ThomasPowers

I made a maille shirt back in 1981 (finish date), 1/4 " ID. May I commend to your attention the "iforge iron" of armour making: (though it predates IFI by a goodly number of years...) www.armourarchive.org/

The first year Fred in NM went to Quad-State he bought 30 anvils---had to go buy a trailer to get them all home. He'll sell on anvils that are duplicated or were low graded from the collection but wants TOP dollar for them. The SWABA group got a tour of his place after one of the meetings.

Too cheap. Working off your stock price is not the way to go as small items have almost no stock cost! Make one and calculate your time---this includes set up, cutting or even buying the stock and transporting it hope, etc. Then figure out what a fair wage would be. Multiply time by wage and add stock cost.

Definitely don't ask for some "Danish" when having coffee at his shop!

Think outside of the box: http://www.marco-borromei.com/fork.html

I haven't run into that problem either but I try to stick with the CP 1 & 2 grades.

How about a hybrid? Cloth upper and leather lower. You know you can help the flame retardance of cloth by soaking it in a borax solution and letting it dry---also helps clean it when you bung it in the washer! The soak and dry has to be repeated after washing it however. I buy belts from the thrift store and retrofit them onto the aprons to allow for smiths with more gravitass. A drill and a couple of copper harness rivets and you're good to go! (though it's funny to watch a 140# beanpole wearing an apron with a belt that will expand for a 300# student---lots of added holes!)

Columbian did make some ductile iron vises that were cast.

You know I was tired of reading where folks should expect to spend big bucks getting started in blacksmithing so one weekend I went out and scrounged/built a complete beginner's set up for under US$25! (and the most "special" tool used was a 1/4" drill!) Anvil: There are no pseudo anvils there are ANVILS and NOT-ANVILS. The London pattern anvil has been in use for about 200 years now, a big chunk of something heavy has been used as an anvil for over 2000 years so which one should represent what an "anvil" looks like? (Take a look at the japanese swordsmiths anvils---a rectangular hunk of steel---no horn no heel---yet most folks consider that the katanas they forge on that simple anvil to be passable...) For my project I scrounged a broken knuckle off a RR car coupler---had a flat spot and a curved spot and weighed around 80 pounds and was FREE. Forge: I took a brake drum I found on the side of the road and mounted it on a stool frame I fished from a dumpster (1/4" drill and a couple of bolts from the fleamarket) Using plumbing fittings I got from the fleamarket I rigged up a tuyere and ash dump (floor flanges, nipples, T, cap) This was the biggest expense as I must have spent $8 or so on getting the used pieces. I also found a scrap of sheetmetal that I could bend into a C and fit it inside the brake drum edge as a Fence allowing me to build a deeper fire and move stock in and out of it through the open part of the C---I also cut a "mousehole" opposite the open end so I could stick long pieces through the hot spot and out the other side. (cut with a cold chisel and a hammer) Blower: I found an old "handi vac" (like the 1960's version of a dust buster---but with and Al housing.) It cost me $2 as it was missing the bag---just had a round Al tube that dumped air where the bag would go. As it was a universal motor it could be regulated with a rheostat---another dollar at the fleamarket. The air transport tube was a radiator hose from the flea market for a buck. (It was one of the corrugated ones and would whistle a note when the air was turned on full) Hose clamps from fleamarket to hold the blower to the hose to the pipe for the air at the forge. Now I spent $5 for a nice double jack hammer and $1 for a ball peen and $2 for a set of visegrips to use while making the first set of tongs. This was my favorite billet welding forge for several years even over the commercial forges I had in my shop. So with this set up you could be making pattern welded blades. I had one student who was in college and got bit by the smithing bug. As I recall he built a gas forge in an old gas grill and ket it chained to a fence out back of his dorm with the other grills that students had back there. You didn't know it was a forge until you lifted the lid and saw the propane forge inside it. He also kept scrap steel under his dorm bed and replaced the desk in the alcove in the wall with a work bench with a postvise on it---and kept his grades up and graduated and works as a metallurgist now... A far better anvil---though costing $25 was made by a friend of mine using a scrounged forklift tine: http://www.marco-borromei.com/fork.html

Is it around Amarillo?

I bought one of the "Anvil Envy" T shirts at the last Quad-State I attended. I was slightly miffed that they didn't give me a discount as I coined the phrase over at anvilfire quite some time ago... We all tend to suffer from it; though I have been buying more small anvils since the big ones as they are easier to load and transport when I go to teach a smithing class...

Well since coal didn't start to be used by smiths till high to late medieval times all the viking pattern welded blades were made with charcoal fueled forges. Charcoal is probably *still* the most common forge fuel used the world over as it can be made most anywhere while good coal is a pain to find and transport. The high level traditionally made japanese swords are still forged with charcoal. What seems to be the problem? The charcoal forge tends to have a deeper and narrower firepot and the blast rate is lowered. Charcoal and coal have close to the same BTU content *by* *pound*; but charcoal is much less dense than coal and so a lot more volume goes through the forge to get the same number of pounds.

It's a Fisher so a quiet anvil but the horn has only a cap of steel over a cast iron "body". Grinding is not indicated. Do you use the horn that much? I have one anvil that has no horn that works well for me for the most part and I made my own stake anvil fro when I need the horn. Will you be at Quad-State? A couple of years ago someone I know bought 30 anvils there---he had to go buy a big trailer to get them home.

For my treadle hammer project the piece of steel I have for the anvil is over 5" in Diameter and 4' long (was free too! as I bought 4 of them and sold 2 for twice as much as they cost giving me 2 to play with) Going for the 10x the hammer weight for sure!

Nice video---but I don't like that title---I know a bunch of folks who make stakes for armourers. (perhaps this was dealt with in the commentary---I can't use the sound at work)

Once you are getting above about the 250# range you are into the "big range" and most hobby smiths will not see much difference going up---unless you have a source of strikers and do a lot of 1"+ sq stock work. So I'd make the decision on condition, brand and price (and if it's a good deal, borrow money, buy both and turn around and sell the other and pay off the loan) I love my 515# anvil with the dead flat and smooth face. I do sometimes have to do work between the edge and one of the hardy holes and of course for small forks and things I have the heel of a small anvil close at hand---but the majority of the smiting is on the big anvil!

Big number builds done on a short schedule are often *much* more expensive than doing one over a period of time---you have to buy a lot of identical stuff you can scrounge 1 of on your own and you make design changes based on what you can get cheap or free when you are doing just 1 for yourself!

Actually they are all tried and true methods! Of course most folks dealing with fullers have a collection of different sized dowels to use as sanding blocks, some may even be made from nylon or with a layer of thin leather glued on a wooden dowel to provide harder or softer sanding surfaces. Scrapers are a good idea too. One quickly learns that cleanliness of forging is right up there with godliness and finish working of the fuller with clean up tooling---think of a flatter for fullers---can save hours if not days of hand work. The bader with an appropriate sized contact wheel is a marvelous thing!

Combs were usually bone or antler

Use the 1/2" contact wheel on your bader. Dress your cratex wheet to the proper shape. Have your apprentice do it!

At 8 inches you will not get a lot of improvement using it vertically. At 3 feet you should. The top of used rail is work hardened considerably but it's the same alloy throughout the rail so if the end appears softer it will workharden with use.

I suggest getting an automotive coil spring and cutting it down 2 sides giving you a dozen pieces of identical steel to work with. This means you can get practiced with one knife steel and experiment with heat treating and testing examples to failure. RR spikes, even the HC ones, are not in the same range of carbon content as knife steels. Yes ton's of people make them but it's more of a "one trick pony" thing. However working on blades before you have control of your hammer or your forge fire tends to result in a lot of frustration and extra work---one bad hammer ding can ruin or require an hour of extra filing to recover from and most beginners will make a lot of them. NB: make sure your hammers are well dressed as most come from the store *NOT* suitable for smithing as the edges are too sharp and will cause more/deeper dings than a properly dressed hammer.

I have a copy of Moxon, Astragal Press, as it's part of my history of ferrous metal working research library (several shelves so far) Anyone have access to the complete Diderot's encyclopedia? Late 18th century French where Moxon was English and mainly written between 1650 and 1700 IIRC. I'll check what the American civil war specs for a traveling forge specified too. I tend to think of the cast iron bottom blast systems as being post ACW but I's need to research it more---all this 18th and 19th century stuff is just so modern! Y0K is much more interesting!

Except that in whiskey making you save the volatiles and throw out the mash where in charcoal and coke making you get rid of the volatiles and save what's left of the "raw material" So not quite like whiskey making (or moonshine---coming from the hills of AR freelance distilling is more "historical" for us...)

Sounds like you need to build a better gas forge. Last time I relined mine I ended up melting a piece of steel in it---definitely enough heat!