ThomasPowers

The Tim Lively washtub forge is a well known and tested item. The metal sides will never get hot enough to burn off the galvanization. It is a much better system if you plan to make blades than a brake drum forge. as it's a linear system rather than a round one. I'm still a moderator at the neo-tribal forum Primal Fires and have know folks using a washtub forge for about a decade now. Folks it's nice to help; but if you are not familiar with something; perhaps waiting to see if someone else answers might be a good thing?

I was planning to take the "northern route" Albuquerque-Amarillo-OKC-Ft Smith-Joplin-Rolla-St Louis-Indianapolis-Dayton As I'll be visiting kinfolk along the way (and hopefully get a chance to blow my diet on concord grapes in eastern MO!) So I'm sorry I can't throw you in the back as I travel along. (I generally do it 1 day from Socorro to Ft Smith and 1 day from Ft Smith to Dayton. Visiting my grandkids and grandfather will make the trip not so much a death march...

You may remember I suggested getting a copy of "The Complete Bladesmith" it has a listing of appropriate steels for blademaking and how they should be forged and tempered. You should be able to ILL a copy at the desk of your local public library---your taxes pay for libraries---go get your money's worth! Once you know this you might be able to strike up a conversation from someone working in the maintenance and repair shop where you work and ask about buying some scrap known alloy tool steel and *know* what A2 or D2 is and if you would be able to work it!

I have noticed that we seem to have become a "maintenance adverse" culture. People want to just buy something, use it and never have to do anything to it until it's time to throw it away and buy another. I still use my mothers kabar kitchen knife bought for her second wedding anniversary in 1956---the year of my birth. A plain high carbon steel blade it has to be wiped clean after using and sharpened every now and then. I expect my kids will fight over who gets it when my wife and I pass on... Tools are much the same; after use they may need maintenance; grinding a mushroom off, straightening, oiling; sometimes even re-forging or replacing! If you are willing to put the time in it doesn't matter as much what you use as almost any steel alloy will have some use life as a smithing tool. I have worn out and replaced tools that I use heavily and if there is a tool I like that seems to be "wearing faster than I would like" I may reproduce it in a better alloy for that use. (I admit I tend to try to find another one like it cheap at the fleamarket first...)

Start with chunk---not briquette charcoal. Easy to light, no out of the ordinary fumes. As a beginner with a hand crank blower IIRC you will not find coke easy/fun to use.

As many of us use quite old anvils we have no idea of the possible abuse it may have seen earlier in it's life and tend to err on the side of caution WRT the hardy hole. If you have someplace else to drive the piece into I'd use it and then just do the very last run on the real hardy hole---or if you are close an angle grinder will usually dress it to fit!

yup spark spectroscopy seems indicated, perhaps in the tang area so as to not mar the blade. Rutile is often found in magnetite sands and may have been a partner in the smelt. Please let us know what you find out; and we are eagerly awaiting book 4!

Some folks bring forges to their camps but it's not common. It's a conference so most folks are there to watch the demos, tailgate and jaw with other smiths late into the night around the raised campfires. Bring items or pictures to hand around or place in the display area. Family members include extended family in my experience there but they would really like the folks attending the demos to be fully registered---it costs a lot to bring some of these top notch folk in from far away trying to avoid contributing is a bit like cheating your friends! Of course you need to contact SOFA for specifics; it's been a while since I was a member as after more than a dozen years of being one I moved 1`500 miles away. I will say that SOFA was noted for trying to help people out and doing what was right. I once had an emergency business trip and at the last minute they were happy to cancel my pre-registration and return 100% of my money. This isn't done as a business. SOFA puts on Quad-State as a "labour of Love" for the blacksmithing Community and I'm happy that they do clear their costs and then some as it allows them to do even a better one next time! I plan to drive in from NM in a 22 year old pickup with no cruise control of air conditioning.

thanks jeff. the height depends a lot on what you will be doing and how tall you are. Some folks like their gas forges high so they can easily see in them. I prefer mine *low* for that very reason---I'm trying to NOT spend a lot of time staring into the hotspot and encouraging glass blowers cataracts! If you work heat material you probably want it set so that the bottom of the forge is about level with where you would hold such materials with your arms fully extended straight at your side and you hands curled. If you are working with quite small items you may want the forge higher to make it easier to fish small items in and out. My best advice is to EXPERIMENT! Don't think of building just *1* forge for your blacksmithing. Think of it as an on-going process of improving your set up till it's perfect for *you*!

Now I took one of those spike driving hammers and *made* and anvil from it. Using another smiths big powerhammers (200# Chambersburg and 100# LG) I forged a piece of 2.5" Sq Stock into a shaft about 3' long with a 9" spike on one end and a tenon that fit the eye of the RR spike hammer. I hot formed it using the eye as a shaping tool and then trimmed it and hot riveted it on and cooled it off before it drew temper on the ends of the spike hammer. Long range plan is to weld over the top of the eye making a small flat pad for forging and thus getting a medieval/renaissance styled stake anvil to use at SCA events with my hornless Y1K anvil. I've got a couple more of them; but have to wait on hammertime to make another (this time with a smaller shaft for use in armourmaking.)

Your cheapest you can find coal might be costing you more than trying to get the best coal you can find! We had a smith here in NM who got a great deal on some coal once. It was so bad he finally offered it anybody who would come and get it for *free* and then he got a load of good coal in. A lot of it ended as gravel in driveways... It is quite possible to get coal so bad your neighbors start mobbing your shop with pitchforks and torches *AND* you are spending 4 times longer trying to forge something *AND* it's messing up your work piece---"I got a real good deal on this coal, I just have to throw out 90% of what I make with it; but boy did I save money on it!) The rule for checking out new coal sources is to gat a 5 gallon bucket or two to test before you buy a ton of "black gravel" (And bituminous is what you want---BUT it also has to be low sulfur, good coking, low in "rock", a good size, etc---as mentioned trying out the best gives you a yard stick to measure other coal by; but also makes you less content. I hope to buy some coal at Quad-State to hoard over the next year!)

You need a deeper fire with charcoal than coal and not nearly as much air with charcoal as coal. SLOW DOWN! Remember that all the japanese and viking swords were forged solely with charcoal. To use charcoal in my coal forge I take two firebricks and place them on their sides an inch or so away from the tuyere, one on each side to make a trough forge. The size of the chunks do make a difference. In the japanese tradition the apprentice spends 1 year cutting charcoal into 1" cubes before going on to other things. Me I pour the charcoal on the top and when it catches I whap it with my light fire rake causing it to break into smaller pieces. The workpiece goes higher in the fuel pile than it does with coal you want several inches of charcoal between it and the tuyere (the exact distance is dependent on a lot of stuff so try 3" and move *UP* if you are not getting what you want.

Sorry Phil I moved to NM about a half dozen bull pins from the drive in fleamarket in Columbus. I'd buy them whenever I saw them for a dollar or two... Fleamarkets are sort of like fishing. You don't expect to come home with your string full every time but doing it regularly increases your chances. If I got a great deal once ever ten visits then I was getting one every month at that fleamarket as I would stop by Wednesday Saturday and Sunday. People getting to know you and what you would buy at what price makes it more likely that dealers will "speculate" on a pile of old rusty stuff sure that *you* will buy some of it from them. Now you may note that the eye that Hofi uses on his hammers is different from the eyes typical of old american hammers (but his looks a lot like ones I saw in Germany at the fleamarkets there on some equipment) I would say find the eye *you* like best and try to duplicate that rather than accepting someone else's as being the "right" one for *YOU*! (I like fairly meaty eyes that correspond to fairly cheap hammer handles in my locale). Car axle is another source of steel for eye drifts and can often be found in suitable diameters to work from.

1-0-18 = 130 pounds (+/- due to wear and accuracy of original weighing it's in the CWT weight system of course.) I'd be happy to pay US$1 a pound and if a student of mine needed an anvil I would tell him to go to $2 a pound; some folks with more disposable income might go $3 a pound. It's in quite good using shape with a nice face and not too bad edge wear. It doesn't need oiling, it needs *USING*! Which will keep the face clean and polished!

looks a beaut! Though I would have sloped the lining up on the sides to "funnel" fuel toward the tuyere during use. If it's still making a lot of noise check to see if one of the fan blades is out of alignment and decide if you want to risk bending it back into alignment or trimming the blade to keep it from hitting. Sometimes adjusting the "bearings" can help too. Note that real chunk charcoal will work quite well in that forge, no need to wait till you find decent coal even walmart has real charcoal if you hunt around the briquettes area! (if you use real charcoal you may want to place a firebrick in the forge on either side of the tuyere to get a deeper yet smaller fire

You have my prayers for your son, yourself and your family. As a parent and grandparent I know how deeply one feels for one's children.

Build your lively forge in an Ex propane grill with the cover. Then you can leave it out in the yard looking like a BBQ and only move the bellows. I have my propane forge built on a propane grill "cart" so I can move it in and out of the secure shop to the forging "carport". I pulled the grill part off and scrapped it for the Al and then mounted a sheet of steel across the gap where the grill sat and then mounted my gas forge on the sheet of steel. Holds the propane tank underneath too!

Quad-State has often had folks selling "sample cones" where a metallurgical lab has taken a sample and turned it into a cone on a lath to check for flaws in the metal. I have several of these including even a medium C alloy cone! I also once found a large valve stem cover that was tapered so my range goes from spud wrench to sample cone to valve stem cover to missile nose cone. I also have a small bick for welding or dressing bodkin points and small socket chisels

How will buying steel tell you what it is? Well when you go and ask them |"Give me 3' of 1/4" by 2" O-1" you usually know you are getting O-1, same for 440C, D2, W1, W2,... If you hunt for "testing of scrap steel or junkyard steel" you may find long posts on the subject, I'm kind of tired of re-typing it once a week for years! Basically you cut off some of the excess metal from your piece and roughly forge it to approximate cross section that you will be trying to achieve. Then you heat to above non magnetic and quench in warm oil and check for hardness with a new file. File skates off then you are hard (if the piece shatters in the quench then it's too hard! May be an air quenching steel in that cross section!). File bites in, then reheat and try quenching in water or brine and check hardness. Still not hard enough to skate a file then it's not a good alloy for knives using blacksmithing heat treats (possible may be some weird alloy requiring precise heat treating in computer controlled systems---unlikely but possible. Most likely it's a low carbon steel.) You don't do this on the piece you are going to use because if it shatters you have induced such stresses in the piece you were going to work and it should be discarded. That's the first step. Second step is learning the correct tempering temp.

A lot of people seem to be afraid of failing and so don't get a lot done. Blacksmithing is a craft that you have to practice! You wouldn't expect to become a concert violinist if you never practiced because you might get a note wrong would you? Every time you fail you are just one step closer to getting it done *RIGHT*---if you learn from your failures. The scrap pile is perfectly happy to accept all the "oops that didn't work" items you can produce. This is why we suggest people work on knives before trying swords. We *KNOW* that they will make a lot of mistakes learning and making them faster and closer together is a *good* thing. Less likely to forget than if you have months in between large blades to forget. One method to refine your skills is to make that item every time you fire up the forge if it's a small item or say once a month if it's a daylong item. After a year you may find that your are *good* at it and the day long item is now an hour in the morning and people start hinting as to how they would like you to sell them the stuff you are making...

Almost any solid fuel forge will get to forge welding temperatures---at least for a small area. Most propane forges are not designed to get to forge welding temps and often use refractories that react to forge welding flux like cotton candy reacts to boiling water. Now when you get a propane forge designed for forge welding those babies will weld all day and even monster billets! (Most of the pro's weld billets using propane forges)

Ticking off the *mayor* in a small town? Why you probably have carte blanche to run electrified barb wire on that fence without any trouble from the town council!

Picked up a breaker box at the fleamarket this morning, brand new Sq D but only 125 amps, no breakers (still in original package) I have a 200 amp box but it's an "off brand" and I may not be able to get a separate drop for the shop the way the electric CoOp is raisng the base rate. So a smaller "name brand" might be able to run off the house meter. I guess this was driven by having to pull the pickup up to the smithy door and use the headlights to finish off a job last night as the 1 extension cord to the shop can handle lights or the drill and not both...grrrrrr.

Gluing weight? Used with a glue that reacts with steel and so the micarta "cap"?

Yes when using unknown steel you *MUST* forge a test piece FIRST to try out quench mediums and tempering temps *before* you throw away your time on a blade! Since the test section doesn't need to be as large as the blade or as finely finished it is cheap insurance for your time.