ThomasPowers

Koa wood was used for a lot of Hawaiian wood objects. Small angle grinders can be used to remove scale---which is hard on files and quickly rough out blades. Did you save a piece to try out your proposed heat treat on before doing it? Looks like a fine campknife---now go use it and start deciding how you want the next one to work!

FF think about cementing a slightly larger piece of pipe in the ground and then slipping your vise pipe into it with say one bolt below grade to keep it from turning. That way you can remove the vise and drop in a cover if you need the clear space for a large project. I'm going to go that way only using structural sq tubing so I can avoid the twisting issue. I may out several receivers into the shop floor and move vises at will.

Postman says there were over 250 different anvil makers in England and many of their anvils look alike. Mousehole was one of the more common ones exported to the US; but a lot of odd ones do turn up. Well worth the price and having another anvil that can hold tooling is a good idea. A 100 pounder is just about perfect as a traveling "Demo Anvil" and you still have the larger one for sledging on back in the shop!

The first modification most folks do with one of those is to mount a modern chuck on them. Just don't ever add a motor to the system! (I knew a blademaker who was trying to save money by adding a motor to his hand crank drill press. Doing a fussy drilling project he reached up to advance the bit while watching the piece and fed his hand into the moving gears. After several EXPENSIVE surgeries his hand was still not right and his "savings" were in the *negative* tens of thousands of dollars!) Look for complete drills with unworn and un-repaired parts that still turn freely. Don't spend too much money on it as it's most likely to end up as a display piece and a 100' extension cord with a 1/2" Milwaukee drill hiding in the back...

Just remember that the 100 year old blacksmithing books tell you the first thing to do with a new anvil is to ROUND THE EDGES. Sharp edges can actually cause problems (cold shuts) when forging.

Hammer Evolution: buy commercial hammers, modify commercial hammers, buy custom hammers, make *own* hammers.

Alpacas have much nicer fiber for spinning; but I see llamas for sale all the time for less than $100 out there.

I used to find hand forged ones at the Columbus OH fleamarket on a regular basis and added them to my kit. Quite handy when you want to divide something up in an odd number that makes using a scale a pain.

Drafting and technical drawing is often based on simple regular forms. Great for Fab work; but try doing a drawing where there are no straight lines or circular arcs---which can be a common occurrence in smithing. Drawing from life can help this sorts of tasks. Still lifes can be close if you like doing ornamental work in a natural style.

Dave much of North America has winter temperatures far below those of England and freezing a slacktub all the way to the bottom and having it bulge the bottom or break the tub is not unknown. I've lived places where several weeks of -30 degC weather was common every winter. I finally came to my senses and found a job in more clement climes!

Ric, remember the one ton? pattern welded billet shown in Saschse's Damascus Steel book? If you are going to be egregious---might as well *wallow* in it!

Rushes were dead cheap, candles were *expensive*. If you had a lighting fixture where you could burn $20 bills with better light in one part and $1 bills with less light in the other part---which part would you use the most? Just like the clothes I wear to the smithy are not the ones I wear to church.

Trenton's are ringing anvils so design into your stand a way to quiet it. My Trenton has the traditional construction of a tool steel face forge welded to a lower carbon body. I don't recall if later Trentons went to the steel top arc welded to the cast mild steel bottom or not. 100 pounds is a great starter anvil size---easily moved but still big enough to do some real work on; I've been working on building up several anvils around that size for when I take the shop up the hill to teach an into class at the local U. One thing that may help as you get started: Take a piece of chalk or soapstone and mark the boundaries of the "sweet spot"---the area of the face that has metal underneath it all the way to the stand. Then try to keep any heavy hitting within those boundaries. (I mark them on the side of the anvil for my classes) And Oh Yah--- your anvil was made in Columbus Ohio.

Spend less time videoing and posting and more time forging! I tend to like watching videos by experts who know what they are doing and I can learn from than from beginners. Those I tend to teach one on one or in a class.

As the ex-president of SWABA I can assure you that you do not need to be a member to attend. In fact most of the attendees will be paying their yearly membership at that meeting since the December one got cancelled! Hope to see you there! Thomas

Pure Iron: Something that did not exist and was never used in medieval times? First thing I do when evaluating a "possible" antique is to look for common wrought iron rusting patterns something pure iron will never have. When evaluating scrap I do the break test and look for greenstick fracture, something pure iron doesn't have. It does forge much like triply refined very low carbon wrought iron but not like the lower grades or the higher carbon wrought irons. Bloomery iron tends to have a range of carbon contents in it. Medieval wrought irons tended to be much more heterogeneous than the stuff pure iron forges like. Pure iron is much more like the wrought irons from the height of the industrial revolution, not medieval. Why do you think it's a good replacement? May I commend to your attention BAR "The Metallography of Early Ferrous Edge Tools and Edged Weapons" Tylecote & Gilmour for examples.

I'm out of Socorro NM; going to be in this neck of the desert any time soon? I can show you my library---if you are not afraid of dust! Are you aware of the SWABA meeting on Jan 14 in Albq and the conference in Las Cruces in February? http://www.swaba-abana-chapter.org/ Lets see Terrell Perkins was in Capitan last I heard, Have to look up the old member's list to see if I can find anyone closer; of course there are a couple of good smiths in Mountain Air. Now as a good steel that is easy to find, fairly easy to work and heat treat and works well for swords I would recommend 5160 and I would source it at a place that makes replacement leaf springs for vehicles and buy the UNUSED stock. Used leaf springs may have micro damage to them that you won't discover till after you put a lot of effort into a piece. Stainless tend towards brittleness, not so much a factor in small blades but a big problem in large ones! Think hard about attending the Conference; best way to meet a lot of smiths in the region and I'd like to introduce you to Pep Gomez of Radium Springs who has all the pretty bladesmithing toys (powerhammers, rolling mill, grinders, etc and so on...)

Well when I enclosed my smithy I used hail damaged propanel that a friend gave me after the insurance put a new roof on his house. I did buy 3 C purlins per side and a bag of self drilling self tapping screws to fasten it together. Having a non-flamable smithy makes me smile! Tools that can be damaged by rain or snow stay someplace climate controlled others can have a tarp thrown over them

Ahh so you are implying that the first 3000 or so years of bloomery wrought iron is overshadowed by the last 70 years of puddled wrought iron in the span I mentioned? (1200 BCE to 1780's is less than 1780's to 1850's?). I see your point but I do not agree as bloomery iron is still produced to this day never being totally replaced by puddled iron. And I still believe that puddled wrought iron is much closer to bloomery wrought iron than to Bessemer/Kelly steel. The greenstick fracture pattern is quite similar as they both have the ferrous silicates spicules in their makeup. However I feel we are picking at nits. What material would you suggest for one wanting to do an accurate portrayal of medieval smithing? (and although there is evidence of some remote farmsteads in medieval Northern Europe having smelted iron for their own use, in general a smith would NOT smelt their own iron from ore but buy/trade for it.)

Firstly what country are you hunting for a heat treater in? South Africa, Australia, Finland, Chile,... Editing your profile to supply a general location will help a lot in this type of question on the World Wide Web! Secondly: I know of no stainless alloy I would suggest for using as a long sword save only for display purposes Thirdly *most* simple steel alloys do not have enough retained austenite to make cryo processing a good idea. Most high alloy steels that would profit from it are not generally considered sword steels. Fourthly I would post a thread under the applicable subforum and ask for comment. Fifthly: No Sixthly the balance point depends on the type of blade you are making. Many swords balance further towards the tip for chopping blades and others closer to the guard for blades used for point work. Perhaps more important is the WEIGHT of a using blade. For nearly 1000 years the average weight of an european using sword was about 2.5 pounds *total*. Oddly enough this weight is also right for japanese blades though they do tend to be thicker in cross section than european ones. May I strongly commend to your attention: The Complete Bladesmith, The Master Bladesmith and The Pattern Welded Blade all by James Hrisoulas If you are in America you can ILL them through your local public library.

For a forge that small make a total enclosure with just the stock opening in front and a mousehole in back for long pieces. That hood is getting mostly cold room air and not hot forge gasses Restrict it so it gets all the forge exhaust and as little room air as possible.

I've been bloomery smelting for about 20 years now and taconite pellets were probably the worst ore we tried. For a short stack Scandinavian bloomery we had to crush the pellets and they come prefluxed so what we got was iron soup---we had to do the first consolidation runs with tongs in the forge r5ather than a hammer on an anvil. Ohio: what I would suggest is to drag a magnet through creek beds or lake shores and collect magnetite sand and collect scale from friendly blacksmiths (same stuff) You can also buy 100 mesh magnetite as a pollution control material---cost of shipping was greater than the cost of the magnetite when we did this. Or you do know that Southeast Ohio "Hanging Rock Region" was a big iron smelting region in the 1800's with the last furnace going out of blast around WWI. We toured it as part of the IronMasters Conference held in Athens... You might ask a local geology department the locations of ore bodies.

It's bi directionally rolled and I believe that they held the patent on that process when it was made. Notice how the torn edges are "platy" rather than "stringy" and so that's what I'm betting. Of course if the process was not patented it could be any company but the number of ones doing that in the late 1920's was probably winding down. Tower was built in 1929 as I recall. So I'm not sure---no mark on it and I haven't tried digging into someone's vaults to find the order for that tower; but it's a guess with some possible basis.

When it's hot out my screwpress will not stay in the same place where it's left but will start creeping down. When very hot out it will speed up! In the winter it's not so much a problem...

Might want to look up recipes for cutler's pitch as a way to use it too.