Stephen Olivo

One of these days I am going to do that to light my fire on a morning. :D

It is one of those things I have been meaning to get around to doing in my shop. Think of an air hammer as the chisel and hammer combined into one. There have been many smiths who have used air hammers with great effect. One of which being an old guildy of mine. A guy near me makes these. Someday maybe I will have one. :D KZ100 Power Hammer inTreadle Hammer mode I use my air tools all the time. I really need to make some more bits for the hammer though. The first guild meeting I ever went to had cris rand and another guy heating up a 1 inch? square bar of aluminum and punch drifting a hole through it in one heat with an air hammer and a combo punch drift. They can be very useful especially for decorative stuff but also if you have a lot of holes to punch or leaves to vein any repetitive task can be done nicely with air tools. There was a video somewhere but I can't find it right now. This guy uses all air tools to do some decorative forging of animal heads if I remember right It was a really cool video I just can't seem to find it.

Welcome. :D

A portaband can be a very useful tool. I would recommend a Milwaukee or Makita and modify it as I did here with a cheeper version. Wish I had just gotten a heavy duty one. I have used chop saws and they can be great. http://ipneto.deviantart.com/art/Platten-modification-for-bandsaw-323162990

A kz power hammer or a good press. A shop. money. a full face respirator. rewiring of garage and basement so I can use my lovely grinder in it instead of my nab ors garage.

Glad I could be helpful :D

ABANA has just in the last year put out one in the hammers blow. This one is from a h. kent hepworth from powell, tennessee. volume 21 #2 spring 2013 I like it but plan on modifying it to be more forged and pretty :D because there is nothing like a pretty functional tool :D

Your welcome. Yes we do. One of my old guildys putting one to use. plus having one and air tools is pretty fun. There was another video or 2 on youtube that showed the usefulness of air tools and a torch. I just cant find them right now as google stuff is all linked so when I sign on my wife's account to print some stuff for her it goes to her youtube as well. Bloody annoying if you ask me.

I love my acetylene torch. They are versatile. One thing that I would advise is a gas saver stand. Its something I still need to make. We are lucky in our guild to have a great man who spent over 40 years oxy acetylene welding rail for the railroad. He teaches oxy acetylene class for the guild from time to time. It is awesome to learn all the things possible with it. Get it and use it. Took me some time to warm up to it because I didn't know what I could do with it. Oh and the guild I speak of is http://www.metalsmith.org cutting, welding, brazing, soldering, casting, concentrated heats, washing down welds, forging the welds, the welds can actually look like forge welds or like it wasn't even there. Just another useful tool especially in a shop without enough electricity. Safety is important. As with all tools.

I disagree with vulcans being junk. I have one and love it far more than my acme or any of the other types I have had the pleasure to work on. Just wish it was heavier than the 185lbs that it is. Plus a good 90 percent rebound is hard to scoff at. Vulcans are quiet and have a flatter top section to the horn which can be an advantage if you know how to use it. I do lots of sledge hammer work on my vulcan. To each their own I just hate to see such a wonderful tool called crap. So don't discount them. It is always better to check out an anvil before you buy. Kinda the same way with cars. I had a kit worked up for when I was looking for a second anvil. Good to know what the tests are and use them.

I started at the beginning of last year being a millwright apprentice and I have seen many trades hit things (not just rusty stuff) to help loosen them when they are to tight to just move with the tools at hand. So it can work but won't always.

Looking good.

Around me it would have been a fair price for that sized anvil in decent condition. My 100 lb acme cost me 100 dollars just as a reference. Sadly some people have an inflated idea of how much things are really worth and theres no talking them out of it. You just gotta shrug and walk away. To bad, Hopefully another will cross your path soon. :D

Welcome aboard. :D

The bigger you go the better off you will be. Just remember you have to replace the air that goes up it so count on having some way for air to get into your shop. Also corrugated steel is great to have against the bottom of the wood so hot pieces that go flying don't just sit up against the wood and start it on fire. Just my 2 cents. Oh and ditto on fire extinguisher and co detector.

Timothy Miller. Lovely vice work. Thanks for sharing it:D

Your welcome. The nice thing is if you put a piece of 2 by 4 in between the legs just under the spring box and close the jaws you can knock out the wedges and remove the vice without fiddling with stuff. Then put it all back together by just tapping in the wedges when you get where your going. I do this all the time and have grown to love this connection for that and many other reasons.

I am loving this thread. So many funny stories. I still need to find the shirt that has the answers to the 10 most ask questions of a smith. Hilarious. When I started blacksmithing I went to demonstrate at the minnesota zoo for john deer days with the president of the guild of metalsmiths and some other smiths. He had that shirt and always put it out to refer people to constantly. :D Kinda fun answering the questions though. Especially when you get a good story out of it. p.s. shared this whole thread with my wife and we both had a lot of good laughs.

Nice job on the spring. I prefer the wedge connection that are on three of the four post vices that are at my house right now. Simple to take off to move. http://ipneto.deviantart.com/art/vice-spring-277231859 http://ipneto.deviantart.com/art/vice-wedges-277231611 The half around the leg is simple to make and the other could just be a piece of flat stock folded over and bolted down onto the bench with enough room for the wedges to pull the two pieces together. If you can forge weld or weld you could make it nicer looking but not necessary.

When I was working as a short order cook about 10 years ago we had an 18 year old girl that was working as a dish washer and she came back while I was doing some prep work to put away some dishes. She saw the full basil leaves in a container on our spice shelf and said eww why are there leaves there. I explained that they were used to flavor things like stews roasts and other food and she said "I would never eat that" So I explained that other than salt all spices were leaf, root, flower, or twig. She looked at me straight faced and said "not cinnamon" Being that there were rolls of that rolled up bark sitting near by the basil leaves and that most people see cinnamon in the rolled up bark fashion I just couldn't answer her and had to walk away. Its amazing how disconnected some people in society are. DSW. Love that story :D going to have to save that one. Little kids can be so funny. :D

If I remember correctly there are some stuff on anvilfire that deals with tooling from rail road track. I suggest a large vertical piece of rail for your anvil and one smaller vertical piece for a bench anvil. The rest could be cut up to make a hardy plate for your new anvil to hold tooling. and if you cut off the flange at the bottom and section off the remaining rail you have ready made square shanks for hardy tools. I will say be careful of sparks starting other things on fire including yourself.

Being you have a truck you could take the rout I have taken and install a crane on the back of the truck as the more weight attached to the anvil the more of your energy will go towards moving the hot steel instead of the anvil. It takes a little added time but its far better for me than trying to be macho and putting it in with my own muscle power. The other option is a three legged stand made from tubing. I have seen many farriers and some of my fellow smiths with this style. It works pretty well. I will be making one for my 100 lb acme anvil soon. With a hand forged wing bolt for quick dismantling. I have found the more a piece will brake down into manageable pieces the easier it is to haul around. Using things like wedges, bolts, square tubing will help to make things manageable. But at that point you have to figure out what is the heaviest you want to be lifting and figure out how to brake it down into pieces that are under that weight. You could have detachable legs that are just square tubing in a short piece of slightly larger square tubing so you have 5 pieces including the anvil( 3 legs, baseplate/shelf, anvil) tap the short sections with a wing bolt so the legs wont fall out when you lift the stand up and don't want them to. At that point your anvil will be the heaviest piece you will have to lift. You could also make a brake down wooden stand. where threaded rod runs through your boards holding them together and undo one to as many bolts as you want and there you go a couple of boards to throw in the back one by one and one to however many threaded rods with nuts and washers on them. When I started I had to haul my 185 lb vulcan anvil and large block of wood out into my driveway every time I wanted to forge and worst of all put it back in when I was done. Yeah I quickly made it so I could wheel it in and out. There are many ways to skin a cat and at 5:00am there are only a few I can think of (and none of them very friendly to the cat :D) I hope this helps :D

http://www.cafac.org Welcome to the guild of metalsmiths. I hope to see you around. :D Where abouts are you? I am in robbinsdale. I plan on pulling out the forge today. Your welcome to stop by if you would like. Just pm me :D