Bigred1o1

if you read the description its only a 7 and a 1/4 inches it opens 10inches still a nice looking vice

a good rasp with square off a round handle in nothing flat

i tend to wire brush the loose rust off of tools and they wipe down with linseed oil that soaks into the rust and sort of forms a shell it by no means makes things shiny and new but it dose have a nice look and while i dont mind rust i dont like things looking neglected as far as first impressions go when people come into the shop but then i also pain repairs i make to our farm equipment where i have had to weld things (even though i realize they will not rust out in my lifetime)

i got mine out of a flower garden i think over all the large majority of the step vises were cast so they are more breakable i have come across 3 working ones and 5 broken ones so far and unlike the post vices that more or less any shop could make the step vise's were more of a specialty tool dont get me wrong i love having one but they seem to be more used by farriers and shops that made carriages so those are the things i would look for

that or check around if there is anyone around you that has a good sized firewood operation i lucked into some nice strait grained 18inch long 12 inch wide log sections before they had run through the splitter when helping a friend split there wood i snagged those ones and put them aside the nice thing about handles is you dont need length quality so even in wood that did not make the cut for the mill there is likely some wood that will work quite nicely

very good idea as well i know we are looking into getting a touch mark for the for the forge at the old stone house partly to be able to track what was made on sight and partly sins our goal is to replicate parts it would be nice to keep the new from getting mixed in with the old as far as the forge goes i am always fighting with out of sight is out of mind and i have been spoiled working with gas of late

honestly i am not on days where i work on the farm shop time is hit or miss depending on what needs fixing and when working down at the museum things can be so fragmented with having to stop and explain that its hard to keep track of what was made through out the day though it is part of what makes it fun when you get someone that is truly interested in what you are doing over all we have found it works best with 1.5 smiths and .5 of a press agent so we tend to trade off and do striking work for who ever is driving the project and then try and field questions between heats its odd though i have burned far more steel while demoing than i ever destroyed glass while demoing glass blowing all i can think is that you dont have the same feed back on how hot/soft things are becoming in the forge

yup its been a good experience i started very early this spring making log dogs for the timber framers then moved on to spuds and then from there we would fix what ever they broke/bent and besides from how long things have taken to make it has been a eye opening experience as far as being able to some small extent track some of the real day to day uses of a blacksmith over all i can say is i far prefer going to the hardware store for my nuts and bolts than hot punching and tapping/threading them in my day to day life

yeah that was why we went with it on the plus side i sure got a kick out of working with it and as you said the hole no no your going to burn it feeling when working it and it was nice to be able to hold up the finished hardware side by side with some samples from the museum and besides from the lack of rust on the new ones they looked the same (a very nice demo moment) while forging in 85*+ weather is not my favorite thing to do this was still quite a lot of fun and etching the scrap at least for me was a treat from the point of view of getting a good look inside the material

for the past few weekends i have been helping out with making some large door hinge hardware for a new post and beam barn that has been recently constructed/raised still mostly just have the beams up and they are now working on the roof at the old stone house museum in Vermont the cool part about this is getting to work with wrought iron not something i am used to doing and i have been really enjoying it partly this has been a chance to work with some fairly large stock of wrought iron around 1 3/4 inches down to one inch in diameter i was quite surprised to find out how quite it is to work with as far as keeping the anvil from ringing (has anyone ells had this noticed this when working with it?) long story short i had a scrap let over and thought i would cut it in half and give it a etch to see what it looked like inside the photo is of a 1inch piece of "triple" refined wrought iron i cant remember the providence of it but i know i was told but at that point i was not thinking much past the head of my hammer on a side note this was some hard stuff and was used for the pivot points in the pintle hinge as well the upper end in the photo was hot cut and the bottom end was cut with a saw this was done primarily bc i wanted to be able to show the differences in how the grain moved with the hot cut vs the saw cut some what large image so i hope this uploadeds

good stuff and glad i could help

sorry not the best drawer but this was more what i meant with a mounting bracket from the tow hitch you could make it fixed or have it sleeved so that it could slide up and down to always be seated on the ground if you wanted to get fancy you could make it so that you could lock it in place at a set height

if you have a removable tow hitch on your truck you can use that as a spot to mount the a vice nice and solid and quick to remove

just a heads up but he has it up on ebay as well

that looks bragging good very nice movement in the bends and a huge improvement over #1

yeah i have a smaller one around 120lb and i truly love how quite it is dont get me wrong if i can come across a anvil with edges and a face in the condition of the one above i dont thing i will be turning my nose up at it on the plus side VaughnT i dont think we are going to be going head to head on many anvils lol

yup as long as i am not making hay i will be there all in all i am sorry i missed out on the mouse hole but i would be cross-eyed and drooling if it had been a fisher in that shape that i missed life goes on and its always good to know there are some descent ones that pop back up

congrats Furnace you beat me to it by about 2 hours i had been waiting to see if i could swap my truck for something less thirsty for the drive it was a 2 1/2 hour drive for me so i am just glad to know that anvil will still be in use i thought it was a fantastic deal for a anvil in that shape

thanks sam oddly enough i just got back from moving some pre steaks to a new field myself i wont say these were fun to do but i wanted to put some work into drawing out stock so this seemed like a good way to go about doing it

touch mark for the post above its a WM and for me making it readable right side up and upside down was key

this is mine its not perfect and its not the same as what i use on glass and pottery work but it works and people know its mine and thats about all you need

i know people are sick of rr spikes but they do make a dandy steakturner with a little drawing out

oddly i have quite a bit of trouble with rust in Vermont i don't know if its just that the fields around the shop are so wet or what but i know a lot of my heavy metal equipment gets covered in condensation and i have to dump the water traps in my air lines anytime i run them so as a result any surface that is not in use i tend to coat with a lite coat of linseed oil and this has fixed the problem if i am not using my anvils for any length of time i tend to hit them with a light coat of wd40 and call it good i don't know if i really need to do that or not but it dose not seem to hurt anything

Link removed at the request of Anvilfire. googling around a bit i came up with this those are just some nice pieces of work

my thought is the simplest way to say it is the hard brick are meant to withstand the heat but not retain it where the soft brick will retain the heat but breakdown more quickly