Michael

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Nice find! My local scrap yard keeps steering towards more aluminum and copper, radiators and window frames and less and less steel, drops, plate etc.

Nice work on the elephant head! Where did you pick up your chiseling technique? I just watched Freddy Rodriguez at a CBA conference work much the same way making troll and dragon heads.

Nice, love the very SC display napkin! need to make a slot punch.

I took a Brian Brazeal class a few months ago and he described how they did the hardy holes in the striking anvils we used. They were 1 inch hardy holes, the steel blocks were about 5x7, 2 inches thick. According to Brian, they drilled the hardies with a 7/8 bit cold, then got the blocks nice and hot in the gas forge (that took a while I'm sure) and drifted them square with a 1 inch square drift, made of some hot work steel. I don't recall the alloy they used, but only having to go a 1/16th wider, you could probably get by with a high carbon drift if you were only doing a single striking anvil.

When I needed the wedge for my larger post vise, dug around in the scrap bucket and found the very first piece of metal I ever forged in my brake drum forge on the 75lb section of I-beam anvil. as said above, a section of wood will give you the rough dimensions to match with a metal wedge, leave it long on both ends, and don't throw away anything you've forged, you never known when it will come in handy

A half a BBQ chimney of charcoal as a coal starter works great! it takes 10 or 15 minutes for the charcoal to get going, great time to get set up, (in my case, pull out the anvil and uncover the tools, fill the slack tub, get out the fire extinguisher etc) Haven't been grilling all that much lately so its been scrap wood cut into kindling and shavings to start the fire.

It took me close to 3 years of forging with coal to get to the point that I understood the use-the-leftover-coke-from-the-last-fire-to-start-the-next-one tip. Years of burning charcoal had gotten me in the habit of burning my fire down to nothing, doing final little heat 'n finish type of work. Used to only burn coal on weekdays, when everyone in the neighborhood was at work, but its gotten pretty easy to get a mostly smokeless fire going now. Shut down of the fire is just shoveling the burning coal/coke onto the forge table and letting it go out in 10 or 15 minutes. Lots of fuel to start the next fire. Now I'm getting used to finding, fishing out and working around clinker.

Nice, love the mini door knocker style.

Thanks Rashelle, that's a good idea. I was thinking I needed to keep the spike square ended, upset just below the candle cup, make a tenon and then, maybe while heating with a torch, upset the spike above the candle cup and finally point it. Monkey tool sounds easier, got some 5/8 drill rod that will do the job perfectly.

The new Coal Bin is here! The new Coal Bin is here! Got a deal on splitting a 500 pound coal order with a friend, 5 50 pound bags of Elkhorn on top of the 100 lbs already in a plastic trash can on the patio. The bags are bio degradable and disintegrate, from the bottom up, (DAMHIKT-Don't Ask Me How I Know This). I'm fine with a large pile of coal on the patio but the family not so much. Piled it into the wheel barrow and parked under cover while looking for a bin or materials to build one. Funny how often you find you need the wheelbarrow when its full of coal. On one of many trips to the building materials recycling place, having passed on $25, 55 gallon drums painted decorator colors, found what I have to assume is the top 2 feet of a heavy plastic bin of some sort, $3. Screwed some scrap 2x2 to the bottom edge, weathered scrap fencing nailed across the 2x2 and sawn off and the bin has a bottom. An old pallet in an out of the way corner of the yard and the coal has a place now. Bin size is a perfect fit for an oil drip pan as a cover even. Cheap, used scrap and pallet wood and I got my wheelbarrow back.

Its just a 6 inch piece of angle iron, with 6 cuts in it. a half inch from each end, both sides of the angle iron, almost to the middle, and one inch from each end, on one side of the angle iron. Hardest part was getting it to sit level Tony Austin's Real Nice Business Card Holder from the January 2004 BAM newsletter. looking at the plan I made the cuts twice as wide as directed, no wonder it looks like a couch!

Wife and daughters were out dress shopping Saturday, so I was able to get a good 4 hours of forging in at the backyard smithy. Trip to the scrap yard first was a little sad. Still plenty of bar stock, even octogonal steel, but the rack of drops, plate and the odd machine tool have been replaced by recyclable alumimum and copper. I get most of my project ideas from the online files of various smithing groups newsletters and all three of these projects came from that source, mostly BAM if I recall correctly. Business card holder from angle iron, more sawing and bending than hammering. The woodworking friend said it looks Greene and Greene, the daughter said it looks like a couch. Tree hooks for a friend who has a cabin in Big Bear, CA, And since EVERYTHING up there is bear motif, I thought some trees might be a nice change of pace. Finally a candle trammel that's been on the list for a while. Learned a few things-the bottom whole the rod slides thru doesn't need to be a tight fit-the adjustment holes need to all be pretty square to the plate and the same size-the hook on the rod needs to bend a little past 90 degrees to hold well, and you need to upset the rod the candle cup sits on BEFORE you bend it round and rivet the cup on. Still trying to figure out to to both rivet the candle cup AND leave a spike to hold the candle. thanks for looking

That vise is a saw vise, for sharpening handsaws. No reason not to use it for knives I suppose. Great finds, especially that swage block, and the big cone mandrel. You don't see those out West too often.

Love the eye slits, breathing holes on the helms. Well done !

That's brilliant!

I collect, restore and use old hand tools to build furniture and toys. It was the need for a lathe tool that got me into smithing. Treadle lathe is currently in use working on a tip and turn tripod table. Got a '03 Velocipede scroll saw (think tractor seat and bike pedals in cast iron with pinstriping) that gets used for toymaking. I sharpen my handsaws and use planes, brace and bits and just about every other hand powered tool for woodworking. Only the 1948 bandsaw (Darra-James) and the big Atlas drill press draw power in my woodshop.

With the heel facing away from me, the cut off in the hardy is out of the range of my hammer hand. I'm working over the face with the horn under my hammer hand. Had it the other way, horn to the left and was constantly concerned about moving the hot cut to avoid an injury.

Just recently swapped my 103 lb PW on its stump so the horn is to the right. Another smith (a former farrier) showed me how you can leave the cut off hardy in the anvil while making nails, it does save time.

Nothing I've made has been sold to anyone, but for the hanging projects that are up around the house/yard/shop, I'll strip the zinc off of 1/4 inch bolt or lag (depending on what is hanging where) with either vinegar or citric acid, toss them in the gas forge to get the heads nice and hot, clamp the threads in the vise with the copper jaw liners and quickly hammer the head, just enough to leave about half the thickness of the original hex head, but texturing the top of the bolt or lag. The bit of hex is usually enough for a socket or wrench to grab, but the look is forged and the same finish as the work.-

This is as small as I've ever been able to go. The knot on my key ring. Multiple attempts to form a ring on the end kept burning up the steel till I gave up, drilled a hole and ran a split ring thru it. I did get a rare chance to use my 1 lb straight peen though.

When I added a jacobs chuck to my old Buffalo Forge #65, I pulled the shaft and chuck from a trashed breast drill, had the shaft machined down as others have suggested, and to avoid losing any travel distance by the additon of the chuck, I swapped out the bog standard 1 inch pipe that the post drill table slid on for a longer section. The new pipe was an additional 6 inches long (IIRC the chuck stole about 3 inches) and fit into the round boss at the bottom of the post drill casting and the small base casting on the other end. Had to cut a longer 2x4 that the post drill is mounted on to accomodate the new length. All that said, I've never had a need for the sort of deep drilling situation the longer pipe allows for. a 1/2 inch hole in an inch thick plate is the most involved post drilling I've had to do, so far, and I could have done that with the set up as it was, even with the jacobs chuck.

sorry for the multiple responses, keyboard got stuck.

No, it doesn't get much better than that. Hope some of those fit your hardy hole. Congrudgulations!

No, it doesn't get much better than that. Hope some of those fit your hardy hole. Congrudgulations!