ThomasPowers

Some coals and tasks you might not use it at all, others you may be using it every half hour or so *DEPENDING*.

Yes; but you can also buy it already made just like one can buy charcoal already made. (There is also a petroleum coke produced as a side effect of oil refining, and there is the soda and there is the alkaloid---heavily overloaded name...)

What I see though is a lot of people basing their price on the asking price of an item that *never* sells at that price. They should be basing their price on the *actual* *selling* *price* of the item. This does make them an idiot IMO as they are not finding out about the *real* market vs the *fantasy* market. That may be a bit harsh---it perhaps merely makes them *lazy*. Of course I grew up on the story about the two old hill farmers that made themselves rich selling a mule back and forth between them... I am also familiar with Tulipmania and the South Sea Bubble both classic examples of artificial markets we had to study in Economics. And I'm notoriously cheap and cranky!

Look at how fast the original set up was spinning the blower. I bet you could loose the jackshaft and still get to that speed and be able to mount the system off the back legs of the forge. Have to shorten the chain but that's simple for someone with your demonstrated skills. As for anvils" the traditional Japanese Katanas that now sell in the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars were forged using anvils that look like rectangular chunks of steel. Look into what the neotribals suggest for a "knifemaker's anvil" It's a 4" sq piece of steel stock mounted vertically into a bucket of concrete---and doesn't have to be Sq or 4" round, hex, etc and any stout size will work. Look at this for an excellent anvil that cost US$25 http://www.marco-borromei.com/fork.html (and yes I'm that Thomas)

Most times I am at the forge I work more than one project at the same time *HOWEVER* there is generally 1 *main* project and the others are minor projects. When the main is at heat it gets worked and the others can go soak themselves! Blades by definition are "main" projects

No you just need more cottonmouths and copperheads to pay you a visit in your smithy to keep you in shape... (Like the old joke about the bear chasing a fellow and the guy jumping at a tree with the first branch 20' off the ground--"Did you catch it?" "Not on the way up but I managed to grab it on the way down...")

We get our smithing coal out here as fines. I store it in a 5 gallon bucket of water and add it sopping wet to a going fire along the sides and let it coke up into chunks. Is your blast a bit on the high side?

Stewart why should folks overpaying for stuff make me mad? Always idiots out there. Always some people fishing for those idiots... I only get angry when everyone else selling stuff wants to charge the "idiots" price. I have a friend who was the blacksmith at a historical village for a decade or so who also bought and sold smithing tools on the side. Checking out the sidewalk sale in a antique store he was flabbergasted at a rough set of farm tongs with a $45 price tag on them when the owner came up and said what a great price that was for those---she had an antique price guide that listed a pair of tongs that had been made as a demo by a big name (Henry Ford?) that was listed as having sold for $90 so she thought that a $5 set of rough farm tongs would be a great deal for $45. My friend offered to sell her 100 pairs at $22.50 apiece so she could really make some money...

The mounting lugs are pretty much limited to cast anvils in my experience and if someone had used cast steel a much more difficult and costly material to use they would have probably used a better pattern and put in a pritchel! Here in the SW US we see cast mystery steel anvils coming from Mexico where they seem to be using old "real" anvils as the master for the moulds. However they run the casting seam right down the middle of the face and are often quite crudely done---3/8" offsets seen in the horns etc. Most are not fettled, all are not heat treated and some auctioneers are misrepresenting them as "antique" "real" anvils. I believe they are "end of the day what's left in the ladle" castings and so what alloy they are depends on what is being cast that day. Some of them could be quite good if they were of a known alloy and properly cast and sold for what they are instead of trying to "cheat" Tempting to try to get a decent one and add *all* the markings Postman lists to it--an Hey-ACME-Trent-Mouse-Wright-Foster-Fisher-...and bring it to a conference.

Farmweld---are you modifying your hammer handles to work with what you have got? The rectangular handles with rounded ends might help with the twisting. Does putting your index finger on the side of the handle with your thumb work---the handle now exiting where your middle finger used to be---again with a rectangular handle. Does wrapping the handle with leather or sports tape to fit your hand help. I crushed a pinkie once and have to do regular stretching and working of it to keep it able to curl around the hammer handle and out of trouble. *WE* are BLACKSMITHS---that means we make and MODIFY tools to suit ourselves! At a medieval event I once ran a fellow with *severe* birth defects through a smithing project: working out how he could use what he had to smith---tong reigns and long tongs he could hold between his arm stub and body, wrapping a hammer handle into his hand stub; me as the trained assistant, etc. Don't recall anyone ever being so happy about making a quite rough S hook. I didn't say "you can't because you could hurt yourself" I said "You want to do it? Lets figure a way out!"

Since a blow drier will put out more air than a typical coal or charcoal forge will require a leaf blower is definite over kill and way more expensive than using something else---like a heater fan from a car for example. Putting wear on something expensive to do a job that can be done by something cheap is generally not a good idea.

OK First spikes are not a great alloy for knives. Next as you pound in a bevel on one side that side gets longer. If the other side remains the same then the longer side will curve toward the untouched side. Luckily this is *easy* to deal with. (My first knife looks like a banana too; sure wish the internet had existed back then...) With the blade *hot*, place it on the anvil on the spine and *tap* the edge so that the blade straightens down against the anvil. This works for even quite thin edges! Though some folks use a wooden or rawhide hammer to tap the edge down to avoid dinging the edge. The other method is to curve the blade before beveling the *other* way, (toward what will be the edge), then as you hammer in the bevel the blade will straighten. The third way is to make a double edged blade so putting in the bevel on one edge will be "fixed" by putting in the bevel for the other edge. Not that you can't anneal in an oven unless it gets wup to steel glowing temps---well over 1000 deg F. You can draw *temper* in an oven though. Quite different heat treat processes! Knifemaking is all about the details!

Single lead screw? Perhaps a screw press rather than a flypress. I could see it very handy for gluing for knives

Sorry I was referring to Mick's "I think copper melts before brass. Keep an eye on it as there is a fine line between copper sweating and running out of the seams" Brass will be pooling in the bottom of the forge before copper sweats!

Use the charcoal to start the fire and then add coal to go on with it.

NO! Brass melts several hundred degrees F below copper! As a rule of thumb alloys melt below pure metals

Depends on what you are doing. I've had little luck draw filing the tang holes in guards, perhaps it's due to only having 1/8" "throw" when trying to use a file that way. Draw filing sure is a great way to rough out the sides of a blade though.

The BEST depends on how you plan to be using it. What is GREAT for one type of work may be TERRIBLE for another. BTAIM I have been using a firepot made from an axle cover from a Banjo Rear end for about 25 years now and doing a lot of forge welding in it during those years. I bought two of them that had been made into jack stands so I have a spare when this one gives out. I usually use a piece of expanded metal for a grate so it's more hole than solid and use a hand crank blower. Oh yes it cost me US$3 for the pair. (It's in it's 3rd or 4th forge btw and about ready for the next one...)

Don't Annoy your parents or your neighbors! Keep stuff you can "hide" and is generally useful (springs, rods, etc). The big stuff you *think* may *someday* be useful can be stored at the scrap yard and retrieved as needed...

Mosaic steel is not covered in that article which has numerous flaws in it as well. (eg Pattern welded steel was called Damascus steel at least 100 years before Moran as that was what was used for shotgun barrels. They also seem to have missed out on all the pattern welded blades done in the 1930's and 1940's in Germany as part of the folk arts pushed by nationalistic fervor.) Mosaic pattern welding is better described at http://www.dfoggknives.com/copy_of_index/damascus.htm

In the UN manual of blacksmithing written for use in Africa they talk of making the simple triangular blade axes out of mild steel. Then heating them and a piece of cast iron up and "crayoning the cast iron onto the mild steel letting it diffuse and form a high carbon steel edge. Another interesting trick.

Ahh Tom, most places not in mining country "Drill Rod" refers to stuff you buy at a good hardware store and is generally O1 or W1. It does not contain a center hole as it's not purposed for rock drills but for steel drills. In England they would call it "Silver steel". Living in mining country I too have a stash of the "old good stuff" that sparks like a file when tested! I also run into a bunch of old tools forged from it out by the mines, and in scrap yards and fleamarkets

Why are you surprised that manufacturers tend to use the cheapest blades they can get away with rather than the best? When you buy a car do you expect it to come with top of the line tires? If you need high speed tires or heavy duty commercial ones you expect to put them on the car yourself after buying it. Most people buying stuff don't need the *best* of something a mediocre "good enough" will work for them and save the manufacturer a *lot* of money. As a gedanken experiment think of bidding a smithing job to use only the best materials at 4 to 10 times the cost of regular materials, what percentage of bids will you win?

Hot filing: I use only farrier's rasps and keep a stack of them in progression: Bought used: sharp ones are used for wood, slightly less sharp are used for hot filing, dull ones are forge stock for blades, hawks and rasptlesnakes. The important thing in hot filing is to not push the hand holding the file against the hot metal! Most projects I use the finer side of the rasp unless there is a wide area I need to hog down and then I may use the coarse side first. Trying to use the coarse side on a thin area is quite difficult and frustrating.

It's cast, made from a poor pattern, no pritchel. I'd go US$50 to have another hardy hole handy for production projects. The seller either doesn't know squat about anvils or is trying to gouge the buyer!