EtownAndrew

I'm looking forward to it. This will be somewhere around my fifth year. I don't have any big plans but it is fun to hang around and look at the material and tools for sale, attend the seminars, and look at the books for sale.

I am excited for you and looking forward to hearing more about it!

I made a blown ribbon burner earlier this year. It has a single row of nine crayon size holes. They are 1" on center. I had in mind knife making and so was going for a longer flame area. So far it seems to work good. My next improvement is to rig up a solenoid controlled air gate valve so the PID temp controller does not turn my motor on and off constantly to maintain temp. I ended up overbuilding the blower not knowing quite what would be needed and ended up needing to choke it down a lot. For the blower I followed the directions from Iron Melting Cupola. https://www.amazon.com/Melting-Cupola-Furnaces-Small-Foundry/dp/0970220308/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499878429&sr=1-1-fkmr1&keywords=iron+casting+cupola. His directions are for a metal blower but I made it from wood. By the way, I have plenty of space behind this so my house window and wall are not affected. I think that I can put my hand on the outside of this and not get burnt.

Ivan, So you got rid of all the stored tools and reduced things down to a back pack. I'm curious if there are any smithing tools that are so special that you made space in your pack to carry them around the country. If so what are they and why?

Ian, I'd appreciate it if you could upload a new set of pictures too. I remember thinking it looked pretty good a couple years ago when they were first posted.

That is great detail tracking! I've sold just two knives so far and I figure I made about $2.50 an hour on them. I may not have sold any more since then since I've raised my asking prices when anyone asks but I'm still probably not asking enough.

I'm jumping in on this old thread with my personal CAD story comments. I've been using AutoCAD daily at my regular job for about 23 years. For about the last 10 years I have had a work laptop with AutoCAD, Inventor, Navisworks, etc. on it that I would use at home in the evenings when I wanted to design something. At home a sample of what I have used a 2D drafting program for are the following; Sawmill design, forged hinge layouts, shed design, 2x72 grinder design, jigs, book shelves, casting patterns, knife designs. About 3 months ago I got tired of lugging my laptop back and forth to work every day and decided to revive an old XP computer that had been sitting in the corner for a couple years. One of the first things I started looking for was an inexpensive CAD 2D program. I have tried a bunch but what I really wanted was something that used the same commands and drawing steps as my work AutoCAD program. I also wanted it to be able to open my old AutoCAD files and save to the .dwg format so I could open files at work if desired. While I could learn a new program I am really really familiar with AutoCAD and I kept on searching around in the other programs looking for the equivalent AutoCAD command and at times there wasn't one and different steps were required for a drawing step. Well I think I finally found what I was looking for this past weekend. I downloaded a free copy of progeCAD 2009 and it works like AutoCAD. One final test was to open a ProgeCAD 2009 drawing file using my work computer and it opened just fine. I plan to use it for personal projects and so the free version is fine. It is a 2D program and that is fine. Another good feature is that it does not overload my old Windows XP machine. Some of the programs that I tried and rejected are the following: TurboCAD LTE, LibreCAD, A9CAD, QCAD, DoubleCAD, DraftSight32.

Very nice!

Nice. I like the skate board wheels. Looks like they work fine. I couldn't find an inexpensive 2" wide idler wheel when I made my wood 2x72 grinder and so I made may own.

Better than my first try. As you made a few more you will notice them getting progressively better. At least that was my experience. Keep this first knife. (Not that you were going to throw it away.) Looking at the first few knives I did always brings back memories.

I had a more complicated 2x72 designed but was never getting around to building it. So I finally said to myself "how simple can I make this and just get it done". So I made a 2 pulley grinder with the frame mostly being a stick of 2x4 lumber. I spent a weekend making it with most of the time spent machining the drive pulley to go on the motor shaft. In order to simplify things I went with a single slower speed at 1500 FPM which also matches the 1/2 HP size. So far it has been working well. I used it a fair amount just before Christmas working on presents. The major costs were $75 for a used motor and about $6 for 2 ball bearings used in the idler.

I have run into guys for years who worked there at some point early in their career.

Very nice. your knife is a couple levels better than my best folder.

My current favorite deer hunting caliber is a 45-70. I think it may be 120 years old now. I use pure lead bullets with black powder pressures and velocities. It groups under 1" at 100 yards. I shot 3 deer this season and recovered all 3.

Neat

A set of larger oxy and acetylene tanks. I bought small tanks several years ago and later realized how much less money the gas would be per cubic foot in larger tanks.

Welcome.

Welcome aboard

I'm the guy in the middle left wearing a black Iforgeiron t-shirt. Today someone asked me what the high point of the weekend was. After some thought I decided it came unexpectedly during the opening ceremonies. The lead singer told the dramatic story of the writing of our national anthem and then he led all several hundred of us singing it. (I'm not quite sure how many were at the opening ceremonies on Friday evening.) I enjoyed the classes, competed in the smithing competition, got a cone hardy tool, a pair of gloves and a couple books. I think I was fairly restrained in my purchases. Maybe next year I'll purchase an anvil and move up from a railroad track anvil.

That one might be good if you can get it on and off fast. I'm not real fond of a heavy leather apron strap hanging around my neck. Add some pockets for a pencil, soapstone, 6" ruler.

ok

NJanvilman. Getting together at Noon on Friday sounds good. I plan to be there by then. I don't recognize your description of Steve Prillwitz (matchless) area so I am not sure what spot you are trying to describe.

Looks like it runs good.