bipolarandy

4 1/2" hand grinder, is use mine for EVERYTING ,Grinding, sanding, polishing, cutting, i hold it down a table and use it like a belt sander,,, iv even learned how to cut sheet with it id brush my teath and walk the dog with it too if i could
The only thing i dont use on it is the wire cup wheels, they scare the heck out of me.

Dan, it "could" be done in a small shop , buy why? Real wought iron isn't that hard to find, factorys churned out tons of it for over a hundered years. and now you can buy Pure iron bars too.
The thing is, with most old steelmaking techniques , you will have a large loss of metal, Even more so when working with wrought iron because of the refining involed.

Take a trip up to the Chittenango Barge Canal Museum in Chittenango, NY. The guys up there have tons of iron they pulled outta the ground from the 1850's, im sure they'd give you a piece if you asked nicely.

welder19, i did get the largest bottle you can buy from the store with C-25 in it.

Just a quick pic of it, i havn't had much time to play with it yet as iv been trying to figure out issues with my power hammer. But I can tell im gonna !love! MIG welding so much more than stick.

Just arrived today.

Nuthing really metal related, but I got some new blue jeans and some other clothes, and a wacom tabet for my computer.

i have an anvil thats around 80-100 pounds, the only marking on it is a five pointed star. the bottom looks like cast iron, and the top is a tool steel plate.

Is it a five pointed star thats raised off the surface?

Actually , iv been looking at that billet for the past few days thinking of what I could forge it into,(it got lost in the mess that is my shop).
But, seeing as how im moving in a month, im not gonna rush things wile im packing a house and a shop :)

I was very disappointed at how much they dumbed down the science aspect of it so much and relied on silly reenactments and 3d computer animations. Shame on you Nova, you took a great subject and trashed it by appealing to the lowest common denominator.

This may be a silly question, but how do you drill a hole thru the handle?

wow, that thing is awesome!, what ever you did, id try to repeat it,
thats a great form...

-andrei

here are some better photos of sparks,
these are from Mild steel or A36,

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Note how the cluster is kinda loose and the sparks are long and straight and dont have many forks and bursts at the ends of them.

Now this is 5160 spring steel.



See how the cluster is much tighter and the sparks are shorter, and there are almost little fireworks at the ends of each spark.

Now this is a High carbon steel, comparable to a file, or possibly higher in carbon.
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See how the spark cluster almost looks solid its so dense, and each spark branches off into two or three other sparks.

Just to compare, look at these two side by side.
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Hope those help
-Andrei

Aint you the guy thats been making these $2000 ninja swords? I thought you would have learned how to forge weld by now?

Haha, thanks Jr. The cake is still being made (by mom) :)

very nice steve. Did you draw it out with the hole in the center of the roll facing you? or was the curved part facing you?

I did a 4000 layer woodgrain billet that looks like a micro version of your's...

nice blades sam, why are you sending it out for the polish? thats a good skill to learn if you want to make swords like that. A full set of polishing stones only cost about 100 bucks from japan.

jake, i bought the 110# russian cast steel anvil for jewerly work, it had some light milling marks in it, they were easy to take out with a sanding disk.
It is very soft, so any hammer hit on the face of the anvil will mark it, and in my opinion the horn is useless.
If you have money to burn, and thats the only anvil you can find, then it may be a good buy. But have you looked at other anvil possibilities like RR track, or a large block of steel sunk in a bucket of concret. if your just learning i big block of steel might do fine untill you have enough money for a good anvil

Nice one tyler, is that three more hammer heads i see under that one?

thanks for all the help guys, I still need to see pictures before any decision will be made (he said they'd be sent in a few weeks), i may even take a drive down to his shop and see it up close, he only lives about 3 hours away.


Bruce makes a good point, if your just buying a piece of equipment for no other reason then to "have" it, your wasting alot of money, which, i think many people get caught up in the "o i gotta buy this cause it will make me a better blacksmith" mode.

Dan, are you going to come out to the Niagara Region Picnic and Hammer-In, in august?
Its a two day thing, and we camp out on the amherst museums lawn. Theres demos and forging contests, and people tailgate stuff, its a good time.

-andrei

I met a guy today that happen's to have a power hammer for sale. Not knowing much about powerhammers or what they go for, i thought id ask here.
Its a 50# Little giant, Newly refurbished , with a 3 phase 2 3/4 hp motor on it.
It has one set of dies, no brake, and its mounted on 4x4's.
And he said it was in fine working condition.
He is asking $4000 for it, is this a good deal? Whatda think?

-Andrei

Well, lets say your materials are free (as in scrap metal). You give yourself an hourly rate whatever you think you should pay yourself, ei, $10 dollars an hour or $20 an hour.
And make one or two "time samples" to see how long it takes you to make something and what problems you may face, and corners you can cut,,,, once you have it down pat, you can calcuate how many hours are in a piece.

Blacksmiths get to work with relativly cheap meterials compaired to other craftsman, so I tend not to factor that into pricing my work.

thats not a burner, thats a flame thrower.
Your forge would have to be the size of an SUV to contain that amount of fire.

.....I wanna put one in my freon tank forge :)

heat it till it glows a dull red and hold it there for around 30 seconds. wait till the colour runs out of it and quench it in water. as soon as it feals hard under the hammer , anneal again, normaly 30-50 hammer blows depending on what it is.

now thats just plain silly rich.
that poor gas station atendent making minimum wage only gets a penny or two per gallon of gas thats sold at his shop. The way he makes his money is FROM the coffee and drinks and smokes he sells... so only buying gas at your local qucky-mart is just gonna hurt the small busseness man not the big oil companies.