matt87

I would agree that it's upside down. Looks like a typical late Mediaeval anvil. Heck if I had a bit more money I'd consider buying it and shipping it over.

A very interesting article. I would like to read more in-depth material. (Mind you, he made one slight mistake; Damascus swords were probably sold in Damascus, not made there )

Another excellent butty filling is chips. Some might call them French fries, others pomme frites. For best results, use a white bap, apply plenty of butter, and use proper chips, none of this oven chip or pencil-thin 'fries' malarky.

Or, start with a hot, oiled pan and add small bacon chunks, making sure to not cook it all the way through. Add chopped onion, mushroom, grated cheese and either tomato puree or preferably chopped ones. Keep stirring as it finishes cooking, and serve hot with oatcakes, tortillas, crackers etc. A good sausage or other cured meat is good here also. For the cheese, the more mature the better. Chopped or dried chili, crushed peppercorns and all sorts of chemical fire can be added to taste.

Don't forget, a leg vice/vise spring doesn't have to be very strong, just have enough oomph to 'persuade' the moving jaw outwards when you open the screw. If you make it too strong it will be hard to close the screw. You should be able to squeeze the jaws closed with one hand. Truck springs are (I think) 1/4inch (6mm) thick. The spring on my vice is about 2mm thick, or 3/32inch.

Dimensions-wise, most leg vices I've seen have the spring anchored by some method where the mounting plate attaches to the leg, and terminate an inch or less above the pivot.

Use the search function in the gallery, and Google image search, for terms like 'leg vise' 'post vise' etc. In the gallery, just 'vise' will probably suffice.

Smiths traditionally used low carbon wrought iron rather than the c. 20-30 point carbon 'mild' steels used these days. They also often had helpers with big sledges.

Don't forget guys, in many states pointing even an empty gun at someone is considered application of deadly force. As already said, know your laws.

A very interesting website, with semi-scientific food-for-thought (especially if your house is made of drywall) The Box O' Truth - The Box O' Truth

Welcome, P Perry. It would help if we knew where you live so we could help you better; just go to the top of the page, hit 'User CP' and enter your location. Then it appears in all of your posts.

To define a authentic Bowie knife "It must be long enough to use as a sword, sharp enough to use as a razor, wide enough to use as a paddle, and heavy enough to use as a hatchet". This ment that the knife was used for just about everything in the wild west.

Sounds like a leuku or a parang or a billhook to me. These tools have been used for a long time to chop, carve, and in extremis, as a weapon. If your life depends on the function of a small group of tools, you avoid damaging them as much as possible. IF you can't clean the black powder residue out of your gun, or you HAVE to use your knife as a pry-bar, you do so, but you avoid it. If you have to build a fire in a hurry and you just snapped the blade off the only chopping tool you have, you're going to have great fun splitting kindling with your teeth...

As an aside, the table fork in various simple guises was used by the Romans. It was eschewed by most people in Christendom until the Renaissance (as I recall), most using their fingers, a spoon and their belt knife for eating. As it was when forks became fashionable, they were considered ungodly by the Church as they replaced God-given fingers. (The fact one tends to use fingers to hold a fork was for some reason ignored.)

Regionalchaos, I don't know how old/mature your kids are, but if you're worried about safe storage, there are gun lockers available designed for your situation. Some are opened in about 1 second by your fingerprint. A .357 snubby or a 12gauge or whatever your home defense weapon of choice is can then be kept ready for use securely.

Depends on the fire type. Charcoal can do a little over 1,600 degrees C (3,000 F), coal/coke generally a little higher. Gas varies.

The one with the snowy beard in the last picture if I remember correctly.

Glad to hear you're still doing the big projects Bruce -- what with the prices of coke and iron going up and all. Would be great to get a DVD made up like your anchor-making one. Perhaps next time you should forge a set of shackles for the cameraman before you start on the anvil! ;-)

I'm sure I've heard a myth about a group of blacksmiths where if one just has two rocks, some iron and a fire, they will use one rock as the hammer and the other as the anvil to make a better hammer. Then using that better hammer they will make an even better hammer, until they have a very good hammer.

If you have a hammer, an anvil (doesn't have to be London pattern), a fire and a bar of iron you can make a chisel. (Use the edge of the anvil or the hammer as something between a fuller and a hardy.) Then you can make a punch using the chisel to cut the bar neatly. Then a pair of tongs. From then on you can make just about anything, given enough time, skill, fuel and iron.

BTW I know that tradition has it that you can make your own vice. Somebody who is such a beginner cannot hope to forge a vice. If you don't agree with this please supply me with a list of the beginners you know who made a leg vice as a first project!

Perhaps not a traditional leg vise using traditional methods, but if that beginner smith has a welder, some other fabrication gear and the knowledge to use them, a suitable alternative that is as good or better is quite possible. Example: http://www.abana.org/downloads/education/VerticalVise.pdf

David Robertson's videos are great. I recommend looking at all of them. Signing up for his email newsletter can also be beneficial.

When I was in Sri Lanka, I visited a blacksmithing village -- one where the entire village was employed (directly or indirectly) in blacksmithing for trade. Every smith there was forging in a sarong, and occasionally a shirt and/or flip-flops. As you say Glenn, personal safety is a personal choice and will often depend upon your circumstances - financial and environmental.

Hofi style hammers are very common and manufactured by a lot of companies, they are not ripping of any thing, Hofi has become a standard for that style of hammer just like a French, German, Czech, Swedish, etc., it simply describes the style/type of hammer. However if you want a real Hofi hammer then there is really only one place to get one and that is from the man himself.

welder19

With respect I disagree; it's the man's name. That's why a lot of places say 'French pattern' hammer or a 'Swedish style' hammer; it avoids the ambiguity associated with saying 'French hammer'. That's like, say, selling a CD of covers of Beatles songs as a Beatles CD.

You don't need to buy fire cement; there are mixtures available which call for sharp sand, Portland cement etc. Much cheaper and available from B&Q, Travis Perkins, Wickes...

Welcome, Ethersin.

The question of scrap materials vs. new is one of those dilemmas modern smiths face, a lot like gas vs. solid fuel. Just like gas vs. solid fuel, each has its advantages and disadvantages. New is generally more expensive (and can be hard to find certain sizes, materials etc. in reasonable quantities in this country) but you know what it is and it'll come in a useful size. Scrap is cheap. It can be as cheap free, but you will probably have to do a lot of work to get it useful; if all you can find is 1inch rebar or old railway iron and you need 1/4inch round, you've got a lot of work cut out. (Mind you, this is good drawing practice, and the old smiths had to make EVERYTHING from fairly large billets of iron.) This is a problem for professional smiths as their time is valuable, so even 5 minutes straightening a coil spring could be money wasted rather than buying a

According to Hofi, the French hammer was designed for cold riveting the Eiffel Tower; it's all angle iron and the step is designed to get the pein into the corner.

Don't forget ball pein hammers, they're commonly available in a variety of weights and handle lengths, and the ball is useful for many tasks. You can fuller over the edge of the anvil, over a horn, over a bottom fuller... and you or someone you know probably has one you can use. English smith often use ball-peins as a matter of course (this may be due to the low availability of cross-peins over here).

Don't ask what I use for a poker!

I was at the British universities annual smallbore rifle match a couple of years ago, shooting at 100 yards. The rifle had just been used by someone else shooting at 50 meters, so I clicked the sights up however many I needed (80 1/4 MOA clicks I think). So I'm on the point all set up and the RO gives the command 'commence'. I line up at the sighting diagram, breathe, and press the trigger. Bang. Look through the spotting scope, nothing. Odd, maybe I wasn't lined up properly. Try it again, nothing. By this point I am panicing slightly, and I look at my sighting card, when I realise I had clicked the sights the wrong way. 80 clicks the wrong way.

So I frantically click the sights up a whole bunch of clicks, guesstimating 160 clicks, and I take another shot. It's on the paper this time but it's in the scoring area and about 18" low for the sighter. Both glad that I was on the paper and annoyed at dropping 10 points already (the hole in the paper was outside of the scoring diagrams) I made a calculation and readjusted the sight elevation, finally then hitting the sighter.

I finished the detail just in time, but my groups looked like shotgun patterns and I finished about 5th of over 100 competitors. My lesson: Davy Crockett once said, 'first make sure you are right, then go right ahead.' I must make sure I do the first part before the second! ;)

Just to play devil's advocate here, has anyone considered what we do to anvils to be wrong? Most of the anvils that we use are over 100 years old. They're antiques, and due to the two world wars and the decline of the craft, there aren't many left. Anvils may be designed to be pounded on for a long time, but our anvils may have come from a century or more of daily use, then be used by us. Metallurgy and heat treatment wasn't always like it is and accidents happen. Chisels slip, hammers miss, hardy tools jam and break heels, welds fail. Careful as we can be, we can only reduce the preservation and quality of our anvils. One could say that collectors are preserving anvils for future study.

The guy who goes duck hunting with a 1900 Browning Auto 5 every day of the season or the woman that carries a Webley-Fosberry revolver for protection is no different to you or I using a good old anvil. People might collect it, but we can easily damage it. There are modern alternatives, but their quality is possibly unmatchable once you reach a high price. Besides, it's grandma's shotgun and she put food on the table with it for forty years, or grandad's revolver that helped keep him safe in France in 1918.

As mentioned, new anvils aren't cheap. They are good value considering their projected life, but they aren't cheap. But there's a lot that a smith can do on an 'improvised' anvil. London, American, Italian, German, Hofi and all the other patterns are certainly not the be-all and end-all of anvils, they're just one way of adding convenient features to the core tool, a big chunk of iron for pounding on. Look at the Brazeal brothers' Easysmith for instance, or the vast majority of anvils until roughly the 18th century in the West. 'Most anyone can make an Easysmith for not much money, and it has a table, a butcher and two fullers. Add a stock stand, a bickern and a small home-made swage block and you've got the functionality of a London pattern anvil with the basic tools, for a much lower cost and a higher portability.

Perhaps collectors hate us.

Welcome, Zac. I used to spend a fair amount of time around your neck of the woods as it happens, and still do from time to time.

Probably the first thing you should do is sit down with a notepad, pen, drink and a snack, and read some of the variety of free guides available on the internet regarding getting started in blacksmithing. Probably the best are on this website. Also get to your local library and find whatever books you can on blacksmithing. Make sure to take notes on anything interesting you see, ideas you have etc. (This is a very useful life skill and will help you in many ways.)

To put it simply, you need 5 things to start smithing: something to hit (iron or steel), something to heat it (fire), something to hit it with (hammer), something to hit it on (anvil) and somewhere appropriate to hit it.

Material/stock to use abounds, but you have to know where to look, and what to look for. If you have a scrap yard near you, great. They may not though let you have a rummage around the place, especially at your age. (Parents etc. may be useful here.) What you're looking for are mild steel and higher carbon steels. Cast iron is not useful for us much. You may have to or want to buy your steel new. Again, if you have a steel yard nearby great, but you'll need a lift. Probably the most useful sizes of mild steel are square and round bars from 6mm (1/4 inch) to 12mm (1/2 inch). Flat bar is useful too. To begin with, 6mm (1/4 inch) thick is good, in widths from 12mm (1/2 inch) to 25mm (1 inch). Higher carbon steels are useful for making certain tools like chisels and punches that you will need very soon. It's also useful for making edge tools.

Forges are an interesting question. I would probably say that you should go for a charcoal forge to start with. It's a readily available, clean-burning fuel, and you can usually get it at knockdown prices this time of year (one advantage to our 'interesting' climate). Charcoal is THE ancient smithing fuel, and is capable of fulfilling all your needs. Plus it doesn't need much air and there's no fiddling around with potentially dangerous, expensive and noisy gas equipment. There are many simple and cheap designs of charcoal forge available on the internet. Start by looking at Tim Lively's washtub forge. For air blast, you can start with an old hair dryer.

Anvils are a real problem in Britain. There are plenty about that usually go for a song, especially on eBay, but the vast majority are in awkward places for pickup only. Don't necessarily think 'London pattern'; that is a relatively modern design with many useful but non-essential features. You're basically looking for the biggest chunk of mild or carbon steel you can lay your hands on legally. Again, scrapyards are a good starting place. New anvils are available, such as through Vaughan's, but a decent one will take you a long time to save up for on

Not all coal is the same. I understand that many coal fired power stations run on lignite, which is a very poor grade of coal. It must be crushed into a powder and mixed with propane to burn at all, which is not practical for a forge. You will have to examine a sample of the coal and see for yourself if it is useful.

Hi and welcome ConchoMan.

I hate to say this, but what you plan to do isn't really very feasible. Pure iron melts at over 1500 degrees C (2800 F) and is likely to oxidise (burn) before it reaches this temperature. 'Cast' iron is really iron with between 2.2 and 4% carbon (by weight) and thus its melting point is lower than pure iron (though still much higher than most nonferrous metals). This high carbon content makes it brittle and generally not suited to a knife. It cannot be forged or firewelded to pure iron or steel either.

You will get better results by building an ironsmelting furnace, and feeding the blacksand into that. These furnaces, when operated correctly, produce a very hot reducing atmosphere, i.e. one where there is free carbon but no free oxygen. This precludes oxidisation. You do need a lot of feedstock, and you don't get much out. What you are left with is one or more 'blooms', spongey, irregular masses of iron and/or steel... if you're lucky. You will need to fireweld these together and work them into a useful billet. THEN you start the forging of the knife. Suffice to say, it's not really for beginners (or the faint-hearted).

There are though much more practicable ways for people to start smiting, which are well documented on this site. They would probably be a better place to get started in knife-making. After all, you don't want to go through all that work in smelting the stock for your knife, only to destroy it due to your inexperience! :D