Ten Hammers

I live in southern Iowa. Couple hours south of me you can go to the grocery store and buy lump. Folks cook with it a lot. The thing is most clerks won't know beans about other uses ( or trendy names on the bag ). Royal Oak is available at Wal Mart and Cowboy Brand is available at Menards. Stremph brand is what I get in Missouri. I think Joe gets his at Home depot in Kirksville. Like Thomas said you can use scrap wood. I use firewood to bank the forge in camp. Forging with coal is a skill that takes time and experience with various coals you will find and whatever air supplies you will use. It is rewarding to make things happen and learn fire management. Charcoal will give you some instances to think differently but will do what you want as well. Less air is the thing I have found.

Nice work Mike. Good use of mechanics in the stand.

Any NOS gas bottle works from medical size to " K " tanks (steel to aluminium on the little ones). There will be a variance in tank bottoms. I haved at least 3 different shapes. Obvoiusly no fuel tanks.

OR, you could just leave it alone, grease and all. Mine has looked the same for likely 75 years. Picturers on other puter.

trick is gettin the hole empty yes Thomas.

A small Victorinox (or Wenger) knife with scissors and tweezers/toothpick is an essential thing on my keyring for 25 years anyway. The tweezers are for any splinters from pallet to metal and normally the knife stays sharp enough to drag accross and free the splinter to pick it.

There will be many things that contribute to the space and time thing.

I have used a ton of stuff over the years. LPS #1 works, liquid wrench works, MM Oil ( heat a bit and put that on , heat till sizzles, come back when cold). My current and no doubt forever will be Aerokroil. Perhaps the other thing ( atf) works well but I have aerokroi in aerosol and bulk, needle oilers and pump oilers. Restores lathes, handsaws, firearms. My story.

Once again IFORGEIRON is the place to make connections. World wide. Thanks Glen and company.

Thomas, you must paint your ceiling frequently. :P

Leon, thank you indeed. In your minds eye you might try and re-create those marks on the mans wrist for any future reference. We are sometimes blessed in our lives to meet people with a history of skills. I have met a few but nothing of the scale you did. Thank you for the posting and please, if you have any other thoughts, post them.

Try this. Take a piece of 2x4 lumber (just scrap) and saw it about 3 feet long, squared on both ends. Place it on concrete and hold with opposite hand. Hammer on it with remaining hand and any hammer available. Wood will have grain and you will get an idea of the solid factor involved. Now, screw a piece of other lumber crosswise on top of this piece. Hammer on it. In just experimenting with this lumber you may get an idea of how steel will react without having to sacrifice any steel stock. As noted above, the solid shaft of steel will give you a fairly good surface to hammer on with HOT steel.

I have several scrollers that have 1/4" pipe welded to them on the bottom. This fits the pritchel hole. the scrollers have an impact socket welded to the top. Breaker bar and extension in right hand, hot stock in left hand. Pull both and the scrolls come pretty easy.

would make a heck of a table for scrolling.

Local Amish sell anthricite ( and the stoves to burn it). My experience has been that it don't smith well ( no coke, period and like Frank sez, bottom falls out but some soft coal reacts in the same fashion and DOES coke ). My kingdom for a local ton or 3 of Sewell Seam.

There will have been MANY threads on the site with information regarding airgates. I'll re-post mine here. That also is a Roger Lorrance pot (with my shop built ash dump/tuyere ). I might add that these pics show the old (original for me ) power blower. will trya and find the pics with the new blower. Last picture shows the new blower on the same airgate. Of course much better performance but the old one was used a LONG time before it died. Some will get hung up in someone elses specifications of CFM's needed, volume needed, yada yada yada. Fact is, the old blower worked fine until I traded for the new one ( which was several years old). The airgate was built from a scrapped 3" hydraulic cylinder tube. The stand is just telescoping square tube that gives height adjustment. The speed control in the last picture ( maybe Glenn can crop that picture a bit) is for the blower on the gasser. Solid fuel runs wide open and the gate regulates the air. BTW Tech 413, you have built an outstanding airgate yourself.

GOOD STUFF VERN ! that work is outstanding in my humble opinion. Hope you are paid well and have repeat business.

Getcherself some new sharp green scotchbrite and some Marvel Mystery Oil. Gloves good too. The anvil will clean up nicely. Be patient and scrub the body of the anvil refreshing scotchbrite as it gets worn. Hammering on the face of course (with hot steel or iron ) will do that job for you. good find. One side has a ledge, one not.

Take a piece of pipe the same OD and the ID of your trivets ( assuming the trivets might be from 3/16 x 3/4 stock). The pipe is about 3" long and welded to a piece of angle iron ( to clamp in the vise). The pipe can be on top of the jaws or on the side, your choice. Heat the stock and wrap it on the pipe using pliers/tongs/channellocks/vise grips etc to get it started and hold when starting again. Wrap and forge flat (er) on the anvil. Figure a starting length and write that down. Wrap 3 times ( in that you said you do this work in 3's ) and have an overlap. Cut with a hacksaw. You now have 3 identical rings the hard way. They can now individually be taken to the far side on the heel area. Bend the ring under the heel and forge the scarf on the near side with the heel of your hammer ( somehow this is hard to type and get the message across ). repeat the other side and you now have enough for the weld to take place. Your ring should remain intact but of course will need flattened after the weld. I like tooling for repeat business or production work. Once you figure your length, you should be able to make the rings several at a time but the stock needs to be bloody hot to bend it the hard way. Once the tooling heats it helps too. EDIT: In reality, I just cut the rings and gas weld them together, heat and forge the weld and lay the feet out for forging. This process makes for fairly quick finished goods and I make no claim of " traditional " weld. Someone wants it that way i do it.

Typical yuppiespeak like Thomas says ( politically correct jargon ). Depending on your clientele, you make your case i suppose. I use silo banding for a few things. I also use scrapped AG steel a bit and whatever else I can find. I also use new steel. There will be a huge difference between city and my area, never mind USA and England. The silo banding is just that. 5/8 banding from a demolished 75-80 year old block silo. See, some folks here would say " well he got that cheap and he is charging a lot for it ". Never mind the fact that I drove 45 miles to get it and spent 4-5 hours with a torch cutting it out of the pile of block and then bending it into submission for the trailer to drag it home and THEN making it straight enough to stack on the rack outside. By the time it is then used for fire irons or tripods or whatever else ( and hammered completely straight on the anvil, cold) I have become good friends with it. :) Some city folks will then be told it is " Green " material in that I saved it from the scrap going to China. They will be happy with that. " Re-purposed " is not a term I have used but I may. Thank you. Sometimes I just say that the material started life as an overhead door spring or a rake tooth or whatever. I live in farm country and we use what we have (which in the long run is often new material simply for the size and shape we need to start with). Please don't think I mean any disrespect of city folks. Simply not true. Life and terminology is all in the eyes of the beholder many times and the friendly attitudes of smiths. Welcome and thanks for the thread. By the way. I was trained in tearing down buildings and/or salvaging lumber as a young man. I was put together with a claw hammer and a pile of lumber and a barrell. The lumber went over the barrell and the nails got dropped into the barrell. The lumber was then stacked. The nails in the end got pulled from the barrell and straightened on something like a tractor drawbar and put into cans for future use. My grandparents were born in the 19th century and parents born in the teens of the 20th century. Those folks could squeeze a buffalo nickel and make it pass gas. I dearly miss them and those times.

Thanks for the continuing education fellas. I just call the tool used to finish the head a rivet header. The " set " can be a top or bottom tool in my shop. The bottom tool can or may be called a monkey tool by me as well simply because i have some that have various sizes in them for various needs.

OK your profile may show your location but here on the forum, it doesn't show. Sam merely said that if we knew where you were we might be of further assistance. Burning through the bottom is really not the issue (although clay may make the pan last longer). The biggest thing is cracking of the pan due to thermal shock and/or being foolish and pouring water on the edges of the fire. Fire management is a class by itself.

Call me foolish but I believe he speaks of a solid fuel forge ( in that he mentioned grate ). Yes, i have put clay on a few forges, and some I haven't.

Remarkable find ! You have the place and the ( perhaps ) time frame. Hope you can put some historical facts together. Always nice to learn more about the history of iron.

Nice work Ptree. Some serious heat and some serious forging.