ThomasPowers

Having Turley's 3 week course under your belt should make you a lot more attractive to somebody looking for a worker. Also having formal training in welding. Drawing is another skill, machineshop skills, etc. Remember an apprentice *COSTS* money until they can do enough in the shop to cover their training. In knifemaking this has been discussed a lot and the proper trade off agreed upon was that an apprentice ought to trade 10 hours of *un*supervised labour for every 1on1 hour with the master. Being able to do a lot of stuff before you start means being able to climb the curve faster!

I'm at 4700' and I have several smithing friends---including a professional smith who have no problems at 7000' using propane systems. If you are burning off the end of the burner you have too great a gas speed, it's faster than the combustion speed, why a flair helps as the gas speed drops as the pipe flairs out and you hopefully hit the point where gas speed = combustion speed and the flame is stable. Going from a 2" pipe to a 1" pipe certainly cjanges the gas speed on a design! Also if you are not using the same blower it changes the speed vs a specific design. Note that you have to be able to tweak the amount of air and it helps to be able to do the same with gas. Now what did the local smiths say about your set up when you showed it to them? I know that there is an ABANA affiliate for your region and having one knowledgeable person look over things and make suggestions is worth a hundred on the net! When I had my first propane forge I had a burner problem, took it to the next meeting and it was tweaked perfectly in about a minute and I haven't fiddled with it in the 10 years since! (blown burner, the aspirated burners I tweak regularly)

I worked with a professional swordmaker for a year---high end stuff. Everything he did was with his hands, no jigs, special setup, mills, etc. Just trained hands from a lot of practice. I haven't seen any method that gives you the freedom in grinding that trained hands will.

When I googled it I got a reference to a site where someone mentioned he had a transformer made from that steel. As a transformer core steel I'd guess it was quite low in carbon and may have some silicon in it. Hmm deeper digging indicates it is an "oriented silicon steel" and cannot be hot worked as exceeding the phase change messes up the orientation

"A real burner" so a burner specially engineered to be used in a gas furnace isn't real? Perhaps this was worded wrong? When SOFA had their first gas forge building workshop we just used a small 150 CFM squirrelcage from an industrial supply like Graingers. It's worked for over 10 years now. Was a lot more expensive than picking up one used from the HVAC folk; but we had to have a lot of identical ones for the workshop so all the forges would be the exact same. (we set up an assembly line and built forges all day and then numbered them all and pulled numbers from a can to see who got which one---keeps everyone on their toes as you don't know which one will end up yours!) Sounds like you will be paying about the same or more for your blower than we paid for the entire forge---minus the hose, regulator and tank. Great if you can swing it; but a lot of us are not so well heeled.

Great city/suburbia anvil; I agree that the price is a bit high for my taste; but iff I was anvil-less and had close neighbors I might bite the bullet for one in that good of condition...

I'd say that every blown burner needs controls for both gas and air which will allow it to be tuned for any particular point. For me the gas control is the regulator on the propane tank and the air control is a sliding plate in the air pipe. To run I turn on the gas at a pressure close to what I've used before and light the burner and then turn on the air and adjust it till I get the burn I want. If I want to go hotter I increase the gas pressure and then increase the air till I get a tuned burn again. To go lower I decrease the gas pressure and re-adjust the air flow again. Adding a blower to a system designed to work as a venturi is probably not as effective as building a simple blown burner. Did you talk with a local HVAC company about getting one of the blowers used for the hyper efficient gas furnaces---not the one to send air to the house but the one used to provide positive venting of the combustion. If you explain what you are doing and don't come across as crazy or abrasive you can often get a used one free or for a nominal price.

A lot of the europeans use powerhammers sitting down, you might look at how they do it. (one I've seen uses a suspended chair that he can swing from the forge to the hammer with the stock.

If you are doing only stock removal most knifemaker's supply houses carry good blades steel in easily worked sizes. If you are forging I like car coil spring because just one of them will give you enough material for a whole lot of blades and so you can experiment on heat treat for that alloy and get it nailed and still have lots left to make knives from.

Depends on the forge and how you are running it. If the flux gets "crunchy" it's too oxidized to do it's job. One tip: I like to build up a big welding fire and then stop all air and stick the piece in to do it's "warming up"; then take it out and wirebrush and flux and back in the fire in just a couple of seconds and then start adding air to get to welding temp.

Thanks Phil! Some hardfacing rods are much harder than needed too. You already have a lesson in the perils of "if a little is good a lot must be better" in cleaning the face of an anvil.

We used to tell them to go dive 10 pounds of 16 penny nails to get them to be able to hit the same spot on a regular basis---something a lot of us did as kids building things. Learning to hit where you want when you want is quite applicable to bladesmithing the only problem I can see is if they have to make splinters then they may power up over control...

Bookfinder doesn't find it either! Searching for books where Title is The Metallography of early ferrous edge tools and edged weapons Book is written in English Searching 150 million books for sale Search complete. Sorry, we found no matching results at this time Sigh

Think of steel as being like blood; the right type can save a person, the wrong type can kill them. Just saying "angle iron" is like saying "red Blood" doesn't give enough data to let you know who you can use it on---However in general structural angle iron is not a hardenable alloy.

(3 x .95 + 2 x .18) / 5 = .642 if I did the math right and counting the size of each piece as "1" as they are all equal in size. Now if you drop the mild and add in some medium---say .6 you then get .81 disregarding losses in the welding and forging.

A nice small forge; but nothing extraordinary. A riveter's or farrier's forge good for small work. Not one I would want to try to weld up billets or heat 1" stock in. It would make a nice demo forge for folks doing small ornamental work. The tuyere looks to be in excellent shape. How many full turns does the blower handle make when you release it?

That gets into details of how large a spot of welding temp you want/need, size of tuyere, etc. For a significantly small spot you could probably get it to welding temp blowing through a straw!

I live in a small town in New Mexico and through inter library loan I can access books that can't be bought! (at least 4 years of continuous book searches on amazon and abebooks hasn't turned up a copy!) It amazes me that a free library card can get me rare and expensive books with no hassle at all. Thanks Ben Franklin and Andrew Carnegie!

I agree that it's over kill; but with the amount of time most of us folks get to spend wearing out our tools; he'd be lucky to have to worry about that problem! If he keeps the joint greased his great grand kids might have to think about sleeving G-G-D's vise... I once had a vise with the jaws pretty far out of level that I took apart and heat shrunk and rivited a plug in the original moving leg hole and then drill out a new hole to get the jaws aligned. It's the large old heavy duty/new student vise now... The screwthread looks in great condition---that and the screwbox are what makes a post vise---everything else can be pretty easily repaired or remade!

As I recall it's a cast steel anvil and as such the edges tend to break a bit easier. Evidently that smith did all his work off of that side---probably the side away from him when he stood at the anvil. I might radius it a bit to smooth it and then have one crisp edge for careful work and one rounded edge for heavier work. An excellent anvil brand BTW and quite a good buy!

Hooks, Tripods and rasptlesnakes are the things I seem to make/sell the most of. Pattern welded steel items (not all are knives!) are the ones I enjoy making the most.

What's done is done. He knows he did wrong and now wants to spend the money and time to dig himself out of the hole he made. So if you hunt down Rob Gunter's anvil repair instructions---posted several places on the net---I know that they work well for a traditionally made anvil as a friend of mine did the same thing and after a decade or two of kicking himself, took his anvil to an anvil repair meeting of the local ABANA affiliate and had *5* hours of welding and grinding done on it to get it back to good using state. Of course it was bigger than your cute little one. Note that if the body is cast iron and not cast steel (you didn't say and both have been used) there is a bit more of a risk but even more of a need for a good hard face. Most hardfacing rod is NOT a good match for an anvil face. I strongly suggest you go with what Rob uses! There are ways of making a good guess as to the maker of it if we can get good pictures of all sides including the base.

If you are around central New Mexico the August SWABA meeting will be on axe making this Saturday and we'd lovew to see you there! I'm a bit concerned about your forge as I have welded in a hole in the ground using home made chunk charcoal before and two small home made single action bellows. Would you like coaching on your set up as well? Thomas, currently President of SWABA

Swamp coolers work best when the relative humidity is below 30%. OTOH they do move a lot of air and that generally helps no matter what the humidity is. We use them exclusively here in NM, USA and on days where there is single digit humidities they blast out *cold* air; but you can tell when the humidity is "high" as they lose cooling power.

If you have an old piece *don't* go with a higher temp solder than was used on the original unless you can totally isolate it. No fun to stick your joint only to see that you *un-stuck* lots of previous joints in the doing! Now if you have build ups to apply it can help to build up the replacement parts with a higher temp solder and then fasten them to the old stuff with a lower temp solder.