GRiley904

You say very dodgy punch, maybe make another and polish that skill

Hi Jordan I'm a learning smith myself and I live in jacksonville. Faba is a great group and their ne florida meetings are held in Barberville. there is a 25 dollar annual membership fee. I made the conference last year and I would say it was well worth it. Shoot me a pm and I'll give you my e mail our phone # .I'd be glad to talk with you about getting started and see what w can learn together. And with the help of the wonderful people in faba we can achieve or goal in smithing and then some.

I've heard of people using the rail to make hammers although I'm not sure how practical this is

Hog hunting is usually done with a pack of pit bulls they run it tired force it to surrender and lay down usually without touching the hog unless your dogs are attack happy the knife is there to finish it or harvest an animal with no fight left in it. Dogs are more often use to take the hog alive than to cut him, and wait a couple weeks before harvesting or marked and released to hunt. Hogs do have a very thick skin on there back and if stabbing through that one would need a tough blade but it's quicker easier and more humane to cut its throat our shoot it than to attempt to cut through their armor if you will

I had a similar scrape in my 79 chevy, take a look at your steering linkage, that solved my problem with a tire being out of whack

that right there is persuasion incarnate

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy turkey day.

It usually takes just under a quart to fill the hub, be careful not to hit the bolts, that could go from simple to complete pain in a hurry.

MRI's involve very powerful magnetic fields. The idea of having metal inside one opens the possibility of it being rapidly pulled in any direction " toward the magnet" at a pretty predictable time

I think the general idea of hoptoitiveness is important in most aspects of life

I recently set mine up here is a link to the thread

Well I tried it out the other day, and I'm impressed. It moves the metal faster with half the effort. I should have d done this a long time ago. Next step is a real anvil and if that jump in performance is anything like this one I'm going to be a happy man.

Had to go back to work here is a couple pics of the tools, I didn't get any at the conference

I showed up for the last day of the conference. I got there just a everyone was packing up so I didn't get to do much other than help people carry some stuff around, and I bought a hot cut and a pair of universal tongs. Even though I didn't get to see much I still had a great time and met some great people.

Forges are very simple in concept, really they're nothing more than a fire with air channeled into it. Read around the site some. I found this blueprint at the top of solid fuel forges under the forges section. Read the articles in the blueprint section. and the stickys are real good start.

Just watched it on the web. congratulations Ric you've done a remarkable job. If I were you, I don't know if I could sell it, I'd probably frame it and put it on my mantle. Your love for the craft is obvious and your skill is something to aspire to. Kudos sir, Riley

Thanks Chinobi I ended up taking your advise. I used a half cinder block filled in rocks around t the sides and packed it with sand. I also shook the heck out of it to try and rid the bucket of air pockets. That concrete slab sits directly on the block witch runs ask the way to the ground. This is what I came up with. The slab is still setting up and I still need to do some grinding to true up my working surface. I can't wait to see the difference with the rail on end rather than laid flat.will post more pics when all is complete. Thanks, Riley

The concrete footer should be enough to handle normal use, I was more worried about the dirt or clay compacting and blowing out the sides of the bucket. I think I'm going to try, I can always get a new bucket, I just didn't want to buy another bag of concrete. Thanks for the advise

Thank you all for your comments. Fred that is a pretty funny story, I'll be sure not to touch it to my lips. Ten hammers I'm sure I will make plenty and learn from each and every one. Ten hammers, David, Camero your praise means allot to me, in fact all praise means allot to me. Makes me feel warm inside and gives me motivation to keep going, not that I would stop, ever thank you all very much.

I'm currently using a rr track anvil. I have a big piece and a small one, and I was thinking about setting one in a bucket of cement. I would do this to be able to sit and forge or for cold work. I don't know whether I should use the big or the small track, I'm thinking small as I will probably be standing at the anvil, but I could set the bucket on something to get the height I need for that. I was thinking fill the bucket about half way with dirt then about 6 or 8 inches of concrete leaving about 4 inches at the top so after I set the track on that concrete I could then fill the rest of the bucket. Is this a good idea, should I try with the smaller track first? I want to do this for the added mass and stop the anvil from traveling on me. When I built my new forge I couldn't get it to the back yard so I moved my workspace to the driveway and I'm trying to set it up as well as possible. Thanks for any advise in advance.

I know if I had a daughter a birthday candle would be too big, but it's not a bad idea. When I start a family of my own, I would adopt this practice.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. I suggested this method because it takes the guess work out of your finished product. Your way leaves the over all width of the stance to be determined upon completion or involves more math to double check (a 20 degree angle will give you about a 6 1/2 to 6 3/4 inch offset over 18 inches rise) no problems with that, your math is good and you seem good at it, but with my way you instead measure the finished product and work backwards, leaving you with what you want exactly. Being a carpenter this is important to me as in if you're not exact to the finished product you fail inspection. Call it force of habit but I want to know the dimensions of my end result and the angle can be tweaked with a grinder. I'm not saying that either way is better than the other, just that this is easier to me and wanted the info out there for others like me that aren't familiar with the teachings of Pythagoras

An easier method may be the use of the pythagorean therum , sorry if my spelling is off, this is used to determine the lengths of either the legs or hypotenuse of a right triangle, or a triangle with a 90 degree angle, the equation is "a squared + b squared = c squared" a and b being the legs and c being the hypotenuse. You could use this to determine your stands leg length if you know how wide you want the stance to be. This would be easier for me and equally effective. Riley

I got a chance to test it out today and guess what... It forks, and those brats were tasty

Tides go in and out slowly yes, but because the water level changes by a foot or 2 you could judge in regular intervals what stage the tide is in. low tide quarter past, half past, quarter till, high. And back down to low for three cycles per day, no it isn't exact you won't have minutes or seconds but hours yes. I also think that giving them a human concept of time could be a mistake, maybe call it something else. Witch ever path you go, good luck Riley