David Einhorn

Depending on the size of the vise, people have made new springs out of both mild steel and old flat springs. If you have an appropriate sized section of mild steel you could give that a try, and it is likely to work. A spring for a leg vise has a slight curve and ears forged at the top corners to hold it in place.

Looks fine to me. Just tell anyone who asks, that the look was deliberate. ;-)

Have you looked at the ingredients on the sides of the boxes at your local Grocery store to see if any of them sound something similar to borax? Then you could have some component names to ask the chemist about. I was going to suggest alternatives from an old ordnance manual, but it listed borax as the main ingredients in both its formulas. :-( Has anyone on this forum tried to use sand as a flux?

Very sorry for your loss. The "insurance adjuster" sounds like a scam, never heard of a person having to find their own adjuster.

Here are some more sources of information in case you need them: Rural Heritage has a bunch of books and DVDs on building wheels. Horse-Drawn Vehicle Books & Videotapes Windy Hill Woods has books and plans to make it easier to make decorative wood wheels. Windyhill Woods home page plans for decortive wagon wheels, buckboards, carts, chuckwagons ... I just ordered a copy of their book "Working Wheels" for $30 to see what it is like.

The folks here made good points: 1) Only use blackpowder, modern smokeless powders can be expected to blow out barrels in blackpowder guns. 2) You should be able to purchase a barrel. In college I assembled 3 blackpowder pistols from parts from an outlet store for Connecticut Valley Arms, back when CVA was actually in Connecticut. If you are actually planning on using the pistol, I highly recommend purchasing a barrel. According to the Artilerist's Manual by Gibbon http://www.civilwarartillery.com/books/GIBBON.PDF canons were rated for the number of shots they were expected to fire before the barrel failed. Gibbon's book also describes the evolution in both design and manufacturing techniques and considerations to improve barrel design in canons, with the goal being to increase the life expectancy of a canon barrel. Not being an expert, I would expect similar design and manufacturing considerations from any metal barrel, especially one that is forge welded. Metal fatigues eventually.

Not pine, it is white oak as per government specification. No I will not age them. I plan on soaking them in linseed oil, and painting them, according to government specifications. These will be functional wheels upon which my Traveling Forge will roll. Aging them would be like buying a new car and spraying the car with fake rust. I prefer to have tools that look like they are in good condition. Civil War Traveling Forges used the same wheels as No. 1 Canon Carriages.

They look very nice. At the moment I am making a pair of Civil War No. 1 cannon wheels. They will be 57" in diameter and weigh about 200 pounds each. There are books available on making both real wheels and decorative wheels. For books on real wheels see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelwright

I took a welder's course through a community college that was hosted at Fort Meade Maryland.

Before grinding on it, pause for a moment of thought. Is the anvil, as is, old enough and rare enough to have sufficient value that its selling price could allow you to trade up to a bigger and more functional anvil. Some collectors want stuff in original condition, and modifying it could lower the value of some stuff! If after I found out that it was not old enough or valuable enough to trade up, I would then clean the surface as suggested above and see how it works. If it still has serious problems and the anvil has no antique value, I would plug-weld a steel plate to the top. Just my thoughts.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to find the root of your issue and identify where you are at in life over the Infernal-net. I have watched *many* people come and go from blacksmithing for over 35 years. Some get frustrated with their skill limitations, some get bored, some discover that blacksmithing was not their interest after all. Different people have different reasons. I see you as having two choices. First to get yourself a book of projects or a copy of Sonn's "Early American Wrought Iron" and make about 5 or 20 projects, and see if you are enjoying yourself. If making the projects does not make you happy, then you have answered your own question. The other option is to take a step back and find your passion in life, and pursue that. What you don't want to do is make a hasty decision to get rid of your tools and then find that you were just going through a brief slump in life, resulting in regretting the loss of your equipment for the rest of your life. I strongly suggest getting a copy of Sonn's book and see if making stuff in it makes you happy or not. Then take a break from everything, possibly a vacation, clear your mind and *then* make an intelligent and informed decision. Just my 2 cents.

A picture would help. Without a picture I would suggest to forge the tube then fuller the end if it needs to be closed.

Instructions for Fixing Anvil Shaped Object hence referred to as ASO Step One: Remove ASO from stand Step Two: Find a real anvil Step Three: Place real anvil on stand Step Four: Apply hot iron and hit iron repeatedly ;-)

I put sand under my main anvil and it just kept sinking. Pulling an engine hoist over to the anvil, to relevel it, every time I wanted to use it did not work out.

A few years back I was in the booth of a tool dealer at an "antique" mall, and there was a gentleman collecting blacksmithing tools to decorate his living room in early American blacksmith. I am not kidding. He said that he had a couple of coal forges, anvils as end tables, and misc tools on the coal forges that he had no clue what they were for. He was looking for a large bellows to use as a coffee table. Also some years back, I visited a scrap yard and found blacksmith tools that a smiths family took to the scrap yard because they didn't want them. A tire bender, a very large cone mandrel and a step vise. He paid $2 per hundred pounds for them. I relieved him of the trouble of recycling them. It bothers me that so much equipment probably ends up at the recyclers each year. I used to pick up anvils and other tools to take to blacksmithing meetings, but I got tired of dragging the stuff around.

I recommend a 2ft by 2ft minimum table size for your first forge.

I never use the step for chiseling. Some day when I hit the lottery, I would like a massive anvil with no step, because then I can use its whole length.

Tow truck worked for me.

I put a coating of car wax on my anvils and other tools in my shop, as I have tried other coatings over the years and that seems to work well for me. So far the car wax applies easily, prevents rust, does not smell very much, lasts a long time on tools in storage, and has not caught fire when using the surface of an anvil that it is on.

Depends. ;-) When electric welding, drilling, using machines, yes. When working at a coal forge, no. When using a gas forge, sometimes but preferably not. Wet gloves are worse than no gloves at all.

How about taking an electric pipe threader and using it as the power part of your roller. To me it looks amazingly similar to the power roller in the Utube film. In one smith's shop that I visited years ago the smith converted the pipe threader to a picket twister.

If I had a metal lathe I would turn parts for tooling that I would like to make, such as parts for sander-grinders, rolls for a roller-mill, turned pieces to make power hammer dies, etc.

The tongue vise on a CW Traveling Forge requires that the demonstrator turn their back to the spectators to use it. Note that it also is a "tongue vise" and not a leg vise so it does not have a leg, and is only intended for relatively small stuff. My solution to not turn my back on the spectators is to weld a piece of square tubing to the back of a square jawed wrench so that it can be mounted in the anvil as a small vise. I also have a small period-correct vise that I will eventually make a mount for it to sit in the hardy hole too. I tend to do small quick stuff for demonstrations, for which I fortunately don't need a large vise. The small arrangements mounted in the hardy hole serve me well in demonstrating twisting and bending on small projects such as Celtic pins, small screw-drivers, C-shaped bracelets, etc. Just my thoughts and what works so far for me. When you are flush with money and time for building a roll-off-the-trailer period-correct forge, the earlier forges are a bit less expensive and a bit easier to construct. What time period are your demonstrations set in? Feel free to contact me publicly or privately if you wish to talk about it.

The trailer looks great! Groundhogs ate the wiring on my trailer. Do you have a source of information on re-wiring a trailer, with brakes, to a 7 prong RV plug? It would also be helpful if I could wire an electric winch to the plug to load and unload a CW era traveling forge.

There is a stake/stump anvil as well as a rivet forge complete with blower for sale, as of yesterday, at a booth in the Black Rose Antique Mall in Hanover Pennsylvania. If I remember correctly the rivet forge with blower had an asking price of $195 and the stake anvil was around $175. My understanding is that the booth belongs to Karl Orndorff of Bonneauville, PA