ThomasPowers

Double bits can keep you chopping longer and then you can resharpen during your lunch break or after dinner. Folks not doing a lot of felling often adjust the bits so one's used for grubbing with a fatter edge angle and the other for felling with a sharper edge angle. And I agree for a LONG time the way to tell if an axe was a tool or was a weapon was to see if the guy holding it is facing a tree or a raider! I don't think Glenn would like me to discuss the mechanics of the axe as a weapon here; so I won't. Just remember that most folks didn't have swords. In early medieval times the sword was the mark of that small percentage of society whose lives were pretty much dedicated to war. The "weekend warriors AKA peasant levies were generally equipped with spears or axes as they are dirt cheap to make and take less training to be useful.

Take a look in one of the Sears&Roebuck reprints of their early 1900's catalog. I think that is part of one of there "Do everything but put out the cat" systems that would also drill holes.

You can use old woody carrots as bottom fullers. They won't work worth a ^&*(, but you can use them. In general I try to use automobile leaf or coil springs for such tooling as they come in a number of diameters (I have one coil spring from an earth mover that is made from stock 1.25" in diameter!) This is normally easy to scrounge at a cheap cost and heat treat can be done using blacksmith methods---for a new person I would suggest just normalizing it. If you wear it out, *then* do a better heat treat on the next one; should take you years before making that next one and you will be much better prepared to do a fancier heat treat.

The only cost for a choke plate should be *1* sheet metal screw as thin sheet is easily scroungable. Does that motor have a place to remove and replace the brushes? If not it is most likely not a universal motor and so will get trashed by a dimmer as mentioned.

Kiss the face with a belt sander to get the rust off it and then re-evaluate.

That's an interesting variation on "King Solomon and the Blacksmith" tale (easily searched on) http://popartmachine.com/item/pop_art/LOC+1040884 I remembered another one it's the tale of how Cú Chulainn got his name (Hound of Chulainn) one of the great Irish tales of heroes. The short form lifted from wikipedia: "Culann the smith invites King Conchobar to a feast at his house. Before going, Conchobar goes to the playing field to watch the boys play hurley. He is so impressed by Sétanta's performance that he asks him to join him at the feast. Sétanta has a game to finish, but promises to follow the king later. But Conchobar forgets, and Culann lets loose his ferocious hound to protect his house while they are feasting. When Sétanta arrives, the enormous hound attacks him, but he kills it in self-defence, in one version by smashing it against a standing stone, in another by driving a sliotar (hurley ball) down its throat with his hurley. Culann is devastated by the loss of his hound, so Sétanta promises he will rear him a replacement, and until it is old enough to do the job, he himself will guard Culann's house. The druid Cathbad announces that his name henceforth will be Cú Chulainn – "Culann's Hound". In the Irish "Heroic" Age the King's Smith had a place of honour at the King's table and the King would not find eating at the Smith's table an odd thing to do either.

Hope to see you at Quad-State in September. (I'm driving in from New Mexico; so WI is not too far away at all!)

That's Hollywood for you! You would have to look really really hard to find examples of double bladed axes being used as weapons in Western Europe in medieval and renaissance times. (and the one or two of those are still be argued about as many people believe them to be tools.) Now axe blade and hammer or spike was known; but why would you want the same thing on the backside? Just use the front side if you need a blade... The Far East did some double sided war axes and the ancient Greeks said that the amazons used double sided axes (labrys if you want to look it up); but not western Europe.

Check out the used market if possible for stainless---demolition/architectural salvage, restore, etc Also places that do commercial kitchens to see if you can get a tear out. I picked up some SS pipe at the Restore, about 4' long for US$10 a piece that I will be using to do the lower section of the chimney and then switching to the $4 per 10' spiral seamed vent pipe for the upper section.

So you going to wait after dark and roll all those tires back?

The problem is that more than a few folks have had their anvil milled so that the top is flat and parallel to the bottom. However the top and bottom may not have been parallel in the first place! So they may mill off excessive amounts of the valuable hardened face to true it to low grade bottom material. I personally have seen anvils that had this done several times (one where they milled through the face and into the wrought iron of a traditionally made anvil leaving the entire "working" area wrought iron with the only face left being in the heel!) So yes you are *supposed* to mill the bottom FIRST and then just kiss the face ever so lightly---if you must mess with it at all. Cast steel anvils are generally differentially hardened/tempered so you can remove the hard layer leaving it too soft to be a good anvil. If the face was ok, but sloped I would probably deal with it with the anvil stand, followed by milling the bottom as a lower choice. I contend that machinists and weldors have ruined more anvils than blacksmiths! You can be an excellent machinist or weldor and not know about how the face of an anvil is made and so mess it up "doing what comes naturally in your craft".

Blacksmith's Air Conditioning-----step away from the forge!

Question: are you in the Piedmont in Italy or the USA? Makes a big difference!

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Jackhammer bits are NOT S7 or H13! IIRC That comes from a listing of alloys and what they would be good for like in Machinery's Handbook. It's NOT what manufacturers use as those alloys are quite expensive and manufacturing is all about cutting costs. Just like Stainless Steel would make a great car body as would Titanium----how many cars have you seen with SS or Ti bodies? (I've seen 1 the delorean) I hope Grant will allow me to re-post some information he gave once on the subject; if you do object I will have a moderator remove it as I still can't edit posts on this new version of IFI. from forgemagic: grant - Sun 09 Oct 2005 00:20:49 #0 " JACKHAMMER bits have a hole down the center and go in a percussion drill (jackhammer). Paving breaker bits are solid and go in a paving breaker. Yeah, I know, most people call 'em jackhammers. Having owned a company for 18 years that produced millions of them probably makes me a little pickier than most. For me, if a customer ordered a 1" x 18" jackhammer bit, I had better send the right thing. As an aside to this, I've had just about every bit made spectrographed and never found one made from a tool steel. The largest manufacturer (Brunner & Lay) uses a modified 1045 for all their bits. Vulcan used to use 1078 (a high silicone 1080) but have changed to a boron steel in the last few years. Most others (Delsteel, Pioneer, Ajax, Tamco) use either 1078 or 9260. I Had good success using 8640. You only have to remember that B&ampampL is water quench and the others are oil when you use them to make other tools."

Depends a lot on what you will be welding. If you start working with extremely high carbon high chromium high nickle alloys you may find that a good flux helps a whole lot! If you work with old real wrought iron flux is not so helpful. Most folks I know who do a lot of welding in their propane forge use a rammable refractory for the inner liner that is extremely resistant to flux like bubble alumina.(IIRC)

I'm planning to attend Quad-Sate Blacksmiths Round-Up this fall driving in from New Mexico---in a 22 year old pickup with no airconditioning or cruise control---it's *that* *good*!

Hey folks get off the internet and start talking to people! I live in a tool poor region yet when I needed an anvil for a friend I had one in less than a week talking to people---a retired rancher in his 80's gave me a Swedish cast steel anvil in nearly mint condition! And there has *NEVER* been on like it on Craigslist for this area. (Fact only one I can recollect on CL in years for this area was a Cast iron anvil...being sold by a guy I know.)

Heat it up and let it air cool?

Thanks I'll check them out. I have about 6' of 2"x3" Ti that I've been waiting to take down...

Howdy Jay; I'm over in central NM, near Socorro. I'd say your best bet would be to connect up with the Arizona Artist Blacksmith Association and ask them where to find stuff. Craigslist has turned up a couple of items local to me and a lot of overpriced worn out stuff. I generally find stuff much cheaper by talking to everyone I meet than ebay, so I don't even look at it anymore. BTW if you edit your profile to put in Southern Arizona as your location so it shows up on all your posts then you save a lot of folks asking where you are at when answering location specific questions

My best diffusion weld torture was to take a billet that I welded and folded a couple of times and forge it into a disk by hammering it on it's long axis---going from 4" sq stock to a 1/4" disk the hard way seemed to indicate that the welds were passable in my opinion.

Ric; details on the slurry and it's use?

Do you perhaps mean welded with hard facing rod? It's not carbide which tends to be brittle---a good smack should crack it; but it is very hard to chisel or grind. Stray weld BBs and usually be popped off with a hammer and chisel though they may leave a rough spot behind to be dressed on wear surfaces. We keep getting off track by your use of "carbide" when it's not; but may be a colloquialism for hardfacing which it could be though a very poor choice for the job. Stainless welding rod will also leave a shiny weld after wire brushing and the old missile-weld rods were used to mess up a lot of stuff by farmers. (Least-ways all my farmer kin used it to excess!) Either way: angle grinder with cutting or slitting disks---just more of them than with a less difficult material.

I've had several pieces get brittle when I had to work them way down from their starting size. I especially recall making an eating fork for my hand forged eating set and having a tine snap so I had to re-do it.

Drift with tapered sq punch then reheat, put the drift back in and hammer the sides back to "spec". (Of course then the tickness may be a bit off and you can then flatten and re-drift----repeat until satisfied or you just give up!)