ThomasPowers

As a comment on an important point Rob makes: I like to run the fire up *hot* and then insert the piece(s) to be welded and turn off the blast totally and go for a glass of water or a pit stop and let the piece soak in a reducing fire until it comes up to fluxing temp. The walking away keeps me from trying to rush the process. Of course I generally weld up 25 layer billets of band saw blade and pallet strapping and so heating them up without burning the outsides is a bit more tricky.

That's where the hook comes in: to use the hardy just unhook the hold down from the spring and remove it. You are fight that you can't use the hold down and hardy hole simultaneously for different things, but I find I don't tend to anyway.

Now did I say puddled iron? *Bloomery* wrought iron was what was produced in the first iron smelters and up through the high/late middle ages when some of the indirect methods started to be used. (cf Waloon method) And even puddled WI is a *whole* *lot* *more* like medieval bloomery iron than mild steel ever was or will be. The grain and ferrous silicate inclusions are quite similar, the more modern versions tend to be rather "cleaner" whilst the older ones more heterogeneous. I've smelted iron in a bloomery and the material produced was quite similar to some wagon tyres from the 19th century I have also worked. Puddled wrought iron's major difference is generally the presence of sulfur in it making it tend to be more hot short. Shoot even the Byers method WI is closer to medieval wrought iron than mild steel and it's about as far as you can get from the bloomery process----*but* the ferrous silicates are present in the final product! On this subject: May I commend to people's attention "The Knight and the Blast Furnace", Alan Williams, for a modern rather in depth coverage of the materials used in late medieval and renaissance armour. Now if you want to go pre medieval you can hunt for high phosphorous bloomery irons like were used preferentially for blade edges in celtic weapons (cf "The Celtic Sword" Radomir Pleiner)

Patrick; if you don't have a use for it; I'd gladly accept it as a gift! Beautiful job and a design I've always liked too. You might remember my trick for making 1.5" hardy tooling? I bought a lot of bunged up top swages at Quad-State on the "cheap pile" and then forged the eye end down to fit my 1.5" hardy holes----the screwpress did a great job at the end to make them parallel and smooth. So top swages that were in poor condition became bottom swages that are great! The struck end us usually more damaged compared to the end on hot metal. Of course with your good sized powerhammer you can forge large stock down...

Remember that the steel face is the heart and soul of the anvil. You want to remove as little of it as possible. If you must weld on it look up the Gunter method of anvil repair. It's a proven in method designed by a top notch blacksmith.

What he said, I have a couple of them too and was tickled to death to only pay $5 each for mine. If you take a scrapped gas welding bottle and cut off the bottom and flip it over you have a nice dishing form to use with one of those hammers and hot sheet steel of good sized gauge.

Silica sand or ground glass was used as a flux for REAL WROUGHT IRON that loves temperatures that makes modern steels burn like a sparkler. *especially* when welding high carbon steels which weld (and destruct) at a lower temp than mild steel I would not suggest silica sand as a flux. Did we mention that silica sand was probably a bad idea? When shopping for Borax make sure you don't get "borax containing soap" but pure 20 muleteam borax. You might keep an eye out for Roach-pruf too as it's about 98% boric acid and so is often added in small amounts to borax to juice it's action up a bit. If you are welding in real charcoal most of the pile should be under your piece---with still a good pile on top. Charcoal uses so little air it would be hard to coke down most electric blowers for it.

Re snot: I have a large screwpress with a toroid flywheel with dependent handles. I found that sticking a piece of foam pipe insulation on the handles tend to make the thwaps less of a shock.

I once picked up the ugliest set of home made nippers/pull offs I have ever seen. *Old*. Real wrought iron with steeled ends and a very large bow. Turns out they made an excellent set of hot firebrick tongs and are now a mandatory part of my equipment whenever I bring the propane forge anywhere I've used US$1 a pair nippers to make knife making tongs from. Be careful overheating them and quenching in use though. Now go make things as gifts for the people who put so much work in getting you a great Christmas present. Any Coal in your stocking?

I forged the top jaw off a pipe wrench (found the jaw on the side of the road on the way to a SOFA meeting) to fit in the hardy hole of my anvil. Drilled a crosswise hole in the shaft and connected it to a spring with a hook and fastened the spring to the stump. Then welded a T handle to the top of the jaw and had a lift-able holder in the hardy hole

"missing some pieces" for the chinese hammer I wonder if they know that that phrase is equivalent to "to be priced at scrap rate"

Making a set of spacers you can use when cranking down on stock on one side of the vise is a GOOD IDEA. I have them from 1/8" through 1". For the smaller ones I took a piece of sq stock and spiraled the top of it. For the large stock I hot split the top of the stock and bent the flaps over the vise jaws making a "T". Then I stamped the size on the tops as students can't tell the difference from 5/8" and 1/2" in my experience. I keep them by my big vise

Get a copy of Wrought Iron: It's Manufacture, Characteristics And Applications by James Aston Lots more info that wikipedia! I believe I have some Byers bi-directional rolled WI plate from the old water tower at the *old* State penitentiary they tore down in Columbus; HOWEVER if you do not have experience forge real wrought iron you will think it it the trashiest material ever! (Real wrought iron forges quite a bit different than modern steels)

Note that Postman has identified over 250 British makers of anvils and a whole lot of them look like mouseholes as some of them had worked in that plant before going on their own! If it has no readable marks then you're pretty much out of luck---however the proof of the anvil is in the pounding *NOT* the name! The basic style dates to after the 1820's when the pritchel hole was added to the London Pattern. Note that this is not correct style for medieval demos where more of a saller cube with a stake on the bottom would be appropriate for a travel anvil and "Cathedral Forge and WaterWheel", Gies and Gies; has several period illuminations of medieval anvils and forges in use. I do Y1K demo's and have a 25" anvil that a friend forged for me from some 5.25" stock. I also made my own T stake anvil from a RR spike driving sledge by forging a shaft for it with a tenon that I hot riveted the sledge eye on at one end and a spike at the other for a short stump. (2.5" sq stock, ended up about 36" tall) As for things to make: start out with mild steel and take a look at medieval cooking equipment! (IRON AND BRASS IMPLEMENTS OF THE ENGLISH HOUSE, Lindsay, J. Seymour) has some ideas. As you get better forging start working with higher carbon steels and real wrought iron (all modern steels are out of period for medieval times. Real wrought iron was king until the 1850's when the Bessemer/Kelly process was invented)

There was a equipment salvage place on the west side of Columbus OH that once was a big WWII surplus *equipment* place. They had one of those forges once in *MINT* *UNUSED* *ORIGINAL PAINT JOB* *NEVER HAD A FIRE IN IT* condition back in the 1990's when I lived there. Too rich for my blood but I found them a buyer for it as I wanted to be sure it went to someone who would *use* it! I've also seen a smaller version where the blower and the down draft blower were run from the same *hand* *crank* system.

I assume you don't have a lot of experience with bladesmithing as you are asking about it. You may put more bends in with re-heat treating it! Good Luck!

Ironsmith: Well I was using my open source method of anvil finding: I talked with everyone I met about smithing and wanting an anvil. So one day I was going through the local fleamarket and a fellow howdy'd me. He was selling greasy car parts I wouldn't have fished out of a dumpster for free; but....So I talked with him and mentioned I was looking for a big anvil and he said his Uncle had one and wanted to sell it! That evening I went over to his Uncle's place, about 5 miles from my place in the same city! He had a 515# mint Fisher anvil with the cut out for a Blacker powerhammer. I asked him how much he wanted for it. He said that a previous neighbor had offered him $350 for it and he hadn't taken it then. I asked if he would take the same for it now. He said yes! Then we used a engine hoist to pick it up and run it down hill to my truck and lift it in. I've bought a lot more anvils inside big city limits than out in the country! Though I've been given more anvils living out here in the country now...

First: do not harm! works for anvils too... As for preheating last anvil repair clinic the local ABANA affiliate had we used a propane weed burner and a barrel lined with kaowool IIRC. The weldor teaches welding at the local vo-tech and so had a nifty optical pyrometer; but tempil sticks---available at a welding supply store will work. We use the Gunter method of anvil repair as that has been proven in over a longer span of time than some of the other suggestions. We only repaired 2 anvils at that clinic---one had been milled perfectly flat and smooth and too thin to use, took about 5 hours of concentrated work to restore it to usability. The other was my 400+ pound Trenton that had a beautiful face---in between air arc gouges where it had been abused by weldors at a copper mine. I went for usability over "pretty" as our friend had spent so much time on the other anvil.

CWT markings X Y Z = (X x 112) + (Y x 28) + (Z) How much do you need an anvil? How much disposable income do you have? I's offer $2 a pound as the max myself but then I am anviled up and generally only add another when I can get them under US$1.50 a pound and in great shape. An that is the hundredweight system no "century weight"

Well simple steels, you can't tell much from the high alloy things as you can get HSS that is over 1.5% C but sparks like cast iron...

Ambient temperature and humidity affects how much frost you will see (and the temperature will affect how much you can draw before freeze up---in the summer here in NM I can generally draw a tank down till it feels light as a feather. In the winter it will poop out with noticeable fuel left in the tank.) Note that some places will just give you a "refill" and charge you for a set amount not taking in account how much gas was left in a tank. Others will carefully note how much was used to top off a partial tank. I know this as a local place charged me for a full fill up on a tank I brought in to be topped off. I *NEVER* went back there again! Another propane dealer *always* does it by the gallon filled *and* has a frequent filler deal where I get a free tank of propane after every 4 fills! Much cheaper than an exchange place---though I do visit them when I have a tank going out of date and need a newer one...

Now it needs to be dressed!---I think lace, ruffles and a little flounce will be perfect for it! With the filework it will be easy to see which hammer is yours at a multismith demo! You may want to lojack it though...it would look really sweet on *my* hammer rack!

Note you can have a solid weld in the center of the piece but still have obvious lines on the outside edges. The break test is what proves a weld. Welding is something that an hour spent with a person who is good at it can save 50 hours of people typing about it...

He is gone, we that are left must now shoulder his burden and try to help the blacksmithing community like he did so his memory will not be lost and his efforts will not be in vain.

And it's more like 100 years old rather than 200 as the presence of the pritchel hole, the style of the stampings and the England make it one of the more recent versions than one of the earlier versions.