Michael

I usually start a forging session with a couple three nails to get warmed up, make sure everything is where I need it and the forge is hot enough. Some really rough nails have been produced, then I toss them towards the large speaker magnet on a corner of the vise table and get to work.

Well, the magnet wasn't holding them anymore, the newest nails just bounced off the top of a pile so I pulled them all off, stuck them in large tuna can went back to work.

Later on, as the forge was cooling down, started counting and sorting by size and ugliness,

102 Nails, or your average apprentice's work output before breakfast!  Probably another 2 or 3 dozen in use around the shop and the smithy, so not really a stellar output in close to a decade of lazy shadetree smithing, But the last one, in the top of the egg crate isn't half bad.

a little heavy for smithing tongs, a little short for sort of tongs that were used to move rail.  Specific to some clip or retainer, maybe a part on a coupling, those are all sorts of odd shapes.  To a real Railroad Junkie, they are probably a common as dirt *blurfl*, like nippers are to smiths.

I'm also in the Bay Area, work in the City and live in the East Bay, not far from BART.  I've got coal and propane forges set up on the patio. Only just took my first class in April after nearly a decade of messing around with fire and hot steel.

I've painted mine many times but he dragon's breath pretty much destroys the paint around the door and the port out the back. Mostly the paint is to keep the shell from rusting too much when its not being used.

Nicely done, love that little "inlay" on the tang between the scales.  Epoxy over file work?

This was my first "anvil" 75 lbs of I beam. Not bad if you stay over the center web.

Well done! nicely shaped bowl. Any file work on those bowl edges?  are you burning charcoal there?

That's pretty darn smart!  First time I've ever seen someone put the RR track anvil on the RR track plate.

Not sure what you mean by a "camping cylinder", the short, fat cylinders that a camping lantern runs off of?  Too small for a naturally aspirated propane burner.  I use a 20 lb, Barbecue type propane cylinder, an easy swap or refill here in California.

A lot of people use larger tanks for propane forges. I've seen (and lusted after) 40 lb cylinders on some souped up grills, residential propane users frequently have 100 lb tanks and many smiths will link up multiple 20 lb cylinders to keep the evaporative freezing to a minimum.

back to the torch, I would think a swirl flame nozzle would be more effective than a pencil tip. 

Where are you located?

I did both a little firebrick forge and a small pipe forge with a MAPP gas torch before I built a burner. MAPP is getting hard to find, when ever I'm at a garage sale, in an actual garage, I always look for those bright yellow MAPP cylinders.

Try it with a torch first, see if you get enough heat to forge with, you can always build a burner if the torch won't get your work hot enough.

the size of the forge chamber will be the determining factor if a torch can get you to the heat you want. I had no problems getting to forging (but not welding) heat in the pipe forge (a foot of 8 inch pipe, an inch of kaowool, firebrick floor). the brick forge was a soft firebrick, hollowed out with a spade bit, but only used for annealing and heat treating moulding plane irons.

definitely leave an opening in the back for longer work, you can always cover it with a firebrick to keep the heat in.

Nice edges for such an old anvil.  Great find there!

That's really nice. I like the way the side fences are incorporated into the landscape, very well done!

I would go for about 28 or 30 inches off the ground, lower than a regular anvil.  Recently took a BB class and the block striking anvils were about that height. There was one shorter person in the class and she wold pulle up a couple of railroad ties to stand on and get a really good strike just by being raised up a little bit.

You've got some fine striking anvils there.

You have a good eye. Nicely done.

Sounds like you got a real deal, especially on the drill bits!

I've had some great luck at garage sales finding blacksmithing tools.  A buddy of mine says garage sale and flea market success is all about "Pattern Recognition", knowing what that shape at the bottom of the box or back of the pile is, I can't even count how many drifts I've pulled out of 'that pile of rusty junk out back'

Sledge hammers hide in the space next to the garage doors, tongs end up in boxes of kitchen tools, flatters, punches and fullers get tossed in boxes of hammers. The flower templates someone thought were trivets, the drill press vises all came with a big old Atlas drill press ("just get all that junk out of here, please")

Eyes open, tetanus shots up to date and off you go.

Nice looking header. It really stood out in the nailmaking video.

Yes, single Ron Reil style 3/4 inch burner, in a Freon tank gas forge, there is only a single inch of Kaowool insulating, ITC coating and a kiln shelf floor   I used a #57 drill bit when I drilled the lamp tube that runs thru the bell housing, and have been thinking I need to step that down to a smaller bit. 

Been having so much fun with the gas forge that I didn't want to take the burner apart just yet. Very happy that I haven't run into any gas leak problems or tuning issues, just using a lot of gas. At $21 for a trade in tank or $16 to get it really full at the propane dealer (weekdays only), forging for $5/hour seems like cheap entertainment, but not if others are getting 10 hours from a tank!

Yes, second on wanting to see that idler valve you set up!  I'd like to hard pipe (is that the right term?) my propane forge so the rubber hose is out of the way, and an idler circuit would sure save on the propane.  Currently getting about 4+ hours to a 20 lb tank.

Well, if its a lower down functionary of the company, I'll make every effort to let the head of the company know exactly what a fine employee they have. Something in writing usually makes it way to a personnel file.

Very nicely done there. Would you expand a bit on how you held the little steel squares while forging the corners and the pips? I could see sending hot cubes of metal flying all around the shop if I tried this.

On the beverage font, these are much better than the 'whiskey stones' you see, granite cubes to keep in the freezer for the same purpose. But.......

as an experienced and frequent consumer of adult beverages I have to say, the pursuit of non melting cubes is a fools errand,

if your ice is diluting your drink too much, make a smaller drink, drink it faster and make another. The subtle joys of single malts are enhanced by a single,large cube of ice melting and opening up the flavors of the scotch. Ryes and bourbons also benefit from the transition of strong to dilute.

But very cool dice that will get a space on the project list.  I know a craps player who would love a set.

Bring it tomorrow, we'll need a flatter for some of the hotcut project we'll be working on and mine is unhandled as yet.

Longer tongs, especially longer pickup tongs to get small pieces out of the forge before transferring them to tongs that grip the work better.

Knowing where the fastest, cheapest place to get your propane tank refilled/replaced

Just got back from a 3 day workshop at Augsburger Studios in Templeton, California. Brian Brazeal led a  free form group of 8 of us in tool making and forging.   Came home with a 3+ lb rounding hammer, a  top fuller, a hotcut, a rounding tool  and most of the sledge work done on a  punch.

Got there Friday morning after a pre dawn, 3+ hour drive, 12 lb straight peen sledge in hand. Brian started everyone out with a tapered shank hot cut, where I probably should have started, but I wanted to make a hammer in a cart-before-the-horse sort of way.

Messed up while punching the eye on the first 4 inch length of 4140 steel *That’ll make a good top tool* and tried again.  With Brian*s help was able to clean up the messy slug and move onto shaping the sides and faces.

Brian had a lot to say: “A 13 year old can make that in 2 heats”, referring to the Int'l Young Smiths, who apparently swung the 20 lb sledge all day; “Heat it, hold it, hit it”; "dont' listen to me, watch what your hammer does, look at where you just hit,"  and “it practically makes itself”, that last one became a mantra of sorts applied to both successes and failures.

Speaking of failures, an electric blower opens up all sorts of possiblities for your work migrating down to melt onto the clinker donut in the bottom of the forge (don't ask me how I know this)

There was a LOT more sledge hammer than I was expecting. Groups of 3 and even up to 5 sledges swinging at the same time, mostly getting the rounding tools started on the low, striking anvils.  Great fun getting 5 people striking, that part was over too fast IMHO

Not a lot of hand hammer work as it turns out.  My little 2 lb cross peen is never going to feel the same.

Great bunch of people attending the class, wonderful hosts, learned a lot, some of which I'm even aware of and much more that will come bubbling up through the brain/muscle connection when I get out to the little backyard smithy.

Funny how the aches, pains and fatigue of the prior days work, would vanish as you gripped a sledge and got a whiff of the coal smoke. But those poor, now gray towels in the Motel 6 shower are trash now.

Start 'em early.  Very cool pictures, all the better for the offspring helping out with the project.

Love your dragonfly's care to elaborate on the process of making them?