freeman

That is a fantastic looking tool tray. Good execution on a great idea. That looks too handy! I think I may have to make myself one of these this weekend!

I'm totally blown away here. Incredible work!

Last post on the topic: fired up a batch of Fred Pugh's coal this morning and it's fantastic. Cokes great, very little clinker, burns plenty hot. I'm very pleased with my purchase.

It all sort of depends on what kind of burner you have, how many you plan on using and if you want to be able to hit a welding heat with your forge. A quick back of the napkin calculation indicates you're looking at 648 cubic inches of interior space. Ron Reil's forge design page has a bunch of great info regarding BTU per cubic inch and burners per cubic inch required to weld.

Personally, I'd have returned the anvil to it's rightful owner as soon as I found out about the situation. I definitely wouldn't want to repay someone's generosity by leaving them in an awkward position with the original owner. Once I had the anvil back where it belonged I believe I'd wait a month to let things blow over a bit then approach the actual owner and see if a deal could be struck.

Spoke with Fred this afternoon. He's got bagged and bulk Sewell vein coal for sale at reasonable prices. I'll be heading over to his place early next week to resupply. Thanks a ton!

Congratulations Mark, hope all goes well. Edenton's a nice little town.

Wow! That it does!

I managed to get over to Bridgers in Wendell late last week and they do have coal! It's bituminous, doesn't coke, smokes like a freight train and stinks to high heaven BUT it'll burn hot enough to weld if you keep the air to it. Unfortunately I'm afraid the neighbors will lynch me over the smell if I where to burn this stuff regularly, so I'm still running down leads on a supplier, but if I'm ever *really* desperate I've got a couple bags of this stuff lying around that'll do in a pinch. I haven't called Fred yet but it's on my short list of things to do tomorrow. Thanks for the lead!

Thanks to everyone that's responded so far! I've gotten leads on suppliers in NC, VA, KC and PA in addition to an offer to drop off a couple of bags at my house from a fellow a couple hours east of me. It's amazing to me how quickly everyone has responded and I'm humbled by the the generosity displayed, what an awesome community of folks! I still don't have a solid line on a supplier but given the number of leads I've been given I expect I should be able to find a supplier in short order once I get home. Again, thank you all.

I just called Kanye and Son trying to get an appointment next week to pick up some coal. They told me they're out, they lost their primary supplier and haven't come up with a replacement yet. I've got a couple of big projects on deck and I'm down to my last five pounds of coal. If anyone can point me in the direction of another potential supplier in NC or if anyone in the western part of the state has a few hundred pounds they can spare for sale please let me know.

So I was out at the forge a couple nights ago practicing branch welds and one almost got away from me. I spent so much time grovelling around trying to get both pieces lined up that I didn't have time to reach for my hammer to set the weld before it cooled. In desperation I proceeded to beat the weld with the tongs, still in my off hand. I'm pretty sure any skilled smiths forced to witness this display would have retched, but hygiene issues aside, I can report that this new technique was successful in setting the weld. The whole thing reminded me of the joke about the Harley guy asking the BMW guy (who had an immaculate organized toolkit on his bike) for a wrench. When the BMW guy asked what size he needed the Harley guy replied "Doesn't matter really, I was gonna use it as a hammer." So what other off-label tool applications have you guys come up with?

Why bitter? It looks like you've got a perfectly functional chair there. What are you dissatisfied with?

Having never used charcoal I dunno how easy/hard it is to weld with it. One thing you can do to try to see if your fire is getting hot enough is stick some small scrap in the middle of the fire and put your air to it. If it starts throwing sparks and comes out crusty, bubbly and half melted your fire's definitely hot enough to weld.

That is a fine looking instrument right there. I'm envious not only of your hammer but the skill required to make it.

Looks like a wide range of techniques and a ton of work went into that project. Way to stick with it! I especially appreciate your taking photos along the way so we can see your progress.

Saiga 12 with a 10 round clip loaded at all times, but that's only for if they get into the house.

Full disclosure: I'm a professional web developer and a contributing developer to the Drupal CMS project. If asked to handle the design aspects of building a website I'll hand you something that looks like the box the server shipped in. First off let me say that switching to a CMS system should greatly simplify simple tasks like adding and editing pages so you're on the right track there. If you're shopping for a new web host pretty much all of the commodity web hosts (Dreamhost, Godaddy, etc) are a dime a dozen. Their service offerings are typically close enough to be identical. Personally I've had pretty good experiences with Dreamhost provided the site isn't generating huge levels of traffic. If you're looking to get set up and productive in a hurry I'd suggest taking a look at WordPress's capabilities. Of the available free CMS's it's arguably the simplest to use. If you think your needs might be too complex for WordPress to handle Drupal is always an excellent option, although with great power comes great complexity. Let me know if you have any specific questions I can help answer.

I briefly considered getting the sensors and charges from a couple of car airbags and using them to rig up something involving a gallon or two of hot pink marine paint (have fun getting that off, sucker). Sadly I'm selectively lazy. While I have no problem spending some large number of hours toiling in the heat to forge something nice, anything involving a voltmeter and a soldering iron is an immediate buzzkill.

You make a good point there, I'll take a look into the legalities before I commit to anything. I figure if the neighbors can have those brick pillars I ought to be OK with something pretty sturdy yeah? My father had a similar problem and after the 3rd time his mailbox got taken out he welded one out of 5/8 plate steel, then welded that to a big iron pipe he then filled with concrete before finally burying it in 3 feet of concrete. A week after planting this monstrosity he found a broken off rearview mirror and two halves of a baseball bat at the end of his driveway. About six months ago someone hit his tank trap mailbox with a car. They couldn't pry the mailbox out of the car on site so they had to haul the car (with mailbox still embedded) off and cut the mailbox out. The insurance company then returned the mailbox. He didn't mention anything about a lawsuit.

Got back from spending the weekend with family to find my mailbox beaten to death by what I can only assume was neighborhood kids playing mailbox baseball. Whoever got it got a really solid hit in, the door's torn half off and they managed to spin the cross arm 180 degrees on the post so the mailbox was pointing at the house. Unfortunately, certain poorly thought out past-times during my youth pretty much kill what would otherwise be a perfect opportunity for some seriously righteous indignation. Instead I'm left with a grudging respect for the kid's aim. Guess it's true what they say, you reap what you sew. Anyway, I figure this is the perfect opportunity to forge up a replacement mailbox. I've got a few ideas but figured I'd open it up to discussion before I commit to anything. So my question is this: if you wanted to build a mailbox that would stop a truck, how would you go about it?

Asked my father and grandfather how much it would cost to get an oxy-acetylene rig for my garage. Just an off-hand question over lunch on Saturday. They both took this as an opportunity to divest themselves of some extra equipment they had cluttering their shops. I'm now the proud new owner of a set of full sized tanks, four regulators, 11 gauges (some are either broken or suspect, thus the spares) two hoses, two cutting tips and a rosebud. Happy father's day!

My recommendations if you're interested in tinkering with foundry work would be to skip brass altogether, get your rig built then buy some silicon bronze shot to play with. If you're set on working brass then I can't stress this enough: * get a pyrometer BEFORE you start tinkering and keep a close eye on your melt temps * if a melt gets too hot and the zinc starts to vaporize (great billowing clouds of white smoke) kill the heat source and get AWAY

Can it be done? Most definitely. Is it cost effective vs buying brass bar stock? Depends on how you value your time. Since you're talking about melting a zinc alloy, make sure you know what you're about and observe all due safety precautions. Speaking from first-hand experience, zinc poisoning is no fun.

This video is brilliant. I think I learned more from watching it and then going out to the forge and practicing for an hour than I did from a couple days of tinkering. Flux-free forge weld, check!