ThomasPowers

You may remember that I have kinfolk in AR... Well planned shop placement!

Wrought Iron the material is a composite consisting of a clean iron with ferrous silicate spicules distributed through it. It used to take quite a bit of "working it" to get it in usable form (look up puddling, shingling, muck bar, merchant bar, etc...) It was also the material that the smith made things out of for about the first 2000 years of using iron made by man. Using the term wrought iron for items that have been worked is rather like going to the store for linens---all made of cotton or poly cotton *BUT* they used to be made from linen and the name of the material stuck for the type of objects originally made from it. So WRT materials there is a difference WRT objects made from such materials the name stuck. "What English lacks in precision, it makes up for in ambiguity"

"no more complicated than a solid fuel forge I would think" Like "Take a shovelful of dirt out of your yard, stick a piece of black pipe in it to the bottom, place a blow dryer in the other end of the pipe" Must be real simple! Or perhaps you should research over "think"

Jake, was that one of the Pennsic Bloomeries?

Jake; You know that if you are a paid attendee at Quad-State you can sell for FREE there and you will not be able to find a larger gathering of smiths itching to spend money that there! OTOH you will have some stiff competition from folks making and selling hammers there too.

Could you chain some empty barrels to your shop equipment and I'll see if I can get some big magnets attached to the bridges on the mighty Mississippi!

Funny I had a student make a blade from a crowbar. Part of the project was to forge out the nail puller end into another blade like shape for testing of heat treat options. Vegetable oil was a bit soft so we went to brine and it hardened nicely---so much so that we have 2 knives, though the end one looks like a fish with the puller the tail. Test your steel BEFORE you waste all that forge time! (And note that the steel used in a craftsman crow bar could be changed at will by the company, no guarantee that any two of them will be the same alloy!)

And remember, like the Pirate Laws, these are only SUGGESTIONS! *NEVER* claim that a piece is XYZ because it's on such a list, only that it might be XYZ. Shoot I have run into 1 strain hardened micro alloyed leafspring in my 28 years of forging---low carbon and not 5160! Test first!

Pretty much *ALL* forges producing heat by combustion will produce CO; the "clean burning" ones tend to be more dangerous that the dirty ones as you *know* that breathing that nasty greenish coal smoke must be bad for you; but the invisible propane exhaust may be worse!

Well folks in TX have been discussing bailing out of the USA ever since they joined as far as I can tell---save for the years when they have someone in the White house, (LBJ, B I, B II). And if you think helping out the car companies doesn't do anything for anybody else you had better take Econ 101 again and review the Guns vs Butter debates on how money put into the economy at one point spreads. Frankly I'd rather see WPA and CC re-instituted and the USA infrastructure replaced and updated. I recently noticed that most of the curbs and sidewalks in our town were WPA made and they have sure been there a while wearing down! I figure out town had dirt streets before the WPA came along.

Better make it 2 in case they are *small*.... What size, type, condition are we talking about? I can't sell plasma right now as the Doc's won't let me; but I am working on making rasptlesnakes for the state fair---they usually pay for my winter propane fill-up for the gas forge; but...

With a tall bloomery you probably charcoalize the peat before it gets down to the reduce the iron part of the system.

I've bought anvils in worse shape---a 1828 William Foster with heel broken off and 90% of the face missing and the last bit of the face quite swayed. Of course I paid $5 for it....worth more for the Wrought Iron!

Actually I've had antique dealers call me up trying to get rid of anvils because they are not in their shop's category. Called a friend hunting for an anvil and he ended up with a 150# PW for US$90; but he had to go unload it from the dealer's van... If I find something I'm interested in I might ask the prices on other things to get a feel for how much they are pricing things for and ask about the anvil later rather than fixating on the anvil to start and watching their eyes start to glow red and the smell of burning sulfur waft about..

Frosty you should really clean out your ears more often just look what was in it!

Yes I sure would like one but running my hobby off a $20 a week allowance makes it difficult to fund "large" purchases. But I wouldn't mind hearing about them just in case!

More info please: do you want to reduce the thickness of hot steel by rolling or do you want to make circles and rings from hot or cold metal---both are called rollers though the first one is better called a rolling mill.

And NOBODY is willing to pay you extra for it! (well very few snooty historical purists) far easier to find it in the scrap stream than make it. (And I have worked on a bloomery smelting team for nearly 15 years as part of a LH group)

Yes you have to backtrack to Florida Artist Blacksmith Association and then go to the how-to section and select Nails Peter Ross Method

Wow drifter you must be pitiful to have a young building feel sorry for you! Did the smith feel that way as well as his smithy? (Just a bad joke folks about a common typo, move along, nothing to see, move along...)

We had our ABANA affiliate meeting at a pro's shop and after a great demo he offered to let us "play". So I got to try working some 2.5" square stock I had brought---just in case---on his 500# chambersburg powerhammer and on a 100# LG. We welded a 4' long 1" sq handle on it and heating it HOT (we had pieces forge weld in the forge by just touching!---Had to hammer them apart and no flux!)) I was able to make them into the shafts for some stake anvils, over 3' in total length but part of that is a spike for a stump and the tenon for the anvil head. Big stuff and big hammers can tire and sweat you out! Now to clean them up and "rivet" the heads on. (these started out as odd sledges, one was a spike driver, others look more like drilling hammers and I noticed how much they looked like medieval armouring stake anvil shapes and so...) Now when he gets the 2000# Chambersburg running I might try to get a crew together to do an anvil!

I'll double your money on it (and pay for the shipping!)

Hinges---roll the ends over a pin and drill out the nail holes for screws.

I think his point was that this should be in the "For Sale" section (called "tailgating") rather than in the discussion section. I'm sure we all like to see stuff for sale---just like it to be where it should be. Makes it easier for folks hunting to find it.

There are "bush hammers" with the face composed of rows of raised pyramids and splitting hammers with a sharp straight peen and even another type composed of hardened edged square stock pieces lined up in a row. Hardness will depend a lot on what type of stone---granite is quite different from limestone and I can cut soapstone or talc with my fingernail!