Private Entrance

I have a 1.5# crosspeen that I use more than my other hammers, and a 2# engineer's hammer that I use next most often. I have a 3# crosspeen that I like but I can't swing for very long since I'm still working on building up my arm strength. I used it a lot the first day I got my forge running and my arm and hand hurt for about 3 days. Good hammer, but I'm not ready to use it as my #1 hammer yet.

Glad to finally be of some inspiration, as I've gotten so much here. See if you can beat my investment in the table - $5 for 2 packs of nuts and bolts to put it together, and most of them are still in a drawer waiting for a use. Everything else was free. Total investment in the forge to date is about $40. I put the ball in the hardy hole and beat on it a little bit tonight, and it sits a bit loose in the hole. I will give it a bit of an upset to tighten the fit some, and then pay more attention to the heat treat. I'm afraid I might have only quenched it without giving it any more treatment, and I really don't want the thing to shatter in my face. I was thinking on my way home from work tonight that I might like to make one of those flattish soup dish looking medieval helmets, the ones that look sort of like WWI British infantry helmets. I've got plenty of sheet metal and they look hard enough to be a challenge but no so difficult I'll never get it done. I am sure the notch on the other side will get installed, I'm just being cautious about over-fiddling with things so I don't accidently jack something up in an unrecoverable fashion.

I did cut one notch in the left end of the table, and I will probably cut another in the right (looking at it like in the picture above). I'm making adjustments on an as needed basis. I don't want to 'fix' something until I'm fairly sure there is an actual problem. I haven't had a chance to use the hardy tool yet. I am afraid that I might not have heat-treated it (anywhere close to) properly, so I am going to tread gingerly with it. There is also a chance that it might not be solid through-and-through. I don't think that's the case, but I want to be safe rather than sorry.

$20/50# bag, unwashed, in bits from small gravel up to about 1" or so diameter. I get it from a farrier supply house about 5 miles from home. He says he orders it from back east by the railcar load about every 3 years. Some obscene amount like 20 tons or something. Seems to be pretty good stuff to me (like I know anything). Gets rr spikes up to forging temp. Cheaper than the 1st bag I bought off the internets - $17.50 for the coal, another $20 or so for shipping, and much more convenient.

Epic. 'Turbines to speed... Engines to power...'

I like that option better than drilling holes, and you are probably right about the paint cracking, too. But I'd rather put a bit on my anvil than a drill to her, if I can help it.

That's a brilliant idea. Never crossed my mind to set something like that up. I will keep an eye out for materials for one.

Drilling a hole to stop the crack isn't something I had thought of. I will consider it, but shan't act rashly. If I had seen the crack before I bought it, I might not have. This is my first and only anvil, so I'm happy with it for now. I'm saving my pennies for an upgrade one of these days, but we'll burn that bridge when we cross it.

I'll speak in favor of washers and microwaves. Lots of sheet metal in both, and also smaller strips and bars of metal to use for other things. Lots of metal in big appliances.

I traced out a paper template of bottom of the inside of the drum, then used that to make two rounds of sheet metal that I then punched holes in to match the mounting holes in the drum. Those are bolted to the drum, while sandwiched between the two is a flanged pipe fitting that I ground a bit to fit inside the opening (about 3-4" final diam, I think). The top plate has a series of punched holes in it to act as a grate. The bottom plate has a 1 1/2"-ish hole in it that allows the pipe from air system to fit into the flange. So far it works pretty well, and is holding up nicely. BTW, the steel for those two plates is the same stuff as the table is made from - metal from the side of a washing machine. I'll have to post pics of my two pair of tongs - they are much changed since this picture. Still not super pretty, but they work a lot better. I improved the fit of the reins and the jaws on both and they make life much easier. Here is a pic of yesterday's efforts. A railspike warhammer in progress, a slitter and chisel I made that actually worked (yay!), a new spike knife in progress, and a trailer hitch ball I've turned into my first hardy tool.

Sweet. Thank you all for the help and advice. I will keep an eye on it going forward, and will not do any heavy upsetting in the hardy hole.

It is under the heel. The heel still sounds good - rings about the same as the front end of the table and the horn, just in a slightly different key. Total length of the crack is about 3/4", looks to be at least 1/4" deep, maybe a bit deeper, and there is a patina in there. Not quite the same as the underside of the heel, but it does look to have been there awhile and I just haven't noticed it. I looked for a 'solid wrought' marking on the anvil, and couldn't find any such thing anywhere, and the serial #, if there is one, is under the strapping holding it down. Here is what I hope to be a better pic. It is comforting to hear that the initial opinion is that this might not be a catastropic failure.

I found this today on my 110#ish HB anvil. I would like to know how bad this is. I am pretty sure it can be classified as 'other than good.' The crack runs from the hardy hole towards the heel. I felt it when I reached under the anvil to move it out of the bright sunlight and into the shade again. I hope this isn't in a catastrophic failure. It is certainly beyond my personal capability to repair. Thanks in advance for any help/advice.

Thanks for the pic and the explanation, Beth. Looks relatively straightforward if I start with the right stock. I will give it a go when I have a run of weekends next month that I can have the forge out.

Very nice. Can you give us a picture of one of the candle holders (or a link if you've posted pics of them before)? I like the looks of those quite a bit and wouldn't mind trying my hand at one. Don't know if I can pull them off with my limited skill set yet, but they look at least theoretically doable. :) PS - love the dog's jacket. Very smart, and he's suitably dressed for dinner almost anywhere.

If you're going to epoxy and re-drill the hole in the handle, I suggest using a slower drying epoxy (like 24 hr, definitely not 5 minute) and mixing some steel wool into the epoxy and jamming the whole mess into the hole. Let it dry overnight/until it hardens, file/sand the overage smooth, then drill. The steel wool will give the hole some extra strength. If need be, you can accelerate the cure of a slow drying epoxy by warming it up with a hair dryer. If you can keep the temp at about 130* F for about an hour (depending on the epoxy) it should be hard enough to drill in about an hour or so.

Nothing. I empty mine out after every forging session. I put the embers from the fire into the bucket after they've cooled a bit, and sort the coke and clinkers out, then empty the bucket.

Welcome! I'm planning on (finally) joining CBA here in the next month or so. Hope to see you at some of the events.

I'm in favor of issuing a set of files to each student and making them responsible for their care and feeding. Store the rest of the good ones. That alone should triple the current life expectancy of them. If the students can't just reach into a drawer to get one or toss it back into the drawer when they are done, they will take better care of them. BTW, the first thing I'd do when we got a tool order in at the beginning of a season is a pull a file of each size out of the box, wrap them up in paper, and put them away into the 'Shop Manager's Stash.' That way I ALWAYS had a good set of files available when I needed them. This also inspired the junior techs to take care of the shop's files. 'Leadership by example,' or somesuch. And, as files get used, they can be moved along to different purposes as they wear. My good set was for hand bevelling and race tuning ski edges. Last season's good set would be used for general ski and snowboard tuning. Then they would get moved to sharpening/squaring scrapers and tools. They'd typically end their lives after 3-4 seasons being used to break in new belts for the grinders. My shops would typically use 1/2 to 1/3 as many files as another shop the same size, simply because we took better care of them in general, and made an effort to avoid using them for things they weren't ready for. My $.02, for what it's worth.

Didn't even think about brittleness being an issue. I was worried more about the density of it making the hammer overall too heavy. Thanks. We shall see, we shall see.

Guzzo, ironwood sounds like it'd be worth trying for handles. I'm going to scavenge some when I'm in the local mountains in a few weeks and give it a go for hammer handles. One thing, though. I don't know if your ironwood is the same as ours, but that stuff is heavy as heck. I don't know if that's going to be a good thing or a bad on a hammer - might balance things a bit better. Might make it so heavy I have no interest in lifting it hundreds of times. We'll see.

Got it done enough to fire up. Here's the first fire. My arm is sore from not swinging a hammer for 3 weeks. Also, managing the fire in v2.0 is a bit harder than on the old one - I feel like I'm starting over from square one in some ways. Nearly finished my second set of tongs, and started a present for the wife. Not a bad day.

That is quite rad. Reminds me of the skull and crossbone earrings the Mobile Infantry wore in Starship Troopers. Make it easy to add a bone for every combat jump, too.

It does have a distinctly unhappy look about it...

I gave serious thought to mounting my firepot like you have yours before my rebuild (see the 'Ghetto Forge' thread for pics, etc.) I decided to flush mount it with the table top to make it easier to get fuel in the fire. Your table top looks a heck of a lot more solid than mine, though. Definite props for that score.