blksmth

I realize this is a little late in this discussion, but here is my comment anyway: In answer to HWooldridge's post, the German Company in the article was the August Refflinghaus Co. They made the forge welded wrought iron anvils with a forge welded steel plate until about 1955. From then until about 1975 they used a cast steel body with a forge welded face plate. Since that time they make an all cast steel anvil and are of the opinion that it is the best anvil they have ever made as well as being cost effective. The article HWooldridge refers to was originally posted in the California Blacksmiths Association Magazine and has since been reproduced and published in Richard Postman's Book Anvils in America. Now the Ernst Refflinghaus Co. (Ernst Refflinghaus - Home) is still producing anvils using some of the same equipment and in the same location shown in the article, although much of the old equipment has been placed in a park for public viewing. Ernst Refflinghaus anvils can currently be purchased from the Shady Grove Blacksmith Shop, in the USA.

Don Fogg Custom Knives has a good article on Heat Treating @ http://www.dfoggknives.com/hardening.htm. Also see Heat Treatments: Direct Hardening a portion follows: "Quench Media Quenching is the act of rapidly cooling the hot steel to harden the steel. Water: Quenching can be done by plunging the hot steel in water. The water adjacent to the hot steel vaporizes, and there is no direct contact of the water with the steel. This slows down cooling until the bubbles break and allow water contact with the hot steel. As the water contacts and boils, a great amount of heat is removed from the steel. With good agitation, bubbles can be prevented from sticking to the steel, and thereby prevent soft spots. Water is a good rapid quenching medium, provided good agitation is done. However, water is corrosive with steel, and the rapid cooling can sometimes cause distortion or cracking. Salt Water: Salt water is a more rapid quench medium than plain water because the bubbles are broken easily and allow for rapid cooling of the part. However, salt water is even more corrosive than plain water, and hence must be rinsed off immediately. Oil: Oil is used when a slower cooling rate is desired. Since oil has a very high boiling point, the transition from start of Martensite formation to the finish is slow and this reduces the likelihood of cracking. Oil quenching results in fumes, spills, and sometimes a fire hazard."

SK, I like your forge. Nice size and a practical design. Does the chimney go straight through the roof or out the side wall?

Hammerkid, you did a great job on your forge. You should be mighty proud of it!!!!!

Hammer Kid, just to give you something to think about I'll give you some of my thoughts. As I am always bending things in my post vise, I do not like a table or anything that could interfere with the iron in the vise. I have been to demo's and used other blacksmiths vises and often ran into a problem when the vise had a table attached. I would rather have a table separate or a swage block on it's stand next to the vise (to be used as a table). Something I can move if necessary. My post vises are mounted on 3" square 1/4" wall tubing. The floor is concrete and has several 3 1/2" tubes in various places that the post vise slips into. Nevertheless, my 6" vise is heavy enough that I do not like to move it. I do have a 4" vise that I move around regularly. I move it to the electric welding area, or next to my gas forge, or out in the open area, all as needed. The 6" vise pretty much stays about 5 ft. from my coal forge. If I didn't have a concrete floor, I'd mount it to the 3" tubing and put a little concrete around it to hold it in place. I like the tubing because it isn't very big around and therefore doesn't interfere with anything I want to do on the vise. I don't have any pictures, but I think it is easy to understand.

Even though many problems are mentioned with regular old 20 Mule Team Borax, there are an awful lot of blacksmiths that get use to using it and swear by it. It is fairly inexpensive. Mark has a good idea in the pickling. I usually soaking the weld in water for a day or two and it seems to eliminate the white. I just watched a video where an older blacksmith originally from Germany was using hydrated lime. Seemed to work fine. He was forge welding with it using a actlyene torch, rather than a forge, though. If you want to spend the money, the purchased forge welding compounds such as EZ Weld and Crescent work good and are not as slick as borax. EZ Weld has metal filings which are hard to get off the finished work. Some smiths use combinations of borax and the purchased products, particularly using the borax to melt into the fine cracks etc.

That sounds like a pretty good reason for the name. Kind of wondered if you were originally from these parts or something like that. Thanks for the reply and good blacksmithing!

The blower on the forge is better than a $350 blower from Centaur Forge. Perfect for a professional coal forge. Of course if you used the blower only, you'd have to figure out how to get rid of the rest of it.

Pawnee, how'd you get that name in Idaho? I live in the middle of the old Pawnee lands (prior to 1885) near the Loup, Platte, and Republican Rivers in Nebraska. Just curious.

Woody, it is good to post this information. Thanks

Sounds like a good price. I think I sold mine for around $300 - 10 years ago. Today it might be worth more as it was better than most.

My first real anvil was a Fulton. It was about 120 lb. and in very good shape. It was a cast iron anvil with a very hard high carbon steel plate for the face. The edges had a few small chips, and the face was slightly depressed into the cast iron in the middle. Neither of those was a problem. I was pleased with it until I decided I needed a heavier anvil. The anvil has a small spot in Mr. Postman's book, but I don't think there is anything significant about it. If the size is right for you, if it is is good shape, and the price is reasonable, go for it. They are good anvils. The one I had had a very hard face and I liked that.

HWooldridge and Steve White (Skunkriv) in their posts of 2/4/08 are right on the money. For serious forge work a blower with adequate pressure is the primary factor. I've seen far too many forges with inadequate blowers.

Jason, they are cast because it is cheap to make castings. You can fabricate one of square tubing or round tubing or weld one up of sheet metal. You can a see a fabricated one at: My Portable Forge

You can check out some other coal forges at Shady Grove Blacksmith Shop. Look under "how to" information.

m_brothers, Weyers book does not give information for H13 as was previously mentioned. I know several smiths that just forge H13 and then air cool. That is all they do. If you want the tool a little harder you can temper at approx. 1050 degrees F, but for smith work it is generally not necessary. H13 should not be water cooled when in use, but then I know you can often get by with dunking it in water quickly to cool if necessary. You are taking a chance of cracking the tool, though as it is not a water quench steel and water is too fast of a quench for H13. Blacksmiths like Tom Clark and Uri Hofi make more than one hot use tool (typically chisels and punches) of the same size out of H13. One or 2 of the tools can be air cooling while 1 is in use. H13 typically does not get hard enough for cold work unless professionally heat treated. See a temperature chart for heat treating several steels common to blacksmiths at: http://www.blksmth.com/heat_treat_guide.htm Hope this helps,

Avadon, that is a nice looking forge hood. If it were mine, I would use a 12 inch or larger chimney and if you can get it 16 ft. high or higher that would be good. Yes it does need to be at least 2 ft. higher than anything within 10 feet of it. I have put smoke shelves in forge chimneys and have left them out. Using each side by side, it didn't seem to make any difference, so now I do not put them in. You can see some forge hoods at: Student Forges in the Shop of Donald Stanley and at http://www.blksmth.com/Coal_Forge_Hood_1.htm Hope that helps and good luck with it.

IronFist, you can look at a portable forge at My Portable Forge The fire pot was made of 1/4" plate and it is not lined with any refractory or clay. I will say that a forge table that is made of just metal, does get hot to the touch. If you want to try to keep the forge table cool, then it should be topped with 1" thick brick, regular brick, cement, or something similar. The metal part of the table can be thin metal such as 12 gauge, particularly if covered with brick ( unless you are forging very heavy items).

M, you may have a reason to make the fire pot the size you mentioned, but for general work I would want it larger. The Centaur, Sofa, and Laurel Foundry rectangular fire pots are all ( measured at the inside of the top) about 9 inches wide, 13 inches long, and about 4 inches deep. I prefer a 4 1/2" deep fire pot myself. The hole for the clinker breaker or grate would be approx. 3 inches in diameter and the air inlet assembly would all be made of 3 inch round or square pipe. You can see a drawing of one at MILD STEEL FIREPOT Hope this helps, Dick

I doubt if you'll wear it out either. It is too bad the companies that sell ductile iron anvils don't let us know what they are made of without having to call the factory. Ductile iron anvils do have some good qualities and those could be advertised also. I sell high quality Refflinghaus anvils and the factory won't tell anyone what kind of steel they are made of either. From experience, they are tough, and they are guaranteed to be RC 59. They have a nice finish, they rust, they ring like a bell, they have 90-95% rebound, they don't have a chipping problem, they rarely dent, they cost $7 - $8 per pound. I know that about the anvils, but not much about the kind of steel. Dick

Lee, they are probably all about the same in hardness, toughness, and rebound.

Quenchcrack, I wouldn't worry too much about the ductile cast iron. It is what some US companies are doing to keep the price down. Everyone knows that blacksmiths don't like to pay over a $ per pound for an anvil. Sounds like the price was right. In many ways it compares favorably to a steel anvil and probably better than some. The Czech made anvils I've used and seen are made of pretty poor manganese steel. Big grain size and soft. They do work harden some, but have to get pretty banged up in order to get any harder. I used a JHM ductile iron anvil at a demo site and thought it was a good anvil. Unfortunately new anvils are high priced. The higher the price the better the anvil. Give us a report after you have used it for a few years.

See anvil stand at: Student Forges in the Shop of Donald Stanley. The site might be useful for those wanting to use a stump.

:)Sabre, yes the measurements are in 1,000s. Most dimensions are in whole inches. 5 inches, 6 inches etc. Forget the 000 after the number. There are 2 ways you can figure the dimensions that are not whole inches. As in most blacksmithing, exact length is not too important. One way is to draw the firepot on a piece of paper using the dimensions you know. You can then draw the lines for the non even dimensions and measure them with a ruler (there are only 2). It helps if you draw center lines for the drawing. The other way is to calculate to the nearest 1/8 inch by dividing 8 into 100 which is 1/8" or .125. 1 ea. 1/8 inch = .125 inch 2 ea. 1/8 inch = 2/8 inch which is reduced to 1/4 inch or .25 inch 3 ea. 1/8 inch = 3/8 inch or .375 inch 4 ea. 1/8 inch = 4/8 inch reduced to 1/2 inch or .5 inch 5 ea. 1/8 inch = 5/8 inch or .625 6 ea. 1/8 inch = 6/8 inch reduced to 3/4 inch or .75 inch 7 ea. 1/8 inch = 7/8 inch or .875 8 ea. 1/8 inch = 1 inch or 1.000 From the above calculations simply add the nearest fraction to the whole number and you should be plenty close enough. If you look at the firepot drawing you will see that there are only 2 numbers that are not whole numbers. One is 6.1033 inches. It is therefore close to 6 1/8 inches. The other is 6.3246 inches. It is close to 6 3/8 inchs. Generally when cutting a plate they do not come out any closer than that anyway. Hope this helps. Dick