Jim Kehler

The difference between 70F to 2000F and 0F to 2000F isn't gonna make much difference to the steel. Your anvil will suck the heat out of your piece faster and you will want a glove on your holding hand as cold steel gets uncomfortable pretty quick.

Ptree how big is that upsetter in the video? I worked on a 4" and thought that it was big :blink:

I really like it, especially the slippers.

I like it! "Modern" design and traditional joinery. Nicely done.

Check out Don Fogg's bladesmith site, search "vertical forge"

I've got an oil burner that came out of a railroad shop (not the one I was in), it runs on compressed air, kind of a supercharged weed burner. A little bit messy on start-up and it sounds like there's an F-18 in your shop. It sure puts out heat. Just point it into a firebrick box. That shop called them "buckeyes" not sure where the name came from. You might want to try something like that and I would really recommend a forge set-up rather than a furnace, for those times you need to take a second heat.

When I've worked to drawings they have had tolerances, plus or minus a sixteenth or something like that.

I find that lighting the forge is a good way to dispose of used shop rags.

I certainly wasn't implying anything :huh: Thanks for the info.

Michael, what did you use in the packing gland?

Looking great! Makes me reconsider selling mine :(

John, I'm afraid I don't remember too many of the finer details it was about 15 years ago. I just know we had to keep it at a certain concentration checked it every morning and added as necessary, it was a green goopy liquid like a thicker anti-freeze.

I find that the propane furnace heats up the shop more than the coal forge.

I've used polymer quenchant at my last job, one advantage is flexibility, you can mix it to different densities to get faster or slower quenches. Personally I didn't like the smell of it.

I went through a broker and had my Beaudry shipped from the Atlantic coast to Manitoba for $800.

Sweet looking hammer! I would think that 12" is lots but yeah 18" is better and concrete is relatively inexpensive. Happy Canada Day!

How you impart "life" to all those bits of scrap just amazes me.

I guess my point is that "as forged" and "normalized" are heat treatments.

I'll agree with Sam here, just because you haven't hardened and tempered a tool does not mean that you haven't heat treated it. Every time you heat a steel that has more than 30 points of carbon and or a significant amount of other alloy you have heat treated it. That doesn't mean that it won't do its job, just that knowing what kind of mix of pearlite, martensite, retained austenite etc. you have may make the tool better.

I think these are two different things, the air line and ball valve are to make it idle, the lever and chain to the treadle are so you can operate the motion valve from the front of the hammer either with the lever or the treadle.

Hi Michael, don't think I'd seen that video of the 750 before . Your guys look eager enough and I think with a bit more practice you would really like working with a driver. B) Your driver is giving you what you'd get with a typical treadle set-up, better if he kept the throttle open and used the motion lever. With suspended stuff like that its good if he can hit every second stroke(a shorter non hitting stroke in between) it lets you get yourself set a bit better. Its also nice if your crane operator has some forging experience so he knows what it feels like when the piece isn't flat in the dies :o I know Grant was feeding a small amount of air into the motion valve body in order to get it to idle, other than that I'm not sure.

Looking forward to seeing those in action :)

I like it! :) What are you using for a clutch?

The blade is 12 inches long, it came with a few blades but none of them new. I'm sure I could come up with postage, or maybe I have something you need, my wife would say I have a surprising number of things that she has no idea what they are ;)

Here's the pic.