Bentiron1946

Nice job on the cat tails and cranes, you done really good on them, now do some more for the neighbors.

Nice anvil! Those are an expensive anvil these days, actually any day of the week. Those Germans sure put the hardy hole in a strange place according to American/English traditions right?

Yeah, that's an easy and cheap class ring for sure.

I can't let my wife ever see these or she'll want me to me a dozen sets for all her friends! You done good.

Many years ago when I was doing drafting I started doing some tasks with my left hand and got almost as good at them as with my right. It sure made life easier when inking a long line and sheet of paper 48" wide to be able to just shift the pen from one hand to the other. It's all kinda unnecessary now that CAD does the drawing but even in my jewelry making these days I try to split up my tasks between hands. During the Vietnam conflict a friend of mine was a very good pistol shot, he lost his dominate hand, he became and even better shot with his non dominate hand after his rehabilitation, he took even more game than he did with a rifle. It didn't slow him down much to switch hands in life. In one of my art classes we had an elderly stroke victim and she had also been a right hander and was transformed in an instant to a lefty and her work was wonderful, she out shown most of us younger ones. Sometimes it is good to explore the other side of our being.

Many years ago when I was doing drafting I started doing some tasks with my left hand and got almost as good at them as with my right. It sure made life easier when inking a long line and sheet of paper 48" wide to be able to just shift the pen from one hand to the other. It's all kinda unnecessary now that CAD does the drawing but even in my jewelry making these days I try to split up my tasks between hands. During the Vietnam conflict a friend of mine was a very good pistol shot, he lost his dominate hand, he became and even better shot with his non dominate hand after his rehabilitation, he took even more game than he did with a rifle. It didn't slow him down much to switch hands in life. In one of my art classes we had an elderly stroke victim and she had also been a right hander and was transformed in an instant to a lefty and her work was wonderful, she out shown most of us younger ones. Sometimes it is good to explore the other side of our being.

My mechanic used to just give me coil springs and leaf springs and other odds and ends whenever I wanted them, he is good about that, a real nice guy. One time he had so much steel parts piled up I took it to the scrap metal dealer for him after I had cherry picked all the good stuff out of the pile and passed some of it on to some friends of mine for tools and knives. Most of the time you don't need to buy steel, it's out there for FREE, you just gotta look for it and ask real nice and it's yours.

"unknown steel"........I think I have some of that too, it seems to be everywhere these days. Anyway that is a nice looking short sword you made there, you done good! Now go make a real one with known steel.LOL

Nice job on the plasma cutting, WOW! that's a nice looking fence and I like the wheat heads.

I had my youngest son bring my broke face 125 up to the house after I polished horn and face to a mirror finish for jewelry work, well that lasted about a week and then it was back out on the patio to once again gather a fine coat of rust. My beloved didn't like the fact that all the male dogs in the house decided it was as good a fire hydrant to them. Yeah, when a wife wants to exert pressure there just ain't no stopping them from getting their way, not in a mean way either.

I guess some of us are into self flagellation, get over it, LOL.

Nice anvil, go light off the forge, get some metal hot and beat the face clean while making some nice fireplace tools. Ain't it fun to beat on hot steel? I love hot metal!!!

I have made a set of miniature forming stakes out of RR spikes and did and oil quench on them and they seem to be holding up well to my forming copper and brass sheet over them along with some of the heavier gauges of wire. Lots cheaper than commercial miniature stakes and will out live me so I guess they were a bargain.

Back in the day of silver coins it was easier to use a stainless steel spoon for the task. I made one in the Navy, standing watch gets pretty boring down in the boiler room during the mid watch and there is so much noise what's little more, you couldn't even hear the the spoon strike what with all the forced draft blowers, steam driven fire pumps, boilers firing, it was quite a cacophonous situation so what was the sound of a spoon striking a coin but a little diversion.

Personally I wouldn't pay a dollar a pound for it in that condition but there are those who would. We had some folks move in the area from Tennessee and they had a really beat up Vulcan and it sold for about $2.25/# and it wasn't worth that much, more like $0.25/# because so much of the face chipped off, just gone, but anvils are in short supply here in AZ.

Nice anvil, just don't clean it up with an abrasive disk, you don't want to remove material just rust so use a wire brush with your 4" grinder to do that task. Now go light off the forge and have a good time!

I lost my father to colon cancer. I'll put him in my prayers and your family too. Jerry

Yeah, Bin Working sure is a crafty fellow, he is so hard to find. When you do give that man a raise.
I saw a WWII poster that showed a smith but man that had to have been when I was in grade school.

There are times when I look back and see times when I was condemned heavily for not being a "traditional" smith, I didn't do it like they used to. I liked to make art and the anvil and forge got me what I wanted. I couldn't get what I wanted with casting or cutting up metal but I could get there only by forging. There were two schools of though in the Phoenix Metro community of smiths in the 70s when the ABANA chapter here was formed and the school of thought I was somewhat loosely associated with was not at all welcome because we were not traditionalist. We would use an arc welder to make a join and then cover it with a clip or then drill holes for decorative rivets. You would have thought that we were worshiping at the alter of Baal. Yes, I could and did do traditional clips on some scroll work but it was much faster to tack weld the whole grille together first and then put the clips on. I could make tongs but like Thomas it was a lot easier to stop a few antique stores, the flea market or garage sales and get them for a few dollars each than spend the time making them.
Sometimes I think we need to realize that if we were to take a blacksmith from 1860 and transplant him to 2013 he would soon ditch his forge and take a CNC for his preferred method of metal work, he rather be in an air conditioned room getting calluses on his hand from working a joy stick than from the handle of a hammer. Do what you want when working your metal and don't feel guilty about it, leave that to the other person.

It'll do in a pinch, naw, it's a good looking anvil, That weld line Yaggy is talking about is where the two halves were possibly forge welded together but I don't think so, it looks more like a scratch in the patina just about the weight stamps, I can't quite make them out. That section that is missing just behind the pritchel hole is a little bothersome but not a deal killer unless the seller is asking something in the neighborhood of $3/# then I'd say "No thanks, price is too high" and dicker some with them to get it down around $2/#.

Ain't it just one of the funest things on earth messing around with molten metal, just be safe as this stuff will scar you for life, both on the inside and on the outside, please be careful.

Cyclopes twins, well at least between them they will binocular vision. Do you have a link to her work so we can all admire it?

So true about the edges being hard and therefore chipping easily, I put a radius on mine which seems to have stopped some of that from happening. Some folks put a radius on the edges and some don't so I guess it's up to you as whether you do or not but I think it helped stop the chipping.

It will sure make a nice bench block for working small pieces of copper and silver for jewelry once you polish up one face of it to a mirror finish.