Mike BR

No one else has commented on this, but I’ve never used half-facing blows for drawing out, and I don’t think I’ve seen it done. Holding the work at 45 degrees from the horizontal and using the (radiused) edge of the anvil as a fuller makes sense (though it’s probably more ergonomic to do it on the far edge of the anvil). Half-facing blows would concentrate the force some, but would be less effective at directing it into drawing rather than spreading. And making 90 degree shoulders that you then flatten would increase the potential for cold shuts.

This sounds crazy, but friend of mine once sent me a link to a video of someone TIG hardfacing their chipping hammer with HSS, using an old drill bit as filler. So far I've tried it on a hot punch and an internal threading tool, both of which have held up well. If you have a TIG, you could try a shop-made bimetal shovel blade. Who knows?

Interesting. Is that domed part at the center of the gear the end of a turned-down and threaded section of the shaft?

I always thought the Reuleaux triangle was a solution looking for a problem, but you may have found it. (The pair under the tape dispenser on my office table is a disappointing conversation starter. But I probably work in the wrong place.)

It looks vaguely like a soldering iron stove, but if so, I can't work out exactly how it would be used. Or maybe you put newspaper in the bottom and charcoal in the top .

Could always weld the cleats to the baseplate.

I could probably looks this up, but presumably recessed letters aren't much used on cast iron because letters protruding from a sand mold would be vulnerable to damage. Ceramic formed in an iron or steel mold would present more-or-less the opposite problem -- raised letters wouldn't hold up on the finished project. So my guess is that this really was made by Champion (or at least a company with that name) and the form of the letters flows from the material used.

If they’d molded it over raised letters, the text would be reversed (mirrored).

I've seen a couple of restored ones operating in Sweden. Walking around a corner (so to speak) and seeing something I'd had no idea existed was pretty memorably

The bellows drive in the forge illustration isn't a million miles from a flatrod system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatrod_system

That's what I was thinking.

The treadle looks pretty light. Maybe start by figuring out what you think the control force should be.

My TIG welder sits next to my drill press, so I have a short length of 2X4 with a tee fitting. I lock the fitting into a slot, and crank the table up or down so the other end of the 2X4 is at elbow height.

I use a gearmotor (a friend got several as surplus) on my bandsaw.

Not sure if this is the right place for this story, but when I first started blacksmithing I decided I was going to make an arc forge with two pairs of carbons powered by a buzz box arc welder. Not knowing any better, I set it up so the arcs were wired in parallel. It turns out that if you do that (at least with a "constant current" power source), the arc with the carbons even a hair closer draws more current. The more current it draws the more it ionizes the air, the lower the resistance becomes, the more current it draws, and so on. Meanwhile, there is less and less current available to the other arc, which makes less ionization . . . . The end came maybe 20 seconds later with the weaker arc going out altogether. At that point I made one of my few wise decisions and used the kaowool I'd ordered to build a gas forge like everyone else. Anyway, if you decide to use two arcs for some reason, put them in series.

Thanks for explaining. The tire looked perfectly happy under the chain, but then I got to the part about acting as a pulley . . .

Living where I live I’m not likely to need this trick. But so I can stop lying awake and wondering, did you mean to say “wheel” rather than “tire”?

They say galvanizing self heals, but I think what they really mean is that scratches cause a couple that protects the steel at the expense of the zinc. (Which seems like the same mechanism as a zinc anode on a boat or structure.) You do get surface rust on a scratch, but I rarely see galvanized rust to failure until significant areas of the zinc are gone.

Sure looks like the left burner is weak and the right one isn’t lit at all. Unless that’s somehow a photographic illusion, the first step is to figure out what’s different between the end burners and the center one.

Call me a skeptic, but it strikes me as unlikely that a piece of wrought would survive melting and rerolling sufficiently intact to come out with that coarse a grain structure. On the other hand, I'm fairly confident that wrought was produced in 1/2" X 1" flat bar back in the day. Is it possible someone somewhere in the supply chain cleaned out a really dark corner?

A friend of mine was just showing off a "Hone" stick welder ($100 on Amazon). He's quite happy with it, and stick welding works fine for most blacksmithing jigs, etc. It's harder to learn than MIG though, so if you value time over money (or need to weld thin sheet or do production work) you might look at MIG.

The other advantage of slitting (which I was taught to call slot punching, at least if the tool as a narrow flat at the end) is that it makes more of the bar available to form the ring. It's not easy to explain why in words, but imagine the ring you could make if the slot in your second picture extended almost to the bottom end of the bar. Also drilling removes more material than punching even a round hole, so going to a drill will be a bit of a double whammy. On the other hand, if you have enough material, you have enough material. Finally, if punching is taking significantly longer than drilling, it may be worth the time to practice your punching. (At least for me, when I haven't punched for a while, it takes almost a conscious effort to strike the punch as hard as it wants to be struck.)

I was just reacting because that sounds like an inefficient way to build a hinge — to get the full benefit of 1/2” leaves, you’d probably want a 3/4” pin. But come to think of it, there’s no harm in building the vibration damper into the hinge . . .

We'll have to teach you to make a hinge Of course, my simple 2-wheel grinder uses a door hinge I won at a raffle . . .

Shainarue, One other thought, now that I've read your post more carefully. Ordinary hand taps (I think the only kind you can get at Harbor Freight) need to be backed off 1/4 turn after every 1/2 turn to break the chips. You can't do that under power in a drill press. A drill press can be useful for making sure you start your tap straight, though. Just take off the drive belt and turn the chuck by hand, backing off as necessary as described above. Once the tap is started, you can either keep going the same way with the drill press, or unchuck the tap and go to a hand wrench.