ThomasPowers

This is a blacksmithing forum not a tool collecting forum. When folks get too engrossed in their tools that they don't even use them for what they were meant to then I feel we're going in the wrong direction. For most smithing equipment, age has little to do with functionality. I am on the side of functionality--- I still use an 1828 William Foster anvil to forge on at times. I don't care what make my post vises are as long as they work well. I'm sorry I didn't notice that he already owned it; I was hoping to warn him off before hand. We get a number of "is this anvil worth it" posts each week and I missed the later post that said he already possessed it. Now if you can find one of the rare anvil collectors I would suggest letting it go to them for a pretty price and investing in one that will be a long term using anvil. I can point you toward such a collector here in New Mexico. He wanted to buy my Powell off me until I told him it was heelless. (I think using it will quickly mar it's pristine state and so drop the collectability of it fast)

Aha---canada! Can you attend CanIron? It's coming up FAST and will be the best way to get a fast start on smithing! http://www.ontarioblacksmiths.ca/CANIRON8/ Of course if you are far away from it it won't be of much help.

If you are in the USA you can go to your local public library and ILL a book on blacksmithing to answer these questions. Or if getting hundreds of pages of information written by an expert is not for you then the search function will bring up hundreds of posts on these questions. Do we really need to retype them again? 1) When are you supposed to quench your piece? Also whats the procedure to make whatever your making stronger like repeat heat quench... or something like that? Never I almost NEVER quench a piece that is not a high carbon steel being used for tooling or a blade! When I am done forging it I let it sit in a safe place till it cools---most of the time thrown out into the smithy driveway or under the forge if people are around. The procedure to harden, NOT make stronger as hardness is coupled with brittleness. is to take a steel of a proper alloy to harden, heat it up to the proper temperature for that alloy and quench it in the proper quenchant [air, oil, saltwater] for that alloy/shape and then draw temper to the proper temperature for that alloy, shape and personal preference. Notice how many things gotta be known to answer that question specifically? 2) I read that it looses its magnetism when its ready to whack, so i had a magnet, piece was not glowing or anything but lost its magnetism. and it was fairly shape able, (it was strong stuf to start with too btw) But must i wait till it glows red or is it preferable or no magnetism, go ahead and whack? Depends on the alloy and what you are trying to do with it. For low carbon steels an orange heat makes it much easier to work. For some alloys too high a temperature will cause it to burn or "cottage cheese"---you should not be working with high alloy steels until you know the basics though. 3) I was using a store bought charcoal royal oak i think its called, canadian tire blue bag. It sparks a xxxx load, any way to reduce this? Is this real chunk charcoal or is it briquettes? Briquettes are mainly NOT charcoal going to real charcoal helps as does letting the charcoal heat up and drive off any water before getting it raked into the hot spot of the forge. 4) Whats the best way to recude your charcoal use but keep the heat as high as possible? Make the firepot of your forge deep but fairly narrow so you don't have a lot of charcoal burning that's not contributing to the workpiece heating. For a coal firepot I usually add a couple of firebricks on edge to wall in the sides a bit. 5) Do you always run the blower on and just crank it to high for the extra push or turn it off when your metal is out of the forge& For charcoal you run the blower as little as possible for coke you run it all the time 6) I got hit by a spark caused a blister bump thing, pop or let it be? Personal preference. I usually get sparked/scaled on my hands and they get popped going into my pockets pretty fast. I generally don't do anything to it while forging. 7) My long term blacksmithing goal is to make a suit of chainmale armor. any suggestion to information bought making one of these? www.armourarchive.org a series of forums dedicated to making armour pretty much none of which requires a blacksmith's forge these days. If you want to make butted maille you could be working on your shirt by the weekend! If you want to make rivetted maille then you will probably need to tool up a bit; but butted maille will help you learn the basics. I finished my first maille shirt back in 1981---all done cold. 8) how do you weld 2 piece of metal together especially wire steel or iron. Forge weld, arc weld, explosive weld, vacuum weld? (they do a lot of explosive welding out here near my office!) For forge weld you heat it to the right temp in the forge and for wire you squeeze the overlap. 9) Railroad nails(not the word but i forget what it is) good for making stuf? RR Spikes: Yes, No, Maybe: depending on what the stuff is. They make quite nice garden trowels but pretty bad knives. 10) whats the general guidlines to picking scrap steel and knowing if its safe to use or not (chemicals) Anything plated may be deadly! Assume something is mild unless it was originally in a use that requires high carbon. Heavy old paint can be toxic as well (lead and or zinc). The basic rule is "if it's rusty it's good" 11) do car junkyards provide good scrape steel to use? if yes whats the best parts Depending on what you want to make from it almost all ferrous parts of a car can be used for something! Leaf and coil springs are a source of medium carbon steel, as well as torsion bars and axles. 12) Best source of steel overall? Right over that way about 1/2 mile is the best source of steel around HERE, it's a scrap yard that allows me to pick through it... I buy my new mild steel from a windmill supply store and buy my knife steel from Admiral or other blademakers. 13) How reusable is the remaining bits of charcoal after a burn? If it's not ash or tiny it's good to go. 14) when im done should i spray water all over my forge or is there a super awesome special technique that makes relighting easyer. With charcoal water is a safe way. If you had a forge that could be closed up airtight that would work better for re-lighting. 15) Anyone feel like shipping to Canada a pair of good pliers 16) Any suggestions for a next project? exempt is the pair of pliers of above that i hope someone ships 17) Wheres the hottest part of a forge, in the coals? ontop? ...? Forges have oxidizing levels, neutral levels and reducing levels you want your steel to be in either of the last two, so somewhere in the middle to upper reaches of the fuel stack. 18) how long do you usualy get to work with the steel before you got to reheat? Depends on what I'm working on---thick stuff I'll tire out before the steel losses colour, thin stuff---like a knifeblade in winter I may get *1* hit before reheating. 19) how do you tell difference between iron and steel) Define iron: Cast iron, Wrought Iron, mild steel, medium carbon steel, high carbon steel, high alloy steel.... Look into spark testing of steels to get a better than just guessing method. 20) can you weld the above metals into 1 bar? Everything but cast iron and some of the high alloy steel is what I do on a regular basis. 21) temperature that glass melts? What type of glass? Most types will melt on hot steel. 22) any trinkets that are good to sell that a blacksmith can make? Pattern welded steel bottle openers, Rasptle snakes, hooks, loaded dice, RR spike letter openers---really depends on the venue you sell at.

Do *you* need to do this yourself or do you just need it done? Do you have the skills and equipment to work this? Remember one trip to the ER can wipe out an immense amount of money saved cause you did it yourself! Since you don't work galvanized metal hot---(doing so killed a friend of mine)---this would best be done cold probably with hydraulics if the form can't be a section of a rolled arc. Probably a lot easier if it can simply be rolled. How tight an arch is it? You may want to alter your profile to give your general location as there may be someone who can do this easily on this forum that lives near to you---this is a world wide forum so if you are in England, Italy or South Africa we have folks there who participate.

Who worries about the rarity of a low grade anvil? Yugo's are pretty rare too! I'd take a Fisher with the heel broken off vs one of those in *MINT* condition.

FCiron---when did the Canadian penny stop being copper? The English one? Australian?

Problem is you *don't* get unhardened D2 without the fancy anneal! To get the best from it you really need the high tech heat treat to process all those different carbides it has out the wazoo! Yes you can take your jaguar and use it as a manure wagon; but it'd be better on the road and something more appropriate for in the fields... I spent a year working for a swordmaker who loved D2 and had the ramping furnace in a vertical configuration, electric and with inert atmosphere. (His father was a research metallurgist...)

Shows are just weird. I once made up some items I thought would be just right for the venue, none sold the first year, none sold the second year. wasn't going to bring them the third year but I was short on inventory so I included them, thought about lowering the price but before I could get around to it they sold out! (and they were some of the most expensive things I had brought!) I will say that if you make a bunch of something it's often best to only have a couple on display and replace them as they sell; hard to sell the hand forged uniqueness of something if you have 2 gross of them on display. Also having a custom trinket that is associated with you year after year can be good as folks come in hunting them after seeing their friends with them...

Rebar ranges from quite high quality stuff used for Nuclear Reactor containment vessels, skyscrapers, major bridges, etc to stuff that the steel company just wanted to get out of their hair so they rolled it out as the lowest quality rebar. (You can look up the time that high level radioactive scrap was included in a batch of steel that was made into rebar in Mexico...) As mentioned the better stuff is usually marked. I tend to use "gifted" unknown quality rebar for tent stakes and toss it out onto the desert to normalize it.

Most smiths I know of who use industrial coke light it with an O-A torch. Industrial coke is much harder to light than breeze left over from a previous forge fire!

There is an engineering concept of DfX (Design for Manufacturing, Design for Installation, Design for Maintenance, Design for Safety, etc) Many of us already tend to design things in ways that we can make them. Some of us look ahead to how we are going to install them; a whole lot of us fall down in how they will be maintained and get bushwhacked by safety standards our work must meet; but we didn't know about. As an example I often suggest hand forged stainless for areas where rust might be a big concern and where I doubt proper maintenance will occur. I like to design on the fly at the forge sometimes too and would probably have a "disposable" plywood gate form that I could pile elements on and horse them around till I got what I wanted---disposable as some may be hot as you figure out "is this bend *right*?" While waiting for final dimensions it can be a good time to start prototyping elements you want to use---also gives you physical examples to show to the client and then keep as part of your design portfolio---or give to the client to show off your work in their office.

Real chunk charcoal---not briquettes has been used to forge and heat treat swords for over 2000 years now; but you need something like a trench forge (Requirements: shovel, NON GALVANIZED pipe with holes drilled in it, blow drier, chunk charcoal.) As mentioned mild steel can't be properly hardened for a blade. As blade making and heat treating is considered an ADVANCED smithing process it might help to learn the basics *first* and not jump in the lake a mile from shore and then ask folk to teach you to swim... If you are near to my shop you are welcome to arrange to come over some weekend when I have "open shop" and I can teach you some of the basics.

First thing to realize is that RR spikes are not a great alloy for knives or hawks. You can find better alloys free as well generally in your local auto repair shop: car axles, coil springs, leaf springs, torsion bars---all are far better alloys for edge tools. RR spikes are sort of like a dancing bear, it's not how well it dances but that it dances at all... I probably don't use more than 1 spike a year and can buy spikes from the local scrap yard at scrap price. (I like to make spoon stakes from them) Last Quad-State Ptree had a couple of kegs of brand new spikes that he was tailgating as he bought them from the supplier by the keg and was letting folks buy them 1 by 1 or by the keg. Will you be at Quad-State this year? I'm driving in from New Mexico for it...

I have a few "go to" books when I want to find a project to fill some blank forge time. Mostly historical ironwork. I'll flip through it until I see something that catches my interest and then sit and figure out how I think it should be made and then go try it---why I once forged a kettle tilter for example. If you start getting frustrated perhaps it's time to work on something simple and get really really good at it---like nails or leaves or even the lowly S hook. Having a box full to overflowing of any of those things can be quite useful on down the line...

We had it demonstrated at a SOFA meeting once Ed Rhodes (sp?) was the smith. "Practical Blacksmithing" Richardson had lots of tips on it IIRC as it was written when it was still a big part of the typical small town forge's work. As I recall the exact angle to be used differed depending on the local soil and such knowledge was handed down locally.

Of course Joe's anvil wasn't cast iron bodied!

Many old anvil have hardy holes that are off sized or out of square. Fitting the shaft to the hole is part of the construction job! As I tend to have difficulties with students not using the hardy made for the anvil they are using in class I tend to make my hardy shafts long enough to protrude from the bottom of the anvil and then tapered so that they can't be "riveted in" by people pounding on them from below to try to get them to unseat---a big problem when they want to use the 1" hardy in the 7/8" hardy hole; sigh,.

300 series won't harden to "knife" hard no matter what; good thing you asked before making one of it right? Will be fine for most other kitchen tooling. Also look into electro polishing or passivation if stain resistant is paramount!

When once I needed some machining done I made use of the local Vo-Tech school. Very reasonable---just a contribution for the end of the year party fund and they did great work. If I had to do that anvil myself I'd probably spin a chunk at a fairly slow speed while using the angle grinder clamped to an arm at the correct angle and then clean up with a belt grinder. Note that the original shows to be not that hard D2 is probably overkill!

Christian; why do automakers take vehicles made by other and put their name on them? They need an item to fit a niche and just use one someone else is making---or have it made for them by someone else somewhere else.

Cor-ten also stains any concrete or paving stones under it very badly with rust. There is a building at Cornell University that was sheathed in cor-ten and the sidewalks looked awful around it. Can you get the boat shafts donated for the project? Make a big difference in price!

Back on after the weekend. I liked the spoon especially as the part that would be hardest to keep clean, the little scrolls, is quite away from the area most likely to be in contact with food---the bowl. As for finishing of cooking gear---a lot of it was allowed to "self finish" as it was exposed to heat and fats and smoke, etc in use. As for hiding the welds. I see a lot of obvious welds in the old stuff from back in the hills in Arkansas. I think the "hide the welds" is more of an ornamental meme. I'm making a "spider" for a large pot to support it over a fire so over the weekend when I could get out to the forge and it wasn't too hot, (the previous weekend we had 108 degF temps, 42 degC but extremely low humidity--14 % RH This weekend was 10 to 15 degF cooler but much more humid!) I bent some scrap 3/8" x 1.5" stock the hard way into a ring using a 11" x 1" piece of scrap round with a hole in the center as the form. Stuck it on the end of a large log and put in a lag bolt as the stop to hold the end as I pulled and hammered it around using the propane forge. Last night I fired up the coal forge and welded the overlap and sized it to the same thickness as the rest using the screw press. I did not try to hide the weld as none of the originals I've see did so either. I did use a method I've read about in a 120 year old smithing book of putting a rivet in to hold the pieces exactly where I wanted them making the weld a lot easier. No problem welding though it had to go high in the fire as my forge was set up for a different task. Used coal for fuel and borax/boric acid for flux. Next step is to forge weld the legs on. Re the gate: Beth, have you thought of adding copper accents? Perhaps symbols of the trinity (clover leaf, pretzel, etc)? Also gates in general need a diagonal strap to keep them from sagging---especially if any little kids decide to "ride the gate" Can you work that into the design (if you were in Scotland a St Andrews cross would be just the thing...) Far better to work it into the design than to have it added later and conflict with the design---also a reputation for being able to make gates that don't sag is a good one to have! If the gate will be exposed to weather it is a good idea to make the ironwork easily detachable to allow the wood to be refinished without messing up the ironwork---and vice versa!

I'd suggest *using* it as an everyday knife---what can you do to it that you can't fix?---You *MADE* it! (of course I once boggled more than a few peoples minds when they noticed me digging an impromptu fire pit with a pattern welded blade...)

I call an item stuck in the pritchel to quiet the ring "a mute" and teach that term to my students. An anvil that large will probably not be getting moved a lot and so fastening it securely to it's base using one or more of the ring quieting methods will help a lot!

The religious background of the student has never had any effect on teaching them blacksmithing in my experience; I've taught folks from most of the major religions and quite a few of the minor ones including traditional and neo pagans. How you choose to modify your learning to reflect your beliefs is up to you---as far as I'm concerned we're ALL blacksmith's here and that's what we are here for! I'd try to find the best *teacher* you can get no matter what their background and then go on from there.