gobinu

G'day! Welcome to the site. Lots and lots of Blacksmiths.... if you are ever up Ottawa way check out Upper Canada Village. Boy, I really need to send my app into OABA... :)

Thx! Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious from my comment, really nice looking shovel.

Would you like to share some details of the construction? I'd love to hear em.

Well, I wasn't going to get all technical about the words I choose but yea, what you said. If you add too much water(sprinking on the fire for effect isn't enough but over do it and I understand it does)

There is another issue with water, sulfuric acid (leached from the coal itself)will age your forge.

G'day all, So, it occurs to me to ask this question as I've not found a good solution to both preserve coke/coal and "quickly" get my fire put out for the night so I'm sure there won't be a problem. I have to return my forge inside each night in case of rain and such.... Starting a forge fire is easy now, thanks everyone, but how do you put your fire out at the end of the day?

I think that I'd like to see some pictures too. My next task is to make some tongs myself and would like to see beginner tongs.

Thak the Blacksmith & Armourer 2282 Floradale Rd., Floradale Ontario Canada N3B 1V0 519-669-0721 info@thak.ca Will ship anywhere for a pretty good price, $30CND a 70lbs bag. Just placed and received my order early Aug 2008. More details at Thak the Blacksmith

Amen, smallest I can get shipped is 350lbs.

Very Cool. I don't believe there is any cure if what I experienced my first time is an indication. :)

Okay, some of these are quite silly so in that vein here is mine, "Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do."

Yea, a little after I posted I realized that normalized made sense. Sometimes these forums are a little too convenient and circumvent thought. Of course, I was also reading a blacksmith book when I came to that conclusion. So it probably was in there somewhere and popped into my head. Thank you all, and I'll let you know how it turns out.

G'day all, Found a nice big chisel at a junk shop yesterday and my plans are to turn it into a hot cut hardie. The edge needs to be completely reworked so I'm going to have to anneal it. My plans are to rework the tool to 30 degree cutting angle. After reading the Hofi stuff about cutting a straight edge with such a beast I think it'll be the most versatile. My question, what temper should I draw once I harden it back up? Is is necessary to harden a hot cut hardie? This will be my first time at doing any tempering, btw.

Sometimes Cheep is use more for when people really mean easy. Often easy is only just the advertising perspective, and not truely any easier. I buy Canadian as much as possible but I have a hard time finding all these auctions, sales, and "found" steel like you guys talk about. :)

Some people have only ever done cheap, and simply don't understand quality. Of course, that's because even the "expensive" stuff that is sold the normal retail route is pretty much poor quality. Something I've learned in the rest of my life. Set your price according to what effort you put into it, not what you think you can get. Cheap is as cheap does. (My wife tells a story about a guy who didn't think his wood carving was worth that much, and he didn't sell any of it. He priced it based on suggestions he got on line from professionals, sold a good deal of it for much more than he ever thought possible.)