Dan P.

A loom weight?

Travel anvil? I think the anvil I use for re-pointing my pen-nibs is about 600lbs.

Josh, in the "olden days" most anvils were mounted really quite low as a mercy to the strikers. Striking on a high anvil is tiring stuff!

Knowing about "glut welds" (using filler to add to the parent material) is very useful and can be done on small stuff, too. I have found it particularly useful when I have miscalculated the length of a collar when doing collar welds. I think there is a bit in the old COSIRA books about doing a glut weld to make a square corner, but I have never managed this successfully. When you are welding two pieces that weigh in tons rather than pounds or ounces, the welding heat is there for much longer, and in this video must have been just incredible. I guess that's why they are all dressed like mummers when welding the anchor!

600lbs? Is that all?

Great video!

Also notice the two-handled sledges they use in making chain. Very weird!

I have a permanent callous exactly where yours is. If you hammer a lot it will obviously stop bothering you at some point. Until then, rather than band aids, try duct tape. Band aids are no good if they keep falling off. Also, if I'm going particularly hot and heavy and my hands start to get sweaty, I find some powdered french chalk (talc/soapstone) will take some of the heat off. An old trick from the national service days (I have been unreliably informed) is to give your hands a good soak in pee (your own, or that of a close friend).

GNJC, I've seen oak handles on hammers. You will find them in areas with lots of oak trees and not many ash! I also have and use set tool with welded on steel handles. They are fine, just don't hold them in a death grip with the end deep in the root of your palm, but that is true of any set tool, I think. Pertaining to flexible handles; there was an article, I think in Anvil Magazine, showing a method by which you drill a hole about an inch beneath where the hammer will sit on your handle, then saw down from the top of the handle, then you fit the head as normal. This is the axis cross-wise to that of the hammer head. I suppose the theory is that the sawn cut provides flex by the two sides sliding together somehow. I did it once. It worked fine, but haven't done it since, which probably speaks of the overall utility of the method.

My forge is called Didbrook Forge because it is a forge in Didbrook. Rather annoyingly, on the electoral register (i.e. the official address) it is called "The Old Forge", so I maybe should have called it The Old Forge, but there are a few (presumably thousands) of those around. More annoyingly yet, there is no other forge in Didbrook, so why i have to be "The Old Forge" is beyond me. Ideally perhaps I would be "The Forge, Didbrook" for all purposes, but Didbrook Forge I will remain for the moment. Strangely, the last smith who worked here called the forge "Acorn Smithy", though there are no oaks in the immediate vicinity. There is, however, a horse chestnut tree right out front (for some reason customary in this country?), so one wonders why he didn't call it "Horsechestnut Smithy" or "Conker Tree Smithy". Perhaps he wanted to get in the phone book, preceded only by "AAA Blacksmiths", "Aardvark Forge" and "A1 Smithy"??

I've seen clips drawn (or attempted to be drawn!) using the cross pein of a rounding hammer. Thus, also sometimes called a "clipping hammer".

Organize? Drills? Hmmmmm, interesting idea!

Thank you for posting these pictures.

Or speak to the people at BABA (baba.org.uk), who will be happy to put you in their newsletter, which often advertises workshop space to rent (if indeed that was not the newsletter that John B already mentioned).

too small

This might be stupid, but is it 1" threaded?

The Italian spring hammers are available from angele.de

No prizes for guessing which camp you belong to!

Thanks Nick, that's very interesting. Indeed, I could have looked at that illustration a dozen times and never noticed the way his vice works.

Dr. Nick, congratulations on you PhD! So, is the handle like a captive ring spanner that you disengage/engage to tighten? Or a ratchet of some kind? What I'm trying to ask is how the handle goes round, as it the bench would get in the way of a full circle.

How do you tighten that vice? Design flaw? Cross Pein, I live near Worcester, UK, pronounced locally; "Wustaah".

cool video!

Kurgan- It was, at times, a very cool place to work, at other times, extremely tedious. Neil- Further to what Kurgan writes, the Corporation of The City of London is a fascinating and sometimes sinister medieval hold-over, and some of the Companies are very powerful in The City (and therefore the UK and the world), and some have an active part in controlling the trades they represent. The WCB is not one of those companies, and has little participation in blacksmithing, save the awarding of various prizes, a tradition going back no further than the 1970's or 80's. PS Neil, "The City" refers to a small part of London, which is largely now the financial district.

I had this problem, but in the middle of London. The problem was not the council but a group of unpleasant neighbours, people who were gentrifying the area and didn't want the riff-raff down the mews at the back of their houses. Now, in fairness, the riff-raff in question were a bit like the cast of "Pirates of the Caribbean", except not fun for children. And there was a guy who made and rented 7' tall speakers for concerts and festivals, and obviously people would want to try them out, you know, to see how loud they were. I can see how that would be annoying. Anyway, the council were actually very helpful to us, but as a blacksmith it would be quite difficult I think to escape "light industrial" classification. As it panned out, the opposite side of the mews, the side with the speaker guy, the motorbike mechanic, the jerk-pot fabricators, the guy who turned up once every couple of weeks and filled the air with unidentified toxic fumes, the bootleg warehouse, and some men who we thought might be growing ganja, turned out to be historically light industrial, so they were all okay. Our side turned out to have originally been stables, which nobody could work out what zoning it was, so we were okay too, in the end! Not any help, I know, just an anecdote I wanted to share.

Nick, those Swedish style hammers have quite long peins, and I have seen one that actually bent (a lot of hard 'n' heavy peening, I suppose?). They also usually have a weird radius ground toe to heel across the face. Personally, I like the look of the HF hammer, but then I prefer a longer hammer head.