoke goes *outside*! Any 10" diameter (or more) grain auger tubing around the place?

wood is not the proper fuel; make charcoal from it first and use that. Too much of your heat energy goes into getting rid of the volatiles in the wood decreasing the temp you get from it compared to charcoal where all the energy goes into the burn.

Just remember that increased carbon content also means increased brittleness---something I do not believe RRs want on curves or switchpoints!

OK first thing: are you familiar with the ring and rebound of the good brand anvils? Hard to judge what is good or not if you don't know the calibration! Next anvils from Mexico: I believe that they were "end of the day clean out the ladle castings" as such their quality varies wildly depending on what they were casting that day. I have not seen one that was subsequently heat treated though and the ones that come through the local auction are not usually fettled. You can often guess what brand anvil was used to make the mold though and I expect to start seeing some cleaned up with fake stampings to try to "pass" as the originals. $2 a pound is kinda high price for a no name, no pritchel, bad horn anvil. If it had good rebound I might go a dollar a pound on it myself here in NM, USA.

I've forged a kama; but for a martial arts instructor who wanted one much tougher than the typical schlock you find at martial arts supply stores---or even the real ones still sold for gardening. Here in the USA scythes are still sold in some of the old hardware stores.

Yah; I have a drawer full of the old "Black Diamond" files from when they were still 1.2%. Just the thing to juice up a billet that's running a bit low! Glad I stocked up when I lived in OH as I haven't seen any out this way that I recall

All the forks I've seen tested were more 1050 or 5160 as they need toughness over brittleness Marine tanker: re hardy hole since you are handy with the welder I would drill a hole that a piece of 1" ID sq structural tubing would fit in and weld it securely top and bottom

Note that knuckle height may NOT be the right height for you depending on what you plan to do. For knifemaking I find that about 4" higher saves my back from hurting at the end of the day.

Deeper fire! If you are using wood/charcoal set a couple of firebricks on their sides to make a 4"+ deep channel to help keep the fire deeper! *ALL* the fuel being in the forging area then.

all steels are "carbon steels" what you want are HIGH Carbon Steels for blades What the big box stores generally sell is A36 which is not knife grade by any stretch of the imagination! As you should be able to get steel that is suitable for knives for *free* I don't understand how *buying* is cheaper? I sure wish you had asked us about the metal before you spent that effort on it! That's a really good job of finishing for a first knife! I have a friend, Ellen, who's a smith in Apache Jct I could send some knifegrade steel to her and you could arrange to pick it up. Keep a look out for old files at garage sales and fleamarkets---never pay over a dollar for one as you are not buying it to file but to make knives from. As soon as you improvise an anvil you can really make use of found steels like coil springs (around 5160) or track clips (1050) while files are up towards 1% carbon!

If the screw and screwbox are in decent shape you can reforge the bent leg(s) back into shape; but probably not a job someone starting out wants to handle as it's a lot of very hot metal to mess around with. How did you check the delamination? Some anvils have fairly prominent weld lines on the sides but no delamination in the interior.

Thom; I want him to see that fantasy that *works* can be cool (and was done historically) Now about those Mughals....

No virtue using spring material over mild steel for that. If the leafspring was cold straightened it may already have micro cracks in it that will just result in catastrophic failure. How much distal taper do you need to do? If a lot I would refrain from riveting the hole until after the basic forging is done. Have you thought of riveting it in copper and using that as a place to stamp your mark? If so do it even after heat treat but before final grinding. My basic take on this is: It's a lot easier to work with hay directly from the bale than with hay that has already been through the horse.

I'd say by starting to learn grinding and knife design. I've know a couple of folks whose pattern welding skills are GREAT but their product is totally wasted by their lack of knifemaking skills. Next learn to forge: hammer control, temperature control for various alloys, etc. Then hook up with someone who can coach you through your first billet or two---it's a heck of a lot easier to learn in person than by net or book!