Michael

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!

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

I learned this method of testing for wrought iron from Daniel Miller, a smith from one of the Carolinas during a CBA demo. It's a good way of testing for wrought in situ. When you see an old building being demolished, a hacksaw and hammer under the seat of the truck let you check out if it's worth hauling that rusty old scrap back to the shop. (Seriously, its always worth it, even if not WI) I've had similar delaminating issues with this material, usually from working too cold.

I tried all sorts of contraptions to hold the ever growing set of smithing tools and finally settled on the old standby blacksmiths tool table that you see in Richardson and other old books. A central table in metal, or I suppose thick wood, with racks around the perimeter to hold hammers, set tools and tongs. This old design has a lot to recommend it, easy rearrangement as new tools are bought or made, space underneath for infrequently used tools. Punches and drifts are in a block with holes in it, the recessed, central table top catches stuff tossed in the general direction without falling off the edge. Perhaps not ideal for your shop situation, but a narrower, longer version might do. Please post pics of whatever you come up with to store your tools. New ideas are always welcome.

This is what wrought iron looks like, half in round bar from an old grain silo. You did the correct test, cut halfway, bend to breaking.

I forged with charcoal for years and a watering can was essential to controlling the fire and not burning thru too much fuel too quickly. Switching to coal I find I use the watering can a lot less, but still need to control the fire and often times cool off the end of what I'm working on. especially if the piece is in a long, soaking heat.

Ambitious first project, 4 foot hinges! The finish work came out very well. Nicely done!

Took a weekend course with Brian in April out here on the Left Coast, and we just grazed on some of what you learned in a 5 day. Congratulations on your successes. Looks like a lot of fun. That shop in Branson is starting to look very familiar with all the posts.

You didn't do too bad for your $80, almost every peice of metal you can get your hands on can find itself a use in a smithy (as my flea market buddies roll their eyes) Nippers can be modified into a specific tong to hold the head of a RR spike.

I've used a 2 lb cross peen for many years, only just recently moved up to a 3 lb hammer for general hand work. 3 pounder is a bit much for making nails, I pull out a 2 or 2.5 lb ball peen for use with the nail header

No, I meant the cubicle hooks, though Office Space has bit of a cult following around here. The red stapler is currently chained to the wall in the copy room. When a printer here was due to be trashed (stripped plastic gears, years out of warrenty) we took turns nudging it, by tiny increments, towards the end of the table, the person who pushed it over the edge, smashing on the tile floor, had to buy lunch. Sort of like office JENGA.

Cool, Please post a pic or two of these, I'm always trying to find ways of inducing hand forged iron work into the cubicle enviornment.

I've met Tim at a bunch of CBA events, real nice guy. He was striking for Peter Ross at a demo a while back. Shawn Lovell and Jim Austin are right nearby as well.

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!