fat pete

have you ever used a milling machine??

i wonder how they would do in a tempr oven...not wrapped .... i tried that after seeing it on a nother forum and leaves a neat finish that you lightly sand the highlights....leaving the insideo fthe twist or file mark stays black...and the edges are shiny....

disturbing my neighbor is a fun thing to do ...he is an ignoramous....so i position my forge that the wind takes the smoke his way...evryone around here wonders about the goof...so its a weird antagonistic deal

i was taught to work the metal at bright orange.....if you use the horn of your anvil, be sure to line the squareness of the way you bend ...cause the horn is tapered you wont get a nice even turn on the peice. ... you do get more scale in the gas forge...the changing of the color of the exhaust, and the water drop thing...where are you getting your metal?? the color sounds like your burning off some coating or maybe some old flux is lighting up.... i leave a scrap[ piece in my propane to set items on so it heats more evenly...that piece of metal goes thru lottsa of heatings and does form an inordinate amount of scale on it, i dont care cause its a sacraficial piece of scrap...when you chip the scale away the metal is ooce and shiny...it would be interesting to weigh a piece and reheat it many times to see how much mass you would loose.....i digress

your picture has a bad file extention name..... "t-swage small bmp.bmp." ...... too waaa i cant see it....

chile chile chile...habenero here too love it

welcome.... after you do a little grinding you will want coal and a hammer....saw blades still need heat treating there are some really good bladesmiths here

Why is a bigger/heavier anvil better?- it depends what you do .... but the more mass the less loss of energy...mass moves mass.... so when you wak it it takes all that energy...bigger anvils have larger working surfaces... If you securely attach a good quality smaller anvil to a heavy base, wouldn't that be solid and stable enough for larger work? sure alot of people starting out just want a mass of metal alot of things can be used for anvils...big drops, you want that steel face...you want a good rebound...it dont matter what it looks like as long as you can have an unmarred face and different edges to do different things....its nice if it has a few sharp edges too..