ThomasPowers

What's the RC of the "hard face wire" face? "Hard Face can be quite soft but *very* wear resistant! HB's tend to have quite hard faces compared to many other "good" anvils. Y'all are dancing around the concepts of elastic and in-elastic collisions. A good college physics course should cover that and then a good materials course explain why some materials tend more toward the one than the other.

Ahh Phil I think the *burst* is when the carbon has burned off and the iron burns in a great burst of sparks. At least that is what happened when I tried to pattern weld with some fine cast iron (bathtub pieces with the porcelain removed) in between some mild steel. (I was trying out a conjecture on how one type of ancient steel was made.) At forge welding temps the cast iron was liquid and would hammer out in large drops that would arc through the air until suddenly they would burst into a spray of sparks. No decarb'd iron was left on the ground---which would have happened if it was just a variation on the Walloon process of making iron from cast iron. They were using a cupola and so melting cast iron. I wonder if this is a leftover from Mao's great leap forward when everyone was encouraged to smelt and puddle in their backyards to produce metal for industry.

Frosty; I recognize the self portrait; but who is the little guy standing in front of you?

It's a great thing to be willing to pass on such tools to people who will use them for their intended purpose. I have left strict instructions to my wife to see that my tools go to a good home when I'm gone. Since you don't list the location are you offering free international shipping? I'd also suggest listing the price wanted. I see a wagon tyre tong and a horseshoer's tong and some others; looks like he did a range of things with those tools!

The shades of about 3000 years of blacksmiths are now scratching their heads and saying "what do you mean that a home crafted nail header isn't a real nail header?" Making nails is part of my intro class and we've been doing it for years with two nail headers that I forged from coil spring that were my first ones I ever made! If you have a lot of a certain size stock it's an easy thing to make a header to fit the stock than to hunt for one that will.

You are making the assumption that the turbine effect adds into the chimney effect when both are present---it could subtract from the chimney effect due to flow interruption; or there could be a cut-over where the turbine helps for low flow and hinders when the flow increases. By a poor analogy: take a straw; as it sits it does not pull water up it. If you place your mouth over it and suck water goes up it. However if you attach a hose to it with water under pressure you may get less water going up it with your mouth in the way than if it wasn't there. The effect of your mouth did not add to the effect of the hose pressure.

If it's an old english wilkinson it will be WI body, Steel face. In general anvils with the markings stamped in are not cast iron and anvils with the marking cast proud of the surface are cast iron. There are a few cast steel anvils that may be an exception to this rule but the Swedish ones and the American Columbian have their markings stamped in or recessed and not standing proud of the surface.

Cutting the rattles off tend to make them peevish and prone to taking offense; but rattlesnake bites are usually not fatal---though the one that took almost the full lane of the road when it was crossing the "explosive laden vehicle" route in front of my pickup recently might be an exception to that generality!

I'll be driving though that region on the way to Quad-State Blacksmith's Round Up Next week---you going?

You don't need a separate jack shaft if you can just do it with one set of pulleys, one on the motor and one on the machine. (KISS principle). For more massive reductions---say 1725 to 60 you can find a gear reduction unit. I scrounge them off old machinery when I can as they are handy things to have around the shop...

Be real interesting to see that in a flamberge blade with the "flame" following the pattern! Quick somebody commission one like that so I can see it for real! First thing that came to mind when I saw how beautifully the pattern was tracking the edge...

Why folks would expect a factory to *know* just what *they* will be using a hammer for and how they will be gripping it puzzles me. Wasn't that long ago that a craftsman would naturally be expected to modify their tools to suit themselves! Factories are trying to get away with doing the minimum amount of work and still get a product that sells. Expecting more from them is usually a waste of time. Of course nowadays liability plays a part. I recently bought a star drill to do a bunch of drilling holes in a concrete slab, (appx 2000 hammer blows a hole---I got to counting after a while and would stop for a rest every 100 blows...), the top section of the drill was so soft that I had to grind it clean of the mushrooming every couple of holes and only had to sharpen the other end twice the entire project!

I like the coffee cup shelf on that big anvil! As I recall reading the old books on smithing a "shop anvil" was suggested to be around 250 pounds for general work shops. The big ones were generally "industrial anvils" for industries doing heavy work often with teams of strikers using sledges. Didn't France Whitaker use an anvil under 200 pounds for his entire career? For most hobby smiths I'd think that a 150 pound anvil would be a good choice for a shop anvil. Massive large anvils for folks who never work anything heavier than 3/4" stock is rather overkill and probably more a factor of "anvil envy" than efficiency.

Lungs Shaking: I got to hear a Saturn V, (Apollo 11), go up from closer than the VIP viewing area, (Holiday Inn parking lot in Titusville just across the river from the cape...) and that is what I remember the most it was doing my breathing for me as my chest was resonating with the flickering flame sound... (Father worked for NASA during the 60's...)

As my forge welding instruction used to yell at me "don't look at it *HIT* *IT*!" Is you anvil real close to the forge so you need only to make a slight turn? Is your hammer in your hand before you touch the stock in the forge to bring it out? Is the hammer raised by the time the stock is just over the anvil? Do you hammer *fast*. A lot of the experienced smiths "extra working time" is actually just cutting out wasted time in the process. I've noticed teaching new folks that I will generally have hit the metal several times by they time they have gotten in *1* hit which they then stop and look at. For nail rods pre-heating the anvil with a hot piece of metal or an old clothes iron can help as well as keeping the stock off the anvil until the hammer pushes it down onto the anvil for the first blow. Cold weather, cold anvil, cold hammer, cold header does not help! And as mentioned nail "rods" were actually square and were slit from sheet/plate. If you want hammer control practice you could make all your round stock into nice even sq stock...

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Or make it out of stainless to begin with! (since so many people are maintenance avers nowdays sometimes it's worth the extra hassle to make things that can be mistreated with impunity.)

You notice any LARGE industrial smoke stacks use turbines? If the stack is large enough the chimney effect, (hot gasses rise) is effective enough on their own. Turbines help keep birds and rain out of the stack though but with 45' of rise they probably *slow* the gasses down than increase their speed!

I did a bunch of "twisted election sign wire" ones for a cub scout pack once---each kid got to twist his own under my supervision and then we tried them out to make sure they worked. Gotta teach the young ones that Mankind is a *maker* of things not just a passive consumer of them!

The "gold standard" is probably the ASM Handbooks that cover pretty much everything metal. The old ones were one volume but the new ones take a shelf and are quite pricy new! I look for ones that are an issue or two out of date and then get the volumes I need, eg Heat treating, Using a forge and scrap metal I don't need the latest info anyway! (I also have a copy of the 1947 handbook)

I'll trade you a equal weight of smaller black widows for that wolf spider! My wife likes spiders and was upset when the tarantula they found in my youngest sister's room didn't survive capture and re-location; but even she draws the line at black widows in the house! A co-worker's wife got spider bit on her foot recently---looks like something drug up out of a lake now so probably a recluse bite.

"rattlers, spiders, scorpions, javelina, bobcats, coyotes, owls, gila monsters" and you just *know* they were all shaking their heads and saying "there goes the neighborhood" when a blacksmith moved in...

I don't consider a shop cat as "wildlife" they are more like wildlife prevention and/or search and destroy units. My cat likes to lay on the concrete floor in the way; or if I'm in the extension, up on a table so he can keep an eye on what I'm doing. But he's not a full time shop cat. I've been thinking of building a shop door for him; just got to do it so the local skunks can make use of it. I was thinking of having it high and making a set of "jump steps" to get to it. Oh I also have sparrows in nesting in the eves and had a dozen barn swallows on the roof a couple of mornings ago---they nest on our house porches. We also have a local roadrunner but I chase him away as I like the lizards and snakes!

You check for a forge welding seam slightly down from the face on the sides. If it's been obscured you could polish a window and etch slightly to see where one type pf stee/iron meets another.

Go *now*. Great deals tend to evaporate/sublimate/disappear if left too long!