Steve Sells

tight knit Yes, but with open arms, and hearts...

At the request of a Facebook friend - We are asking everyone to say a prayer for the US "Darkhorse" 3rd Battalion 5th Marines and their families. They are fighting it out in Afghanistan and have lost 9 Marines in 4 days. I am HONORED to re-post this! Thank you to "OUR" Service men and women !! http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/prayer/darkhorse.asp

I must have missed something, HTML is going out ? hmmm my host is great but I program, not sure how they are with having to build and maintain it for you. I refuse to use the wysiwyg editors, for a non programmer they get a nice looking page, but forget SEO with them, ranking with any of the engines is gone with all the added code needed to use those editors.. I use a simple word processor. http://www.adwh.com/ American Discount Web Hosting, based in Texas. Dawn the owner knows me, she is a sweet lady. Call her and ask

I have had a few 'disagreements' with members here when they say forge welding is too hard, I tell them they have not paid attention. In person I can get them forge welding in one afternoon if they want to try to learn, when I show them and they do it they are surprised, but on line its not likely to happen, when so many 'experts' post and the person asking has no idea who is honest and who is full of hot air.

if it does turn out to be stolen, how will they prove it? In this case, a charge of receiving stolen property is hard to prove. If they do prove its stolen and you bought it in good faith, you will lose that track and the money you paid for it is now gone(as stolen property gets returned to the legal owner if recovered), but not likely get any fines or jail time if you have a receipt.

Fantastic Thomas ! Too bad many often make assumptions about things they never really have done, and then lose out on this experience, thank you for sharing how its not imposable to forge weld when people pay attention. :)

nope still in knifes. http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/56-knife-stickies-here/

One of the hardest parts is explaining to someone to hit at orange, or yellow heat, because of the way we see colors, or the ambient lighting levels in our shops will effect how we see the same color(s), the other half is how to hit, When learning many of us tend to hit too hard. I agree we need to start at the beginning and learn basic forge skills, before jumping into advanced areas such as pattern welding and blade making. While the act of forge welding itself is one of the basic skills for a journeymen smith, it does take a bit of practice before one gets to the point of 100% perfect welds every time, and that pattern welding is not a beginner project. I am wearing my fire proof suit, awaiting the flames from all the arm chair smith's, that like to contradict me, even tho basic does not mean beginning.

What was un clear in my sticky about heat treating? I will be glad to correct it, so more may understand it

NO TAPE!!! there are dome covers (look for patio outlet covers as box store) they go on like a standard house Cover, but keep the business parts of the outlet protected from above to even head-on while things are plugged into them

Asking questions is good, but why should we spend our time, when he has not been willing to spend some of his reading what has already been posted? Trying to point out there are answers to his questions posted already. The manner of his post proves he has not read much of anything about forging, or his query would have been stated differently

well frankly.. if you have read a little on this subject before posting here, you would have known how foolish that proposition of yours sounded, and after all the 14 yr olds posting here, some of us tend to get annoyed at people that are too lazy to research anything for them selves. So in essence you opened the door by expecting some of US to do your work for you. But your last reply did show some humility and that is good. If you wish to stick around and learn many of us are willing to attempt to teach you, but with about half million posts in this forum IFI alone, I suggest you first start by reading some of those posts. Also many of us, my self included , have an open shop, where we welcome people to stop by and learn, be warned that smithing is not a spectator sport, wear old cloths.

I have commented that its nice to have a socially accepted way to beat the snot out of something after a long day at the other job, and I get paid to do it.

Very nice, For getting the high contrast blue/silver: using a normal nickel alloy wont work, but pure nickel will resist hot blue wonderfully, even with mild steel for the dark layer. use .030 sheet nickel with 1/8 steel, as it tends to alloy , dont go over 400 layers for same reason. post pic's

You have not smithed before? yet you want to make automotive parts for resale? are you serious??

Welcome to the Nut house :D

you are most likely too far south, but Ft Wayne Indiana is at US-69 and US-30, I have room for your tents. and We like to cook. if not then maybe next time wife and I get to your island... local group meets 1st and 3rd Saturday of every month, unless its a national Holiday.

A backhoe weighing 22 tons is on top of a lowboy trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas . The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a criss-cross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing. Solve: When the shovel arm hits the overpass, how fast do you have to be going to slice the bridge in half ? (Assume no effect for headwind and no braking by the driver.) Extra Credit: Solve for the time and distance Required for the entire rig to come to a complete stop after hitting the overpass at the speed calculated above. Yes, you can also neglect friction coefficients. I wonder if he will he stop using his cell phone while driving in the future?

Welcome to the dark side.... your journey is not yet complete, but its a start Nice work Stan

first pic looks like your over heating the steel. This is easy to do in sunlight as that light source varies in intensity, but our eyes compensate. An example: my shop seems very bright when working inside, but people walking in from outside think its dark, until their eyes adjust. so you see the same color to your adjusted eyes, but its much brighter, and hotter. as for second photo's twisting, you twisted it, you can un twist it, as you gain skill you will do better, and that wont be an issue.

here are the tripods set up, with either using the doubled ends through the loop, (5,6,7) or with the single sides (8,9)

One problem with hardening is that not all the austenite converts to martinsite right away. Leaving us with some retained austenite from the quench. We temper after quenching to reduce brittleness, but after a time the unconverted austenite does convert to martinsite. This is after the first temper cycle so we have some untempered martinsite which is brittle. A second temper cycle helps make sure of tempering this newly converted martinsite. Some steels require a sub zero quench (-170 F and even colder for some SS) after the initial hardening quench to force the retained austenite to convert. As for triple tempering I am not convinced its needed for everything. I only do it if its springs that get a lot of stress. this is a simple explanation, but in the heat treat sticky's in the knife section, I have references for more detailed information.

I had thought I already posted here. This 3 year old photo is my demo set up for the RenFaires, my son helps out a bit, and there is my Kohlswa 45 on the stump

Also a big reason there are regulations about how we keep bottles of gas in the shops.

mine was from W.Va close to Glenn's back yard