ThomasPowers

I was blown away by the prices too; but noticed that a lot of stuff didn't sell! I think that there is a bubble going on and folks are raising their prices just because others are rather than because the market supports it. There were several times when someone told me that they didn't have a price on their stuff yet because they wanted to walk around and see what other people were selling for. I did manage to pick up some very reasonably priced tools and two post vises ($50 for the 6" vise and $20 for the small one) I did notice that some prices were quite negotiable on Sunday...

It's listed in Anvils in America; I'll try to read up on it tonight after unloading from Quad-State.

First clarify your question! What TIME and PLACE in History? Egyptian, ancient greek, migration era, medieval, renaissance, early Industrial rev, american colonial, 18th century, 19th century 20th century. I can help with sources for pretty much all of these BUT I am not going to type out pages of info only to be told that you want 19th century South American... A historical forge could be a hole in the ground with a ring of people using blow pipes, (ancient Egyptian), to a massive masonry structure using water wheel driven bellows, (De Re Metallica), Divers Arts 1120 Mechanics Exercises 1703 Diderot's Encyclopedia Enlightenment Practical Blacksmithing 1889, 1890, 1891, etc...

Aaron C did a nice old german one and Adlai S did as well as I hid his as soon as he brought it back to camp. Fred bought at least 10 as usual.

Frank; I picked up a quite small tenonned postvise at Quad-State. Missing the mounting unfortunately. I'm trying to get a light portable set up put together---and it looked so cute next to the 6" vise I also acquired there. If you will be at the Dec SWABA meeting I'd be most interested to getting your opinion on it.

I met Aaron at Q-S and he did seem to be having a blast. I'd say that money ran through my fingers there too; but "galloped" would be more accurate. I can't wait to unload tonight and fondle all the stuff I bought again!

AinA has a patent for an anvil with a hollow going up through it to allow for greater hardening of the face plate. (*NOT* cast iron!)

Postman gave a tentative identification of my anvil that it missing everything from the waist up: he said it looked to be a peter wright and the one I have missing the heel was a Powell. While I was at Quad-State there was a local CL listing for a Fisher with broken heel and badly abused sides---heading toward ridge back! They only wanted the same per pound than the near perfect peter wright I bought in the same general area off CL a couple of month's ago...

Note that styles and methods can be quite COUNTRY specific. For Example: I've seen a lot of rural 19th century french stuff being sold lately as centuries earlier items. As you don't specify what country colonies you are interested it's hard to say if you are referring to the Belgian Congo or Brazil! I have the Sorber book but it tends to not even cover all the USA colonial stuff as it's quite low on Spanish Colonial items from the American South and Southwest as I recall. (The town I live by was named by the Spanish about a decade before Jamestown was founded) What I check for when evaluating an item: 1: real wrought iron. 2: forge welding where appropriate---if an item avoids forge welding then it's almost certainly modern. 3: style---certain times and places tended to use certain design motifs in certain ways. 4: Does the item show typical/expected wear and tear; while perfect items do occur they are much less prevalent than used ones. And there was a rash of colonial repro's back in the 20's just like there are a large number of Victorian era repro's of medieval items during the gothic revival. I have smithing books from back then showing folks how to make such items.

And the Mid Ohio Blacksmiths, MOB, was based out of Columbus Ohio; I saw a bunch of them while I was at Quad-State last weekend! And one of them had had a bladesmith Hammer-In in a suburb of Columbus in June. Send me an e-mail and I'll give you his address! Also some of the old Mobsters are now involved in the Idea Foundry in Columbus.

So "The Complete Bladesmith", Hrisoulas, wasn't enough? Has a lot of great information on swordmaking and the advantage that it's already typed out with pictures! Never figured out why folk thought that somebody typing a page or two on the internet was better than 50 pages in a book written by an expert. If you are in the USA and your local public library doesn't have a copy; ask at the desk to ILL it. In this small rural New Mexican town I can ILL books that AMAZON wasn't able to find during a standing 2 year book search!

I usually don't keep water *close* to the anvil/forge too many times an HC piece has done it's utmost to seek out any water for the sheer joy of self destruction! All I use it for is to cool down tools and ends I'm holding in my hand---and so way under hardening temps. Most stuff get a "desert normalizing" just toss it out onto the dirt. For hardening I have both brine and oil tanks that have lids on them when not actively in use. The old half whiskey barrel full of water was great for zilch carbon wrought iron but is an active hazard when forging modern materials!

One of mine was a dark green; the other was "industrial gray" Original??? The gray I have stripped down and it seems to have been gray over a black primer/filler stuff.

Back to an earlier reply: I start my blown propane forge with the blower OFF. You get a large plume of burning gas out the front port and I then start the blower and tune it to get the best burn. If the power goes off you switch back to the propane plume---which is actually probably less of a hazard than the dragon's breath you get from when the blower is on as it's *hotter* and *INVISIBLE*!

I do better off of Craigslist myself. For every auction I've been to where stuff went cheap I had to sit through 10 where stuff was WAY overpriced. When I would go I used to call the auctioneer and ask "how many people did it take to lift it?" That would generally get me in the ballpark on how heavy it was.

Quick run out and buy some flats of flowers to plant in your new planters!

Scrap metal is *everywhere*! Avoid plated or coated metals as burning them off can kill you. As we say "if it's rusting it's good!" Many small metalworking places will sell metal on the side---either scrap or new (they get a better price the more they buy so if you help them buy more you help their bottom line.) I get mine from a local company that builds and repairs windmills---about 1/3 cheaper than buying it at the local lumber yard and a WHOLE lot cheaper than buying 3' sections at a big box store. For bladesmithing I like automotive springs---coil and leaf. Coil is particularly good as you can zip down opposite sides with a cutting torch and have a lot of easily worked smaller pieces that you can tune in your working/heat treating on of the same alloy! Will you be at Quad-State Blacksmiths Round-Up Sept 24-26 in Troy OH? I'll be camping there with a lot of the folks off the net. My tent is a conical canvas one and I'll be wearing the disreputable red hat.

What kind of cold work?

So how long will you be holding onto those before you are willing to pass them on? (And how did you encourage him to finally pass them on? Did it involve beer?)

The most pristine anvil is one that *NEVER* gets used. What a curse that would be for a smith! The quality of the work is usually more dependent on the skill of the smith than the pristineness of their tools. Skill is usually a function of time spent *doing* stuff with the tools and pristineness is an *inverse* function of time spent *doing* stuff with the tools. Use that anvil and everytime you sell something you made with it put a dollar in the Brand New Anvil Fund. When you get it up to being able to buy a whopping big pristine anvil, you may find that you'd rather spend the money on a powerhammer...(I've owned 4 that the most expensive one was still about 1/2 the cost of a big new anvil; 25# LG, 50# no name, 2 x 60# Champions...))

I have a low number of thread starts on my screw press and when properly lubed it will seek bottom on it's own too---I have some lengths of pipe insulation slipped onto the dependent handles to mitigate THWAPPAGE when I'm jockeying the die or piece around and not paying attention to the relentless creep downward and the slow circling of the handles. (It doesn't have balls but rather a 42" dia toroid).

I don't quite understand what you are getting at: Take a vessel and put a port in the top and a port in the bottom; now block one port and blow into it. Then switch. Why would blowing in the top one have more pressure than blowing in the bottom one? Now as to heat: the heat load is quite highly based on radiation from the hot forge sides If the forge was designed right that should be pretty equal everywhere save the outlet of the burners and the door/exhaust area. Where I would worry about top vs other burners is: after you shut the forge down and you no longer have the cool gas keeping everything outside the forge cool and the chimney effect can allow heat from the inside of the forge to rise up into the burners. Also if there is any exhaust leakage around the burner ports then the hot exhaust can rise up and be recycled by the burner increasing CO output. I would wonder about using a cast iron fitting *inside* the forge as mine will go above cast iron melting temps.

Look for the disreputable red hat! and given good weather I'll be wearing lederhosen and an aloha shirt on Friday in honour of RAH and PPW.

Knuckle height is a great one when you are using top tools and a striker. You may want to raise it if it's just you and a hammer! One method is to slip 1" wood under it until your back doesn't hurt after a long day and your hammer marks are still good!

The old blacksmithing books say that the first thing you need to do when buying a new anvil is to round off the edges as sharp edges can cause trouble---not only are they more prone to chipping they also are more prone to leaving cold shuts in your work. What the heck do *you* need a sharp edge for? I forged for over a decade before I had an anvil with sharper edges than that one and never missed them!