rdennett

What (Frosty is) describing seems to be showing that inertia or mass under the hammer is more important than surface hardness, the latter of which should correlate with the anvil's rebound. I haven't tried this since I don't happen to have any ball bearings handy, but it seems to me that the bearing would bounce to the same height on the tail of the anvil as it would over the sweet spot. Is that the case? I would think a true apples-to-apples comparison would be to test a block of hardened and tempered steel against a block of mild steel with the same weight and dimensions and orientation. It's my understanding that the hardened block will score better on the ball bearing test, but is it the case that it would move metal more effectively than the mild steel one? Also, I always thought the issue with cast iron was that it was too brittle for forging and a miss could cause it to break, potentially injuring the smith.

I have seen various videos from Trent Tye and others who make a rather convincing case that anvil rebound in meaningless. A hardened face will certainly last longer if you miss a lot, but i wonder if the importance placed on rebound is some lore handed down but no one knows why it's actually important. Daniel Moss's video in reaction to Mr. Tye's didn't really make a compelling case. ISTM that all things being equal, an anvil made of mild steel will work just as well as one with a hardened face. The anvil will likely deform over time, although this may take years, if not decades and there are anvils with hardened faces which are swaybacked. Am I wrong? If so, can you please explain why?

With the advent of these inexpensive Mr Volcano forges ($68 at present), is it worth it to try to build one? I currently use a JABOD forge using coke for fuel. I would continue to use that, but coke is hard to come by in central Texas and is rather expensive. Coal is cheaper, but I live in the burbs and I don't want to piss off the neighbors with smoke from green coal. I can get lump charcoal for $27 for 34lbs, but I don't like it as much because of fire fleas and the fact that it doesn't go out by itself at the end of the day, waisting any unburned fuel. Propane is easy to get, practically 24 hours a day, but I have not taken the plunge since propane forges are much more expensive than a JABOD. However, I might just do that. I am only a hobbyist, so I try to keep things inexpensive, but the forge mentioned above is not much of an outlay. Could I come in cheaper by building my own? I am also curious about forced air forges. Do they have to have a ribbon burner? How much gas pressure do they need? Less than the 2PSI I understand a BBQ regulator puts out? What about the blower? Do you need one of the squirrel cage blowers I commonly see people use or could you get away with a hair dryer like my JABOD uses?

It’s kind of a pride thing, but i don’t want to spend more than $70 to assuage it. A 7TPI rip saw will indeed resaw … eventually.

The blade in question was specifically for resawing. It’s about 4 feet long, 3-1/2” wide and has 3 TPI.(Commercial link removed do a search for Blackburn Tools Roubo Style Frame Saw)(actually, I see it’s $70) The question remains, though. Is there anything sufficiently thin and high carbon that would likely be found in a scrapyard?

Indeed, it’s the blade. I can buy one for about $80, so I will need to come in well under that to make this worth the effort. Note that I don’t want to sell them, just make one for my one use should the need arise, I.e. having to resaw some lumber.

I’m just a hobbyist who lives in the suburbs. I currently have stick capability with my Everlast, and mostly make tools. I don’t have much in the way of heavy plate.

Is high carbon sheet metal used to make anything common, such that it’s likely to be found in a scrap yard? I want to possibly make a frame saw and want to know what my options are. Thanks, Rob

I have a Lincoln AC/DC 225/125 arc welder purchased from HD in the late '90s. A couple of years ago, I picked up an Everlast 161st, which I now use for the small amount of welding that I do. I haven't gotten around to picking of an Argon bottle for mild steel TIG welding and was thinking of selling my Lincoln to pay for it. Any special reason to keep the old Lincoln? While it's a beast and unlikely to wear out, I don't use it much, don't have a cart for it and it's basically taking up space. As mentioned, I only do a small amount of welding to make shop tools (I have yet to go through 10lbs of rod). Is there any particular capability I would miss if I got rid of it? How much should I ask for it if I did?

Does wetting it like that increase fire fleas?

I’m in Austin TX. I’ve called practically every place in the area. If you know of a place, I’d love to know.

I use coke I my forge currently because I like solid fuel but live in the burbs and don’t want to have to explain coal fumes to the HOA. However, it’s become increasingly hard to source. I can easily get lump charcoals year round for a lower price, but unlike coke, you can’t just turn off the air blast and break apart the fire and have fuel still there when you return the next day. You get a pile of ash instead. I tried dosing the coal in the slack tub and skimming it out again, but this seems to really increase the fire fleas. Is there a better way to conserve fuel if you only forge for short durations, say no more than 2 hours?

I recently forged a straight razor and while it takes the hair off my arm like nobody's business and slices cleanly through paper, it barely cuts off any whiskers, and is more likely to take of the skin. I tried for several hours to get a flat grind on the blade (I don't have power tools to do this), but my first thought is perhaps the blade is a little thick. Looking at examples on YouTube, they all appear to have very hollow grinds (mine is slightly convex near the edge). I had heard that when you sharpen them, you lay the whole blade flat on the stone. I had gotten impatient and raised it up to, say, 20 degrees (I freehanded it). Is the edge likely not acute enough? Thanks, Rob

I too was turned off by the high cost of vises (personally, I blame Forged in Fire), and their extreme scarcity. I took a different approach, though, fabricating mine out of 1" rebar using a $100 HF welder. Rob

I took a page from the college where I took the class I mentioned. 7018 was kept in a rod oven, but 6011 was just kept in bins. I just got some fresh 7018 today, but I will have to dress my coupons. They are pretty rusty.

I do have training materials, some from Lincoln, but none of them answer the question I asked. They show examples of "travel speed too high/too low", "amperage too high/too low", etc. but as I said, since they are good welders, they can easily modify their technique to show off what happens when only one of the variables is wrong. If I were interested in doing this for money, a school would obviously be a worthwhile investment, but since I am not, I am seeking something more informal. I looked into retaking the same class I took about a year ago and found the prices had quintupled, plus with COVID, it's currently on hold. While I don't expect anyone here to be able to say, "here's what you're doing wrong" without watching me do it, I was hoping someone could advise "first practice your arc length" if that's a thing. It sounds like IronDragon is indeed advising that's the first thing to master. It also sounds like I might need to use 7018 to exaggerate any issues. Is that fair to say?

Unfortunately that link only has the table of contents and a little of the first chapter. That said, I have been watching a number of videos from weld.com, Tulsa Welding School, et al. but part of the problem is that they are all such good welders that if they are showing poor technique, they can isolate it down to one variable, whereas I am likely screwing up several things at once, hence my question about which to master first and how to tell when you have. Getting coached by a good welder would be good, but the only one I know lives in another city. FTR, I am running 6011 at 90 amps with a 10% hot start (99 amps for the 1st few secs) on 1/8” plate (maybe 3/16). I was getting thin beads (about 1/4”) which didn’t appear to be too high nor noticeably V-shaped. The weld didn’t look too dragged out, but certainly wasn’t a stack of dimes. I was grinding them off today and didn’t notice pockets of slag or porosity. I hardly have a trained eye though and might not be seeing all my mistakes. I mostly do this to make tools for blacksmithing, so I can do it well enough to get it to work, but it would be nice to be able to mean to make the welds I make. If I lay bead after bead, it’s hard to see how I will improve if I don’t know what’s causing my issues. Thanks, Rob

No, while I’m not a total novice, it wouldn’t be at all accurate to say I am rusty. The classes amounted to about 100 hours of instruction and practice, but I can’t say I really got the hang of it and we weren’t pursuing certifications or anything like that. It was more of a survey course where they exposed us to different processes (OA, brazing, stick, MIG and TIG). I wouldn’t be able to weld anything structural. The beads I have been making are no good but I am not sure if it’s travel speed, amperage, arc length or, more likely, all 3. That’s why I want to know if there is an order in which you should master these and how to tell when you have. Do I need to use a different rod for practicing e.g. 7018? I always regarded that as something you used once you had mastered welding. That said, five pounds of Lincoln rod are about $15 at Home Depot.

I took a continuing Ed course at the local community college about 20 years ago but haven’t stick welded much since. After years of wanting it, I finally got 220 installed in my garage and fired up my old Lincoln AC/DC 225/125 and tried welding a couple of projects. While they stuck together, the welds were pretty ugly and I had fits trying to get the arc started without sticking like crazy. I have had my eye on an Everlast stick/TIG machine for years and finally ordered one off Amazon ($414 shipped for a 160STH). I decided to start doing some practicing on a coupon, trying to lay a straight bead. All I have at home is some old ESAB 6011 rod (and some hard facing rod) so, I was practicing with the 6011. Naturally, my beads look terrible, but I am not sure what I should concentrate on first to make them better. Should it be arc length, rod angle, travel speed, or do I have to concentrate on all that at once to master it? Thanks, Rob

I used an old wooden planter box to make a JABOD forge last spring and rebuilt it recently after it sagged and the bottom boards fell out. The tuyere pipe is 1” black pipe connected to a hair dryer. The end is about 2” below the top of the space for the fuel and sis dug out about 2-3” below that. in the spring, I could get welding heat no problem using TSC rice coal, but since it kept turning into a tar ball and blocking the air supply (I was raking it out about every five heats), I decided to switch to using some coke I have. Getting it lit is not an issue, but it seems to burn awfully cold and it’s really difficult to heat up metal. Coals above the air inlet more than two inches have about the intensity of a small camp fire even with the air on full blast. This afternoon, I lit some lump charcoal and wood scraps to see it was getting enough air. The coals were getting blown out as they burned down, but I certainly wasn’t getting the fires xx Xxxx that I would expect. Any ideas here? Too little fuel? Too much air? I can’t seem to get a consistent fire at all. Last weekend, I went from waiting 5 or more minutes for a dull red to pulling out a sparkler after a couple of minutes. Thanks, Rob

A lot of articles on blacksmithing emphasize the importance of rebound when determining the quality of an anvil. I believe the idea is that this somehow makes the metal move more easily by resisting the force of the hammer blow from the underside. Please correct me if I am wrong about that. Given that we are hitting hot metal which has next to no rebound, I am not quite sure I see the point. It seems to me that mass under the hammer and securely fastening makes more difference. That said, I am not a professional smith and have only a tiny fraction of the experience of some of those here. Can you please enlighten me? Thanks, Rob

Black powder. To be clear, this isn't a project I am currently working on, it's just something on my bucket list. I am familiar with The Colonial Gunsmith, first seeing it in the early 80s, and where I first fell in love with blacksmithing. I finally got ahold of Foxfire 5, but haven't heard about that issue of Anvil. My question is how you would handle welding a barrel without a striker or power hammer. Does that article cover it? By the way, I would never get my face near a barrel that hadn't been proofed. Thanks, Rob

Ok, what would you do? Rob

If you had to make a forge welded tube a la Wallace Gusler for a rifle barrel, by yourself and without a power hammer, how would you do it? The bit I can't figure out is how to insert a mandrel and make a weld without losing the heat. Also, does anyone know if there is a scarf and what it looks like? Thanks, Rob

I was looking up prices for new 1018 5/8" square bar from some local suppliers and was shocked to see the price was around $3/lb.. Is this typical? Thanks, Rob