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I Forge Iron

ThomasPowers

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Everything posted by ThomasPowers

  1. Just like when Ohio Village canned their highly skilled craft demonstrators (I think the most recent of them only had 10 years experience) in favour of volunteers that basically knew squat about the time period and the crafts at that period. (and the people who could have trained them were gone!)
  2. You may want to look at armour forges for heating shaped pieces rather than heating the whole piece of sheet each time. There is a nice example over at anvilfire.com under the Armoury link, Eric Thing Raising a Norman helmet
  3. I'd use the term "central asia" rather than India as folks get mislead with the countries nowdays that weren't around back pre 1000 CE
  4. How about a circular plate you can bolt to the stand that has holes of different sizes that you can index over the large bottom hole? Nice set up and very handy if you do a lot of that sort of thing. I might go with a slanted piece of sheet metal that would skid the drift out into a tray of water/punch lube and make it easier to pick up with a pair of tongs---by the end of the day forging I'm not bending over real well anymore and so have a set of tongs for getting stuff off the floor...
  5. I've started a whole bunch of kids, young adults and adults in smithing and have found that while many do not continue in it immediately a number of them will come back to it in the future. (And an ever widening pool of people are out there who don't think that blacksmithing is some odd dangerous thing that should be banned form the community!) I'm taking a couple of forges to the Festival of the Cranes this weekend; never had problems even with the coal smoke, of course finding out that the Head Honcho's son is interesting in smithing and working him through a couple of projects may have helped! Having been smithing over 28 years now I feel kind of like Johnny ForgeSeed. I move into an area where nobody is smithing and when I leave there is a bunch of smiths to inherit my scrap pile!
  6. There is at least one other hobby smith out in your neck of the sea as I remember his laments over the problems of finding equipment out that-a-way in the smithing forums over the years.
  7. A lot depends on if you are welding up billets for pattern welding and using higher alloy steels in them; or if you are doing "drop the tongs welds" on regular items. If you are billet welding with chrome or Ni steels you may need a much more aggressive flux and you don't want ones with iron filings in them. If you are just doing regular welding then adding boric acid to your borax may help.
  8. Wow, that was a blast from the past! Tom Brown and his Brother Jim were my Scoutmasters back in the early 70's...
  9. Having melted terracotta pots in my coal forge before, are you sure you want to use them as grog?
  10. When they are overlapped they were welded---I have an original renaissance quarrel point with a welded socket along the edges. The corrosion shows it very well. or to put it differently: pretty much any way you can think of was used sometime somewhere.
  11. Ten just playing with the difference between "in" the forge and "on" the forge. I've forged a couple items that I will use to cook with or eat off of that I can toss in the forge and burn clean---I'd much rather play with fire than wash dishes (and it impresses the tourists...)
  12. Ten hammers---try making your coffee in a pot rather than the forge; it's amazing what not pouring it through the forge and catching it at the ash dump will do for the taste! (Of course I have cooked over and in a bloomery multiple times before and food can be quite tasty "out of the fiery furnace"...)
  13. Firstly heating to forging temps will "cure" any work hardening issues that haven't propagated to cracks yet and then re-hardening makes for a good edge---for shallow hardening steels just grinding can move you past the hard layer fairly fast. Secondly the idea that packing increases the density is pure BS; if it did we smiths will be dieing of radiation poisoning---you don't compress atoms. In early steels with little or no alloying, heating to higher temps for forging can cause crystal growth that forging at lower temps before heat treat can refine. With modern steels you can thermally refine the grain structure *much* better than the old "packing" method. Lastly there is always the observation effect where observations that match our pre-held beliefs are remarked upon and observations that contradict them are often discarded.
  14. Wrought iron traditionally came as a layered material---merchant bar (what was sold in the old days, hence the name) was made by taking several pieces of hammered out muck bar and stacking them and welding them and reducing them to the size sold. As with any forge weld there can be problems in the future if the original weld was iffy---especially if WI was worked below welding temp! OTOH WI can have an appreciable carbon content in rare instances and so be subject to overheating issues.
  15. That is "tempering" using tempering tongs rather than hardening. It's a good way to do a differential temper and even works with double edged blades if your heating bars have a indentation to cradle the central ridge.
  16. Unlike acetylene bottles there is not a problem with propane laying down as long as you don't heat them till they pop off and stand them up before using.
  17. The grate is a consumable and so should be made a bit easier to switch out. I'd only use 2 bolts. (I don't have any bolts holding mine in place) You may also want to notch the sides of your brakedrum slightly to get stock lower when you want to. Nice job!
  18. Small stump anvils called denglestocks were used to hammer out dings in scythe blades in the fields. Small historical travel anvils can be found in some of the re-enactment sources. And Steve Parker makes drop dead stunning stump anvils of a style that we have documented as running all the way from Roman times to the French and Indian War! I have one of his that is around 5" on a side and have used the heck out of it even bringing it to my classes in beginning smithing I teach at the local University.
  19. Lots of good research on wootz these days much of it superceding earlier research as methods are better---looks like a lot of what make woots wootz is due to micro alloying that in earluer days would have been lost under "tramp elements" in assays.
  20. Looks perfectly usable to me. Why you worried about the edge. Just use the other one if you need to. So many folks mess up anvils trying to put sharp edges on them and then you read the old smithing books and they tell you the first thing to do with a new anvil is to *round* the edges! I have an 1828 William Foster anvil that is missing 90% of the face and had the complete heel broken off. I demo with it every now and then to show what you can do with an angled 2x3" working face. It's a great anvil to use for historical sites in America as it covers most of the time period pretty well.
  21. if it's not oily or greasy you could soak it overnight in vinegar---total immersion is required. Then next day put the hose to it and scrub off the black stuff with a scrub brush under flowing water.
  22. *stainless* and electo polish it!
  23. If it doesn't have a pritchel then it's probably pre 1820's
  24. Lot's of great smithing groups in OH. I heartily suggest you locate your closest one and attend the meetings. (OH is also the "happy hunting grounds" for blacksmithing equipment.)
  25. I've already laid claim to our old kitchen stove that we are replacing with an older one this weekend---it has *2* ovens and one working burner so I can make hot tea in the shop whilst tempering different pieces!
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