ThomasPowers

You know that I've bout 2 powerhammers at less than that; one in AR and one in OK, Texas is not that far... Have you put up a notice in the local feed store yet? How about an advert in the local free sales paper? If you plan to be doing this a while a 75# anvil will not keep you happy for long and if you tied up your cash in it you might not be able to get a better one when it comes along. I'd forge on a chunk of fork lift tine and save the cash! Seems like the best deals come along when you are not "hungry". Last year I bought a 112# PW in near mint condition for $150 in Albuquerque NM on craigslist and have ignored listings for poor quality anvils at 4 times that price per pound. As for the basic supply of Anvils: well it's best where there was a heavy population density 100 years ago. Places like NM where the population was squat are anvil poor. Places like OH with a strong industrial base and lots of small farms are the happy hunting grounds. Even so there were more anvils in the cities than in the country! Just harder to find them (and more of them were scrapped).

Very nice indeed! Unfortunately we have burn bans a lot of the year here in the desert and that sort of thing is forbidden---unless you rig it for propane---which takes the "fun" out of it! Now do you have a large pot that fits in the top to warm wine or cook soup in?

Damp charcoal sparks a lot more than dry charcoal. Some smiths pile the charcoal on the sides and let it "dry out" before raking it into the fire. And of course I hope this is chunck charcoal and not briquettes as briquettes are composed of small bits of stuff and so have that problem innately (as well as others---better softwood chunk charcoal than hardwood briquettes!) Some hardwoods contain sap pockets that then make for more sparks. Some gourmet charcoals are not fully charred to allow the smoke flavour from the wood to be present, (mesquite often has both those issues in spades!) I don't water my charcoal. I build a restricted firepot with fire bricks and then only have the charcoal I'm using in it. Note that charcoal takes far less air than coal and over blowing it will waste fuel and produce more sparks.

As I recall the harbour freight wheel is rated for steel less than 1/16 of an inch thick. They do not over engineer their tools as much as they over engineer their ratings!

Yaw, Pitch and Roll: I learned them wrt Space capsules when my father worked for NASA in the 1960's. I believe they came from aviation and even earlier ships. They basically refer to motion about 3 different orthogonal axii I noticed that many europeans make handles from flat boards when I visited there a couple of decades ago rounding the tops and bottoms of the handle but having a flat on the sides. Didn't know if it was cultural, due to handle materials available or what.

If this will be used in combat check the rules for the group you will be fighting with on rivet size, spacing and placement. I assume you have already checked on metal thickness with them. If it will be only for display I'd suggest putting them midway in the overlap and space them as looks good to you.

Seems like a lot of work. I've never found postvises to be in short supply even in rural NM Most meetings here there's a couple for sale and even some cheap ones out there if you are vigilant. Certainly easier to find than anvils! Of course 2 people around here have asked me to try to repeat my "$50 6" postvise in good shape" trick again at Quad-State. I just spent some of my Q-S money on 2 postvises: 4, 4.5" at $30 apiece with the mounting brackets. The way the plan was presented didn't seem to me to be "Here's an Idea, what do you think?" As a "Here's how you do it" I once bought a homemade postvise I found in AR; weighed over 200 pounds! Impressive stout in a crude way but the screw was too fine a thread to make using it easy and I sold it on to someone who wanted to experiment.

Yup! Country is nice; but if you do have neighbor problems they are *worse* than in the city as it's much harder for the authorities to catch them in the act.

I remember seeing one at Emmert Studebaker's shop when SOFA used to meet there, (Tip City OH).

Ifn you were to take Mat Sci here at NM Tech---a respected engineering school though in a very small town---you could take Turley's classes and The Gunter's classes during summer breaks---both of them are about 2 hours away by interstate. I can arrange a School Tour of the Mat Sci department if you can drop by sometime. (I can provide a ride from Albq or Las Cruces/El Paso too) As a smith I try to make friends with metallurgists when I can!

Is that pair of tongs in the background 4' long or 18"?

Now can you talk them into letting you do *two* of them? Very handy to have two, or even one to sell or trade...

Does your columbian have bevels on the legs? The basic shape of the legs does look columbian but those funny bevels do not. The 4" vise I picked up last Saturday has Columbian Vise Co, Cleve, standing proud of the back of the stationary jaw on it and has the "U-Bolt" mounting plate. Looks pretty much mint as the delicate lettering is clean and undamaged. My 6" columbians do not have that funky bevel on them and do not have that type of screwbox.

Angle control Would a rectangular handle allow for more angle control thumbs down or are you referring to pitch rather than roll?

"Steam" is fairly low temperature. As I recall we were preheating anvils for welding at nearly 400 degF as being around the tempering temp of it. As long as you are below the original tempering temperature you are not softening the face any!

Ric; don't you need to wrangle a grant to do research on explosive lamination of pattern welded steels over at EMRTC and stop by for a visit? I can arrange for a friend to help you clean up your shop while you're down here...

Frank's school is in Santa Fe NM. ABS school has a campus in Southern AR. NM tech is about 100 yards that-away...from where I'm sitting....

Work hardening does not grow grains but piles up the dislocations in the crystals. OTOH annealing can cause re-nucleation of grains if the dislocations are prevalent enough and so can decrease the grain size. Since elevated temps grow grains cutting the time spent *hot* by quenching helps.

No---*Hollywood* did! (as usual...)

American Bladesmiths Society school for knife forging Frank Turley's Blacksmithing School for blacksmithing NM Tech for Metallurgy (MatSci) (and located 5 miles from my smithy)

Since you asked: Whether it has nothing on a different type of vise depends on if you need that extra. Paying extra for features you do not use does not make sense---though auto manufacturers would differ in their opinion---my 4 cylinder 2wd pickup has seen a lot more off the road miles than many a massive 4wd SUV... Inflation doesn't increase all prices evenly. Otherwise we would not need a market basket to determine it. Just pick one item and it's increase would be the right number for everything. (You may remember that the "going rate" for anvils stayed at US$1 a pound for *decades* even when houses, cars, and gas doubled.) Rarity does not equate to high price. I can bend a nail into the shape that no other nail in the world has---will you then pay me $2000 for it? It's *rare*! I met a fellow recently who told me he had just sold a fisher parallel jaw vise for US$150---too cheap in my opinion; wish he met me first; but I would probably have sold it on as it doesn't suit my needs as well as a cheaper vise would. (What really hurts is that I will now be giving smithing lessons to his kid *after* he got rid of all the smithing equipment on their farm...)

There are ALWAYS other options! You may not be familiar with some of them but that doesn't make them non-existent. I assume your wheel is a home built one with a multi ton jack for pressure and large flame cut 2" thick steel sides? If it's a HF cheapie you may not even bend metal that thick with it. Still do a better job heating it in a hole in the ground full of charcoal and using a blow drier for air and hammering it out with a borrowed hammer on a steel weight plate than trying to do it with an english roller. Just why *MUST* you use the roller? (I've know several people who built english rollers for armour work that were very beefy and massive items and none of them ever tried to thin steel with them.)

If Stewart can get it to Quad-State I could haul it from there to OKC for you *if* I get to go to Quad-State this year. (and you have a place I can drop it off at OKC)

No----much better! "Work past 10 pm and get a warning not a ticket" cards! I ran long once and a neighbor called the cops on me; as soon as they told me the problem I shut *everything* down and apologized---then spent an hour discussing smithing and knifemaking till they got another call...

Hmm might be the stuff they spray on oil well pipe to keep it from rusting as much. If so; I once had the side of my van sprayed with a heavy layer of it and sand. Had to wash it with diesel and then with rig wash to remove it. paint job was never quite the same afterwards. Rig hands were spraying it in a 30+ mph wind and never bothered to tell us our logging unit (and cars) were downwind...