ThomasPowers

If you decide on a Swing arm it really profits from being able to move the arm system up and down the mounting column as you can then adjust the "center hit" zone for different tools. Also either type is better with a hardy hole for tooling. or even better with one on both faces so you can mount tooling in the upper face as well, (of course one of those tools will be a flat face for both hammer and anvil) Lastly having a heavy anvil helps the efficiency! (I'm using 5.25" solid stock for my anvil---it's what I got for free...)

I keep coming back to the thought of "skilled labour"; if everyone in the shop is a skilled smith then a lot of smithing methods may be faster as everyone can do what needs to be done without oversight. If a lot of the workers are not skilled smiths and may only work for you a year or two before moving on then some of the fab processes are a lot easier to teach and turn them loose.

In the hot summers here in NM I can take a tank down till it's pretty well *dry*. In the winters I generally have to either warm the tank or switch it out when there is still a gallon or so left in it---since I always buy propane by the gallon there's no extra cost in doing it this way. If you just trade bottles instead of refilling you'd lose a lot of money switching before it was "dry". (Also the "trade" is about $7 more than a refill and my local re-fill place has a frequent buyer card where for every 5 refills I get a free one!)

Actually there is a gauge system for copper; it's a different one than the ferrous ones(s) though. Always go by mm or decimal inch though---avoids a lot of possible error modes! When I was re-tinning some pots for as friend I used these folks---good prices and service! http://www.rotometals.com

A lot depends on the location. That's a good buy here and about $100 over priced where I used to live. You are WHERE?

Fine using shape! My main shop anvil is a 515# Fisher---I love the quiet! I have a demo anvil that's a ringer to bring folks in; but I sure like going back to the quiet one in the shop.

The bloomery process can produce pretty much anything from cast iron to zero carbon wrought iron (and will often create a range of carbon contents in a single bloom!) 6th Century Romans???? We they time traveling? Seems like a typically hyped and erroneous popular media article.

One of my students needed a couple of root canals and can't afford having them done in America; 4 hour drive each way will save him over $100 per hour.

If I told you I had a car, it was a 4 door made by Ford in the 1960's and asked you how much it was worth---could you answer the question without know more details including, condition, mileage, style, location, etc. Anvils are a lot like that, from what you have said we can say it's worth anywhere from about 10 cents a pound to $3 a pound.

Make a hardy tool with a pritchel hole

Why not build a double lunged Bellows? I did and would use it in preference to my hand crank blower---and I had a *good* blower! I would not consider anything that uses a gear box to be "simple" to build on one's own.

Thanks, I enjoyed that; Master Wilelm

In set tools I could see where they would be a good place to make a rod handle for it if you didn't want to use a wooden one---but that doesn't work for things like hammers. Maybe like tail fins on cars...

First thing to do is to decide on a swing arm or in line version.

If you were in NM you could come look at my copy---under armed guard of course! It's a LARGE book, very scholarly and of interest to a very narrow selection of people. Cost a ton to publish and I hope they break even on it. Inter Library Loan, ILL, should let you look it over for a nominal fee---last time I used it here in NM it was US$1 per book! I suggest folks ILL any smithing book before buying it---saves a lot of $$ on stuff that doesn't really help you and nothing worse than to blow your book budget only to find out it wasn't what you needed and now you can't afford to get the one you do need!

The big problem with copper is that the copper oxides can migrate to the crystal edges and promote cracking so over annealing---especially in an O2 rich environment can be a problem.

I'd say the opposite, the folks with lesser qualities are improved by the "hammering" of the folks with better qualities. I'd look into the sharpening of scythes using a denglestock and hammer myself, or the action of sheep shears---the old style go way back! You may remember that the Israelites were hammered on by many of the other local peoples when they strayed... Where are you at? I can send you some real wrought iron, what they would have used and not any carbon content or heat treat to it for old testament days. Can you file a blade from it; I can do a rough forge to shape for you when I take my Y0K forge set up to the local "Little Town of Bethlehem" set up in early Dec... (and remember there are *2* places in the Bible that mention forging your pruning hooks into spears and your plowshares into swords and only *1* going the other way!)

The heavy tarpaulin for oil field use seems to have been well treated against flame when I got it. At least in the 20+ years I had and used it there were no burn throughs. Oilcloth was probably originally made with real boiled linseed oil rather than heavy metal doped driers linseed oil---don't you just hate it when they change stuff but keep the same name! as to differences in flammability, the thinness of cloth compared to wood in the system can make things easier to start. I'm familiar with your field---my sister is a Chemist; used to work for IBM. (My degrees are in Geology and Computer Science)

Time and temp make a difference; we did a pack carbonization experiment by packing pieces of wrought iron into a piece of steel pipe (1.5" dia IIRC) filled with powdered charcoal with one end welded up and then we folded the other end over to make a semi air tight system. Rolled it to the side of the gas forge and then kept track of how many hours at temp by soapstone on the forge shell. (rolled the pipe over every now and then) Our first attempt was 30 hours---got cast iron carbon amounts---oops! The week long soaks described in making blister steel were in a much larger system and running at lower temps. (BTW "The Cementation of Iron and Steel" and "Steelmaking before Bessemer, vol 1 Blister Steel" are commended reading on this topic...)

People often over estimate the weight of arms and armour in those times---sometimes by as much as a factor of 10!) I'd suggest making the cross out of at most 14 gauge mild steel sheet and riveting it together and then trying to weld the riveted section. That's what I have done making a spangen helm before. Remember too that most armour was made from low carbon wrought iron. If you really want the low down "The Knight and the Blast Furnace", Alan Williams, is the current top standard work on the metallurgy of medieval/renaissance armour. Your local library probably can ILL it for you if you live in the USA; (don't look up the price of buying your own copy if you have a bad heart!)

That could very well be an artifact of translation; I had a book on finnish art that called them horseshoe pins... (and then there are the pseudo penannular brooches...) I've made a good sized wild one out of Ti that if I can ever get it cleaned up, (Ti is not an easy metal to polish!), I'm going to anodize it and wear it when I'm being more obnoxious than usual in the SCA...

That's quite an old anvil; the lack of a pritchel hole pushes it back before the 1820's, the small ridged feet---it could be back to the american colonial days. You might find someone needing a 200+ year old anvil who would trade you a more modern one in better condition! If you do decide to flake off the delaminated chunk of face I'd suggest keeping it as there will be someone who would like to have a knifeblade made from early steel! Am Rev living history, Fur trade, etc. As for fixing it you may want to practice welding on wrought iron as that is what the body of that anvil will be.

The best way is to take them to somebody who knows how to weld and has a welder! If you want to learn how to forge weld then that is not the starter piece I would suggest and you are likely to spend more time and fuel and mess up more metal than just *paying* someone to weld it would cost. Don't forget that after welding spring steel will need to be completely re-heat treated to act like spring steel again! So what are you trying to accomplish---getting two pieces of spring steel welded in a cross or learning to forge weld?

Tar and boiled linseed oil both are designed to get HARD. Bellows need to be flexible! (They are also quite flammable, perhaps not the best around fire either!) I built a double lunged bellows back in the early 1980's using scrap canvas that was used for making wind shields for oil drilling rigs---heavily treated "tarpaulin" material. It was free from a shop that supplied the oil drillers. Is free cheaper? After 20+ years the canvass was going strong but the wood was degrading rapidly from being left outside in central Ohio winters and I gave it away when I moved out west. So I advise you to go looking for tarpaulin material and at the source not priced up through several middlemen. As to historicity of using canvas I recall reading a reference to canvas being used for bellows in Biringuccio's "Pirotechnia" circa 1540 A.D.

Well the earliest documentation I've seen for a power hammer was pre 1000, (Medieval Technology Conference at Penn State about 20 years ago...) So if you are forging with coal you are already past the powerhammer date! Though "Luddites" were worried that machinery/technology was going to take away employment from workers so the powerhammer replacing several strikers would have been on their "bad" list.