Mr.Blacksmith

I was working a church yard sale, and before we had started I found a really really nice vice. I went and asked our head seller, and she said to just take it, I convinced her to let me pay; and then set it far aside with my hat and jacket. I worked till about the end of the day, hauling, price selling, and helping to load. I came back to the building and some gentleman was walking out with my vice, and half a dozen old files destine to become knives that I had locked in the jaws. I, as respectfully as possible told this gentleman that the vice was mine, and had been set aside for me. He pushed past me. I walk after him, asking him if i could buy it from him, he looked at me and continued. He made it to his car, were I asked once more if he would allow me to pay thrice what he did. He said, "I don't care I carried it, go away kid." by this point the head seller had seen me, and wondering what was going on, came over. He disrespected her and was rude, and I then told him to get out. That would have been my only vice, and the files would have been valuable pieces. But I guess I didn't need a vice then...

Even though I'm sure y'all know, a little trick to cut some time: have two or three pieces of stock heating, and that way you don't have as much down time in between heats. Work through the line left to right or right to left, so you know what has been used, and to avoid burning your metal.

A little something I have started for anyone who is interested. A short story of how I got started, I will write some more when I find the time.
Enjoy,
Matthew.

It's looking good, keep on hammering

Merry Smithing,
Mr. Blacksmith

If you buy it, and keep smithing, find a real anvil, and move forward, it will be the best $20 you ever spent. You will win every "my first anvil was worse than yours" contest.

I used a rock when Iwas young to work copper, something is better than nothing

Have you thought about doing anything for the handle? Maybe a para-cord or leather wrap, if you don't have to tools to do a wooden or metal handle. Have you tempered the blade in any way? If you are planning on using it I would temper it so it will hold an edge better.
Now this is just my two cents, I'm no expert but I hope it helped.

I have had the blade made for a while now, but i just now wrapped the handle with para-cord to finished it up. I am giving it to my uncle for his birthday, but I thought y'all would like to see it.

With a waterbucket full of charcoal, watch that it doesn't turn the water into Lye. It burns really bad! (don't ask me how I know that! <_< )

"Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club!"

I had already made a slit chisel, and I was going to make a drift to open up the eye.

The idea was to show the newbie that you do not need a high tech blower, a high tech forge, or a high tech anvil.You can forge metal using a rock. It may not be efficient but it can be done.

I started using just that, a rock, I still have it in fact, and I was fanning a wood (charcoal) fire by hand to work copper, and I was using a small hammer. imagine thousands of years ago, many peoples were doing the same things! If I can start doing this at twelve with literally no money so can you!

Howdy,

I found some plans online for a tomahawk when I was rooting around. This is my attempt thus far, I have finished the rough figure, but I still have to drift it open for the handle and clean up the shape. Tell me what you think, and any advice on drifting it would be welcome, as this will be my first attempt at doing so.

I started with a run of the mill RR spike


Then I cut the point off


Next I upset the end to allocate the necessary metal to form the head, It was upset to about one inch square.


I proceeded to fuller the head out.


I continued to fuller it with a vertical cross peen until I reached my present state.


I plan to use a punch to help start the drift for the handle, then clean up the form of the piece itself.

I personally have taken he time to pick up some of the new html5/css3 stuff, however it is not always necessary to use it. If I just want to make a custom home page I don't need html 5 interface, but if am building a site for someone, sure I would use it. Really it comes down to the preference of the programmer, and the budget...

I can agree, when I was taking websites, people would say "well I started it, but didn't finish it, can you make it like WWW.qwerty.com or like abcd.com with what I have?" with only a few tags was the small print.
or my favorite, "can you give it more neon, or pop, or just something that reaches out and catches your eye?" only to realize that they wanted their site in neon pink with neon green secondary with mouse tail effects and radiating stars from every letter.... yeah I spent 6-7 months in class on how NOT to make a website. If you get a good web designer, you will pay for it, but it will show.

I second the crispy critter comment, having been one because of inexperience + over enthusiasm + propane.

Exactly what I don't want is half a hairdo. No offense, I'm sure you made it look good, but I don't think I could get away with that. My Original idea was to have to ball valves, one for gas and for air. Since I am building my shop from the ground up, Grin, I am setting everything up my way, not the garage way or the shed way.

With the gas shut off, the idea is to have a regulator AS WELL AS a ball valve, so I can cut the psi to .000253454 or something, to save in between heats. I have gotten the land staked out and the spot for all my tools and such laid out. I will be heading down to get the rest of my burners parts when i'm off from work and such to get a proto. built. That will hopefully be this weekend.

I too am in the process of building my smithy. It is a long and arduous process, but I look forward to my finished building. My floor is going to be dirt, and be a semi open building, because I like being outside, not kept in a concrete cell. I wish you luck Joshua, my smithy at 14 was a tarp covered area, and at 12 I had...well nothing. I stood by a fire lol. Good luck to you, merry smithing.

well, with the force of the blower I don't know if I could use just that, I will do some experimenting though.

I have decided on the design where the propane is introduce at the bend, and I am getting the supplies necessarily, black iron pipe fittings, plugs, etc. i can do most of the assembly myself, but I will have external help from a welder for the injectors. I plan to hopefully make two, and thus build two forges out of soft fire brick. I will would them horizontally firing into the sides of each forge, and they will feed from separate tanks. my blower is more than powerful enough to supply both forges running at once, even if I add a coke forge into the system it will still have excess power. So to regulate the flow of air I thought about using a valve so I may adjust to the perfect amount of air, and have the valves mounted on a post or on the wall so I have access quickly. The same goes for the propane, I will have the regulator close by, should it need to be cut off in a hurry.

Now with the flame holder, does that hold more efficient that a flared end? I ask because I myself can not weld, however I know a place that will do it for me for $. So I am trying to keep welding to a minimum. the design seems to be simpler over all though.

Since my blower is very powerful (recycled from an inflatable slide) i wanted to make it so i could regulate the airflow like shown there with a ball valve and then introduce the propane a little after the valve. However, would it simply be easier to do a Venturi burner instead? I do not want somethign overly complicated.

But I must say the older Html books, if you can get them for nothing, are a good start. For instance i'm sure you are all aware now borders is going under. If you get some html for idiots books, it may make it easier to learn, but you do have to go look up the newer info. So if you are having a hard time it may help some.

I am going to go see about building a forced air burner, Using the design off of this burner I have here.
I would like to know if anyone has done one like this before and the problems they ran into?



If i build it exactly as shown will is work well and safely? Also for the flared end i was going to take the 1 1/4 and forge it into the flared fitting described here with a 1 1/2 opening.

Thanks and merry smithing,
Matthew

If you do not understand how to code a basic static web page by hand, using a editor will just produce a whole lot of code
you do not understand, know how to fix or change.

If you want do it yourself, buy a decent up to date book on html/css and play a bit. In fact you dont even need to buy a book,
all the info is available on the internet for free, html/css/php or any other scripting language is open source, so is free as is the
spec and documentation, you just need to search for it, best of all the info is latest up to date, not 3 - 5 year old printed stuff.

Yeah there was just recently a new Html, 5 I think.

No problem, I saw that this was one thing I knew I can contribute to on the forum. I do enjoy building the sites, but I don't have too much time now with school, work, and smithing. I enjoyed the classes when I took them and got awards for being the most distinguished web designer in the classes =). I fixed the students and teachers problems with their sites!

I have seen a lot of people have been interested in doing a website for their shop(s). I wanted to take some time to help explain some of it to the lost beginner.

When you reach the stage where you can afford to host (put a site on the web) your page(s), you will need to first decide on a few things:

1. How large do you want your site to be? Two or three pages with your contact info and maybe some pages with photos?

2. What do you want to do about a company name and logo? Do it yourself or send one out to be done?

3. Do you want to display your work on the site?

4. Do you want to make your work available for purchase on the site?

5. If you choose to make your work available for purchase on the site how do you want the store to work out? Do you want customers to email your private email address? a store address (my_forge@gmail, yahoo, or msn.com). Do you want to pay for a PayPal set up?

6. How do you want to deal with shipping if you do make work available online?

7. What do you want your site colors to be dark, light, neutral colors. (Stay away from neon, super bright, and extremely light colors. this makes it hard to read)

8. Do you want to place links to friend’s sites, or charge for advertisement?

9. Do you want to do the entire process yourself? Do you want to send it out to be designed or do it yourself? Do you want to build the site or send it out?

10. What can you afford to do with your budget? Do you have a budget for this kind of thing? Do you think you should for internet advertisement?

These are just right off questions; one might also what to think about how they want to set up the logistics behind the site, including funds and attention to shipping and up to date information on the site.


If you do have a hand drawn logo design or some ideas you may PM me for some help, I may even be able to do a logo design for you.

I have designed websites before, by hand with tags; this is very hard to do. If I was to be hired to do you website I would basically story board your site, layout the design, the links, and then I would put together a model on paper for you to see. I would go from there to use my design suite, whichever one I am using, and layout the site as a computer based site. Which means you can view it providing you have the flash drive the file is on. Then if you like it I would choose a web host or you would and it would be sent to them to be hosted on their server for x amount of money a month. However like has been said here you could go and purchase or download a program or a book. And design/build your own. Pros of this being it is cheaper, cons it is hard for most people, if I was to be hired I have already taken the classes and have the experience. Pros, I take all the design and production headaches. Cons, I’m expensive. Also a con, you lose work time doing your own website, it may not look as professional, and it may end up being a bust. E.G. you quit and you have spent precious time and money on the site.