ThomasPowers

Could the one layer be an alloy that needs a little help to weld> Ni and Cr alloy steels can need an aggressive flux.

What was wrong with the driveway? Build your forge into a gas grill cart and wheel it out to use. It will be cold in the winter but you CAN'T use a propane forge in a garage in the winter without opening all the doors and windows anyway.

So why are you not using chunk charcoal? No smoke! It's what was used for the first 2000 years of smithing---all the viking pattern welded swords were forged in charcoal forges and the traditional japanese katanas are forged in charcoal forges to this day! I've forgewelded in a hole in the ground forge blown by a hairdryer. However if you have no experience smithing I would NOT get hung up with forge welding until you have a lot more experience!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Shoot, you should be able to make and sell enough trinkets to pay for a top of the line forge *before* you are ready to concentrate in forge welding. When you are learning to drive you do not spend all your time worrying about Formula 1 racing!

I'd have to check Postman's book but it looks to be after the 1820's. The original construction method was to forge up chunks of real wrought iron into the basic form and then forge weld a tool steel plate (or plates side by side) onto it for the face. Looks to me to have the original face on it. Beware the urge to "clean up" the face thoroughly, the original face plate is like solid gold and removing much of it can leave an anvil ruined. I tell folks to "only do to their anvil's face what they would be willing to do to theirs"

One of the finest anvils in production! But most of us don't drive Rolls Royces. I'd rather have a lesser anvil that was larger for the same price myself as "quantity has a quality all it's own" in smithing was well as warfare.

Great!---Doing it authentic will probably be CHEAPER than doing it half-a**** (may take more time though, especially if you want to go all out and adz off rough sawn lumber for your woodwork---great place to learn to use an adz as it *should* look crude when you are done as this would not be an upscale item but one "crude but functional") The forge should cast *nothing*; the anvil should be smallish and not a modern london pattern so a hunk of steel that is free or at scrap price should be found, (or you might find a small colonial pattern anvil, unlikely but possible for that use)---might inlet it into a stump to hold it. I've built bellows before out of scrounged materials and so the cost was under US$1. For that time/place/use a fairly small double lung bellows or twin single lunged bellows would be spot on. Note that the twin single lunged bellows really needs to have a separate person to work it or a slightly tricky set up to alternate the pumping with one pole. Then you can forge your own tooling; some patterns of tongs have been in use for about 2000 years so far, you may be able to find or modify fleamarket hammers to the correct shape; etc.

One thing that can confuse people is that the *answers* to questions may change depending on your experience and background! When I teach an "intro to blacksmithing" class at the local University I ask the students what their major is and where they want to go with smithing and then tailor the answers to that---we can discuss crystal structures and dislocation climb with the MatSci folks; or just tell someone in psychology that "you need to heat it up and do this to it". (Unless they want to make knives and then I think they should know the details of what's going on rather than old smith's tales; but even then we will start at a very basic level...). For an advanced smith we might suggest forge welding a tool together where for a beginner we might have them draw it down from a larger piece---more time involved but "simpler"

At a more advanced stage that fishmouth can come in handy---it can be cleaned up and used as the slit to drop in a piece of higher carbon steel and then forge weld it together. Not worth the hassle at your starting stage and as I mentioned once you get a working tool you may find out that you would rather make other things than to go back and re-do things already made. I find that a curved hardy is easier to set the piece onto it and you can walk the cut if you need too. My project this weekend is to forge 2 hardies from high carbon small wedges, (leborg? with a falchion trademerk?) I picked up at Quad-State. My goal is for each anvil to have it's own tooling which I will then colour code for my classes and having a small hardy length will help avoid hitting it with a hammer---a lot of my students seem to work on the shotgun principle when they hammer "close is good enough"

Well actually the black oxidation is Magnetite, Fe3O4, and the red is Hematite, Fe2O3. Magnetite is essentially the same as the black sand smelted to make japanese swords, I'm collecting it for doing a scandanavian short stack bloobery run myself. Gas forges can be anything from extremely reducing to extremely oxidizing depending on how they are constructed and tweaked. Aspirated ones tend to be more oxidizing as you can't choke them as well due to how they work, (and the more sloppily the burner is built the more "free air" it needs to work without messing up). Since leaving your stock in a coal forge too long can result in it disappearing while you can tune your gas forge to let it sit all day there we may have a user perception issue---stuff gets left longer in the gas forge and so scales more and that's considered to be that gas is more oxidizing.

Prices were up at Quad-State; though I think s lot of "high" priced stuff went home with the original owners... I managed to find a 6" postvise for $50 and also a tiny 3" post vise for $20, (*old* hole for a tanged mounting plate, pivot bolt was held in with a wedge) Now I have to make fittings for both of them.

For small game a barbed head is probably not needed since the arrow impact should be overkill anyway; bit for larger game I would think it would be best. You may want the practice doing barbed heads though; so starting early might be a good idea.

A brick forge sounds unlikely at that time/place and not something that a part timer would have invested in. Are you trying to be accurate or would any setup just do? Some clay in a wooden box might be more likely than a sink. Bellows are pretty easy to build yourself. One way to start building a charcoal supply is to get some folks that use wood stoves to sift their ashes and throw the charcoal into a metal bin with a tight sealing lid. I do that out here and am building up a pile to use in a bloomery run. You do have to be very careful that the stuff is OUT as charcoal can start back up from even a small spark. When I use wood I generally burn it in a separate fire and then rake the coals onto a shovel and dump it onto the forge as needed. This keeps some of the heat off your face and can be arranged to keep the smoke away from you too! (I was doing an Y0K set up for a local church's Bethlehem drive through last December and it was a cold one and my charcoal producing fire was *very* appreciated by the other participants.

Last time I was involved in making *wood* lathe tooling the fellow wanted bent tooling for vase and bowl turning and wanted to mount (metal lathe) carbide inserts on it for the cutting edge. So I threw a length of stock into the forge and broght it out and stuck one end in the postvise and handed the other to the guy and told him to bend the curve he wanted. Next week I sold him an anvil...

I like that design for folks who don't weld; but: I forged my hardy over 20 years ago and have never had to forge another---even with teaching hundreds of beginner smiths. Faster to touch up the edge on my hardy than to grind off the rivet for replacement.

You keep mentioning "too far away" but do not list your LOCATION do you not think that suggestions might be better if we knew where you were and how far you could travel? I have a 2 lead large (H-frame) screwpress and while I would prefer an extra lead on it; I have enjoyed using it for forging---I've been smooshing top tooling down to fit in my 1.5" hardies with it--nice smooth parallel sides. Also making square tenons with it and a stop block. (and the odd coining job, straitening tent stakes, etc) Bought it for $50 + buyer's reaming, tax and $35 to have it loaded on my pickup. Auction was in the old factory toolroom back behind the building I worked in. Arbor presses were selling much higher for piddly little things!

I have a rawhide hammer know to my students as "the stinky hammer" very useful to true up light work against a stump where I don't want to mar ornamental twisting or chiseling on it.

No handling holes and a thick heel---definitely cast something! What does the spark test say about the base and face? Casting looks too rough for most of the "name brand" cast steel anvils. Trenton's tend to have much thinner heels, handling holes and the pellet indent in the base I hope it was cheap! did you do the ball bearing test on if before you bought it or was the face painted too? (I live in Lemitar; but with taking off a week and a half to go to Quad-State I couldn't make it to the auction---anything good?) I also expect to see some of the mexican re-casts of "good" anvils to start showing up cleaned up and masquerading as the originals sometime...

And don't forget that a hardy hole may not be a perfect square!

*large* flat springs: dump trucks, RR cars Large coil spring: got one from an earth mover that was about 1.5" in diameter stock---and *snapped*! I would suggest looking for a heavy equipment repair place and asking them about broken stuff...A box of doughnuts for the office/floor staff will often pay off *handsomely*! (As well as explaining what you are trying to do; smithing fascinates a lot of folks.) Note that the section down the hardy hole does NOT need to be high carbon steel and traditionally wasn't

The basic shape to me looks like it will drop out of the wound fairly easily. The "traditional" arrowhead shape is designed so that once it goes in it stays in doing more damage as it gets knocked about during the flight of the animal. A bit gruesome but in a "tis no kindness to hang a man slowly" sort of way.

I like a pure wool felt hat as it keeps flyash and hot bits from getting in my hair *OR* between my safety glasses and my eyes! My "disreputable red hat" is *safety* equipment!

Ahhh why would you think that there would be a standardized system of tooling? Blacksmithing tends to be very non-standard; more like various "schools" of tooling---like hofi hammers and the punches he uses vs other folks and what they use. You might be able to find a mil-spec on some of the equipment---but again that is a rather limited source. If you read "Practical Blacksmithing", Richardson you will find it full of folks debating and suggesting better ways to make and use smithing tooling from back in the 1880's-1890's. Even nowadays you will find people using and extolling slitter drifts and punch drifts. Best I can say is to search for someone doing exactly what you want to do and see what they are using---and then improve on it! Lastly: jackhammer bits tend not to be "out of phenomenally good steel" but a good tough *medium* carbon steel. Yes the Machinery's Handbook says that S 5-7 would make good jackhammer bits and some "junkyard steel charts" then listed them as being so; but Titanium would make *GREAT* car bodies and frames---know of anyone that has one made out of Ti? As a "consumable" bits are made out of stuff much cheaper than the phenomenally good alloys. BTAIM I made my hardy out of a jackhammer bit that broken off the chisel tip---just hammered the broken shaft into square and made sure it extended below the base of the hardy hole---to tap it out if wedged and it's worked great the last 20 years or so.

Wow what a great haul of RR stuff! Are you thinking of making a stake anvil from a RR spike hammer? I did and like it a lot! Some great anvils in that lot too---I used a busted knuckle for an anvil in my "under $25" smithy. I finally got a chance to check out the odd set of tongs I picked up at Quad-State for $10; yup as I suspected they were made from Ti! Now they can join the set I forged about 10 years ago...

Aha---that lets out a big london pattern anvil and fancy set up right there. Makes it easy for you as a couple of hammers/pairs of tongs would be the most you would expect for an out in the boonies smithy. If you want to be accurate avoid the urge to make it much larger and fancier a setup that they would actually have---you can have your own private smithy with all the bells and whistles hidden somewhere else! You'd be forging with charcoal for fuel too. Steve Parker has made some *GREAT* historical travel anvils---I have one of his that weighs about 25 pounds and is spot of for anywhen from Roman through at least F&I war, (I know of Roman, Viking, Spanish Colonial and F&I examples). I just used it at the smithing class I taught yesterday as it's a great one for nailing which is one of the 3 projects my beginning students do. It has a nice spike on the bottom and so easy to use where ever a sump can be found or made.

Look up "coining"; I have a friend who does this and has a slew of screw presses and a knuckle press. 3-4" is GIGANTIC and will require a very large press indeed! Screw presses are nice in that the pressure spike as they bottom out helps "squirt" the metal into the die. (my screwpress was used to strike 100 feast tokens last month) Look up buying planchets way too much time making them and if they are not perfectly even will strike BADLY. AZ cheap way to go can be to buy coinage from other countries where it is cheap, anneal and restrike the coins---with a good press you don't even need to flatten them or remove the old design. Actually go to http://www.shirepost.com/ and look over his mint pages and talk to him directly! Far better to go to the source!