Bentiron1946

Heed these words.....I would leave the anvil as is and just use it.............Wise words these are!

I have done it a few times in a solid fuel forge, no need for a gas forge. It has been done far long in charcoal and coal forges than gas so it ain't all that advantageous to use a gas forge and if you going gas why not just use your gas torch? A good fit of parts is necessary and no brazing is not a gap filler, it is and never was meant to be a gap filler. If you have that big a gap do some more work on the fit, that's files are made for, refining the fit, not just turning into knives. The method Thomas mentioned using the filings form good brass stock works better than just laying a piece of brass wire along the join, I mixed mine up in a thick paste with the flux and put it all along the seam, this seem to work the best for me and then I brought it up to temperature. My first few failed but after a couple of more I was doing them right along. A couple of years ago on the Wood Wright he had a fellow making Colonial door locks and he was brazing them together, it was a pretty good show, you maybe able to find it on their web site.

Nice looking old anvil that has seen a lot of American history. Just think of the stuff that has happened since the 1820s and you get the privilege to add you little bit to it by forging some more excellent smithing to it's history. That anvil could have come here sometime between James Madison and John Q. Adams administration, that's how long ago that was, just think of that, and it's still a function tool. How many other tools will you own do think will still be functional that long into the future? Not many, anvils may have a few dings and chips but it takes a lot to make them totally nonfunctional and this one is still able to do a good days work. Go buy it! Light off the forge and make something useful.

I used to buy new shiny bright steel by the 20' length and then found out that once I put it in the fire it didn't matter all that much so I started buying it at the salvage yard for half the price because he didn't charge for keeping it pretty. I made it into art and let it rust anyway or put linseed oil on it and turned it black so why pay a premium for shiny when rusty did as good.

Pure copper is not the easiest of metals to melt so be aware of that.

Just "thinking" over coffee in the morning sun...................You know that thinking stuff will get you into trouble every time. Here in Arizona it will fry your brain cells.

We had a neighbor for awhile from England, wife beater first class, and he used a bill hook to trim his trees while all of us used loppers. I was surprised how fast he could trim compared to those of us with loppers, a real smooth cut too. I kept waiting for the sheriff to come over for him decapitating his wife with that thing.

Out here in Southern Arizona for awhile there was a lot of talk about and some stuff was built but it was kinda expensive. My neighbor is a general contractor he built a few houses and a couple of businesses out using it. The thing was you had a fairly normal outside wall then you had to build another one just like it on the inside of the bails. If you wanted say a 3,200 SF house you ended up with the width of the hay bales all around added to foot print of the house under the roof and the way the county assesses tax is based on what is under the roof so the folks with these house had to go and argue for a tax adjustment, sometimes they got it and sometimes not. One house had a terrible termite problem in the straw and after three years the owners had him come back in and take it out and put in batt insulation, cost them a bunch of money but they only lived here in the winter, so he had all summer to do the work. The businesses he did were office and attached cooled warehouse for items that could not be stored above 85F so for them it paid off to keep their stuff air conditioned. There is a charter school near me that has straw bale insulation and I have heard that the class rooms are nice and quiet from near by traffic on a major road.

You can do a lot with them but like said there are better alternatives, however if it's all you got go for it. Some folk stand them on end and use the small sweet spot on the end, yeah, I know not very big but it has a lot of mass under it and that works to your advantage, better rebound of your hammer and that means less work for you. RR anvil are not meant for forging big stock but are good for 1/2" and down. Half inch is pushing it from my experience but you can still make a lot of neat stuff with 1/2" rod so light the forge off and see what you can make and post some pictures of it, we really like pictures.

I think that if you want the swirly pattern without doing the mokume-gane thing you will need to have one of you metals near a temperature where you can stir it like mashed potatoes and have it stay in peaks and valleys while the other metal will need to at a very high temperature at pouring temperature so that it fuse and bind to the other. After this lump has cooled you may be able to draw it out by forging but it could be a bit difficult if the two metals a very dissimilar, they could crumble if forged to hot or if not annealed often enough if forged cold split.

That is a nice looking stake holder. I made mine out of a stump from a locust tree and drilled some holes and then put a small steel plate in the bottom of the hole. Seems to work OK but yours sure seems to be the best solution I have ever seen.

We are all offering up prayers for your continuing strength and recovery after this terrible event, I just can't imagine a thing like this. May the peace of God fill your heart as you go through this, Amen. Jerry

Nice pattern in both the blade and the wood, the leather ain't bad either. You done good, very good!

Call Sid, he has the connections that you need. Peter Sevren may be able to help you. His shop is up in Sunnyslope of Hatcher.

If you want a nice quiet anvil look around for a Fisher and they even have bolt holes. My wrought iron anvils I would clinch down so solid that I never had a problem with ringing. My anvil stands were made from structural box tubing, 10" square filled with sand, 1" steel plate top and bottom with 3/8" mild steel rods welded to the top plate and then clinched over the anvils feet, no ringing.

It's a lot better than a rock and that's the truth. Don't complain when you have an anvil, many don't have it as good as you in the third world and turn out many useful products. Light off the forge, get your iron hot and make something, you'll feel better about the anvil in a week or two of steady forging.

Yeah, that's bad. I had kin in the area but they moved before that first big storm in '99 so no worry about them. I had friends in Joplin, MO but they were just outside the path of that one. I lived in OKC for awhile and was glad to get back to somewhat sane weather of AZ. Those poor children, my prayers are with the families, may they find peace, jerry

Some friends of mine work at processing deer, elk and moose antler for dog chews, boy do they get to hating the smell of bone dust as they band saw all those pallets of antler apart. I have bought some of the antler for buttons, rings, powder flasks, brooches and other decorative items and I can tell you it sure stinks when using power tools, not so bad with hand tools. I polished some American Buffalo horn to a shinny black and that stuff will stink you out of the house when you use a power sander on it. The dogs seem to think it a very good smell and lick up the bone dust.

It really is hard to fit hammer heads for the long haul here in the desert. With retaliative humidity ranging from 0% to 50% wood gets a real workout in taking on moisture and swelling, then giving it up and shrinking back down, so yeah it's bound to get somewhat loose. If you get a really tight fit when it's dry it will swell up when the humidity goes up till the fibers are crushed and then it will shrink back down and be loose after a heavy day of work. Glenn's suggestion of a soak in a 50/50 mix of boiled linseed oil and mineral spirits seems to work pretty well at keeping the balance of moisture in the wood and prolonging the useful life of a hammer handle in just about any climate. However if you are moving from the East Coast to the ultra dry of the Southwest deserts be aware of loose hammer heads, they may not stay together long unless you account for the loss of moisture, 5%RH will really suck it out of you!

Hey, It just ain't the same without you here, so we pray for your healing! Jerry

That's a good one! Vacation at states expense! I have an acquaintance that make expandable sculpture out of steel(thin)plate, welds the seams closed, welds in a valve, then connects it to an air compressor, applies heat to the panels and watches it expand and hopes it doesn't explode. Paints the panels in vivid colors and sells it to unsuspecting collectors, really it kinda nice but I think you want something thicker than what he uses.

Yeah, some of us so old we started out with a big rock for an anvil, another rock for a hammer, then used green branches for tongs, yeah things used to be rough back in the early iron age. Sounds like you're off to a good start. As you get more experience you will be adding more tools, they just seem to sprout from the ground, things like hammers are always coming along, tongs pop up too, I used to buy old chisels and punches, they are easy to modify so they come in handy. Scrap pieces of steel are handy for making tools, so look for dlo tools to make into other tools but if you're wanting to make knives and axes you will need to know what kinds of steels are best for those kinds of tools. Being a smith means that you will become a scrounger of odd bits and pieces of stuff, we waste nothing as it all can be used for something.

I don't know about in AU but here in the US I can buy new tank ends, no danger from propane, a little more expensive but safer, also just a catalog item in most cases. Then there is pipe caps, the big ones, for 24" schedule 40 steel pipe, kind of expensive but perhaps if you went to a scrap yard you could find a section of pipe and cut a cap off. Good stuff that schedule 40 and thick!

Sounds like a plan! Please be careful, it's not that I mind praying for your health and safety, that's a lot better than praying for your family after you pass. Always maintain a well ventilated work space and observer safe working conditions or you could end up with a damaged body and end up in a condition that is unpleasant. Don't ask how I know, it's just too embarrassing!

I got a delicious candy orange.......Now that would be worth trying to get on a regular basis.