ThomasPowers

I sure would like to put an adobe wall on the west side of my sheet metal sided smithy but as dry as it is in NM a fan works pretty well. I did cheat and did not put the east wall up on the extension---overlooks the neighbor's irrigated alfalfa field which is sure cool and green to look at. Come winter I'll need to finish the wall to help deal with the winds.

As I recall JPH advocated gold flashed lenses like what is used in steel foundries. A good alternative is to not stare into the fire all the time---get used to how your forge heats metal and si be able to judge when to take it out by time.

People do seem to fall for the "I've seen one that sold for $XXX do mine must be worth that" a lot. Discounting such little details like the first one was hand made by Samuel Yellin and has been in a museum the last 80 years and the one they have was a bottom of the line item sold through the sears catalog as part of their "cheap" smithing set up. A friend of mine ran into this at a sidewalk sale in OH where an antique dealer had a pair of tongs with a $45 price tag. As he was standing there wide-eyed the owner came by and was remarking how great a buy that was as she had an "Antiques Guide" that had a pair of tongs forged by Henry Ford as a staged demo for $90 and so she thought that half price for a run of the mill farmer's tongs would then be a good idea---he offered to sell her all she wanted for half that... CL has been much better for me than EBay; especially as shipping costs are low compared to many e-bay auctions.

How much forging experience do you have? If you forge a blade out and forge down the front end some before you do the beveling the beveling will swing the tip up some. This can usually be reduced by using a wooden hammer on it when hot to not mess up the blade but to shift the blade around. You could also hot cut the blank or started blade.

"I would need an adjustable table on a grinder for that to work for us." there was no table on his grinder, just a contact wheel and a platten. It was a bader.

Personally I would not like to breathe the vapors produced by quenching *hot* metal in boiled linseed oil. Warming metal before coating with oil or wax is a fairly standard process in smithing.

I have degrees in Geology and Computer Science and have worked in both fields. What I have learned about metallurgy is because I was interested in the subject and researched it on my own! Where you would go is to the Materials Science section not MechE. Old school would be Metallography or Metallurgy. Or just look up the book I mentioned and look around it for other titles that look interesting...would work in my study! (of course my interests tend toward the 1900's and earlier...)

Would that be Fairbanks Alaska? I have heard that stuff is expensive up there; but a post vise being worth a good sized anvil????

Or "friends"? I've parked a powerhammer with a friend before who had the space and was outside of the city. I also run an open forge on a regular basis for the college kids why can't work in the dorms. And what do you call a person who does a wide range of smithing? You call him a blacksmith!

carbon diffusion is both time and temperature dependent so you would need 3 axis graph: time temp and carbon content/thickness. However there is a book on "The Cementation of Iron and Steel" Giolitti, Federico that goes into excruciating detail on the subject (cementation was an old name for the process) As far as making tooling material it would be probably cheaper and easier to buy higher C stock at the scrap yard than to spend the fuel to make it from lower carbon stuff. I play around with it as part of my historical processes experiments.

With that damage I would expect it to go for less than US$1 a pound to US$1 a pound max. Don't pay top/"antique/"collectable" price for a damaged anvil!

UV is not a danger from a blacksmith's forge *IR* infra-red is the danger, (see "glassblower's cataracts"). Unfortunately so many folks come into smithing from welding that they keep thinking about UV and are not aware of IR! It turns out that lenses good for UV may NOT be good for IR and so many people have a false sense of security with their PPE.

In your situation you might profit from looking over "Step-By-Step Knifemaking: You Can Do It!" (ISBN: 0878571817 / 0-87857-181-7) David Boye. ILL it at your local public library. You may also want to look into a "one firebrick forge" made from one firebrick and a cheap little propane torch which would allow you to get your feet wet in forging and heat treat and the whole set up: forge, improvised anvil, tools would fit in a 5 gallon bucket you can haul to an outdoor locale.

Some yards that won't let you in can still be accessed by bribing the owners/workers. Bringing in a dozen (or more) doughnuts to the office and explaining that you are looking for a large chunk of steel to use as an anvil can often work wonders---you still will probably not be allowed in but they might drag a couple of "possibles" over to the gate for you to choose from. (ah, try to explain what you are looking for---some yards "large" will be in the multi ton range...)

none of your information gives us any indication of what kind of pressure it can shove through a stack of fuel rather than just in a free air test. In general it's easier to run a test with the forge you intend to use it for and see if it works without straining itself.

One trick I use on myself is that I bring the fire way up and then turn off the air completely and stick the piece deep in the fire to preheat and go get a bottle of water or use the restroom. helps to pre-heat the piece thoroughly before I drag it out and flux it and put it back in and turn the air back on to get my weld. With the air off the fire is reducing and doing something else lets it heat through and through without me getting impatient...

As I recall it was about 5/16" to 3/8 I can dig out the mate and measure it when I get home. When we usually get this question it's WRT blademaking so fairly thin stock is involved. The piece we did was to make the edges of an early medieval spearpoint the center of which was a twisted patternwelded billet. Unfortunately it was so high in carbon we could not weld it to the core as it fell apart just like cast iron does at high temps in the forge. It's time to get another set up to be ready for cooler temps in the fall to try again. I soapstoned the start and finish times on the side of my propane forge to keep a record of how much time at temp it had.

The coupler I used to forge on was broken so it would sit with the flat up on it's own. Worked quite nicely.

Electrolysis is highly recommended for delicate items! (and is pretty cheap and easy to do on a home basis)

Days and Days? 30 hours packed in a tube of powdered charcoal in my gas forge got me too close to cast iron to use. The next batch will be only 10 and 20 hours. I was starting with wrought iron too. To know exactly how much carbon is in it would take an analysis either chemical or spark spectroscopy (and you could probably buy new steel for your life for the cost involved of owning your own set up.) May I again commend "Steelmaking before Bessemer, Vol 1, Blister Steel" to all interested in this topic.

Well it's like the kids who want to make swords from broken leaf springs rather than springing for a new piece from the spring shop. If you are willing to spend hundreds of dollars of time on a project that may then not work out due to problems with your starting materials---go for it! I generally suggest they mow laws or clean garages to get the low $$ needed for a piece of known steel.

Hot working messes up the special properties you paid for if you bought it originally. Doesn't mean you can't forge it! it just won't be the same stuff. Like taking a piece of pre-hardened tool steel and forging it. It will mess up the original heat treat but you can still use it (and in this case you could re-do the heat treat, the oriented silicon was probably done with rolling and so not a re-do option...)

The number of revolutions varies but in general the more the better!

For the mason jars I would make a drive hook that drops down about 4-6" and then comes out straight a bit over the diameter of the jar then comes back up about 4" in "front" and then curves around in a circle. (or depending on stock is split and then curves around on both sides from the front. So the mason jar just drops in and is supported on the bottom and by the circle around it's waist. work on the sizes and you can probably make it so it will hold a flowerpot when it doesn't have a mason jar.

Hmm you are now the fourth person in Central OH that's had a run in that I know about. They may be a bit more cautions there as the RR tracks go within several blocks of the statehouse. There are some great "rails to trails" out there where you can legally take your kids for some great hiking---or biking!