ThomasPowers

A lot of makes use the disk more than the belt for doing flat grinds. However as mentioned trying to use something designed for wood to work metal is sort of like trying to use your car as a boat! It would be unfortunate if you decide you don't like knifemaking just because the tools you were using made it much more difficult to do a good job.

LOCATION Are you in Australia? South Africa? England? Where? Hard to make suggestions on where to sell if we don't know what continent you are on! However in general getting started I showed a lot of my stuff around to people I knew (church, work, etc) In fact I used to donate some of it to fund raisers so that people in my town knew who was doing that sort of thing. Get a set of cheap business cards so that each piece has a lead to you on it. (vistaprint offers cheap ones online in the USA) I still have some on display in my office---cubical hooks with dragon heads are handy to hang your coat on, easy to make and have generated several orders. Are you involved in any re-enactment activities? Selling at such events is often a good way to get started. Do you have enough inventory to do a show and is it professionally finished? Most folks starting tend to short the finishing as it's the least fun of all the steps in making; *BUT* it's what the customer sees! Finally if you are in the USA (or Canada or England...) Check with your local blacksmithing organization. Some of the members there may be willing to share with you where they are selling---or venues they are not selling because of distance or size that may be perfect for you! The local ABANA affiliate for New Mexico runs continuous demos at the State Fair and any members that do a demo can sell at the sales booth for the entire fair a truly excellent arrangement---especially as a demo'er the club can give you a free pass to get into the fair to demo! (I'm cranking out rasptlesnakes for the fair in September!)

You could also make jaw covers from angle iron if you decide not to weld it. Do a spark test on it and see if the jaws had steel plates forge welded on and if so do the proper pre-heat before welding!

I'm glad it went well. In my experience you sell some stuff well, then make a bunch of it for the next one and find that other stuff sells at that one! Last one I went to I threw in some stuff that I had not planned to take because it hadn't sold in several years. But I was low on inventory and so added it to bulk out the display and sold out of them at the original price! Having something fairly small and cheap that even a kid can get is a good idea. And I use my business cards as the price tags---punch a hole in one corner and writes the item name and price on the back. That way everybody who buys something from me knows where to get more of it---or if someone asks where they got it they can tell them!

Already started towards being a swage block if you have free access to a machine shop!

I don't see the attachment. If you go through the archives you will see several discussions about the possibilities almost all of them trumped by one member who used to make the things as a business!

I know I know; there have been hints that the reason I'm bearded is so that I don't have to look at myself in the mirror when shaving. (Actually it's so my *wife* has to see as little of my face as possible!) The beard has come in handy though; now I don't have to clean up nearly so many messes from when the monster under the bed gets a good look at me when it comes out at night...I hear it's in therapy.

Since some folks are unwilling to take the time to go down to their local post office and find a picture of me I thought I'd see if I can finally get one posted here. This was about a year ago when I was making stake anvils from some odd shaped sledge hammer heads, I'm working on the tenon that gets riveted through the eye of the hammer head. No this is not my shop. When I wanted to work down some 2.5" sq stock I borrowed the facilities of one of New Mexico's great professional smiths, Chris Thomson. So: Name: Thomas Powers Location: near Socorro NM Smithing since around 1981 Been on the net since back in the bulletin board days and rec.crafts.metalworking Strong interest in the history of ferrous metal processes, bibliophile. Noted as possessor of the "Disreputable Red Hat" Member of the SCA since Fall of 1978

Hot steel is *soft* if it's marring the face of your anvil it's too cold! Also the idea is to not hit the face of the anvil with the hammer so it's only soft hot having contact. Use it and then decide if you want to go forward with mods, (You might look up the Gunter method of anvil repair if you decide to weld on it. At an Anvil repair clinic I saw an old anvil that had had the face milled perfect---and way too thin to use fet a new face built up with a welder. Good preheat and about 5 hours of work and a lot of rod and abrasives but it was good as new at the end.)

What you are hunting for is Rigidity and SLOWness when you drill metal. Most set ups are designed for woodworking. I have two hand drills, one for wood the other for metal. At the same capacity the metal drilling one is way less than 1/2 the top speed of the woodworking one---but about twice as heavy. It will happily hurt you if you don't watch out!

He's in the UK and sometimes their colourful language can surprise us on this side of the pond!

As galvanized is just one of possible dangerous coatings, (lead paint and cadmium plating are a couple of others), the general rule is that "if it's rusty it's OK" If the surface of scrap is covered with a layer of rust then it doesn't have one of the common toxic coatings. Of course this doesn't work for items covered with oil and grease; but they seem to be fewer in the scrap stream.

I used to take my daughters to play in the creek and gave them all toolkits. I've started picking up tools at the fleamarket for the grandkids so they will have real tools to lose, abuse and get rusty! When they start wanting *new* high dollar tools I'll probably be gone...

Probably not delaminating but only the weld seam that wasn't dressed all the way as these were not real high end things. If I had a student needing an anvil I'd suggest he be willing to go $2 a pound. Welding to that disk does cut the price a bit as it will have to be removed to be used---so $300 would be a reasonable top offer IMO and $200 an "out the door by the end of the day" price.

Rather high in Al too; which is added to kill steels. The Si is within wrought iron levels but the O2 looks too high for that and the Si looks low for most of the slags I have been involved with. (like Fayalite---Fe2SiO4) (note that the scrap price for steel *is* higher on the coasts as the shipping costs are lower compared to in rural NM)

I was thinking they might have used it to remove glass from their tooling. I'd think they would use a larger hammer for mold making.

Some of the best smelts we did using Y1K techniques used 100 mesh magnetite or "iron sand" collected from the shore of a lake with a magnet. (That was coarser than the 100 mesh but was still in the sand grain size range. ) We also used some earthern ore before, goethite as I recall.

Very few anvils were actually date stamped (William Foster and some Fishers as I recall) Some have serial numbers that can be interpolated from lists and finally some had changes to their stampings that varied over time. Anvils In America by Postman pretty much is the current source for dating anvils but for a PW it will be very general.

I hope to pick up some good coal at Quad-State; I got spoiled when I was a SOFA member and could get it from them on a regular basis!

Shall I just say I have seen an ash tube glowing red and just leave it at that? Far worse is to look in the rear view mirror and see your steel coal bucket glowing red as you are trucking down the road *thinking* the coal/coke from the forge was out when you dumped it in the bucket to go home...and that one was one of "mine"! (Luckily nothing caught on fire and I was able to pull off the road and make sure it was out!

If you strap it done you may not need the blocks. Handling: think of grabbing the anvil with a 8' long set of tongs that rest on a rotating loop of chain swung from a jib crane. Now think of that set of tongs having the ends bent in and sharpened to fit exactly in the handling holes and then a keeper placed on the reins. Now you can rotate the anvil and swing it closer and farther away as you work it under the steam hammer. See http://www.anvilfire.com/bookrev/postman/postman4.htm for an example of a different set being used that way

My first thought was Spiegeleisen from that one shot but with the original amount of O2 and the low amount of MN it doesn't seem likely. Hmm specular hemetite? Now who says ore has to have nasty impurities in it? The ore I use in my bloomery is almost 100% magnetite that stuff has a lot of other compared to what I use! One of the problems seems to be that the analysis is jumping all over the place. Much more common with an ore than with a finished product. Have you taken it to the local university's geology department and gotten their take on it? Matt are you planning a bloomery run? If so that's not a good ore to use you will have to crush it finely to make it usable. I've crushed hard ores by hand and it's not an easy task even after pre-roasting them. Talk with Lee Sauder about what they are using for ore!

It would help if your air connection was much closer to the firepot as ashes will build up in the ash dump tube until you open it and let them fall to the ground. With your current set up you would need to do that ALL the time if you were using the coal we often get here! Moving it to 1/2 or 2/3 the way up would allow you to work a lot longer before having to dump the ashes. (Also if small pieces of coal or coke fall in they might continue to burn with the air being pushed through them and you don't need a glowing red ash tube!) Welds: if they work they're great if they don't re-do them Once it's full of coal nobody will see them. If someone bends over to scrutinize them there is this trick you do with a cold wet pair of tongs----make sure they won't cut their head on the chimney hood!

Handling holes don't go very far in. They definitely don't go side to side. The central peg will hole it in place but not quiet it down strapping it firmly done will help keep it from moving and quiet it down. For my travel anvils I just cut two blocks of wood to match the curve on the base of the sides and nailed them to the stump so the anvil lifts on and off---I have to use a mute in the pritchel hole to quiet them down though. My big shop anvil is a Fisher and *quiet* so I just have about 4 fence staples hammered most of the way into the stump to keep it from walking. (the ones shaped like "U" and about 1" long---it's over 500 pounds and doesn't need much to keep it in place!)

Aha; what kind of an iron works? Smelter, Finery, Chaffery, Bessemer converter?