ThomasPowers

Look into the Northern Rockies Blacksmith Association NRBA - Northern Rockies Blacksmith Association and see if you can get to some of their meetings. I recommend The Complete Bladesmith to everyone interested in learning bladesmithing---especially swordsmithing *but* it's not the book to learn basic blacksmithing from and getting good moving metal with a hammer *first* will save you ton's of heartache doing blades. I like Alexander Weyger's "Complete Modern Blacksmith" for his scrounge and make your own way of learning to smith. (about US$20 last time I checked) Don't get hung up on "bought tools" none of the medieval and renaissance or japanese swords were forged on what we consider an "anvil shaped" anvil (dates to early 1800's) Personally I find e-bay a terrible place to buy smithing tools as I can find them locally at fleamarkets, garage sales and junkstores much cheaper and No Shipping! My buy price for tongs is about US$5 a pair for decent usable tongs...might go as high as $8 if it's an especiably good pair I can use right now! Start asking *EVERYONE* you come in contact with about smithing tools and see what you can turn up! When people have tried this some have even been *given* anvils.

Chris; It's Friday and 9 minutes before the end of the work day here so I'll answer your questions with "Yes"! Some people add the flux before the steel glows, some will add it after it glows; some will do both! Some will pour/shake/spoon it on; some will poke it in a container of cold flux and some will melt the flux in a vessel and immerse the billet in the molten flux (much less common)

I've done some forge welding of very old rusty barbwire to make basket hooks with. Hard to weld as rusty as it was---especially keeping the barbs from burning off. Good pattern, no C says san mai!

Probably not need tempering if quenched in oil as old barbwire is usualy a mild steel to begin with. Let it cool and give it the file test!

CBran; when you speak of reduction in mass do you mean yield ore=>bloom? if so it's fairly wildly spread since a well trained smelter might get several times as much yield as someone just 'trying". The crew I was a member of went from "enough iron to make a fish hook" to 15# blooms on a regular basis with the change mainly due to experience. Blacksand = magnetite = "iron sand" to the japanese Dragging an old speaker magnet in a creek near metamorphic or igneous rocks; or glacier sediments can often get quite a lot of such "sand". Remember folks that scale is generally magnetite too so you can collect and re-smelt your scale as "ore"; probably the easiest way to get ore for many smiths. I have a multipound coffee can under one of the 1.5" hardy holes on my main shop anvil that I sweep the face into as I work

High quality planer blades may be made of HSS which heating to orange and letting cool may very well make it harder and more brittle. Lower quality blades may just be a high carbon steel and so normalize OK. What you have---Who Knows?

Most anvils I have seen in "supply" catalogs turn out to be ductile iron. Check before buying!

First: Do No Harm! Some types of anvils have extra puching holes in them. If they are not in the way plugging them may remove a useful feature Do they go all the way through? Could you use them for mounting specialized dies? With a big anvil you can start thinking of dies you mount securely and then use a sledge hammer on. (I would suggest off setting the dies from the holes though so the force is over the center of mass on the anvil. If they are terribly in the way for your style of work *then* think of filling them in.

As a fellow with a geology degree I vote for hematite: take the back of a piece of bathroom tile (white back) and scratch the piece on it and look for the rust-red streak. Smelting it in a low tech bloomery you will ned to get it WAY smaller. Doing a pre-smelt heat on it can help make it easier to break up. In the 15 years of bloomery smelting some of the best smelting stuff we had was 100 mesh magnetite. Pretty fine!

Out that the Fine Arts Metals building here at NM Tech we found a large tree crotch cutting that turned upside down made a lovely stump for the bridge anvil---theough there has been suggestions to make it anatomically correct... If I was going to build one I would use 4x4" stock vertically with 2x8-12" on the ends to "box it in"

Well having a guy on-hand to work with you is worth a ton of reading either on or off line. I know what he's saying... I tell folks that 1 saturday afternoon with a real smith is worth 6 months to a year trying to do it from a book or "remote" instruction.

If it's in good shape and a good brand snatch it up! And then take it to Quad-State and trade it for a smaller anvil and a couple hundred dollars... I got my 407# Trenton from a fellow that was tired of moving it but didn't want to give up the possibility of smithing. Traded him a 125# PW, a screw and screwbox from a postvise and $100 cash and we were *both* happy with the deal!

Some folks use a more aggressive flux with fluourspar in it for welding Ni. What flux are you using?

Just a fast note search using "welding" particularly "forge welding" "folding and fusing" won't get you where you want to be in a search.

Yes blacksmiths spent a lot of time at the cutting edge of new technologies as they were often the inventors and prototypers. Some of it may be a mind set that stuff is mutable and so you can tweak it to suit yourself rather than living with what folks decided was the cheapest common denominator to produce. I've noticed teaching that some students get the shivers when you tell them to take a factory made tool and modify it to work better for their purposes.

The earliest power hammer I have documented was pre 1000 A.D. so "traditionalists" that don't use power hammers need to be doing early dark ages work using only charcoal and real wrought iron! A common divider would be that a "traditionalist" doesn't use modern welding methods in their work.

Looks exactly like mine; they seem to have been common in the old cable tool oil well days for repointing drillbits. I got mine in OK, a retired friend of mine's father used to use one in the oilfields of PA and I found one here in NM associated with an old cable tool rig out back of NM Tech---it's now in their Fine Arts Metals classroom. Mine has a shield with some letters in it cast out of one of the ends. I'd need to make a tracing to figure out what it was though. I just had mine cleaned up for use and was disappointed to find out that it was a cast iron and not a steel anvil---explains why it was so beat up and whey they were treating it as a "consumable" though.

The best help you can get is to have someone walk you through your first welds in person. If you are near central NM, USA I would be happy to. (Hard to volunteer when we don't know where your are at...)

IIRC the large diameter axles tend to be case hardened while the smaller ones are the same steel all the way through. The cut off was somewhere between 1&2" but I don't recall exactly which. Have to ask across the street where one fellow used to work in an axle making shop. (unfortunately I'm leaving for a 3 day smithing demo today and won't be able to follow up till Monday) The smaller axles make good hammers. I prefer a bit more carbon for hawks/axes/etc.

All powerhammers want to tear themselves apart. All moving bits wear/flex fatigue in *anything* The tire hammer has a better foot print and less "flapping stuff". The Rusty is a true JYH in that you look around to see what you have and build it from that. As such it's better than no powerhammer by a bunch. The tirehammer is a bit more optimized in my opinion and so a bit pickier to build but less to go wrong and easier to maintain. Personally I ended up buying a working commercial powerhammer for less than the cost of building one, ($700 for a 30# Champion in working condition)

If I needed an anvil I might got US$50-80 on that one. Bad face repair. Bought one with a great face, so so horn and missing the tail for US$40 once that I use as my "leave outside" anvil.

Hand pump bellows of one sort or another have been used with charcoal forges for the last 2000 years. I don't expect they will stop working any time soon. To be efficient you will need a much larger stack of fuel. When I use charcoal in a coal forge I place a couple of firebricks in it on edge to make a narrower but deeper firepot. It requires less air than coal though and a bellows (or hand crank blower) is a superior method to provide it than an electric blower in my experience. In particular the double lunged bellows or the chinese box bellows work well with a forge and can be built at home fairly simply and cheaply. And as was mentioned: with charcoal you can cook over your forge!

I was in a rusty building class and would advise going to a tire hammer personally.

Well if it's marked in CWT that generally means it will be an English brand (of which there were over 200 according to Postman) One that does use the F would be William Foster; if so look for a date stamp as well! Prices in good using condition: $1 bragging/steal; $2 decent; $3 topping out; $3+ you should have let it go!

Hope you got a good price; they go for a lot of money buying them new over here! Say 50 - 90 Euros apiece