David Einhorn

A stone anvil, a really rocking shop!

I have been a humble hobby-smith for about 35 years. In that time I have seen and read about smiths such as Francis Whitaker. I don't recall any of those fine professionals referring to themselves as master-smith, but everyone active in the blacksmithing community and guilds seemed to know who they were and respected their skills. I have seen a large number of beginner-smiths pump out volumes of work beyond their ability and skill level (less than well made) prance around announcing their presence to all who would listen. Because they did not take the time to learn the basic skills they eventually reached the limit of what they could produce, lost interest in blacksmithing, and faded away. My feeling is that you know a smith by his/her work. If the smith is consistently producing a wide range of masterpieces, his/her work will speak for itself. If a person has to tell others that they are a "master smith", then perhaps their work is not speaking for them. If you want to become a master smith I humbly suggest to *begin* the path by learning: - hammer control. A person who is hitting the anvil as well as the iron is not a master smith. - fire control. A well controlled fire does not put out a lot of smoke. Coal is moved in from the sides and allowed to coke. Water is used to help the coal coke, to control the area of the fire, and to control the flow of air within the coke walls. - develop an eye for your work. Burned, bent, and dented iron are not part of a desired end-result. - have patience. Work on projects designed to refine your hammer control and other skills. Skill building is a life long process. Master the basic skills, the rest will come in time. Have poor work habits, do work beyond your ability, brag, and puff-up and people will just nod their heads and wait for you to fade-away.

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As others have mentioned wrought iron comes in differing quality. Wrought was made by taking a mass of iron hammering it into a slab, cutting the slab, stacking the pieces and putting it back into the fire to be forge welded. The more times the stack was drawn out, restacked and forge welded, the finer the wrought iron. Low grade iron was drawn out a couple of times, and higher grade was further refined. I once cut the ends off of an old pair of tongs and tested the two pieces. One piece fell apart like rotted wood, while the other piece forged nicely like soft butter. If your piece is large enough, you could cut off a small piece and test its quality and the range of forging temperature. One local smith's secret was that he would purchase "drawing wire" in spools from companies that provide almost pure iron to companies that draw out wire for screens and other stuff. The iron is very much like high grade wrought iron and is wonderful to work with. The draw-back of any iron without carbon is that it is very soft. We tend to be used to iron that is stiff. When using soft iron you will have to use more of it if you don't want it to bend. This can be seen in specifications for iron for the military during the American U.S. War Between the States, as the specifications call for heavy forgings of the contractors providing iron objects due to the soft nature of wrought iron. Wrought iron was still available and still being made in the 1970s, but became unavailable due to lack of demand for wrought iron. If you find a source of spools of iron wire, especially wire of 1/2 inch or larger, please please please share the information!

The folks here have given great advice. Glenn sums it up nicely. Local guilds have monthly meetings where stuff is demonstrated, tools are sold and exchanged, and information is shared. One of the closest clubs to you is PABA Home. I would humbly suggest joining the PA guild and the Blacksmith Guild of Central Maryland and taking a beginners and a couple of more advanced courses at the Maryland Guild. Their courses are usually on weekends and usually for two weekends. You have also been invited down to visit TheCivilWarBlacksmith (Joseph) at the Union Mills, MD museum shop. These are incredible opportunities to learn. Where you live you are surrounded by skilled smiths and professional shops, and several blacksmithing guilds/clubs. Grab the opportunities and soar!

I designed and wrote software as a profession for over 19 years. Beginner classes are offered frequently by the Blacksmith Guild of Central Maryland, about 2.5 hours from Philadelphia. I highly recommend taking a beginner's class. Blacksmith Guild of Central Maryland One method of modeling blacksmithing is through the use of modeling-clay. Iron bars when heated behave very much like modeling-clay. For example, if you stick you finger in the center of the bar it, clay will move away from your finger in all directions. If you press the side of a pencil against the top of a bar of clay, more clay will move perpendicular to the bar than parallel to the bar. Taking a blacksmithing class is very highly recommended, and a lot easier than writing simulation software. Your planned program would be a great programming experiment, but I would be very surprised if there was a market for computer-simulated blacksmithing.

Very nice, congratulations.

If I remember how the line shafts were set up in the Industrial Museum in Baltimore, I believe they had the idler arrangements at or near the drive wheels on the overhead shafts. That way the belts hanging down to each machine only moved when the that machine's lever was engaged. So putting the clutch wheel/mechanism near the drive wheel on a machine makes sense. Just make sure that the clutch and belt can't accidentally engage and become a hazard to life and limbs.

My insurance agent said that he could only get me a policy for decorative non-functional objects that I made that would sit on a shelf to be looked at, and not anything functional such as furniture or cooking utensils or toys, etc. as those items, he said, would be a very very expensive policy costing many thousands of dollars per year. Be careful that the policy you purchase actually covers guest smiths, visitors, the types of items you actually make, demonstrations, and everything else that you do. Actually read the proposed policy and make sure you are covered for what you make and do.

very nice work, congratulations.

I resemble that remark ;-)

My preference is to use Hofi hammers for forging whenever possible. The center of gravity is different than any other hammer. The Hofi hammer is great for those of us who have had shoulder surgery.

I bought myself another Hofi hammer.

Very nice. What diameter is the bowl of the ladle?

I agree, it is hard to pass up good straight lines. Oh well. Monkey tools are what you use to twist, adjust or bend with. Butcher tools are used to cut and make shoulders for having a thick bar shoulder down suddenly to a thinner bar.

Unless you are using a Hofi hammer, your hammer face and edges will need to be reshaped and finished. Hammers out-of-the-box tend to have sharp corners and a face that is too flat. The end result is misc. dents that keep multiplying.

I have concrete floor with 3/4" stall mats at the workstations. The mats are sold by farm stores to protect large animals from concrete floors of barns. These mats greatly reduce the wear of walking on concrete and are less money than shock-absorbing mats designed for people to stand on. What are White's Boots and who sells them?

Some, a minority of smiths, still don't share their "secrets". One local professional smith has repeatedly told me, over the past 20 or more years, that he only demonstrates tools, techniques and products that he no longer uses for stuff that he sells.

All of the firepots that I have are old, one Buffalo and a couple of Champion brand. These older firepots are cast iron. Cast iron holds up better to high temperature, from what I have heard, because the lower carbon content raises their melting/burning temperature. These firepots were used, and I still use, Bituminous Coal. I guess I am out of touch with modern firepots as I thought they were still being made of cast iron for people using coal. If you look in some of the older books emphasis was placed on adding coal to outside of the fire and gradually working the coal inwards as the center of the fire burned out. Water was sprinkled on the coal outside of the firepot area to keep the fire under control and build up coke walls. The end result is that by the time the coal reached the firepot the fire was comprised of coke, and smoke was minimal. This hot coke fire needed a cast iron pot if the firepot was to last very long. At least that was the way things were in the stone-age when I bought my equipment, perhaps someone could enlighten me on what suppliers of blacksmithing equipment are now using for materials in making their firepots.

My various mentors have preferred to forge a blade and finish the blades on the sander and then the buffer. As the result, that has become my preference. In my humble opinion, I agree with the people who have said that the forging process tends to be both faster and safer. The less I do on machines, the safer I feel. On that note, I have recently upgraded my goggles to better ones, and added a full face shield to use with the goggles. This is the result of my first eye injury in over 35 years of hobby smithing. The metal sliver flew up under my goggles, and had to be ground out. My conclusion; hammer good, machine bad.

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People hammering on a piece of metal and hitting the anvil at the same time they hit the piece they are working on! Or missing the piece entirely and hitting the anvil.

An S-hook, many many years ago back in the stone-age, sharing a single coal forge with a bunch of other students. I also remember that I burned my hand pretty good too. We only had vise grips to hold the iron, an old hair blower blowing air into a length of black-pipe. A slit in the cap on the pipe served as the air-source.