ThomasPowers

The temps used for normalizing are above 1000 deg F so a kitchen oven will not work; a Heat treat oven will. Note too that leaving steel in the oven as it cools down is generally an anneal not a normalize. Normalize is usually done in still air.

Bad weld or working too cold are usually the biggies; and sometimes nothing shows up until the acid lays all bare! (dangnabbit!)

HB made a farriers pattern anvil with an extremely narrow face and a massive long horn on it "Swell Horn Farrier's Pattern" I owned one once, (198#) and let it get away trading it for a more medieval anvil for my historical re-enactment. My current HB seems a bit more bouncy than my PW's too and I often use it for teaching as students usually can't dent it! If you are attending Mountain Man events you may want to look into getting an earlier pattern anvil than the elongated horn and heel ones seen in American anvils in the late 19th century. A Mousehole or early William Foster would be pretty much spot on for that time/place---but probably much larger than would be totally accurate. (I have a WF dated 1828 that would be great for that period---iff it was in better shape, not for sale though.)

e-bay is generally for people who don't know any better! (especially when they don't factor in the shipping cost---that $4 a pound anvil might really be $5!) I bought a 112# PW in excellent shape here in anvil poor NM for US$1.34 a pound last year---and this was on the open market not a "friend deal".

Trying to save too much of the lower contents of the firepot is bad economy; often there is a lot of small bits of clinker mixed in that will speed up problems when restarting. I tend to dump the bottom stuff and let it cool and pick out major chunks of coke and let the rest gravel my drive.

I think they also made blowers for other industrial uses as well.

I use a number of copper pennies to make cowboy hat earrings---amusement, novelty and jewelry!

Please note that the London pattern anvil got it's final feature---the pritchel hole--- in the 1820's, while a big cubic chunk of metal has been used for an anvil from at least Roman times *through* the current day. So 2000 years vs 200 years, which is a "decent anvil"? I often use an anvil based on a Roman one in the museum at Bath England---preferentially for some tasks and I have a number of "decent anvils" to hand. One I used for my "US$25 starter kit" was the broken knuckle off a train car coupler---it had a flat section and a curved section, weighed about 80 pounds and was *free*. One "Honest Bob" used to use for demos at SOFA was a section of large round shafting, again it had a flat side and a curved side and he carved the stump to hold it either way. What you don't want to do is to throw money away on a cast iron "Anvil Shaped Object" when you could buy a better chunk of steel cheaper at a scrap yard!

You ought to post that over at the Kukri forum at swordforum.com. (and please remember to forget that I suggested that...)

As long as you don't try to pass them as *coins* you can do what you want with them.

Frances, I'd like a copy of that as well as I have 2 Champion #1s, one is using shape and one in "project shape".

Well at the Festival of the Cranes Demo I kept warning my apprentice that while it was nice showing off using the heavy sledge one handed in the morning, your arm and shoulder were going to give you what for in the afternoon and next morning you'll be wanting to not lift your arm above your shoulder. He proceeded to learn this on his own. I keep trying to keep him from being as messed up as I am when he gets this old---and yes I mean YOU! #1.... I tried to keep with small stuff an a small hammer so I could do 3 days straight at the anvil.

That's a pretty modern concept: historically the fellow hammering out the blade didn't polish it or hilt it or make a scabbard for it. Different shops would do that stuff each one specializing. Save for out on the frontier when there was only *1* guy---but people usually bought blades premade from back east anyway.

I was just going to lap weld it.

Can we a picture from other sides?---I mean just looking at me from the back I can pass for a handsome man!

The idea is to get to one meeting and find folks you can carpool with to the others thus cutting down transportation costs and making the trip more fun. We had a 2 hour drive to get from Columbus OH to Troy OH for the Sofa meetings but we would put half a dozen of us in a friends van and stop at a fleamarket on the way (as well as for roadkill4ed metal!) Had a great time!

Well I would contact the CA group and *ask* them if there are any members out your way. Hmmm they have a member locator page http://www.calsmith.org/membership/locations/ shows about 4 members in your general area. Charcoal, real chunk not briquette, is often easier to get started with; burns pretty fast so a hand crank blower is better than a fan unless you control it way down. It still requires MASSIVE ventilation!

As bandsaw blades often get tossed before they are worn out due to breakage I cut them up for hacksaw blades and in general I mount a piece in a wood cutting bowsaw frame---I punch the holes slightly inboard so they will tension a bit more than a wood cutting blade. Having a 30" hacksaw really helps when you are in un-powered situations. I usually have one tossed behind the seat of my pickup. The ones not suitable for hacksaw blades tend to get assembled into pattern welding billets alternated with pallet strapping. A bit tricking to get the first welding run in but starting with 25 layers cuts down on the runs needed to get a nice number of layers! The bandsaw blade etches bright too because of the nickle in them.

I usually cut the bottoms of tanks off pretty short and stick them on a stump. Armourer's often will weld a plate on the bottom and fill them with sand to cut down on the noise but working hot is pretty quiet. A couple of tabs welded on the side so you can lag it to a stump helps if you are going to use it a lot. My local scrapyard hates tanks cause the big place they take their scrap too requires them to pull the valvestems from them before they ship it so I get them cheap when they have them around. Don't know if I have a picture of the completed ones but I do have some of the process; lets see if I can get them posted here: Nope Internal System Error

Don't know of how heavy you can get it; but they sell it for Z purlins down here at metal building supply places

Hmm; there is a piece of armour in an Italian book I have that is decorated with rows of truncated pyramids. Tempting to reproduce it using a system like yours...

I modify tools all the time both for re-use and for "art". I've made stake anvils from old sledge heads like that RR spike one. Forged down heavy stock for a spike at one end and a tenon at the other and hot rivet the head on. You can hardface the joint if you want to make a hard flat for the center of the stake anvil. I take old bull pins for working structural steel and use them as drifts, I have also taken wrenches with the tapered bull pin shaft and forged the wrench to fit the hardy and made a mandrel for small stock out of them---I use one to plannish out my wedding ring to fit my finger when it swells... Turned a gas grill cart into my propane forge cart. Forged tin snips into scrolling pliers Turn RR bolts (not spikes---bolts) into deep dish dishing hammers and reforge ballpeens into shallow dish dishing hammers Ball peens also get forged into punches, hot cuts, tomahawks, etc. Bottom of scrapped gas cylinders have been made into dishing forms, the valve protectors sold as wind bells. Garden rake had every other tooth cut off to make a wall hanging too holder And then there is the nose cone of a ballistic missile that is my mandrel... Tons more but I'd need to stand in my shop and look around---oh yes took an old shingler's hatchet and cut off the poll and modified the blade to make a bearded hatchet from it. And for "art" this weekend I forged a handful of scrapped wood augers into a desert bush sculpture.

Note that companies were still selling bellows WAY after blowers were also for sale in turn of the century catalogs you could generally find bellows, hand crank and electric blowers for sale at the same time, so electricity might not be a good dating point! I currently am in a non-electric smithy; but I know it dates to 2005 as I built it...

"At least it was only my spare vise" First line, First post. I think he has another vise... So he can play with this one and experiment! I have a PV I recently bought with a greenstick fracture in the leg. Definitely wrought iron so I am going to finish the break clean it up and try a 2 helpers, 1 smith forge weld sometime this winter.

Frank I call that a "ski slope hardy". I made one from a cut off I found once, one side is a more abrupt slope than the other so I can flip it around to do different ranges of diameters.