ThomasPowers

One of the advantages of using tong held tooling is that you can make the tools out of high alloy steels at a reasonable price---a couple of inches of S7 can often be sourced as a drop compared to a 6-12" piece for a full sized punch or slitter.

Now you didn't say it needed to be nice and flat now did you? If you don't provide the NECESSARY details you can't complain later! (well you can this is the internet after all...) They have used explosive welding for naval ships where they want a steel hull but an Al superstructure. So an explosively welded transition piece where Steel welders can weld on one end and Al welders and weld on the other is quite handy. If the design supports it a press fit of Al over a knurled steel shaft can be quite strong.

Some of them were not steel though they were often used hard and put away wet. I have one and found one for the local Fine Arts dept at the Uni. They were used for reforging cable tool drills that worked by raising and lowering the bit to smash a hole through the rock. Predates the rotary tool bits now used in the oilpatch though water well drillers still sometimes use them---my neighbor had one done that way last year. I'd check the hardness of it before I made a bladesmithing anvil out of it. If it's just a ductile iron it will mark fairly easily. The 5th generation blacksmith in Stroud OK had one that he had flipped over to get an even larger flat surface for truing plow points on. (when I visited with in in the early 1980's...)

Screws can have multiple leads though common ones generally have *one*. hunt under "multiple start screw" "Multiple-Start Thread. A multiple-start thread is one that has two or more ridges wrapped around a cylinder or cone for the total length." What it means in practice is that the screw advances *much* faster for every rotation of the shaft. So a screw that has 3 or more leads will be a lot faster for forging hot metal than one that has only one or two leads (sort of like the difference in a fast hydraulic system and a slow one when used for forging)

Here's a pic of my cleat: marks on the scale are at 6" intervals.

I've hot forged silver before, it's a lot of fun compared to working say D2. And as hot you don't need to anneal as you go along---just reheat. However you do want to not MELT your silver when re-heating as it's a pain to extract it from the clinker in your forge. If you keep it de-oxidized it will work great. Note that cutlery usually has minimal silver in it and most of it is other materials with a thin sheet of silver over it. As mentioned: if it's in good shape it may be worth much more than silver price as replacement pieces and there are several places that specialize in such. I'd cast as close to final form as possible to save time and effort.

No pictures of my battered 1990 (made September of 1989) Isuzu 4 banger. I'm sure that all my trucks go directly to heaven having experienced purgatory whilst in my care...

"Cast Steel" was a common descriptive term; I have a number of blacksmithing and wood working tools marked that way. As Frank mentions it refers to the use of crucible steel to make the item and not that the item was cast as casting of steel to final shape was not much used in those days due to the problems they had with grain size, piping, etc. For a more in depth coverage see "Steelmaking Before Bessemer, Vol II Crucible Steel" or look up Benjamin Huntsman and crucible steel. In some ways it became an advertising buzz word like we see in later items "Vanadium steel" or "440" stainless with no other details of what *else* is in the alloy or if it's a good alloy for the purpose! Cast steel was used in comparison to "blister steel" or "shear steel" made from carburized wrought iron (see "Steelmaking Before Bessemer, Vol I, Blister Steel"...

Cast Steel anvils are renowned for ringing the loudest of any anvils. Cast iron anvils with a steel plate, eg Fisher and Vulcan and a few others, and total cast iron anvils do not ring. The devil is in the details!

Check to see if the rest of the face is delaminating by tapping it with a hammer to see if it rings, (good) is dead (bad) or even *buzzes* (very bad). If the rest of the face is sound I might go US$1 a pound on it. Any more delamination and I'd only go scrap rate with perhaps a slight bonus for the horn and hardy hole...

Hey; getting the local VFD interested in your smithing can save a LOT of hassle in the future. I'd talk to them and see if they would do a brown pop trade to do the job just to have their buy in when you go to making a big fire to heat it!

When I used my 1 firebrick forge with a plumber's propane torch I tended to work 1/4" sq stock or sometimes 3/8" round stock at the max. Making it bigger does not increase the heat you put into it but does increase the heat losses.

Good point about using the clip. I tend to use a section of pipe flattened to slip over the tongs as my tool holding ones like to be quite close so a chunk of 3/4" black pipe does a fine job and is less likely to get knocked or bounced off than a C clip.

Or wait till a good freeze lets you drive over the muck!

Is the sanding just to remove scale? If so I would look into a chemical method to speed things up. I've found that having a limited number of semi identical objects on display tends to sell them better---I ask the store to only put a handful out and then add new ones from the box in back as they sell...

"the good thing about rebar is it is identified every few feet on the bar as to what it is" The bad thing is that this is not necessarily true. None of my 70+ year old re-bar is marked. Stuff in the scrap stream can be brand new or antique. My 70 year old square rebar is fairly good for tool making. Found it in the spoil piles alongside the river in Columbus OH. Don't know as I would trust the markings on stuff from over the border out here in NM too---remember the incident of getting radioactive cobalt melted into a batch of rebar?

Looks like it's an "everybrand anvil" as it looks like they stamped every name possible on it! (yes I know testing the temper of chisels on the body of the anvil...)

Explosive welding. EMRTC at NM Tech can probably do it for you though the price of explosives has risen over the years!

I think the real issue with sodium filled valves is the possible unexpected splash of molten metal and it's possible impact on your skin where the sodium *will* react as it melts it's way in and catches on fire from the moisture.

John, sort of depends on what type of forging you're doing but 3+ is generally a good fast lead

So I stopped by the local scrapyard when taking the trash to the transfer station, (OK I went to the scrapyard and took 1 sack of trash to the transfer station but if you don't tell my wife I won't!) Thought I was going to get off easy as all I had found were a couple of garden rakes to turn into tool holders and a piece of 3/8" wrought iron rod. So I added a couple of RR plates to my pile as they would be cheap and more legal than taking them from a track. Then I saw it peaking out from under the pile---an *old* mooring cleat---about 150 pounds and 30" long. Looked perfect for doing some armouring on and the oddity of it showing up about 14 hour drive from the nearest navigable water way meant it had to come home with me. (The scrapyard is learning that if it's weird and old I probably want it; but won't pay a ridiculous price). I also found a box of unused election sign frames and the male end fixture off a wooden sucker rod---nice for pole arms. So all in all I exceeded my allowance for the week and went home very happy.

Rebar comes in different grades, cheap big box store stuff is NOT what they use on interstate bridges, skyscrapers or nuclear power plants. So what you scrounge from the scrap stream can be great or it can be iffy---much like everything else in the scrap stream!

On modern steels you can refine the grain by proper heat treat and "packing" is not needed anymore. Pluses for forging the bevel is it's *faster* and more *fun* than grinding. Minuses including you can mess it up and decarb can be an issue.

The holes in the base of the anvil are generally called "handling holes" and how many and their position can help identify an anvil with no visible stampings.

"I used 6 inch sections of a muzzleloader barrel instead of a piece of steel." What is your muzzleloader barrel made from? All the ones I have seen/used are a piece of steel? Another "cheat" for pipe hawk stock is the shafts of rock drills that have a hole through the center for coolant. Better carbon content then most barrels too. Leastwise the old mining drills around these parts spark quite nicely. Do you have a wooden mallet and a stump with a couple of troughs burned in it to allow you to straighten everything hot without messing up the forging?