ThomasPowers

Most professional knifemakers I know weld the ends of the bundle together and leave enough extra that they just cut the "contaminated" ends off. You will probably want to weld a handle on as well.

May be high manganese too. Like most alloys it will be good for somethings and terrible for others. It will probably be harder to forge and heat treat than a simpler alloy. Knowing *WHAT* is in it would help a lot "special high carbon steel alloy" could be anything from 1080 to D2! The fact that it's supposed to be easily welded and no special thermal cycling mentioned makes me suspect that it's not as high carbon as you may think! I think they are going for *TOUGH* and wear resistant.

The alloy makes a big difference too, straw may be perfect for a tool made from 1050 and way too hard and brittle for one made from 1095 but that one might work perfectly well drawn to blue... A lot of the old smithing books give a single temper colour for many items; but the range of alloys available was much more narrow and they expect you to be able to test the piece and adjust the temper to suit yourself too. Blacksmithing is often the zone of possibilities when many new people want hard absolutes! (Can I make an axe out of 1050 steel? Sure just temper it to a lower colour than one made from 1080....) This make is more fun and gives you a lot more chances to be creative.

When I need to use wood for a forge fire I generally build a fire near by and then transfer only the hot coals to the forge as the smoke and heat thrown off by the burning wood makes it harder to be around the forge. Using pre-made charcoal makes for a much nicer forging experience---but I'm cheap and so usually have a scrap wood fire to "help out" the store bought lump charcoal.

You cant find an old file, piece of A-36, piece of automotive coil spring, etc? You are not going to get a spectographic analysis just looking at the sparks with your eyes and your test samples need not be extremely formal either. Now if you are friends with a knifemaker---especially a stock removal one you may be able to get cut-offs of different high carbon steels . You can also ammass your test kit over the span of years too. Don't let "perfection" get in the way of "good"!

Well what you want to temper to depends on: Alloy, hardening used (oil vs water for some alloys), intended use---cutting vs punching vs drifting vs etc..., liability, and lastly personal preference---some folks like their tooling harder or softer than others do. So as I read your request to me is sounds like "Tell me what *I* like in a tool" Very hard for me to do so---are you wearing an Al foil hat or is it just the sunspots causing trouble? However as someone just starting out I would go softer over harder as generally that is *safer*. You may have to dress your tools more often though and as you get more experience you may decide to reharden and draw temper to a bit harder. Anyway drawing to a good deep blue will probably suit you well for the working end and an even higher temp for the striking end---why people advise heating from the striking end and letting the heat travel towards the working end and quenching it as soon as it turns blue (and not heating the striking end so hot it will quench harden again---we're talking temps around 500-600 deg F not forging temps of 1500 degF) Thomas

OTOH be wary of pants with steel buttons for the fly (levi 501's for example!), both for the gaps that let unwanted scale, flux, etc find their way end but also the buttons can get quite hot---the old woodstove effect that Frosty is probably aware of...

You don't need to do an anneal before starting---they forge will have it up past annealing temps anyway! Generally I take a cutting disk on the angle grinder and zip down the side of the coil on one or two sides to make a bunch of arcs of coil the same length---easier to store and to un-coil in the forge. Have tongs that fit the material well. I like to heat a coil section and bend it open reheat one end and straighten on the anvil then flip it around and do the other. Sometimes putting an end in the hardy hole and grabbing the other end to bend it open helps. Forge at a good temp, lower orange works for me---don't work cold! Quench slightly above loss of magnetic properties in warm oil, temper as appropriate! Remember too high a tempering temp is safer than too low! Why would one *want* a torch for heat treating? Scrounge a number of different coils of different cross section diameters---makes it a lot easier to make punches if you start near the wanted size!

That anvil looks just like my travel anvil in my Y1K kit! I had a great time smithing at the Kingdom of the Outlands' Battlemoor Crusades a couple of weeks ago using the Y1K set up in garb.

Phil there was a company on the far west side of Columbus that sold used machine tool parts (on Phillipi rd south of 70 on the west side---I'll edit this when I remember the name...) They also had a branch in Lima, also the used machinery dealers might have piece parts hiding in their stashes---the one in the old part of Columbus used to have a yearly tent sale to get rid of the small stuff that built up from selling off entire factories. EDCO Tool & Supply COLUMBUS 445 Phillipi Rd Columbus, Ohio 43228 (614) 276-8181. Fax: (614) 276-8285 ... Lima, Ohio 45804 (419) 228-6176. Fax: (419) 228-9066. edco@edcotool.com.

If it is rusting it's generally safe to use. Note that old paint on steel can be quite high in lead so I try to stick to old rusty metal. The Geiger counters are from an "Oops" back a couple of decades now. In Mexico a stolen piece of medical equipment was sold to a scrap yard where it was melted down and the metal incorporated in a bunch of things including re-bar and seats for a fast food restaurant chain. Turns out the original equipment contained Cobalt-60 and the resultant steel was quite radioactive! It was finally found out when a truck carrying rebar went in the exit gate of a nuclear facility that had Geiger counters mounted to make sure no radioactive stuff got out accidentally and they went off big time. Hmm seems to be a lot more prevalent than I had realized: http://www.recyclingtoday.com/Article.aspx?article_id=17361

Well they'd ask "where are the helpers"? And be amazed at how cheap steel is nowadays. Of course the earliest powerhammer I saw documentation for was pre-norman conquest (actually pre 1000 A.D.) I believe a lot of our viewpoints on smithing in America come from two major factors: being a "frontier culture" where the smith might be the only one around and so *had* to do a bit of everything (compared to Europe when just making a sword might involve 4 separate guilds back in renaissance times!) And the gradual "dying" of the craft where many of us have met and talked with solitary smiths who were gradually riding the job down into the dirt as they aged. (younger smiths converted to auto repair, welding, etc) It's up to us to help change peoples ingrained ideas about smithing! My stock answer to "It's a dying craft isn't it?" is "Well all my friends do it!" and "There are probably more smiths in Santa Fe NM, USA, now than there was 100 years ago!"

Wow that welding on the collar is so poor I'll bet it will fall off in another 100 years or so...(Perhaps crudely welded would be a better term than poorly as it's seen a *lot* of use so far without failure...)

I find it's easier to have the actual samples to hand to test against an unknown than to have a "word document".

Billet welding hydraulic press!

Well most modern smiths don't use flatteners much---these days you are more likely making up dies to put texture on a piece than to remove it. Some knifemakers use them but hammer control is a whole lot faster and easier in my opinion. So to me that was way too high---I've bought a couple for around US$5 a piece just to have in the rack for "what if" cases. The old hand crank drills had a standard size hole in their "chuck" and the drillbits all had a section *that* size that fit in it and were held with a set screw/bolt. They are fairly easy to retrofit a jacobs chuck too---find a chuck that will take a bolt the same size as the hole and cut off the head of the bolt and slip it in the drill's chuck. Now as to missing pieces---they don't make replacement pieces; anything you need you will have to make yourself or cannibalize off another one. If you are not familiar with them they can be hard to judge wear on them too! Whatever you do please don't run it off a motor! I once met a knifemaker at the guild show who told me that he tried to save some money by motorizing a hand crank drill and one day he was drilling a tricking piece and reached up to advance the drill bit and fed his fingers into the gears. After quite a lot of very expensive hand surgery and months of down time when he couldn't work and two years more of healing they still didn't work right and as he said "I could have bought the fanciest most expensive drillpress on the market and it would have still cost me only a small fraction of what I spent in medical bills" The old machinery doesn't have the guards like the new stuff has.

If folks ask *me* to offer a price on an anvil, I always start at US$1 a pound. It was the going price for decades and some folks will still sell at that price.

Please spark test it and tell us how it looks for the various parts. Did they possibly come from a very rocky area? I once had a wagon tyre from a hard life in the Ozark mountains that etched up wildly after a low heat forging. Looked like a telescope picture of the milky way with fine grain areas alternating with large grain areas in a swirling pattern. Took it to the local U and talked with the Mat Sci prof (who asked us *why* we were not in his classes rather plaintively) I explained that I thought that the low temp forging had allowed recrystallization of areas with massive dislocation build up due to carrying heavy loads over rocky roads for a long time and he agreed. If that sparks high C in one layer you have some great stock to experiment with various old time knife/sword configurations! (Fold and weld high C on the inside and grind to the High C layer for the edge, fold and weld high C outside and forge an edge with a tougher core, etc...)

an ingenious solution to a common task! Are you using a high alloy steel for the "cutters" like H13?

How much of the rivet are you leaving "proud" of the joint before peening? They have to be trimmed to the correct size you know.

Torque after that reduction? I'd certainly go with flatbelts that can slip if necessary! I don't know how much you like the "old stuff" and how much hassle it may be so I can't say if you should or shouldn't. However it's a good price for a small light duty lathe!

Just a tip: If you are asking *other* people to spend *their* time helping you; it behooves you to make it as easily as possible for them. Of course if you are willing to pay people for the time they spend helping---sure make it as difficult as you like/can afford! As to that is how most kids your age think/talk---most kids your age don't speak english! It's the world wide web you know!

Well I have never found them "expensive and hard to find" so I hope his reasonable offer is not too outrageous!

I'd be wary of converting a treadle to electric and real happy to restore it as a treadle. A lot of things that were not electric are not engineered for electric speeds and forces and if you are not careful you can do it or yourself damage. Fleamarket report: AT&SF RY crosspein in great condition $3, Wilton 6" C clamp, $3. Turned down an 04 propane tank for $20 as I can trade out for one that's newer and full at that price! Fellow said he will bring a bunch of LARGE THICK old files for me next week---some of them cast steel! wants $1 per...

Sam; remember to keep your *face* to the crowd at demos---*please*!