ThomasPowers

Not so recent a thing; in the early 1500's a "robber Baron" lost his hand to a cannon ball and had a prosthetic one made so he could hold a sword in it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tz_von_Berlichingen

I don't think that just wrapping the pin without welding would hold very long as the pin would "work" in the joint and gradually wear itself loose.

on a lot of old blowers one of the vanes on the fan may be bent slightly and so rub against the case, bending it back or if it's "spooky" filing the vane slightly will help.

That's a dandy anvil and still very usable and also it's just missing it's nose. I have one where the bottom half has lost the top half---I know it was a complete anvil at one time as the weight stamps are still on it. My Loaner anvil is about 100+# and has lost the heel; but the face is still great and the horn is usable. It was lent to new students to use while they acquire their own set up and was outside under the tree when I lived in the city and wanted an anvil I didn't have to move all the time---wasn't stolen as a "damaged" anvil has little value---I paid US$40 for it from a Farrier and think it works out to about 33 cents a pound...

Looks a lot like my 1828 William Foster---though it has more of the face left than my WF (which is missing the heel as well) I picked up my WF at a fleamarket in Columbus OH for US$5 just to get the piece of 1828 steel on it and then to have a WI base to try an old style re-facing. (What I suggested SOFA demo and then they did at a QS I was not able to attend---ARGHHH)

deleted liability concerns as I notice you are in the UK

Old Black Diamond files (not stamped Nicholson) were 1.2% C and if I was betting I'd bet the leaf spring was more likely to be 60 points than 95 points carbon. To figure out the end amount you need to do a weight balance---notice that Rich did his calcs for *equal parts*. You can do the calc for unequal parts but you have to take in account how much of each. (Pts alloy A x weight A + Pts alloy B x weight B + Pts alloy C x weight C...) / weight A + weight B + weight C +... So you can see you want to keep the low C stuff a lot less than the high C stuff so things like pallet banding combined with files or even better bandsaw blade combined with files---use two higher C alloys and no lower C alloys and use the alloy materials for differentiation when etching not the carbon content.

If you are interested in selling it---it shouldn't bring much as it's in VERY poor condition. Personally I might buy it for 25 cents a pound to use as a doorstop. If you are interested in using it; it could be used till a better anvil comes your way. You will want to try to stay on what's left of the face though as the cast iron body is pretty bad for forging on. Don't do ANY grinding as the face is already too thin! Wirebrush and learn to use it's idiosyncrasies.

When you learned to drive---did you start out with a $50,000 car refusing to learn on anything lesser? Or like most of us did you start out with a much less fancy car and learn on a "beater"? If you get a large square chunk of steel you will have an anvil much like the japanese sword smiths use to make their famed swords. Many new people make the mistake of waiting for a "real" anvil not realizing that most of the world works on stuff that are not "johnny come lately" london pattern anvils. Or the pay way too much for a cast iron Anvil Shaped Object, (ASO), and don't have the money when a good anvil shows up. Time at the "anvil" hammer in hand usually makes a much bigger difference than what the anvil looks like to your success in smithing. I have a 25# travel anvil based on Roman, viking, renaissance, and F&IW examples that I bring to historical events (as it covers a *WIDE* range of history!) and I also bring when I teach a session at the local College. Many of my students avoid it trying to get time on one of the london pattern anvils instead until they have problems making their nails and I point out that the travel anvil has *perfect* edges for nail making and is the one I use to demo the project for them... May I commend to your attention "The Complete Modern Blacksmith", Weygers as a great book showing improvised anvils and how to make RR rail into an anvil.

I have a prosthetic pancreas (insulin pump). My main smithing changes are to turn it down when I'm smithing as the exercise takes the place of some of the insulin and I try to keep it cool in the smithy. In the summer I wear it in a fanny pack with cool packs in the winter I try to keep it clipped to the back. Also wearing bib overalls helps to protect it from "accidents" and to keep the tubing from getting caught, (postvise is a joker!), or cut by hot metal.

A curved face can help as you can angle the piece so it's still engaged on the hardy in the previous cut but the new section is on the cutting edge to be struck---like walking a curved hot cut.

on sale for only about 100 *times* what it's worth. They are cast in China and the one we bought to make into a propane stove was NOT top grade cast iron it was about the lousiest cast iron I have ever seen; so much graphite in it that it drilled like black butter! (of course we only paid $28 for it and it was for a Q-S gag...) A good sized chunk of scrap steel should be a better anvil *and* cheaper to boot! A chunk of damaged fork lift tine can make an excellent anvil especially if mounted vertically so the mass is under the hammer zone.

Long handles for hand held, short handles for treadle or powerhammer hammer or screwpress ones, combo punch/drift (or slitter/drift) for certain jobs. There is almost endless variety depending on what you want/need to do.

You don't want any coarse scratches on the blade as they help propagate cracks during HT; but a mirror polish is not needed. Depending on what I am going for I do not hand rub at all! (Meet my friend, Mr Bader) If I'm going old school I will draw file and then hand sand with a hard block to 220 or so before heat treat. Heat treating in a pipe in the forge horizontally with one end closed off and some real charcoal in it can cut down on scaling and make for a more even heating (rotate the pipe as it heats to equalize temp and then hold the blade in the pipe not touching *or* only touching the back on the bottom of the pipe.)

Note that "hefty" knives tend to spend more time in a drawer than on a belt. I admit freely that I abuse some of my blades because "I made it if I break it I'll make another!" OTOH when I want to chop I forged a nice light camp hatchet from a farriers rasp--bent over and forge welded together and forged out into a light axehead and drifted the eye for a hammer handle---easier to find and cheaper than hatchet handles out here... Paola, Ville helped me get the IR2 working on AOC, SFIT123 ran 10/12 of the scans and then stopped with the below error:

We use swamp coolers out here and they push a LOT of air in---usually have at least a 1/3 hp continuous duty motor doing nothing but spinning the squirrel cage. Set one up to exit around the working area and you are guaranteed to have good airflow *away* from you. (Unlike airconditioners they require an open vent to the outside somewhere in the building.) When you get single digit humidities a swamp cooler can sure put a chill on you working in 95 deg heat!

Usually we say the thickness of a dime, (and I bump that up a bit if I'm expecting "trouble"...) The better you get the finer you can go (or you get to know what shapes and alloys alloy you to go finer without problems with your preferred method of heat treat!)

How about some old heavy rope that's been soaked in a strong borax solution? (Packing?---some of us remember oakum!)

I'd go larger than 1/4" for the pin; fist time some kid swings on the gate your 1/4 will be loaded a lot more than you expected! An even simpler design just has the hinge parts stack---no "cutting out" necessary---also makes it easier to demount the gate by opening it and then just lifting it off the pins. Buy lag bolts, de-galvanize them if you have to; but remember that rust never sleeps!

WHERE THE HECK DID YOU GET THAT FROM WHAT I WROTE? Cast refractory flares built into the sidewall of the furnace lining should work fine. I did not address that part at all in my previous post; just that there are other factors besides melting point in choosing materials for flares.

There are more properties than just melting temperature to take account of else we would be using platinum flares! In this case it's the resistance to degradation through oxidation that plays a heavier part than just the melting temperature.

Distal taper and a full blade bevel can make that an elegant usable blade. No distal taper and a partial bevel makes it a crowbar with an edge.

Not having a sway was the hardest part of getting used to my mint massive Fisher. I was so used to having a slight sway to work with I used to have to go back to my earlier anvil to straighten stuff.

Ahh the start of the iron age was the bloomery process which made wrought iron directly from ore. If they did it wrong they *could* get cast iron but that was considered a major error and was discarded as useless. About 1000 years later they started making cast iron in the stuckoffen and finally figured a way to convert it to usable wrought iron. (The Walloon process and a bunch of others followed by puddling and finally the Byers process) Cast iron is in no way a "steel" and the values would be 2%-4% not .2% - .4% for the carbon content. Using the bloomery process you can get everything from a very low carbon bloom to a very high carbon bloom (to the oops---cast iron). As part of the method of working a bloom into usable wrought iron---repeated stacking, welding and forging, the carbon content tends to go down---much like in the similar process in making japanese swords. Pig iron *IS* cast iron---just run out onto the casting floor to form ingots or "pigs". Cast iron is a liquid at welding temps for wrought iron---it splashes! (I've tried it) It is possible to use it to transfer carbon into lower carbon material but this is not done at welding heat---the UN book on Blacksmithing gives instructions. If you can decarb cast iron enough to make it into steel then that can be welded to other steels. (both China and India worked out methods of casting things in cast iron and then decarbing them to produce a steel layer over the inner core of cast iron) Cast Steel is a totally different thing and though it was know through wootz and other crucible steels coming from Central Asia it was not a major factor in Western Europe until the 1700's when the Huntsman process was discovered. (This is my area of interest and I have smelted iron from ore using a Y1K bloomery process)

I teach doing tapers square in cross section and then converting and I think several of the books I have read mention it; I'll have to check. Expecting You-Tube to be a definitive source is not a good idea; *ANYONE* can post on it with no check on skill level or veracity---I could post that your were the love child of Margret Thatcher and Elvis Presley on You-Tube. What I haven't seen mentioned is that it can be a lot faster to cut the end off at a sharp angle and then work the taper. For something like a tent stake you can generally do the cut and pointing in one heat! I make stakes in multiples of 2---cut to double length, then hot cut at a sharp angle in the middle.