ThomasPowers

Also straighten that blade so the edge is all at the same place. Doesn't matter as much if the back is a little wonky but you have to remove the high spots to make the edge straight and that wastes width! So heat it up nice and red and set it edge down on a flat plate of steel and tap the back until all the edge is in contact for the straight part of the edge.

I had a friend whose mailbox was often run over so he built the base to that when it was pushed over it would dig into the ground and rip it's way down the undercarriage. Lots of fluids lost next time he had to go out and set it upright. I guess it wasn't too fun explaining why the gas tank had to be replaced. The fact that your neighbors are doing something illegal does not make it OK for you to do so as well. Find out the law and then go for the loopholes!

I think I stored my unobtanium next to the adamantite; I don't remember where I stored my bar of helium...

Sorry; I had mis-read your post to indicate that the one in question was higher in carbon. Strike the Shear Steel possibility. Now take a small section and hot twist it and then etch it to see if it makes pretty furniture for knives! When studying the early bloomery process used to make wrought iron by the direct process I was amused to find out that a single bloomery could make anything from just about zero carbon content wrought iron to high carbon wrought iron to even cast iron! And sometimes a mix of all of them would be present in a bloom. Reading old blacksmithing texts they often mention testing every single bar that came into the shop to "see what it was".

Hey; most likely this will be a 75 pound vulcan anvil with horn and heel broken off that they want 22 $/# for. Most ones "get away" and should! I don't need another big anvil and even if it's a good one I'd most likely pass the deal to someone who is local to it. (Now if it's *mint* and a dollar a pound I'd be tempted!) The point I wanted to make is how expansive networking really is. Here I am in NM and I hear about a possible anvil deal in VA---the old "6 degrees of separation" at work. Still waiting on an update. My student who is currently the "interface" is working two jobs and so isn't easy to get a hold of...

Yup this sounds a whole lot like "I have an old pickup with the suspension and wheel bearings shot and repaired with baling wire and I can't understand *WHY* anyone would want a pickup truck!" I like pickup trucks just fine and also leg vises! Shims are a "baling wire" repair. Not aligning north to south---is this a lateral offset of the jaws or a vertical offset? Either one can be dealt with. Lateral needs the cheeks of the support "bearing" adjusted. Vertical may need the moving leg straightened or even the bearing tuned up---I riveted and hot shrunk a plug in one vise's moving jaw bearing and re-drilled it to deal with a bad vertical offset once. Note that mounting hardware is often not original to the vise and may have not even been made for that vise but just thrown together to get it out the door at a sale. make sure the mounting hardware fits and works properly. Since the jaws swing on an arc there will be only *1* place where they are exactly parallel---not that much of a problem as in smithing we often are working with taper*s. However if the jaws are worn it's time to repair them or even re-cover them---easy to make angle iron jaw covers. If you do a lot of cold work you may even want to look into Al covers as they hold cold steel better. Post vises have often seen over 100 years of *hard* use and should be expected to need work; just like if you pulled a Model T out of a scrap yard you would expect it to need a through overhaul before it would work right. As for timeperiod; IIRC Moxon's Mechanics Exercises advises that every smithy should have a post vise in it---published in 1703. So any "professional shop" after that date can make a good case for one.

How about shear steel? It definitely looks layered and at a fineness I would consider suitable for shear or double shear steel. This would explain the hardening too. Got any to sell/trade?

Wow. Just Wow. Forge welding, especially forge welding for blades is considered a "graduate level course" and as I read your post it seems you are entering elementary school. You can jump ahead *IF* you have someone who can stand over you telling you when it's just right for the alloy you are using, if you are hitting too slow/hard/angled, etc. Generally we want a student to be a decent smith before we start bladesmithing. Lots of points in your post; one of which is that most propane forges are not engineered to weld and that trying to weld in one not built for it often does damage to it. Did you clear this with your Uncle first? Regular working temp is way cooler than welding temps some forges you *double* the propane pressure to weld in them---some just won't weld as the heat out gets to equal the heat in and the temp doesn't rise any more to get to welding temp. If you start with a good metal alloy forge welding is more likely to make it *WORSE* than better. Especially if you are new at it! Decarburization, weld inclusions, poor welds, cracking due to overheating, grain growth---think of it like taking a new car right off the dealership floor to an old mechanic who has never worked on anything built after the 1960's and asking them to "improve it". *Please* ignore all the crud on Youtube and especially anime where they don't know squat about patternwelding and spout urban legends as if they were the truth! (My boss likes to show me episodes from 'the Sacred Blacksmith' just to see me get red and the face and upset about how many untruths it;s teaching people...) So if the library is still there, get thee over to it and ask the desk about doing an inter library loan on "The Complete Bladesmith" by James Hrisoulas---turns out that a couple of hundred pages written by someone who is acknowledge as a master of the craft is often better than a page or two or short video put out by people that may be complete idiots on the subject. You might want to check into the Arizona Artist Blacksmith Association and see if they know of any bladesmiths in your neck of the once woods. Or if you can manage it I'd by happy for you to stop by my forge in Socorro NM some Saturday after mid July for a daylong getting started pattern welding class. (I was taught by a master smith who gave me a class back in 1984...) Sorry it's so late; but I'm taking two forges and going camping with them in Colorado over the Fourth of July holiday at a Middle Ages re-creation event and so getting ready and resting up after takes a couple of weeks out. Note: if you are under 18 you will need to have a Parent, Uncle, older Sibling, etc with you bearing a signed paper from your parents or legal guardian that states that I have their permission to teach you blacksmithing and knifemaking. My wife teaches spinning (been teaching it for over 30 years); so if your ILP (in Loco Parentis) has an interest in that rather than wanting to smith too something can be worked out. I go through Showlow every February when I'm taking my forge to a big middle ages re-enactment near Phoenix (and its NOT the RennFaire).

Clay quarry tiles will probably break up FAST due to the uneven heating and cooling---just clay from a local creek bed would work better. Also note that forges get way hotter than some clays can take---I've *boiled* a terra cotta flower pot once in my forge. I'd go with *no* liner or just creak clay mixed with wood ashes. For my Y1K forge I use old adobe broken up and mixed with water as it's nicely "tempered" to start with.

A regular working fire won't get you to welding heat and just leaving your welding experiment in it while you do other things will likely oxidize it enough to make it very hard to weld indeed! On the other hand: a welding fire with "other" work in it will most likely end up with the other work burning up while you work to get the welding heat. You don't drive a formula one race car to the store to buy milk and you don't drive a regular car in a formula one race. However after your other work is done you may have a fire that will then be suitable to bring up to welding heat---lots of coke instead of green coal. It does need to be clean of clinker build up though.

A forge can be as simple as a hole in the ground with a piece of blackpipe taking air from a hair dryer to the bottom of the hole and using real charcoal, not briquettes!, for fuel. Another common starter forge is easily made from a brake drum and some plumbing fittings. Forges are a lot simpler to build than most folks credit! Blacksmithing is not some "if I tell you I would have to kill you" voodoo art---especially in the USA where most folks smithing are happy to help you get started! Find your local group and attend some meetings and start having *fun* with red hot metal!

Those items are *exactly* what the label says they are "Carpenters striking knives". Very common before cheap pencils abounded and actually make a great line for many projects as you are actually starting the cut right on the line. Many old items will still bear witness to their use in places not generally visible to the owner. Remember that burning the building to collect the nails was outlawed in VA IIRC. TJ's smithy: You may be confusing this with Thomas Jefferson's Nailery; where some of his slaves produced nails for sale. He wrote up a complete business plan for it that is still included in his collected writings including how many nails of what types which slaves could be expected to produce. It's a valuable resource on the economics of period nail making!

One aspect of cutting with a angle grinder: was it rigidly held? I have cut a lot of auto/truck coil springs with an angle grinder---as well as RR rail (I have a big grinder) and while the hardened steel usually cuts better than "gummy stainless" I have managed to cut the latter with few issues. *But* if has to be rigidly held and the grinder applied firmly and not allowed to bounce all over the place. I would cut an end off and test it (heat till a good orange and quench in water and then test for brittleness WEARING PROPER PPE! (The brittleness test should be expected to result in shrapnel!)

Just had one of my students call me up and ask what a 600# anvil is worth, a friend of his had a grandparent die recently and the family doesn't know how to deal with the anvil...it's in VA, too far for me to get but I'm still tracking it down remotely. (bet it's a lot lighter than 600# though!) (of course if it *is* a 600# double horned footed anvil in great condition----well my sister and brother in law live in Manassas....) *networking* is everything when hunting anvils! Yoicks & Tally-Ho!

We lived in VA near DC during the 1960's. I still have my tiny horseshoe with my name stamped in it from Williamsburg from back then! (They got a lot better!) Haven't been in years though, too far away now...

The important thing is to have your necessary and preferred tools to hand when you need them. You may literally need to find them with your eyes closed!

Well I'm a excavate type of guy too but when you get the trough dug using the magnet to lift the splinter out works for me better than needing a magnifier and sharp pointed tweezers and trying to get invisible pieces out. I have also used a REM to pull a piece of sharp steel out of my eye---not embedded but laying on it, one of the nasty curved pieces a die grinder kicks out that had lain in wait in my hair until my goggles and face mask were off---sure glad I removed it before it got pushed into the eye---it's about 50 miles to the nearest eyedoctor!

Things you should know *first*: How to build and maintain a good fire. How to recognize the reducing part of the fire How to recognize low carbon from high carbon from high alloy steels. How to hit fast, smoothly, firmly and accurately! (Hitting too hard can bounce a weld apart or make a dry weld that fails easily) How to recognize the various working and welding temps of the various steels in practice! How to scarf a proper joint to extrude the crud when welding. The more you know the easier it is to "cheat"; but If I have a problem making a weld it's back to first principles! (I had a forge welding class in 1984 and have been welding since then. BTW)

English colonial; not spanish colonial---our town here was named in 1598; Jamestown was founded in 1607

Well since we are talking small differences you need a bit more rigor: 1, optical pyrometer to make sure the piece is *exactly* the same temp each time. 2, A weight supported at the same distance over the piece and allowed to free fall in the same orientation to make sure the impact is exactly the same---sort of a guillotine system would work. 3, repeat the test a minimum of 10 times with each anvil mounting. 4, publish results Also my 515# anvil wasn't dancing in use but it was creeping.

At most places I take the forge we are all volunteers; however very few of the others have to take an extra day off work to load a forge and equipment. Very few of them have to buy fuel and supplies for the demonstrations. Very few of them have to spend the extra gas used by a vehicle that can haul a portable blacksmith's set up *and* the camping gear needed. Most of them can just show up in their regular car with a tent and sleeping bag in the trunk they day of the event. If they demo they may be using the site's equipment and materials. Any help I get to cover my expenses that are often many times that of other volunteers just means I'm more likely to be able to continue supporting their event! (And I have been told time and again that people at the event have told the folks running it how interesting it was to have a smith there, or that it was their favorite part of the event.) I do not use the term "tip"; but I'm happy to put out a Feed the Forge jar...(actually a metal tin as a glass jar doesn't live long around a smithy in my experience...) What is bad form is to expect some volunteers to massive spend their own funds to support *your* event while others spend nothing! As a class smiths are not overly endowed with extra cash to throw around.

I'd suggest having *both* on display, a couple barn board mounted for more money and a couple cheaper ones barn board free---sometimes one type sells and sometimes the other---if they all sell you are pricing too cheap! I made some "wind bells" once from old welding tank valve protectors, (bought a bunch of them cheap at the fleamarket). I also made up a set of "hangers" for them that would 1/4" lag bolt into a wooden fence pole of porch column (and I supplied the bolts in a sandwich bag taped to the support!) Two years at the State Fair and I hadn't sold a single one then the next year I sold out---right before I was going to lower the price!) Picked up another cap last week for $1 lets see what happens this year!

One major issues is that most smiths don't buy by the rarity of the anvil maker they buy by size and condition. So it being a HW puts it into the "good quality anvil" bucket but doesn't suddenly double it's price. (If you had a 200 pound Peter Wright in the same condition as that Henry Wright and asked the same price for both of them smiths would jump on the PW leaving the HW...) Very few anvil collectors in the USA though there are many more anvil hoarders. Michigan is in the anvil rich midwest, if it was here in NM it would go for more than $225

Notice they don't address what the splinter is made from. Lots of folks don't even know about metal splinters! I find one of the scary strong rare earth magnets is a help for ferrous splinters. Old disk drives are a cheap (free!) source. Keep it in a closed pill bottle so it doesn't grow "hair" in the shop though!

John I believe you mean "weaving" rather than "sewing". When you work on a loom you are weaving. I had to take a couple of business classes as part of my last degree and some of it was like being through the looking glass! I could grasp when it was better to run a factory that was losing money rather than shutting it down; but the part about how it made you more money to scrap a fully paid off machine that was still producing items well within speck with an identical new one that you owed a million dollars on---that made me wonder if someone needed their meds adjusted! (Though it was sadly true due to taxes and depreciation schedules)