ThomasPowers

What quenchant you use is based on what alloy you use *and* note that most of the professional information is based on a 1" cross section. With knives you often back up one in the quenchant list as we are using much smaller cross sections. So a water quenching steel may do fine in a fast oil quench, an oil quenching steel may actually harden with an air quench, etc. If you don't know your alloy make a sample piece the same size as a blade and test it on various quenchants starting with the most mild. Stop when you get the hardness you want and then test tempering temperatures on it. A lot of work but if you want to use scrap it's the price you pay! I tell my students to expect to ruin their weight in steel learning patternwelding and knifemaking!

A sen is a drawknife for metal. Japanese term though the tool existed in Europe as well. *carefully*! (Use a curved or a round file)

I often accept old chisels as "change" at the fleamarket and throw them in my High C bucket. Sometimes they surprise you, I've run into some that air harden when in knife sized crossections, and a few that were hard to harden at all!

If you have a single person smithing in your smithy, it's not much of a help. Yes it can help if you sometimes break down large stock with a sledge (and so want the anvil a bit lower) and then go on to do bladesmithing and want the anvil a bit higher); but it's not that big of a deal---a piece of 2x12 on the floor will accomplish the same thing (stand on it when working big stock with big hammers) If you run a teaching forge, then having anvils at different heights for different students is pretty much a must. Teaching up to 6 students at the same time I have a number of anvils all at different heights and sometimes they have to share if two need the same height anvil.

Out by the *old* town dump and saw some rod sticking out of rotted timbers on Saturday. Looking at the striations I realize it's real wrought iron and managed to extract 3 pieces the same diameter---around 1/2" and the same length around 6'. Now I have the stock I need to do a copy of the Oseberg tripod! For Free even!

May I ask you to seriously consider attending classes at the American Bladesmith Society School near Texarkana AR? As to "traditional" how traditional? 100 years ago, 1000 years ago? (big changes after 1856 (Bessemer/Kelly), 1700's (Abraham Darby), high middle ages (use of coal instead of charcoal), around year 1000 (better steel/catalan forge, etc) , etc in the production of metal and smithing...) May I commend to your attention "The Complete Bladesmith, The Master Bladesmith, The Pattern Welded Blade" for learning modern methods. Learn the "easy" ways first! Then on to studying earlier times "The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England (pay no attention to the appendix on pattern welding, it's been superseded by more recent research), "The Celtic Sword", "The Knight and the Blast Furnace"---focuses on the metallurgy of armour but that ties in with the metallurgy of swords used against it! If you live in the USA and do not have a public library card and know how to use Inter Library Loan---shame on you!

If you harden a moderate to high carbon steel YOU MUST DRAW TEMPER on it or it may shatter in use! If you quench a low carbon steel you may not need to as it doesn't get hard enough anyway... Many people do not harden high carbon tools that will be used for hot work but just normalize them---this is maybe what was being referred to. As to size of spring, I'd assume you would just go with what was available; maybe make a different set later if you got larger/smaller dia spring stock... A lot of blacksmithing starts off like that old recipe for rabbit stew: "first you catch your rabbit"

There are many ways to make a fuller: you can grind it in with a belt grinder, you can scrape it in with a sen, you can mill it in with a mill (horizontal or vertical), you can file it in, or you can forge it in. Note that many times you will use a number of these methods together, eg: rough forge, then use the the sen then grind with the belt grinder to finish. One method is not necessarily better than another and if you are working pattern welded materials you very well may choose stock removal over forging so as not to mess up the patterning. As to helpers in the smithy, well traditionally there would be half a dozen ranging from day labor/new apprentices doing grunt work to journeyman smiths working on their own or helping with complex work done by the master smith. We think of a smith being "alone" because the 'recent' memories of smithing were of it's passing days when most smiths were coasting downhill as factory made stuff was taking over and they could not afford the labour. But look at the photos of blacksmith shops 100 years ago, you almost always see a groups of people posing at the smithy door! I tell folks that having a single person working in a smithy is just like having only the surgeon in an operating room today.

Do a good anneal on it after forging to shape! Your proposal is a very common way to do it. Don't forget to leave the edge a bit thick before heat treat, it's a pain to reduce after heat treat but really helps control warping or cracking on the edge.

Patrick has sent me pictures of them working 40" dia stock at Scott Forge; gotta love a set of tongs you *drive* around....;so 3" is small stock to them...

That bellows looks weird. I have built and forged with paired single action bellows in a Y1k set up and also the double lunged great bellows in a renaissance+ set up---built the great bellows over 20 years ago now. The one in the picture looks like it has the central board but the top is rigidly mounted rather than floating. Anyway you should be able to get enough heat to forge with a bellows that size if it's properly made---how big a nozzle does it have?

Yes and Yes. Requires extreme cleanliness and or an aggressive and toxic flux (can welding or fluorspar added to your regular flux). I assume you have a lot of experience welding non-stainless steel before this right?

It's a decent method to judge the relative worth of items of differing sizes but similar configuration---do we buy diamonds or gold by weight? Ah yes we do! If you have two Peter Wrights in similar condition how do you judge which is the better deal---well the one that is $1 a pound is a better deal than the one that is $3 a pound no matter what the weight actually is!

Acetylene can exothermically disassociate without the presence of O2! So the tank could go up if an explosion propagated up the hose. Propane won't----inside the propane tank there is no O2 so no explosion possible.

Bentiron, you are welcome to list it in the SWABA tailgating section in our on-line newsletter. NM is close to AZ...

"As heavy as is easily moved by the owner" I'd go with 75 pounds as the lower end.

Depends on what's in your local ground. Where I live there is a bentonite pit and a pearlite mine and so the answer is *yes*. Back in OH the answer was no.

Uh Charlotte; coal started to be used as a smithing Fuel in the high middle ages, (Gies & Gies, "Cathedral Forge and Waterwheel"), and the side blast went on up until sometime in the 19th century. Probably more a function of the great boom in casting stuff at the end of the American civil war.

How about when you moved 1500 miles and it was going to be 7 months before any of your household goods show up, you pack a forge and anvil in your vehicle as "must have to survive" stuff. yup I did!

I used to buy drops for US$1 a pound from a local springmaker.

Ohio? Hers a fairly recent tale of making an excellent anvil for about $25 and some sweat equity that happended in Columbus OH: Marco/Krieger Armory - Rapiers and Accessories and yes I am the Thomas mentioned---I drug out the other fork and it moved to NM with me. Glad I didn't know how much it weighed when I did it!

Perhaps you should look at how they were made in the civil war (US Civil war I presume and not the Spanish, English, etc) That way if you ever wanted to use them in a Civil War era demo they would be spot on! Now just for buttons in general mosaic damascus with your initials would be a nice touch---though pay attention to what UnicornForge has written. I have been greatly amused by folks wearing Levi 501's coming out of the cold and standing too close to the wood stove...

Punching on a wood pritchel won't work real well as the wood will tend to burn out and be a 'soft" surface where the punching wants it to be hard and resist . OTOH just get a chunk of thick steel and drill a "pritchel" hole in it and place that on your log (or anvil) My "loaner anvil" has the heel broken off at the hardy; nice face, decent horn---a great anvil and at US$40 for 100+ pounds a great deal in my opinion. I loan it to students to use until they can find one for themselves at a *good* price. Seems like as soon as you have an anvil they start showing up around you. My current student was just give a 130# Peter Wright in nice condition by his grandmother. His uncle got the larger one...

When I built my first forge it was made from an old dry sink. I used clay form the local creek and had a piece of pipe with a lot of holes as the air input. I had it horizintally on the bottom of the foge and ran a ramf0d inside it to control the length of the fire.

Talk with your rehab folks to make sure you are not causing different problems down the line; you sure don't want to lose *anything* you have left. One of the old SOFA guys built a minature powerhammer that sat in the hardy hole and used the anvil as its anvil. Only about 5# ram as I recall but it sure would help bladesmithing! A lot of us start to think about powerhammers as we age...