ThomasPowers

A coal forge has no hazards when "Properly Ventilated" *and* warns you that something is amiss if otherwise by the smoke. A propane forge has no warning if something is amiss until you get the CO headaches... To build a solid fuel forge you will need a handful of plumbing parts to do the air handling/ashdump. To build a gas forge you will need a handful of smaller and cheaper plumbing parts to build a burner. Can you explain your reasoning again? Making a burner is a bit more fussy than making a solid fuel air system I will admit. Can you get good smithing coal where you are at? I have to drive a couple of hours to get OK coal but can buy propane at 9 pm on a Sunday night in our small town. With a coal forge you have to learn both fire management and forging at the same time. Propane lets you concentrate on juts the smithing part. However a big component of the decision is what you plan to do---which you didn't mention. Sort of like asking us which vehicle you should buy without telling us if you will be hauling tons of gravel or commuting 3 hours every day. Solid fuel forges are better general forges as you can usually scale up or down on size of work piece/size of fire. Gas forges are more limited to what fits in them and so if you are doing different sized work you need different forges. (ranging from a single firebrick forge to one you can drive your truck into).

No pritchel hole, casting seam right down the center of the face---with draft ugh! Modern mexican cast anvil---watch out as that is a very thin heel even for a cast steel anvil! If it cast steel you don't know what alloy and you are assured it wasn't heat treated. (if it is an hardenable alloy dressing it and then hardening it might make a good anvil out of it!) Do you have a large angle grinder that you can hog metal off with? Can you talk a local Vo-Tech to mill the face for you as a class project? Like using large bastard files drawfiling it while watching TV? Now for an out of the box thought---you may want to leave a section with a slight curve up on it to make for faster drawing, sort of a wide bottom fuller. Hope you didn't pay more than 50 cents a pound for it.

David, during bad weather I used to use a 1 firebrick forge with a plumber's propane torch as the burner so I could still forge small items in my basement---did nails for a wood working project (Mastermyre Chest) a lot of hot forged silver penannular brooches, etc. I couldn't make it through a winter with no forging!

Bentiron---are you hot forging silver or working it cold?

I'd mount it to the support beam as immovable is *good* in a post vise. We mounted the one I've loaned the College Fine Arts Metals program to a vertical I beam holding up the roof by bolting a piece of structural square tubing---4"? horizontally to the beam and using a square "U-bolt" to go around the spring and back shaft of the vise and into the square tubing---worked great for several years now.

Well I used to work with a lot of Hindu's, Sikh, animist, etc folks who's traditions went back 100 generations or more in their families and have been in the SCA 30+ years so the differentiation of old and new is pretty apparent. (Had one fellow I used to work with *horrified* when he learned that we often camped with a couple who were high priest/priestess in a neo-pagan religion. I told him that sometimes the best thing a person can do is to show members of another religion that you can be christian and not a jerk---God will sort it all out in the end.)

Do the tasks that will increase future productivity *first*.

Snow---that's that white stuff you see on the top of the mountains while you're wearing shorts and a T shirt in the valley---right?

Try to get as much exposure and training while you are over there as you can. It will stand you in good stead back here. Every smith has a slightly different way of going about things---why the journeyman journeyed. (and also customers get excited when you can truthfully state that you were trained by an overseas smith! I have it a bit different: when I was in Germany for a summer I trained a smith at an open air museum on how to pattern weld...)

Double edged knives are rather common in the custom world and in fact IIRC forging one is part of the ABS test sequence

I've sworn an oath that I will work smarter and so in my shop extension I plan to have a jib crane to load heavy objects into/out of the truck. Already I have an arrangement that when I teach smithing at NM Tech that they provide loading and unloading help!

Of course hardening blades with an O-A rig has been pretty standard for stock removal bladesmiths for over 50 years now that I know of for steels with simple heat treat requirements---like O1.

I commonly weld up billets of 20 pieces held together by 3 pieces of tiewire, Helps to compress them in the post vise and then twist the wire tight working down the arched sides with a small hammer so there is no slop when things warm up a bit. Can also help to weld the billet in 2 passes so one end is still cold and tight while you start welding from the other end. Making sure your first blow is a firm rather than sharp one can help as well. Can you make a set of tongs box ended to hold the billet in place?

Why I wonder at so many folks wanting to *sharpen* their anvil horns! Looks to me like many of my anvils had the horns dulled on purpose. A bic for the hardy hole works great when you need small radii and is even at a convenient height for working small stuff.

The wake is a good way to go. At Quad-State one year we gathered around the bonfire in memory of PawPaw and toasted his memory in a favorite drink of his, passing the cup around the fire and at the end tossed the cup into the fire.

Ask over at armourarchive.org as they use such shears a lot for armour making.

My wife is always willing to help me move heavy items---she says that she will hold the whip while I do the moving...

Forge welding billets can humble a smith pretty quick; especially in a coal forge. In general if I am doing a billet I am doing *NOTHING* *ELSE* not even answering questions! Sledge: just get one with a nicely dressed face; you may want to rocker it if you only want to draw with it.

Price data can be rather odd as I generally get books through used bookstores/fleamarkets. I also don't have a camera Many of my books don't have ISBNs as they predate that system but can be great sources to track down on smithing.

"Free in tropical areas" Take a look at the pretty much complete deforestation of Haiti! In many tropical places biomass harvesting is destroying the environment. Rainforest soils are generally extremely poor soils as the nutrients are quickly washed away leaving only the current composting components to provide for new growth. While biomass can be managed as a renewable resource it generally *isn't*. Ob smithing: "The Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity" Rehder deals with biomass fueled furnaces used in ancient times for a number of purposes. (book includes plans for a "foolproof" bloomery in the appendix too.)

Why would anyone think they would be common in places with pretty much zilch population density "back in the day". NM is the same; most of the smithing stuff is brought in from other states recently though I keep hearing tales of tongs and stuff abandoned at old mine workings out in the nowheres!

There are quite a number of these pots extant (well pieces of them) that were done from iron so it wasn't a rare version of them at all. Note that iron is less of a food safety issue than copper or bronze is; but well seasoned no problem either way. How about repousee a sigil for each panel? 4 side panels and perhaps "spirit" as the bowl to "hold" them all? Thomas, (not pagan or neopagan but I can work with symbolism...)

Thanks for the update!

Chris with that set up I'd guess you would do better with a car heater fan; also 12v and much better made and without the annoying hair drier whine. Cheap/free from wrecked cars too.

There is a dynamite smithing group in VA; hook up with them and you'll be on the fast track for sure!