Ric Furrer

Stew....how the heck did you meet the teenager that lives up the peninsula from me? He was sent to me and I did a favor for the family...I gave him a forge and some hand tools and lent some some books....never got the books back and he did nothing with the tools. It was the last time I helped in that way. No more for me. Last time I gave money to a beggar in the US (did it a lot in India) was also with a cup of coffee and a sandwich..he said he did not drink coffee and was not hungry....but he wanted the money...so no more of that either. On some things I am slow to learn....AND a few bad experiences will lead me in a different direction. Ric

Remonds me of the cave paintings in Lascuax. Do you happen to know Peter Fallon in Galway? I worked with him when he lived in the States. Ric

Outsider, You may wish to stop in and see Owen Bush http://www.owenbush.co.uk/ He is in Kent. I'm sure he can help out with instruction or material he has made or time in the shop for you to do the work. Ric

Hello All, I appologize ahead for tangenting this thread a bit. Stuart, You and I seem to be on opposite sides of the issue...which is fine. I have little interest beyond the fact that they are tools and my curiosity....I'd like to see these two tools that you are able to make more efficiently than anyone else. I will not produce them, but I'd sure like to see them. If I were you I'd be trying to break into the English and German market rather than have their work imported here. Seems like a growth area to me. As to efficiency. 15 years ago I began making trap net anchors for fisherman in the Great Lakes region. I am not the only one making them, but I am the only one forging them..the rest simply weld on plate for the flukes. (pictures are on my website for those that care http://www.doorcountyforgeworks.com/Trap_Net_Anchors.html) The first batch, given the tools I had, required roughly 20 heats per anchor...a ridiculous number, but I committed to the gig and I did the work. Now..15 years on I have it down to 7 heats and maybe another for tweaking. I had it to 4 heats for a time, but the product suffered...so I added a few to increase quality. As my tooling improved and I could bring more force to bear and design tooling to utilize that force..the work got faster and the product became better. There is another leap I do in efficiency with more tools, but that will wait till a larger order comes in...no need to invest in that at this time. To date I have made about 1,000 of these..the demand is not great so the numbers are low. Would I show a video how-to to make these? No...no reason to I think. Anyone who has been forging for a while can see what is done to make them. Ric

I guess I am not so keen to give away the store. "give away the store" was the same translated response I got when I sat down with a Japanese sword maker some years ago and asked about certain nit picky techniques. Since then I have been able to answer those questions on my own. Over the years I have recreated several ancient and medieval metalworking techniques...early on I would cast the information to the wind..now I much prefer to plant and see it grow. In the end the simple fact of it all is that if one person can figure it out so can another....if you wish to put in the time. Ric

Sorry to hear about that Andrew..it is all to common I fear. I have had clients bring drawings and photos and quotes by other smiths to me for building to see if I could beat the price. It usually involves a long talk with the other smith on the phone. I once built an entire railing from a clients rough sketch and some talking....a few years later I saw photos of the same basic concept in one of the "Anvil's ring" which someone had done in the past. The client had seen it, drew it up and sent it to me to build....I had mixed feelings about the job for years. Ric

Should this be applied to all knowledge? Some here earn their living via the knowledge and skills they developed. Some run schools to teach, some do specialized industrial forging so make propriety forgings for companies. SmoothBore...I can think of the history of the firearm in terms of non-shared knowledge. I think there is a difference between with what can and should be shared. Ric

We had that in the Army as well. I have mixed feeling about that phrase and method...what it does is gets info out there fast..what it does not do is get deep wells of teachers out there at all. I have had the fortune of finding some very deep wells of information in the folk I have called teachers and friends....they saw much, did many and do not much teach one as be one. OR to put it another way "ya want your appendix taken out by someone who was taught by someone who did it once?" Ric

Phil and All, The term which I had heard first from Mike Blue (knifemaker in Minnesota) was that such folk were "VIRTUAL SMITHS"...I have yet to hear a better definition. The casting of the Conan "father sword" sword being one of the best and enduring examples. For smithing only I'd have to point out the hit the anvil hard and then tap the work which is all too common on TV. Getting back to the subject of the thread though I have to agree that there is a vast difference between asking "when I do X then Y happens...but I wanted Z to occur..what went wrong?" and asking "tell me everything you know about X cause I'm thinking about trying it one day." Ric

Thomas...I rather like you and the odd vantage point you inhabit. Ric

I have wasted my time with some folk and I have invested my time with others. I have no issue with anyone asking anything...I have great issue with snide comments and demands when answers were not given. What I have noticed in my little corner of the universe is that folk are very willing to share things they have learned from others, but very quiet when sharing things they have figured out. I see this in the knife world A LOT. I have had some whom I have helped along do something interesting and when I asked how they did that I have been told "well it took me a while to figure that out"...I tell them that I too had to spend time with R&D and they have benefitted from that information....if we do not reach an understanding then they stop getting info from me. I have had some end relationships at that point....sort of defines the terms of the relationship retroactively. On more than one occasion folk I have never met show me something and explain that they learned it from X...no mention that I was the one who showed X....when you encounter that form of short term memory loss it make me wish to stop sharing entirely. Ric

Good idea!! I do have the tooling to forge the common tenons I used to use, but this is interesting. Here is one on brass It appears it also sets up a chamfer on the interior..maybe a tool like this would do the center hole for your taping operation as well Danger?

Larry, I think you need to let more folk know your are taking over the furnace. Ric

It is impossible to make what you do not know. It is best to handle as many swords as you can...real ones and preferably old. I have held many modern swords and can only assume that the maker has never held an old one from a time when they were used. Get comfortable with forging, but it will be more important to be handy with a file and sand paper/stones or a belt sander. You will spend more time away from the fire than with it. If you think sword making is forging then you are wrong. Forging is the fun part and over the fastest...the other 90 percent is the hard part. A sword is not a long knife, it is a dynamic tool with many disparate demands placed upon it....if you do not know those demands then you can not make one. Find a blacksmith and learn to forge...find a machinist and learn to run those tools....when you have time with no sword orders those other skills will "feed the dog". Ric

Just to muddy the waters here...I have a sole proprietor LLC. Insurance via "Society" in Fon du Lac,WI and have an extra rider for shows which covers my product to,from and at. they also cover me when I teach in the shop provided I limit myself in some ways. Insurance is NOT like photographs where it is better to ask forgiveness thanpermission. It is best to lay out all of what you wish to do and then do that. If you hide things they can drop you...after the occurrence of the claim. Do not give them any reason to. Tell them what you wish to do and ask how that effects the policy..it is a service industry to some extent and they want you to give them money. You should shop around, but it will be in a small range of costs....and it is cheap compared to a claim against you. Demos are an odd thing...there is a reason THEY want YOU to have insurance. Ric

I would happily arrange for one time importing a supply of these from one of the Chinese companies I spoke to five-six years ago. I was set to do this and then saw that others were doing the same thing...and then Ebay listings came up. I ended up finding some US made unit at an industrial auction and stopped looking in to the endeavor. Not sure what Grant had changed..I see stickers in English on the ones he sold, but I think to really know if anything inside was altered one would have to compare the newly imported to the ones sold...from the same company. What I learned was that these smaller 15KW units are designed for work we do not do....much like the the Model A and T Fords were not designed for use as a plow tractor, but formers used them as such. Industry is concerned with efficiency and we just want it to get hot faster and cheaper than a gas forge. Basic rules: --The lower the Hz rate the higher the costs. 60hz is for industrial melting where deep penetration is needed and 100,000hz is a skin heat used for sealing the foil on tamper proof caps...like those on medicine bottles. --The larger the range of heating the higher the costs. --The lower the freq the deeper the penetration of the eddy current which is making the material in the coil make the heat. --The better the water the better the system works long term (de-ionized, kept within the working temp range,no steel fittings in line...stainless is OK as are bronze and plastic, but mush else and you get electrolysis in action) --The size of the coupling coil (the place to place the steel) has its limits in inside diameter,number of wraps,shape for a given heat/part and the copper tube itself can be optimized for the work with some research and R&D...but in general you are always playing some game of "it is not ideal, but OK given the situation" --I noticed also that the English was much better in wanting to buy then when wanting to know what it was really capable of....I would think servicing was not an option..even though I was told it was. One of the issues is that the profit margins are small on these and one service issues and there would be zero profit...so the incentive to import and offer after sale support..... is very small. Ric

I forged a few ton of 6061 bars when I worked in Florida. We would heat with a torch till a paint stick (pine stick) would leave a mark....about 600-700F and then forge. After a while..in the same dim shop light..there was a shimmer when you got close and then you would test with the stick. As I was making the same part from the same stock I got into a count timed event with the torch and could get it close more often than not by counting the time the flame was on the part. I did many leaves from 5/8 round bar. For large simple bends we sent a bound pile of the bars to a commercial heat treater for annealing, textured it cold and cold bent the parts. A black magic marker will work as well as a paint stick..or you could use those tempil sticks and get a range of temps 25F apart. As with everything else...if you do a few it gets easier. Once in a while a bar would crumble from getting it to hot or split when forging because it was pushed too far. For sheet we used 3003 alloy. Ric

Is it allowed that I do the whole tool in one heat under a power hammer? Ric

Where will you get the gears heat treated? Without a proper heat treatment the numbers mean nothing. The gear places I spoke to wish to cut only annealed stock, not Q&T. Ric

I had written a long reply to this, but it got lost..not sure why. Look into box beams and standard structural shapes. You will need to know the forces you need to contain and then build a safety factor into that....OR build big and hope for the best. Plumb and straight are a matter of shims and ground/milled parts, not off the shelf components. Castings are weaker than rolled parts and need to be larger...one off castings are going to be costly and still need machining. I think your next step is to try to calculate the forces you are containing and then design the stand. Have the engineer that is stopping by work out rough numbers for you.....should take him a few hours. You need to give him the following: yield strength of what you are rolling reduction percentages speed of the rolls roll diameter roll material and its yield bearing contact area and maybe a few other numbers. Ric

I burned a little girl at one demo....more sacred then damaged..she was 30 feet away when I struck a forge weld...got her in the face. I had two rope lines..one for watching and one further back for forge-welding.....I thought 30 foot was enough. Since then I use clear plastic screens on metal stands set right in front of the anvil to catch it all. When they are scared I rotate them 180 and use them again (offset them below the anvil height so rotating is an option). I second Owen's don't damage yourself comment.....do appropriate things for hand working....fast and little seems to be the best. Folk like twists and scrolls more than hot cutting and do not care if it is 6mm square or 60mm. Forge-welding is less impressive to most folk then you think. Have fun..make it good for you as well...happiness shows and so does grief. AND two more things 1)apparently everyone I have ever met at a demo had a grandfather who was a smith (and he was better than I am) 2)no matter what I was making someone always told their child it was a horse shoe.....I asked one woman how a three scrolled trivet could be a horse shoe, but it did not phase her. Ric

wrought material is stronger than cast...best to use standard structural steel. The bulk of the force is keeping the rolls from separating...called oddly enough "separation force". 1/2" plate will buckle like a newspaper in the wind under the forces you will need to do what you need to do. At some point you need to run the numbers OR build HUGE. Most 16-20 inch mills have 7x9 or larger castings for pillars. I'm not sure you have really internalized what it is you are trying to build. If you can build this for less than $15,000 in parts I would be surprised. Ric

Divine wind in Japanese is Kamikaze..refers to the wrecking of the Mongol invasion fleet in the late 1200's. A fuller will create more a sound then not having one....I am not sure if slots or holes will add much to the noise....easy enough to play with if you make a few swords from wood and swing them around. Ric

the bell bronze that is used in cymbals prefers to crack....its nature is to crack. So you need to work it in a way to play to its other properties...tension is a bad thing. As with all math...have him show his work. I think the engineer will ask several questions..some of which you can not answer and some wish not to. Ric

You could make a 2" or 3" contact roll from hardened tool steel with a cradle of back-up rolls....two of them with the roll nested between them. Two gear reduced motors..one attached to each roll..one on the left and one on the right so as not to be in each other's way. The entire motor drive on the upper could move with the roll. If the same model/serial numbers they will rotate close enough to not need any more co-ordination or alteration. Be nice to have a fly wheel in there for momentum, but... Failure could be a linkage between gear box and roll...shear pin, gear sprocket and chain? The lager back-up rolls could be set in a babbitt cradle and cast as a unit..maybe a secondary set up to rotate them a bit under load...could be a simple chain drive and 2hp motor to another gear box as they rotate at a fraction of the contact wheel rpm. The smaller contact wheel takes a HUGE amount of torque off the drive train and though it limits your reduction possibility as the slip angle is much less (15degrees of 2" vs 4 or 8.5") to be frank you were not going to have the power to take advantage of the large reduction potential anyway. Ric