Dan P.

If you are forge welding low carbon wrought iron a snowball welding heat is generally considered OK. For mild steel it's not so good and for high carbon steels is trashing it!

I have often read in old manuals, et cetera, that a sparkling heat is okay or even desirable for welding wrought iron, and I understand that this is still a widely held belief. I wouldn't want to tread on anybody's toes, but it is something I have heard quite often, and I would personally question why a sparkling heat is so often said to be okay- it may not be terribly harmful, but it certainly doesn't do the material any good, and is quite unnecessary. I would warn against a sparkling heat what ever the material.

One of the members at Living History Library- Your Home for Living History and Reenactment! works in a shop that has an original hammer quite like that. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Thanks for the link. There are a few such hammer mills still operating in various European countries. Sadly most of those still functioning do so in the capacity of working museums. I think I would kill to be master of such a forge.

They are excessive. I believe you can hear him using an old Spanish expression indicating that he thinks they are excessive, too. Those sparks indicate that he has burnt his steel quite badly. Luckily, if the stock is quite big and is to be drawn down, you can sometimes get away with it, because the nasty burnt bits sort of get forged in, but it shouldn't happen.
When you get proficient in forge welding, there should really be no sparks at all.

Take a look at this-

I know nothing at all of the story behind this man and his extraordinary hammer, but his shop looks quite newly built, while the helve hammer looks like it could have been taken directly from a medieval hammer mill and hooked up to the three phase! Very peculiar!

Jake- those bellows are of the two chambered type, except that they are circular and go straight up and down, rather than pivoting on one side.

This is commonly referred to on the internet as a rivet forge, though in the UK they are more commonly associated with farriers. Is this the bellows you are referring to on your thread about a ground forge?

There is a very eminent smith here in the UK who only uses silver (quartz? silica?) sand as flux. He takes the merest pinch and casts it atop his fire while heating the work to be welded. Watching him do this led me to the conclusion that, while he referred to this action as fluxing his work, he was in fact either fluxing his fire, or, more likely, simply performing a confidence enhancing ritual with no real effect.
As noted before, for the majority of welding flux is not really necessary, and in some cases can even be a hindrance. With correct fire management, even high carbon steel can be welded without flux.

If you burnish your knife with a piece of copper (or a copper brush, if there is such a thing) it will impart a tint to it. Obviously the finer the polish, the less tint you get. And it might also be a bit close to pink for your purposes!

Hammerandtongs- I would recommend you use charcoal, which does take a bit of getting used to, or you could try coal. The problem with the latter is that the only readily available stuff is house coal in bags, which may not be suitable, and seeking the advice of many coal merchants is a bit of a waste of time, as they are mostly not experts on the matter of forgework(!). Having said that, I have used crummy smokeless house-coal to forge and even fireweld, so you never know. An excellent blacksmith's coal still available (I think) is Maltby Bingles from RJB.
I have never heard of a foot-operated blacksmith's bellows (not that I'm an expert), but if it's from one of those farriers forges, or one of those jewellers/apothecary bellows you will definitely have problems using coke.
I can't offer any advice on reconditioning leather, other than that I would carefully consider whether it is worth doing, as leather, unlike wood or metal, can't really be brought back to life once it is knackered, especially for the purpose of rigorous use as per a bellows. Better perhaps to replace it?

Though, having said that, I have passed up two pristine 5 cwt brooks and very recently a beautiful 2 cwt P.Wright on UK Ebay at bargain prices because I've got nowhere to put the buggers. Probably ended up in someone's garden. Depressing!

This anvil in the truck yard (where I happened to be renting one of their vehicles) was probably two or two and a half cwt, and really pretty much pristine. The yard had previously been a stables, as even here in London they had horse drawn carts on the streets till the late eighties/early nineties. They had a sentimental attachment to it. Apparently!

That looks like a nicely made hammer, but what do you do with such a large peen? It's almost like a rounding hammer.

Though Peter Wright (an UK company) was producing anvils till later than the thirties- in a truck yard local to me is a pristine P.W. dated 1947; "Nah, not for sale bruv. Part of the furniture, bruv." Plonkers!

I'd seriously consider using something other than coke. I'm not sure what kind of set up you are thinking of, but coke requires a pretty hefty blast and a sizeable bed to be usable. Much of the advice you have received, while good, doesn't take into account the fuel being used, which is entirely understandable as coke is not particularly common in the US.

Hi,
I'm a professional smith living and working in charming SE London, UK. I do mostly ornamental ironwork (gates, railings, grilles, tables etc.), but I enjoy making life's pointy things- swords, knives, arrowheads etc. I classify myself as a "traditionalist" blacksmith.