ThomasPowers

Well assuming folks that are trying to help you are out to get you and their input can thus be ignored does tend to annoy folks. At least that is how a lot of stuff came across to me reading this thread. I haven't seen a lot of ban worthy stuff go by; but shunning might take place by some folks. But I have a high tolerance of hurly burly of the free flow of ideas on the net and tend to take a vacation when I get too riled up over something. Now do you think you could have a prototype to show off at the Quad-State Conference? (too short a time for the ABANA conf in my opinion) Hmm with more lead time we might be able to ask SOFA to make it a display catagory at a Quad-State and get other people's ideas as well!

Potato Digger Links: Old ones 1080 new ones 5160 is what I was told last Quad-State I went to.

Ken; you're running the rule *backwards*! (Did you see that prop sledge they had in the latest Sherlock Holmes film?) And I did put in the staples when I found that I was *moving* the anvil with my hammering. It's mounted on a section of 3 bridge timbers bolted together that I found floating in an OH stream during a flood. I clambered aboard it and paddled it with a branch to where a friends 4WD could pull it out with a chain. It is long enough that I have the 410# Trenton on the other end and can have a swage block in between.

Sometimes I envy my forebearers who could hire a trained striker to swing a 12 pound sledge for a 10 hour day for less than a dollar an hour! I blame Henry Ford and the outrageous wages he paid his workers for the lack of such help nowadays!

And remember *NOTHING* is as cheap as good safety equipment! Here in America a visit to the ER can cost you thousands besides the lost time, pain and function! Is spending a bit on a face shield and glasses really out of your budget? (I try to pick it up whenever I see good safety equipment in good shape at the fleamarket so I will alwys have some for "visitors" to my shop.)

"I made them, I can make other ones too if I need to" *That* is the essence of blacksmithing!

What did your refractory supplier suggest when you told him you were having this sort of problem? (Or contact the original manufacturer of the stuff as they should know what works best for your situation and be *happy* to keep you as a customer!

I made a Y1K set of paired bellows from a junked printer enclosure---oak faced plywood and a junked awning; but if you *have* to buy stuff.... For my large bellows the controlling factor was to be able to get the entire thing from 2 3/4" x 4' x 8' sheets of plywood which I got cheap as they were stained. So each of the 3 "solid" pieces was cut from appx 1/2 sheet of plywood and the two "horseshoes" were interlaced and cut from the last piece. The snout was glued up from 2x4 and 2x6 scraps and then draw-knifed to exterior shape. The "leathers" was made from tarpaulin material scraps from a shop that did wind wings for oil drilling rigs---very heavily treated and lasted over 20 years of abusive use! (spend several summers and winters outdoors, etc) Time to get bact building another one! I gave away my old one when I moved as I know I would never build a replacement as long as I could frankenstein that one for another decade or so!

Failure modes for such presses are generally quite unpleasant. I would not suggest trying to use it as it is for smithing; but as mentioned it could be used as a frame to build an air hammer on. Not worth paying much more than scrap rate if you do though.

Answering the folks out there who might profit from a straight answer to this question...A good first knife is a fairly small 1 sided blade forged from a piece of automotive coil spring---if you have access to a cutting torch, running it down opposite sides of a coil spring and making knives from all the pieces is good practice and allows you to practice your heat treat skills on a number of reasonably identical blades. Quenching a RR spike; given that you have made something appropriate to the alloy of the spike, super-quench is about as good as you can get. Opt Cur: If you have forged a knife from a spike I would suggest a seppuku quench as the most impressive one

R-G; I think that what you have *is* a system, a system that allows you to start off small and build/acquire more tools to use with it as you find you need them. I'm not happy with dovetails in the smithy as they are more expensive to make and maintain.---If we can dent and chip our anvils how much more fragile is a dovetail? (they sure look snazzy though I've seen an anvil that had a broken horn dovetailed back in place and was impressed by the work the owner had put into it.) Now for a weird idea: could you partner with a VoTech machining class to build these things with sets of tooling that meet the class requirements for projects: Swages, cones, the anvil and horn piece, etc. The more of these things out there the more demand and supply of tooling for them will occur. If you ever get a prototype built; please remember to sign and date it so 100 years from now some smith is not left scratching his head wondering

I hold that, like many middle eastern titles, the ranks of curmudgeonhood are given to one by acclaim. Thanks HW! as to how to ascend: keep answering the same questions over and over again and fight the good fight in vain over popular culture's glaring errors. It helps to have a few strongly held beliefs like RR spikes are NOT proper knife alloys; practicing knifemaking on non-knife alloys doesn't get you as far as fast as learning on the real stuff and not to pick up a hammer for the first time and light a match and demand to know how to make a damascus greatsword with your family tree delineated in the pattern on one side and obscure knock knock jokes in polish transliterated into the elder FUTHARK on the other side! (how was my acceptance speech?---And Pep, if you read this DON'T YOU DARE!)

It's not the the 50# ASO you are selling against. Its that folks with limited metalworking experience can make a decent anvil from a chunk of discarded fork lift tine for $25 and effort! Your *system* works better for a pro, not entry level smith and should be designed and marketed as such. If you want to make an entry level set up you need to go way down in your price point because there are *tons* of old decent anvils out there and they are sold quite a bit cheaper than the new good ones. Get it out of your head that everyone is mired in the past---look at all the new designs for farrier's anvils that sell! But just remember that New does not automatically mean Better! I buy anvils missing horns or heels because you can get great anvils dirt cheap that way and I always have students looking for their first set up---shoot I have a loaner anvil and postvise for student's use till they can find one themselves.

Most traditional ones did not have a guard or pommel and so no spacers. (langsceax sometimes were hilted like swords; but the using knife seaxes were not!)

"I have heard it more than once I think that a cheap used kit only costs a couple of grand" After hear the same thing again and again I built a beginner's kit of forge, blower, anvil and basic tools, once for under $25 using no tool more rare than a 1/4" drill, (no welding!). It was a great forge too; I kept kept it for billet welding for several years. I did it mainly to show folks that they could start out simple and cheap and build their way up. Perhaps this is why I don't see your proposed set up as being cheap. I will say this: most folks I know that have been smithing a long time end up doing very different things than what they thought they would be when they got started; so having a system that allowed for change is a *good* thing. (eg: bladesmiths doing ornamental stuff and ornamental folks becoming bladesmiths, etc)

It gets worse---we don't have natural gas where we live so my wife finally broke down and got a propane kitchen stove---now when it's 100# bottle gets empty she robs my forge of it's 20# bottle to use until I can get the big one carted into town and re-filled. What we will agree to to keep the meals coming!

"on Earth" as Rob Gunter hand forged some Ti preforms being machined for Satellites as I recall...)

Wrought iron or mild steel with a forge welded high carbon steel face. *not* cast iron with a steel face like a Fisher or vulcan. Gotta watch the jargon!

Mesquite is usually very poorly charred as it's used for "flavor" and if it was fully charred there would be no difference between it and any other fully charred charcoal. Being a resineous wood makes it even worse. *Not* a forging charcoal; but great for grilling.

Well I usually tap the anvil face with my hammer instead of hitting myself with a board...

My main shop anvil has 4 fence wire staples holding it in place 2 on each side in the curved sides. Of course it's a 515# Fisher and doesn't bounce much...

Many of the woods used by knifemakers are oily by nature and so you have to clean the wood as well as the steel to get a good bond. Acetone is a common method---but only on the surface being glued! Probably a bigger danger than silicosis is becoming sensitized to the various tropical hardwoods we commonly use. Their sawdust *IS* toxic!

I used a double lunged bellows for my demo forge for around 15 years and plan to do so again as soon as a get another one built!. It was right at the end of the forge and I could pump it to a welding heat in the forge with my pinkie. Getting the pivot point just right on the lever makes all the difference!

One more general word of wisdom: "Never take a job where they won't let you do well" eg: you are provided with a design you *have* to follow exactly that doesn't take in account things like sag, wear, lever arm deflection of mounting points, etc. As you can make it *exactly* to what they demanded; but when it doesn't work it's *your* reputation that gets bad mouthed.

Dan there are no "new" hand crank blowers save perhaps for very expensive ones being imported from India. So pretty much all hand crank blowers are "antiques" (most recent ones I have seen date to the 1960's) As for price that may vary by a factor of 2 depending on where you are at. Are you in the USA? East or West Coast? Midlands, Southwest???? And how large a blower do you need---small rivet forge, large billet welding forge? Answers to those questions will help come up with a price that is appropriate. In general all I can say is that $50 - $150 is the range I would expect.