ThomasPowers

Charcoal does best with deep and relatively narrow firepots and less air than coal takes. When I burn charcoal in my coal forge I place a couple of firebricks next to the firepot to keep the fuel from spreading out as all of it on the forge table will burn. I once built a bellows from a trashed printer stand (plywood) and a trashed awning (plastic impregnated cloth) and used a tubular table leg as the nozzle. Cost was about US$1 (for tacks) Much nicer than fanning the fire. Note that the bellows needs a check valve so as to not suck small hot coals into it's innerds where they will happily continue to burn!

Sounds like a way to go!

SOME REGULATORS ARE NOT OK FOR PROPANE! They need to be marked "for all fuel gasses" and if you don't know it's ok get them checked before taking advice on the internet gets you killed or your house burned down! Since I don't know how old or what brand regulators the original poster has err on the side of safety! Note that if your regulators are not ok for propane and you do use them for it and there is a problem your insurance is not required to pay!

"Mechanics Exercises" J. Moxon pub 1703 "Practical Blacksmithing" ed Richardson 1889, 1890, 1891 "The Celtic Sword", Pleiner "The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England", H.R. Davidson "The Metallograpy of Early Ferrous Edge Tools and Edged Weapons" Tylecote and Gilmour "Solid State Welding of Metals" Tylecote "ASM Handbook" "Machinerys Handbook" (esp old versions) "De Re Metallica", Agricola (16th century)

I believe that the grinding and sawing is mainly from "The Making of Tools" which was not a blacksmithing book per say. Perhaps you would have been happier with just "The Modern Blacksmith" still out there on the used market. (I myself don't use TMoT much). Duplication is quite common when you take three separate standalone books and package them as one. My copy of Richardson's "Practical Blacksmithing" has 4 volumes in one---I have put in a bookmarker at each index and just live with the duplication. I figure that having all 3 books available for the same price I bought 1 of them back in the 1970's I can put up with a lot more issues!

NO! Or as I tell folks "If I can stand with my cojones less than a foot from the fire in the summer with no problem---why would you assume my feet 2' away will stay warm in the winter? ALso remember you need ventilation which in the winter will be cold air. Buttoning things up to stay warmer = increasing your CO inhalation.

Way overkill for a beginner and not well sized for what folks are generally making. I didn't have to change out anything but have not used it since I moved out here as no gas! I use my propane forges I built at SOFA (in Ohio!) gas forge workshops *cheap*.

Knifemakers tend to like the worst grades for blade furniture as that provides the best look when etched to show the "grain". Had a friend upset with the high grade I sent him once; he wanted crusty old wagon wheel tyres! I would sort out everything that could go in a flat rate priority mail box, then everything that would fit in one with 1 cut, etc and offer it that way for folks that can use it in small lengths. While there is a market for it out there there is not a "hot" market. You might be able to "prime the pump" by having a local BNS demo making leaves out of it and etching them and then mentioning that you had some of the same stuff to sell... I just turned down a couple of pounds of 1/2" WI cause the fellow wanted $5 for it---an old bolt that had been forged into a doublehook to hold deer up for butchering I believe.

Unfortunately for a lot of folks global warming doesn't mean that everywhere is warmer all the time. It does mean that the mean annual temperature of the earth as a whole goes up and as a consequence that weather becomes a bit more active and previous models don't work as well as they used to. Expect more hurricanes and blizzards! So we get folks that say "we had a cold spell here global warm is horse hocky!" while the glaciers disappear in the andes and alps and the greenland, antarctic and arctic ice decreases markedly. Sort of like saying "since I don't have the flu nobody must be having it!".

Oxy-Propane is *preferred* for cutting! As mentione you have to have propane rated seals in the regulator and propane rated hoses and special tips; but it's cheaper than O-A in use and makes a great cut. However Propane-compressed air won't work for cutting as it's the O2 that does the cutting---had our shop teacher demonstrate by doing a cut and turning off the Acetylene after it was started and finishing the foot long cut with only O2.

"And sometimes if you keep messing with something, it get worse" "Overworked" a concept used in Art at times. Settling for "rustic vigour" is good at times.

Standard fire brick forges are usually gas hogs with long warm up and cool down times. The large Johnson's I have seen are more industrial forges and not a good choice for someone starting out. I skipped the middle man and bought a Johnson heat treat forge/furnace (Pedestal model) at a school auction in Columbus OH for US$40.

What are you welding? How are you welding it? For my Bandsaw blade and pallet strapping billets I use 20 mule team borax and roachpruf (boric acid) For plain drop the tongs welds: borax or borax with filings.

One of the features of using chaindogs is that there is nothing on the underside of the stone so it can be lifted and placed on a bed of mortar. Of course you then have the holes visible why it was used for rough work over fine work.

If it's real steel then it would make a great upsetting plate for the floor near another anvil

Note when working on wiring that has been worked on by someone else previously *NEVER* BET YOUR LIFE THAT THEY DID IT RIGHT! *TEST* *TEST* *TEST*!

Well what are you interested in specifically? "Knives and Scabbards, Museum of London" is a really great book if you do medieval historical knives---not so good if you do Art Nouveau ornamental work or industrial smithing...

Well I figure the most important one would be: "Don't risk your life and health on anecdotal information provided on the internet!"

I particularly like Weygers' "scrounge and make" philosophy; He's the one that helped teach me that anything that doesn't burn melt or break might be an anvil and a forge can cost *nothing*! As a quite skilled artist his section on forging woodcarving chisels is very good indeed! And this is the only book I have seen going into detail on making triphammer dies for specialized jobs. I originally got it when it was 3 separate books back in the '70's and re-bought it when all 3 were published combined into 1!

On the other hand, if you have access to high alloy tool steels, making your tooling out of them means you don't have to worry so much about heat transfer when the tool is buried in an orange hot block. Since I teach it's a good thing not to have to worry if my students are doing the "3 strikes then out and cool/lube, repeat". For a recent example I just had to touch up an S1 slitter rather than remake a lower alloy one. They are pretty fierce on them when hammering the eyes making ballpein hawks---I don't let them drift with the hammer eye drift until they have done the work with a cheap easily found bullpin!

Generally somewhere between 30 deg and 60 deg depending on what the user likes! There is no one best angle! What works a treat cutting axles may make a terrible one for doing fine ornamental work. I strongly suggest the iterative approach. Make one, use it, modify, use it; repeat as desired. One of the joys of smithing is you can make or modify tools to suit yourself and so are not limited to what some bean counter figures is the cheapest tool design they can get away with.

You mean like chain dogs? Or something else?

Porter bars, dolly bars, probably a heap of names for them.

So am I; but I sometimes notice a strong current of smugness from folks who make all their own tooling vs some folks who get to spend less time in their forge than the others do just making tooling! I'm for folks doing what suits them best and don't consider them lesser smiths if they decide to specialize in something else and buy *great* tools from such folks as Grant! Remember I'm a "Twisted Path Smith" all the way! I actually have a store boughten hardy, won it in an IitH...As well as some antique ones. I found I liked the jackhammer bit one more than the antique ones!

I've seen it done in Demo's using a bicycle pump. Gas forges where you can heat the entire thing up evenly are a big help! Ahh putting water into a red hot enclosed form = safe???? That sound you hear is the steam explosion paging Darwin! "IE heating an enclosed fabricated mild steel form to red hot and then injecting compressed air into it to make it expand" Or do you mean they were using high pressure water into a cold system---not what was being discussed. I still think that low pressure into a hot system would be safer than high perssure into a cold system.