ThomasPowers

Since post vises are so cheap compared to heavy duty bench vises, (especially in Ohio!) I fail to see why one would want to abuse such a nice vise over spending a couple of bucks for a postvise that thrives on abuse. Vice = Vise, english spelling and it's an english vice.

What about taking an old gas grill and pitching the grill and bolting a metal sheet to it and making a portable gas forge cart. I had one in OH I used and loved, it even holds the gas bottle for you! and am building my next one out here. There was one fellow who built a dog house to cover his anvil---had back wheels on it so he could wheel it back and use the anvil or just wheel it forward to cover the anvil. I love living out here where when I asked my builder about property line offsets he said "The dripline should be inside your own property"

Superquench is your best bet if the spikes were marked HC. Warm oil is a faster quench than cold oil as the decrease in viscosity helps faster heat removal Warm water doesn't get you anything over room temp water. Ice water can help a tad though.

Nope I moved 1500 miles away to escape the MOB---Mid Ohio Blacksmiths a Columbus OH and local area blacksmithing group I helped found. Need contact info? I'll be in Columbus NM Saturday.

You hold the *COLD* end and hit the *HOT* end; please get it right next time! (Quote from an old friend---Jim Green)

I am so glad it's going to a great home! Now ride him about keeping up the maintenance!

If you just weld up the ends you can get a "fun" situation where the outside layers heat up first, expand and bow out letting crap in. if you leave 1 or more ends "free" they can expand without bowing, or if they bow you can tap them back flat easily. The size of the billet should be sized to the forge; I've worked 3" x 1/2" x 21 layers and also 1' x 1.5" x 21 layers using different forges (and a 50# powerhammer for the large stuff!)

Check for leaks, always turn off the gas at the bottle at the end of the day, VENTILATION VENTILATION VENTILATION! Personally I have 2 10'x10' roll up doors on opposite sides for my shop along the general wind trend and unless the breeze is blowing over anvils I keep both of them open. On windless days I have a large squirrel cage fan going to assist. Of course since I am often doing blade smithing and so like to run slightly reducing CO is a concern to me!. I light my aspirated forge by taking a wooden match, lighting it and resting it over a crack in a floor fire brick so it will stay burning and then turn on the gas. Very seldomly do I have a problem with it blowing out---though the match stub may "blow out" of the forge.

Shoot almost in Downtown Columbus OH I used to dig a hole in my back yard and push a piece of blackpipe down into it and blow it with a shop vac-output--wasting almost all the air as it puts out way too much. A sack of chunk charcoal and you're forging! (I once did a trench forge like that to boxfold 3/8" plate for the firebox at the Santa Maria replica)

One of my students picked up a 4" post vise frame for US$1 IITH ticket and bought a used screw and screw box for $30 (including S&H) so his first post vise will be $31 + making the mounting bracket and spring.

Wow most of my BSB&PS billets are just wired together with 2 or 3 pieces of baling wire---lets any crud inside get outside easily during welding.

Note that if it's a cast iron anvil heating and forging is NOT an option! The description makes me wonder as "very thick and has a blunt tip" is common on cast iron anvils.. Now in general: I have seen several people grind the tip of their anvil's horn sharp---only to learn the hard way why so many old anvils have had the tip hammered blunt! Far better to make a bic that has the needed radii than mess with the horn. (handy too as you can put the bic in a postvise and have another tool in the hardy!). I've made bics from spudwrenches and bullpins (fleamarket finds at US$1 or less!) and have several conical hardy tools as well If you have a specific radius you use a lot it may be a good idea to make a hardy tool *with* that radius and not tapered. I have several short pieces of nesting pipe sections that I can drop over a hardy post to have the exact radius I need for some jobs without needing to have separate tools.

Street car tracks may be lighter than RR tracks. I have an old one that is quite slim in profile. Anyway it makes an anvil suitable for ver ysmall work or jewelry. A large chunk of steel will work better eg: chunk of fork lift tine or broken knuckle off a rail road car coupler And as mentioned above: orienting it to get the most mass under the hammer impact zone helps a lot!

May I commend the book "Step by Step Knifemaking" to your attention?

For flux I use plain 20 mule team Borax. Annealing is a form of Heat Treating; as is hardening and normalizing and tempering! You have to have the right alloys to harden by heating and quenching; some alloys will get softer when you do that! What you quench in depends on the alloy. Quenching an air hardening alloy in oil will probably shatter it. Quenching a water hardening steel in oil may not harden it enough. Tempering depends on the alloy, hardening method and what you want to end up with---400degrees to temper for 2 hours may be too much or too little. STRONGLY SUGGEST you go ILL a copy of the Complete Bladesmith, Hrisoulas, from the public library and not think that a web page or two written by ??? is a substitute for several hundred pages written by an expert!

Miniature swords made from pattern welded steel make dandy upscale letter openers.

anvilphilia????

Yes there is a specific rule on weight/length: it's---What works best for *you*! I have hammers with a wide range of handle lengths and the only thing I can think of is that as they get heavier the handles get shorter---until they suddenly jump to half length and then full length sledge hammer handles. When you find an optimal length for a handle on your "favorites" Mark it down so you can replace it with a similar one when necessary!

Well if you'd stop by my shop you might be able to talk me out of a piece of two. (See there was method in my madness to moving out here where NOBODY is close!) I'm just kicking myself as I never got around to getting two tanks I spotted discarded in a junk pile back in OH... Some CO2 tanks have a nice dimple on the bottom---have a bottling co nearby?

I recently was working some 2.5" square stock about 20" long---we welded a piece of 1" sq stock about 4' long to serve as a working handle to it. much easier than tongs and you don't have to worry about messing a pair of tongs up through forge heat or powerhammer oops! (Lighter too than a set of tongs for that heavy a work piece!) M brothers---you ever work in dispatch in OKC area? The problem you have with a handle on a billet is that generally you are reducing the size of the billet in half before folding and welding so the weld size is also getting reduced in half *and* scaled off, shocked, etc. So if you started with a good 3/8" weld and fold 4 times you end up with your weld now being 3/64" and extremely scaled to boot. Most pros expect to have to chop and re-weld the handle to the billet several times of the course of welding it up.

More damage is done to anvils trying to "fix" them than due to abuse in my experience. Remember the high carbon face layer is of limited thickness and taking it down just to make things "shiny" is throwing away years of life! Also we get a lot of "I want to weld up the edges as they are not sharp". Funny thing in the old blacksmithing texts they say the first thing you do when you get a new anvil with sharp edges is to round them off so they don't produce cold shuts in the surface of your work. Wire brush the face, hit it *LIGHTLY* with a sanding disk if you must and get to work! Excellent size for a travel anvil and once you have one anvil you are more likely to have others turn up out of the woodwork!

Gee we got three pickup loads from one hydrotester, they did demand that we cut the bottles in two *before* they left the yard; but also supplied the gas to do so. All we had to do was bring the torch and hoses and regulator. One of the gas forge building workshops used the center section from these tanks as the (very heavy) shells. I've been given 7 bottles that went through a fire as well---shared them with the fellow who's bandsaw was large enough to cut them into bells, dishing forms and central sections.

I have a pesky road runner out here that I could use that anvil to "reduce the problem to a manageable size"... (actually I do; we prefer the lizards as bug eaters than as road runner food)

Rust damage may be so severe that the first thing you need to do is to re-consolidate the wrought iron by forge welding it back together

And as another Gloomy Guss: I actually read the fine print on our insurance policy once. It includes the proviso that if I am involved in an accident with a possible 3rd party involvement I am *REQUIRED* to sue that third party whether I want to or not. If I don't the insurance company doesn't have to pay!