blubrick

Wait, wait, wait! You advised him not to go to a blacksmith for dental work after hitting his tooth with a hammer and punch?

CLW, from what you've given us, it's clear that you want a propane fueled heat source, but exactly what you need depends highly on what you intend to do with it. Are you intending to heat metal so that it's soft and you can smack the tar out of it until it conforms to the shape you want? If so, you need a forge, and you don't need a crucible. Or are you intending to melt metal and cast it into molds? 'cause in that case, you're talkin' about a foundry and/or a furnace and you will need a crucible. But most importantly, that "xxxx filler" you talked about? Read it - You'll find it's actually not "xxxx" or filler. It often contains definitions of terminology, explanations of procedures, and safety recommendations. The first two will allow you to ask your questions in a way that's likely to get you the answer you need, rather than requests for clarification. The other one will help you to remain alive and intact long enough to ask your question - particularly if you plan on building a gas-fueled forge/furnace thingy.

burns .....

Federal elections (or the lesser of two weevils)!

You're using metric measurements and quoting prices in dollars, you sound kind of Australian! Additionally, that description and those measurements seem remarkably familiar, so it seems you may be referring to a certain 40Kg anvil I have seen on eBay for pickup in Ballarat. I know nothing about this anvil except that this is at least the third time recently that it has listed for the same starting and "buy it now" prices - each time with no bidders. Now, I'm no expert, but based on the two photos, it looks like a decent anvil. It certainly has crisp corners and a very clean machined face, but at 40 Kg (88 Lb) it certainly is a small one. Be aware though, that for whatever reason, it has failed to sell at that price at least twice before. Caveat emptor, young C Teen! Actually, I didn't originally provide a link to the auction, but I have since done so.

What a wonderfully poetic way of phrasing it - much better than "Information Overload"!

sword......

That's a good lookin' hammer you've got there, Larry. Is there any function in the channels behind the face, or is that a purely decorative feature?

SJB, We made one out of 10mm(3/8") square mild at a smithing course I did and it rings just beautifully. Come to think of it, most "real" bells seem to be made of bronze or brass, which are both pretty soft. I think you'd be better off saving the high carbon stuff for projects that require an edge.

I'll leave the "toti" puzzle for someone else because I already know it. But I'll admit that the first time I came across it, it had me stumped for a few days before I finally relented and googled the answer. But back to our friends the penny pincher and the blacksmith. The old miser comes in to the smithy again, this time with a piece of silver chain seven links long. He says "I've got a feller doing a week's work for me and I have to pay him one link of this chain every day. If I don't give him a link at the end of each day, he won't work the next day. If I give him more than I owe him, he'll abscond with more links than he has earned." "Now, I know you got the better of me on that last chain deal, so I'm giving you exactly what you need to cut up this chain so I can pay him daily. I know you don't need to cut every link, so here's $1.50" So the blacksmith smiled, knowing that once again he had got the better end of the deal. He did the cutting and handed the links back to the old scrooge saying "This is exactly what you need to pay him one link every day." What did the blacksmith cut and how did that solve the problem?

Our friend the blacksmith charges the penny pincher $13.00 "Huh? $13.00!" I hear you ask. "How do you figure it's $13.00?" Well, to avoid going to hell, he quite rightly charges $0.50 for each cut, the same for each weld and $10.00 for knowing which links to cut.

People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse?

Irnsrgn, your computer's name is Fred? Does that by any chance stand for Flamin' Ridiculous Electronic Device? :)

OK Ice Czar, Here's a fifth option for ya... 0. I subscribe to alt.sysadmin.recovery and still read it with /bin/rn ==== OK, so I'm not quite at 0, but here's my confession of geekdom regardless. I have been shuffling bits and bytes since 1991, in varying capacities, on IBM's MVS, VM and DOS/VSE, Unisys 2200 and A-Series, HP 1000's and 3000's, various distributions of Linux and BSD, MSDOS, PCDOS and DRDOS, OS/2, just about every version of windows there has been, and for nearly ten years up until 18 months ago, I was a Unix Sysadmin on Solaris and HP-UX. I know which manpage in Solaris has the hidden joke. I never got one of these t-shirts, but I wish i did. I understand that sentiment - at depth! I have a 4 digit slashdot userid. I know which program in the Solaris codebase is copyright Microsoft, and why. But no more! I had an opportunity to escape that geekish underworld and I latched onto it. So I'm here now to say: "Hi everyone, my name's Matt and I'm a recovering Geek." (Crowd responds with: "Hi Matt!")

I've quite recently moved into a new house and there's this powered shed in the backyard that I am not putting to use at all, so I would like to set up my smithy/workshop in it. On the face of it, it would seem like an ideal solution, but it has a couple of problems. It's uphill on a fairly steep incline and it has a raised particleboard floor that needs replacing. Fortunately, the joists and bearers seem to be in reasonable condition. It's a tin shed about 10' by 12' and although the floor itself is level, the ground underneath it falls away by roughly 2' from one corner to the opposite one. My first idea is to replace the particleboard and lay down some cement sheet to protect against hot iron and coals. But that won't be solid enough for an anvil, so I would probably need to cut a hole in the floor and sink a tree stump through it into the ground underneath. That is of course, when I get a proper anvil - until then I can make do with a good length of RR track buried vertically. If you have any suggestions, criticisms, opinions, or other ideas, I'd like to know.

Jane bumped into Peter.

After emptying out half the water by tilting the can as Paragon described, stand the can vertical and pierce a small hole at the water level. Plug the hole with your finger and fill to above half full. Empty out the water to half-full as you did before, then remove your finger. As long as the hole is facing directly downwards, the can will drain to one quarter full. Alternatively, since you have no measuring instruments, precision and accuracy are not that important and you might as well just guess. After all, how are you gonna be proven wrong? Oops! Too slow - and wrong to boot.

Don A, I read your description and it reminded me a little of this cable knife by "LDW" that I saw in the Glenn's gallery recently. I suspect this knife's handle was made using exactly the techniques you suggested for the thistle. It looks like it would be possible to tease out the wires to form the purple part of the thistle and then stuff it into an appropriately fullered and textured piece of pipe.

Well, if you really want to do it cold, perhaps something like this thing might help. If that guy uses it to arch his leaf springs to match a specific curve, you could probably use the same tool to straighten an already arched leaf. Be patient though - it might take a while ;)

I believe what's needed is a chair that can pivot to move between forge, anvil and vise, and lock in place while hammering, bending and twisting. Of course this can be done in conventional wheelchairs with simple two handed movements, but this would necessitate our hypothetical chair-bound smith putting his work down between removing it from the forge and working on it. In order that our smith not lose his hard-won heat, the pivoting controls could be activated by pressing down and forward or backwards with the elbows at the same time, and then lock into position once the elbow controls were released. This would allow him to pivot while holding tongs and hot steel in one hand and a hammer in the other. Of course, his workspace would need to be set up specifically for his chair, with forge, anvil and vise all a bit lower than usual, but I think it could work.

If it's a decision you are having difficulties with, can I recommend that you utilize a digital decision maker? This is a round metallic device composed of copper and nickel, often bearing the images of an eagle on one face and a certain distinguished gentleman on the other. You quite possibly have several in your pocket right now. Cast it toward the heavens and recite the following arcane incantation: "Heads it's Grey - Tails it's Silver!". The gods will smile and when your cupronickel disk comes to rest, you will find your decision has been made for you.