ThomasPowers

Yes. (Character count police now happy?)

Why are you quenching? Do you really need to? Could you get by with just a gallon of warm water you haul out to the forge when you go out there and pour out when you leave there? If you are forging A36 it's a *LOT* safer to normalize rather than quench!

Babbit is a bearing material, like most triphammers have in their bearings. It is easy to cast in blacksmith shop settings. You smoke the original screw so that the molten babbit won't stick to it and *HOPEFULLY* you can unscrew it from the new "nut" you have made.

Wrought Iron: Its Manufacture characteristics and Applications, James Aston, A. M. Byers Company, Philadelphia The Byers company came up with pretty much the last WI production method where they would pour molten steel into slag and then hydraulically "mix" it to get wrought iron---a process that made a friend of mine scream about going backwards. As I see it the mix you suggest may have a problem that the melting temp of the silicates is below that of the welding temp of the iron---one reason that multiple forge weldings helps "refine" wrought iron as it extrudes silicates during the welding process. Putting pressure on a mixed state material can become "interesting". Can you get old "rock wool" made from steel refining slag? Nothing like experiments to show what can be done!

Jafo can you share your documentation for this for 1814? I've seen them from later in the 19th century out here in the west; but nothing so early and so would really appreciate the cite!

Having an anvil professionally repaired is usually more than the cost of buying a good one. At the last anvil repair workshop we held *1* anvil took 6 hours of a professional weldor's time, pounds of rod and lots of abrasives to get back to an "as new" face. (and this weldor is a blacksmith and teaches welding so he did it right!) The repair was to fix where a machinist had milled the face clean and sharp and too thin to use as an anvil anymore.

We used to hang paint cans on the horn and heel of the 400# anvil and build scrap wood fires in it. A warm anvil lets you do a whole lot more in a heat, helps protect the anvil from damage and is a great place to sit while waiting for a piece to heat up to working temp. Note that it is possible to quench high carbon steels using a cold anvil or post vise---usually when you don't want to and the brittleness is a nasty surprise!

Brazing a new screwbox is described as a method of fixing a stripped out one in the late 19th century blacksmithing manuals---casting Babbitt around the *smoked* screw is another method they mention.

Can you make a cake just by pouring all the materials in a pan and sticking it in the oven? Some of what makes wrought iron wrought iron is the mechanical working of the system---look at the byers method of making wrought iron using bessemer steel. Note that it's ferrous silicates not just silica. If you go just by composition some of the high silica, clean iron transformer steels would be "wrought iron"---but they don't work or look anything like wrought iron The Byer's book on Wrought iron is cheap I suggest you buy or ILL it.

Have you thought of casting/machining a refractory piece for the end of the burner? Many commercial forges do not have the end of the burner project into the forge at all it bing inset in refractory in the side of the forge.

Note that grinding BeCu, beryllium copper, can result in your death. If you want to make non-ferrous "damascus" look into Mokume which can even be done just using US sandwich quarters... A.G.Russel once flattened an Al beer can and honed it till it would shave. Didn't hold the edge long but it was sharp!

Navy ships had forges but no horses or mules---they were part of a good repair machineshop for years!

I used to work for a professional swordmaker, (as in I saw one he sold for $13K back 20 years ago or so...) He didn't have a mill or lathe either. What he had was skill and practice!

I have a 5 gallon bucket I drop cheap old ballpiens in when I find them for $1 or less at the fleamarket so I'm not tied to seasonal fluctuations...though over time I do drain the local supply down and I do run into folks that are very surprised that while I buy any ballpien hammer at $1 or under I won't bother to even look at more expensive ones. Note that a manufacturer can change what alloy they are using every week if they want to!

I've done hand forged Christmas ornaments for years. Down here making chilis and painting them bright red or green is a good project. For small ones I forge down the tubular legs from a junked bag chair. My parents are pretty well off so handmade is a great way to give them something that they don't already have 5 of.

Last time I needed to bring home some 1"+ WI rod I tied it to the front and back bumpers with it running underneath my vehicle---didn't have to cut it that way. Of course I ran it away from the driveshaft and other under car stuff.

Sure you can! induction heating and then used cold quench blocks in the vacuum to pull heat out of the piece.

Nice shop---all that wire mesh to hang tools and stuff from! I do not approve of it's location though as they can keep an eye on what you are doing from that kitchen window!

Good to have you back with humour intact; now you can settle down for a long winter of telling new folks to add their location into their user CP! Have you looked into making a micro forge you can use inside for small stuff?

RIOGRANDEIRONWORKS; there are sometimes forges for sale on the NM ABANA Affiliate web page. ABANA-chapter web page Are you going to the SWABA meeting this Saturday---we could ask the group about one for sale and it will be at Rob Gunter and Sons blacksmithing school in Moriarty and he has made a number of very good propane forges before. Thomas President of SWABA (South West Artist Blacksmith Association)

Well how about a chandelier made from an old buggy tyre with those rods riveting into the tyre and then curving up to be forge welded into the hanging hook. Sections heated and flattened for knife hardware? Short tripod for a raised firepot---make the feet to hook on the edge of the firepot and get a cowboy coffee pot to hang from it over the fire. Don't be in a hurry to use it; especially if you have never forged WI before.

Good Excuse Frosty; what was the one you were using *before* the GWB attack? The last set of skewers I made was designed to fit in a rack that held them so they would heat well and be spaced---the rack had slots for the blade like sections to lock into and on one end of the skewer I had a rounded section and then the blade twisted 90 deg so you had the option of locking them in place in 4 different orientations by merely using the round section to turn it in the slot and then push or pull it slightly to engage the blade section to hold it.

High carbon steels are harder/tougher to work than low carbon steels even when just normalized. But yes they are not nearly as hard as they will get when properly heat treated for hardness. We tend to talk about them with their possible hardness in mind even when their current state is pretty soft. So file steel is a high carbon *hard* steel that actually might be pretty soft if you have annealed it.

I've been smithing going on 29 years now and have made 1 set of tongs, (I forged them from Ti!), repaired a bunch of old ones and have picked up some new ones in IITH. If I see tongs at the fleamarket and they are not trashed I will buy them at $5 or less on spec. If they are a good commercially made tong in a pattern I like to use I might go to $10. I will go to $10 on ones very close to medieval examples I have seen too for my LH forge kit. I pass on heavy crude ugly tongs

I did it for 15 years in inner city Coolumbus OH. Had one student who worked out of his dorm room, had a forge out back with the BBQ grills and carried his anvil back and forth. Shoot with a 1 firebrick forge I've forged in the basement of my house when the winter was bad.