MLMartin

I was not thinking about the size of the chimney in any way, just that you are saying that the paint is peeling all the way at the top.

WOW sounds like a lot of heat escaping the building! My 12 duct is straight up and has a simple super sucker side draft hood on the bottom. It is 15 feet long. Even after forging 1 1/2" Square all day in the Georgia summer the duct at the top was not so hot that I could not handle it. Very hot yes, but I could grab it for a moment and slide it around without burning myself.

If your chimney is getting hot enough to peel paint 10 or 20 feet in the air you have some real problems.

You can also just order 12" metal duct from websites like McMaster Carr. They sell some of everything, every type of joint also. They ship items quickly and while it will be more expensive than making duct from scrap metal it will be much much faster. Its all about forging to me, I am not a sheet metal worker

If the ball weights are missing how about just making a heavy ring! Many of the new presses have a ring instead of a ball. Helps to prevent head smacks. Harder to have a ring come over and hit you than a arm. Just add the two weights together and use that weight as a start. Then measure the ring size you need and you can calculate the length then see what stock size that length will come out the right weight

I do not know about common sense hammers specifically but the bottom die looks very short. The top looks short to. Hammers can be damaged from running them with short dies. I would ask anyone running them if they know how tall the dies should be. Dies shrink from grinding/dressing them over and over. I have seen many many little giants with damaged arms and guides because some one ran the hammer with short worn out dies. The arms would end up smacking the wrap around head guide. While this hammer does not have that type of guild you still would not want to run it much if the dies are worn out. Looks like a fun hammer!

The shape looks spot on for a Hay Budden. Some Hay Buddens had the entire top of the anvil, waist up forged from steel, and only the bottom was wrought iron. I would guess this is the case, I do not think it is cast steel

How was the weather today? I use a "super sucker" 12" and when the wind outside starts blowing real hard sometimes I will get a good puff of smoke pushed back down the pipe and into the shop. Also shine a light up the chimney, I guess its possible something is in there. As a side note I have been thinking about climbing on top of my shop and painting the top of the chimney exposed to the sun black. I would hope this would cause the pipe to heat up faster and cause better updraft.

Colombian Tool company

I about choked I was laughing so hard at Number 3 and 4 Thanks for the good information in the rest of the post.

It was always a fun game to see who had the longest slag peel at the end of the day in welding school. They were like little prizes! Sometimes some one could get a 6 or 7 inch one in a intact piece. Ha what a joke it was to make every little thing a contest.

I have had a vice with a factory spring installed that was way to strong and You are right about a overly stiff spring being to much. I just use old leaf springs because they are free and close to size. I make my leg vice springs very thin. My 100lb 6 1/2" vise has a spring that starts about 5/16 thick 1 3/4" wide and tappers to about 5/16 by 1" at the bottom. You can easily spin the handle closed 2 revolutions with just a few fingers. I often actually close the handle with my knee while I am holding large work, then I will finish tightening the screw by hand when I can let go of the item. Probably to good way to judge if your spring is to tight is to see if you can easily close the jaws together without the screw. A person should be able to push the front jaw closed with one hand while the screw is extended. The spring ONLY needs enough force to open the front jaw nothing more.

Clamp the spring in place. Falling off a broken stool with sharp broken points sticking up sounds less than fun. I bet some U Bolts could be used to fasten a spring in place well.

I bet that would be a great handle material for top tools! Nothing like a poor swing from a striker to rattle your arm.

One common historical way to join ironwork to stone is to drill a slightly over sized hole for the bar, place the bar into the hole, then pour hot lead into the gap.

I have made a few new springs for leg vices. I have always used old automobile leaf springs. I forge to shape then I normalize once. I do not bother with hardening or tempering. There is still plenty of "spring" to the steel without heat treatment for this application. The spring only needs to push on the front beam for about 1". When the bottom of the beam has moved 1" the top of the jaw has normally opened 4 to 6". More than enough for normal use. A leaf spring for a car needs proper hardening and tempering because it undergoes high stress. A leg vise spring undergoes very very little stress and a very little amount of travel. Look at Mr Millers new spring. Its wrought Iron! And it works fine. And I do not think he heat treated it

What about wrapping the head of the hammer with one of those heater cords? Like the one used to keep a engine block warm. I am not familiar with the oil reservoir of this hammer. Could you insert a oil heater into the reservoir chamber? I know some large equipment in cold areas have this part.

Traveler

Hello everyone First off I want to say Thank You to Mr Dillon. He gave me my first opportunity to work with perfection artisans and exposed me to wonderful forged sculpture. I started this piece 2 years ago when I was working with him once again over the summer. One afternoon we stopped shop work early and started "Forging Friday". He provided some material and the use of his grand shop. I started with a few sketches in soap stone and started forging from there. I think I used his 250lb Murry and his 500lb Bradley for the two main arcs. Well the two parts sat in my shop for the past years and have looked very sad. So a few weeks ago I decided it was time to make them come together. First I sank and planished the bowl of the main arc. Then I hot cut and drifted holes in the two main arcs. This was overly time consuming as I had to do this by myself. The drifted hole is 1 1/2. Also as a side note. This is what leg vices are made to handle, and why I always recommend securing them tight, with the leg on the floor. Next I bent the curves. I was lucky my brother stopped by on the day I was going to make the base. It started at 1" by 3 1/2" by 30". I did all the sledge work and he brought the work from the forge to the anvil. I used a 20lb sledge for most of the chamfering. Hole was slit and drifted over the vise again. Where I could I riveted parts together. The main arc is balanced on a barring and will tilt back and forth maybe 25 - 30%. To achieve balance I have formed the orb hollow and then poured hot lead into it until equilibrium was met. The orb is raised and welded copper along with the arrow point and the rivets. To first set the horn shaped rivets on the bottom I set up a fixture using a second leg vice as a buck or anvil. The vise is clamped onto the horn side of the rivet and adds mass so I can heat and rivet the other side. I still need to do a little finish work on the surface and decide how it will be coated. Wax for inside, or lacquer for outside. The piece is approximately 4 feet tall and I would guess around 100lbs. I have about 10 days into this I hope everyone enjoys it. I know I have been thrilled to see some of the wonderful work that is posted here. Mackenzie Martin Martin Forge Works

Maybe the solid box came before the U shackle. But it seems also very plausible that the tenon mount vise you have simply had the screw and box replaced many years ago. The large "Goldie" I have that was made in New York has a shackle and a brazed box. I have seen 2 other "Goldies" that had identical brazed screw box's just like mine. This makes me think the box is original to the vice. So I will safely say at least in one instance in America a company was making brazed box's after the U shackle came along. I sure do like vises. I think it is time for me to start branching out into European vices though. German and French leg vices have a distinctly different style from English vises. Maybe a happy shop with a sampling of Vises from around the world is in order!

Looks great Mr Miller. I have thought about heating and dressing the jaws on a large 6.5 vice from 1842-9 I have. It is marked "Goldie - 133 Attorney Street. When the vise is standing straight up the jaws both slant down maybe 5% to the left. I do not think it is something I could do alone though. The vise must be over 100lbs and I do not think I could hold a 50lb part and forge on it. I would guess you heat treated the jaws after forging? Is there much fear of a steel jaw wanting to delaminate during the quenching? Yes the jaws on mine are 1/16 off and the beams look very straight.

Here I have made a simple thread chaser. It is a piece of 1 rd that I have drilled a cross hole in at the end. I tried to match the angle of the threads with the hole. Then I drilled and tapped a set screw hole in the end. I have used some HSS for a cutting bit and ground it to the matching valley of the male screw. I just thread the scrapper in and out of the box and slowly extend the cutting bit out farther and farther each pass until the male screw would work with the box again. Still a little tight. I needed to replace the mounting bracket as the old one was destroyed. The new bracket is not the same shape as a original would be. But it is a tenon mount like it should be. I read the paper about repairing this vise a few years ago and could not remember the exact shape the bracket arms were originally. This one will work fine anyway. Lastly I made new wedge keys for the mounting bracket and for the pivot pin. Now I need a slick workbench for the vice!

Hello everybody Here is a English colonial leg vise my Sweetheart was given by her hobby blacksmith guild shop in VA. I believe it is English colonial, 1750s. The shape of the box with the 4 rings and the plug and its brazed construction are the key points. Also the fact that this vise uses a tennon for the mounting bracket makes me think 1750s. Anyone have a closer date to place on this vise style? Well sadly at some point some one used it to hard and all the female threading in the box was torn out. Also the mounting bracket is destroyed. The box is made by rolling thin plate iron into a tube then pressing on the 4 welded rings and jamming a plug in the end. Then the two no turn lugs are riveted on to the box. Lastly a female screw is made by wrapping square bar around the male screw and inserting it into the screw box (Male screws were cut on a lathe at this point). Then the whole part is fluxed and generous amounts of bronze bits are placed in and one the screw to braze the entire part together in the forge. Since the screw box was mostly still intact I had no need to remake it. I first cleaned the box and lightly scraped the inside. Then I formed a new female screw around the old male screw. I inserted and brazed it up. I used 3 feet of square bar to form the female screw. Clean up was greatly sped up by placing the box into a liquid solution and using a electric current to break loose scale and flux. I will continue photos of the rebuilt A thanks to Mr Peter Ross and Mr James Melchor for there paper written about rebuilding such a vise

Here is a anvil I built 7 years ago when I was 19 years old. I did not know enough to research proper steel faces for anvils at the time. I just asked my welding supply shop for hard facing rod and used what they sold me. It is a stainless that micro cracks to stress relive so it is a bit ugly up close. But regardless the anvil is pretty hard, maybe 50 Rockwell. I have used it pretty hard over the years and it has help up fine for hot steel. The anvil is made from 18 blocks of mild steel. Every part was cut with a gas torch for 100% penetration welds except the feet and upsetting block. They were maybe only 3/4 inch fillet welds as they would provide little rebound into the main block of the anvil. I built the thing over a few weeks of evening welding in my little shop. I used a Miller Thunderbolt DC, little stick welder. And I am sure I overran the cool down time but it buzzed on happily for years and still works today. Also I used a angle grinder, drill press, gas torch, and square. Hopefully one day I will replace it with a solid steel new anvil. But this works fine for now The anvil is just shy of 200lbs

Huzzaa I would love to come assist with a build. I bet a nice stake anvil would be a good seller if you could forge them quickly!