William Conn

Although I am new to this forum and many people have already said so much I would like to send my condolences to his friends and family as well as all the people whose lives he touched. When I was down in southern California at a demo for the CBA I was introduced to his tongs and when I came home I found out about the induction forges he sold... His reach was truly amazing and a true measure of the man... I just want to say thanks

Seriously.. those viking sword guys spent all that time making that beautiful pattern welding and they just ground it all to dust.. I just can't understand why you would waste all that talent, hard work, and tool power to just grind it all away... Why not forge it down to a meaningful shape and insert the blade later at least so you don't waste fifty percent of the work.. heck if you even ground it down before inserting the blade at least you safe 80 percent of the hard edge.. It's a wonderful sword and a beautiful pattern but I just see so much wasted metal, time and grinding belts that it hurts my head.. The Jim Austin axe video seems to be a more successful product in my eye.. Just my two cents but what do I know I'm new P.S. The grinding of the fuller made my heart hurt although I understand the idea of showing the pattern it still makes me just die a little inside because as a well trained but under tooled smith I wish I had the fullers to hammer in the grooves so I could do it the right way

Now that I think about it I suppose the artist model is pretty nice especially considering you can block off the openings with firebrick to help keep the heat in.. I am going to buy/build a sheet metal forge that will allow access from all sides to work with sheet and for bends and such

I'm pretty new to getting tanks filled, I used to just turn em in because it was faster, but now I have more than 1 so It's way cheaper and easier to fill them. I filled my tanks for the first time yesterday and I noticed the operator of the filling machine used a screwdriver to turn a screw (opening a valve I assume) and when the vapor vented he turned off the machine.. Perhaps the filler at the store you went to did not turn that screw on your tank and thus made it possible to overfill it. Maybe the tank's OPD is not broken but the person at the store did not understand how to use it. I hope your tank is still in good shape!

I also have their two burner blacksmith model and although I find it too large for most of the things i work on I am glad to have the extra room for those things I do "go big" on.. Also it does allow two smiths to use opposite sides or even more people if you have the room for anvils. I don't know if it's right but I reamed out the jets a little and made them slightly larger and I can run my forge at very low PSI, 1 or 2 when it's fully heated..