anvil

I'd do it different than all the other suggestions. Going on your pic. 1: Make the detail tool you are talking about. A hand held tool with a 3 dimensional rectangle at the working end. The rectangular face is perpendicular to your anvil face when the tool is laying on your anvil. Now forge that face back so it is at an angle, no longer perpendicular, to the anvil face but the top edge is set back. No sharp edges or corners, especially the bottom edge and corners. It's not a cutting tool, it's a moving material tool. 2: taper the square bar and champfer the edges to start getting the slightly ovaloid(??) shape 3: now the fun part. I would work at some angle with the length across my anvil using a stand, an s hook, and a heavy weight. For me this will hold my work secure and I don't have to continually adjust the pritchell type hold down and leave both hands free. Now the tool. What you are going to do is drive up the leading edge of the scale so its above the top face of your stock. Think Yellen and check how he creates leaves on the sides of large square stock. I did a large acorn this way where the shell separates from the kernel. Start at the center, then work outward twards the sides. While you are working twards the sides, maintain your angle but spin the tool shaft slightly around its axes as you work outwards. Don't forge too much, little bits at a time works. Now work from the top down, bottom edge facing out twards the back of the valley and start working on the lateral radius and flat valley bottom This will leave a natural relatively flat raised top edge that tapers down to the bottom valley. spinning the tool in your hand will flatten the wide valley bottom and start making the lateral roll. Thats the plan, my man and where I would start. Starting here and a bit of playing around on this technique may show you where slight edge, bottom, and face changes will make a better tool. All in all, you may need a tool variation or two in the working end to get this detail. I think with a tool or three variations you can do all the details and have the flat radius"d valley bottom get progressively smaller. 4: My instinct is to do the side grooves last, but maybe not. A great project to grow the uniqueness of your scrap pile,,, or wall hangers from the initial test pieces. The interesting thing here is that the instinctive tool shape would be concave. Not so, a concave shape has a single radius and you are stuck with it. Great if that is what you want, but It doesn't work for an ever changing radius. So a slightly convex shape actually works better. 5: Roll it and scroll it. I just noticed that George had a similar approach.

Tandy leather for leather and supplies and make it yourself. Or find a local leather craftsman and have him make it. Since blacksmiths do custom work, your apron might as well be custom. If you have a leather guy do it, who knows he may pass it back for some leather tools.

Thats the way I read it too, that he is building a forge. I would find or buy a good rectangular bottom blast cast firepot like from Centaur Forge and set it in while you are building it. And put fireclay or castable refractory about 6" or so between the rammed earth and the cast firepot. Why bottom blast? I like it better because its easier to remove ash and clinker. Lol, You either need to break your fire down to clean the ash, or you need a hole and a clinker ball in the bottom to remove it. An ash dump is best in my opinion, so if ya got an ash hole there anyway, might as well bring your air in thru it.

Shainarue, you are doing a lot of complex forgings. Great way to improve. An organic mosquito/fly repellent that works is to take a shot glass of cider vinegar every morning. They dont like the smell as it when it comes out of your pores. Works great for horses as well if you add a cup or so to their water trough. Show horse folks learned this trick long ago. They would add the vinegar to their horses water to make water taste the same wherever they went. Then noticed the flying critters stayed away. I then tried it on myself and it worked a treat. I recommended it to all my clients and many tried it. I could always tell those who did. If a shot of vinegar doesn't appeal to you, just eat oil and vinegar salad dressing on your salad on a daily basis. Takes a few days to work its way thru your system.

Just remember, you are dressing out someone elses abuse and to make it be a safe and workable hammer, get the cracks out. Also, another problem to consider, the temper on hammer faces is not very deep, so you will most likely end up with an unknown and mostly softer face. If you use it much, you will end up very shortly with the same mushrooming problem. Consider heat treating when you are done. A good learning experience all around.

Yup, don't weld on it, dress it down on a grinder or whatever you feel comfortable using and bring the head back to slightly domed with champfered edges. Then you will have a great hammer

Good to hear you tried it. Now you have an idea to its limits and strengths. My setup for half log treads was the same, but because it was wood, I could remove more material. Still on a 16" log surface, it was, like your deal, lots of passes. I'd still recommend a large 9" or larger side grinder as the tool of choice. Theres a lot of torque and that works in your favor for keeping your surface in plane. You can easily feel the highs and its not too hard to learn to just kiss the surface and feel more and more contact as you progress down into your work. Best of all, the large size covers your whole width, so not so tedious as mucho multi passes with a router. Congrats anyway on a job well done!

Centaur forge carries coke as does Peih tools. Both ship as well.

I've used flat stock and rounded it quite a bit on a number of things. It creates a nice detail on long strap hinges as well as more strength. Also on switch plates for raising the center and leaving the edges proud and in plane. Its not hard to round flat stock between the step and the face of the anvil, then put it across the face hump up and lightly forge the edges into plane. For your rivets, a long heading tool works. Coil spring with an upset end for the header works well. For hard to get places I have a few that are offset and they work fine.

Pretty big, too.

Just to add a little more confusion, I prefer a 9" cut off type wheel. Decades ago I worked as a welder boxing beams and used this to clean up the welds. Worked in the field and used the same tool. I have rebuilt a couple 3 anvils by building up the face and had real good luck using this type wheel to get a level surface. In my shop I have little to no need for a grinder of any sort, so, thank my lucky stars my wheels last for decades. I've not used a cup wheel for many things so can't compare them. I keep it real flat and can get a lot of wheel surface to contact the anvil face. For me, this large flat and parallel surface works a treat and is pretty quick.

Awesome, Frosty. I find it pretty cool that the Cal tech program for junior high had a test like that. Its not an easy task without quite a bit of filing experience. Especially considering that it was a test, back in the day, that apprentices had to do to become journeymen. A huge boost to my filing skills came from Tom Joyce once when I worked for him. "You used to be a Farrier?" "Yes" " Then you must be pretty good with a file." It took about 6 months for that to soak in and realize that simple association. Sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees. Thats when I consciously added a file to my primary tools. I basically add a touch of the file to nearly everything I do. Works especially nice to add a bit of brightwork to the champfer on the edge of leaves.

Correct, Frosty, I'm not a machinist, I'm a blacksmith and this is a blacksmith site, not a machinist one. And I do have a fair amount of time running a file as both a Farrier and Blacksmith. Consider the mass of a vertical mill and the fact that you are moving the material into the tool vs a hand held light router that you are moving over the material. Consider that on the mill both the cutter and the material are firmly secured and you don't have to apply any manual force to do the job, much less the rpm difference between working wood or steel. Did you forget this? Seems that if you learned how to file a level surface and file a cube in junior high, its not a majorly difficult task. Did you pass the test? However, I agree with Buzzkill and giving it a try is most often the best way excepting jumping off bridges to see what happens. But consider with a router you will need a guide to run on that will hold up to the downward force you will have to apply and a carbide bit. Both add time and cost to the job. Personally I think that using a hand held router will mess up your block without a major setup. If it were me and I didn't want to file it, I'd consider a hand held belt sander. A vice and a belt sander is all you would need. By the way, I'm assuming that by ends you mean 5.5"x5.25" and you are cutting off or dressing the weld bead.

Lol, the funny thing was that the only big busts they actually got was a couple of officers with footlockers full of illegal booze! A ship has Lots of places to hide stuff that are hard to find.

I think you are talking a metal block, correct? A router is really not the tool to use, guide or not. Its made for wood. You will fight it continually to keep it on the track. To apply enough down force to prevent this, you will burn your iron and/or burn up your router. I've done both. I used a router and a guide to get a level surface on half log treads for a iron sweep stairway and a router is great for this, but they aren't built to deal with metal, carbide or not. A file is a blacksmith tool which one of its primary purpose's is to do just what you'r doing. Create a flat plane. I call files a poor man's vertical mill,,, Again, a 4-1/2" side grinder makes it very hard to get a truly level surface. A 7" or 9" one works very well. Resurfaced a number of rebuilt and built up anvil surfaces with this tool. For such a small piece, just get a couple 3 10$ good quality metal files from fine to coarse and draw file it. Treat them well and they will last forever.

A dang Fine hammer. I'd bet it is a striking hammer, not a struck hammer.

You about nailed it. Not sure if it will fit but sometimes a bigger grinder(diameter wheel) will give a flatter surface. Also, if possible in your setup, for me, draw filing gets me the flattest in plane surface

Awesome!

Goods, I really like your chipping hammer, very clean, well forged and great balance! Shainarue, Thats a very complex forging and you pulled it off with style! It will be a treasure chest full of memories 10 years from now when it shows you how far you have come! I have many of my early forgings and still use them.

Nice horse. You described literally every one of my horse shoeing customers. There were two little girls above the ranch about my daughters ages. From spring til snow in the fall, the'd saddle up in the AM and head south into the National forest. Somewhere around noon they swapped horses, had lunch at home, then headed north back into the forest.. Sometime close to or shortly after, they ended up back home to do chores at the ranch. Best babysitter you could ever have.

Beautiful dog!. I too have a service dog. We have been together for 17 years. I had a similar experience with customs agents when I was in the navy, Viet Nam era.About mid cruise over Christmas We spent our 2 weeks liberty in Tokyo. The USO had a dance so I went. I met a lady who was an American college student whose parents worked in the car industry in Tokyo. She was a rather striking sailors dream,,,blond/blue etc. Her family "adopted" me and my best friend for our time ashore. We had very special and she and I "did" Tokyo in fine style. Well, their roots were Polish and a Polish Christmas tradition is to give a lump of coal. Its good luck. On Christmas morning there were our Christmas stocking hanging on the mantel with my lump of coal deep in the toe. Thats the very special and high vibe memory that that lump of coal represented to me, a future smith. We headed to Pearl at the end of the cruise. This was a time when the government decided to really crack down on illegal drugs coming into the USA via returning personnel from Nam. Scuttlebut had it that we would be picking up a handful of agents who would search the ship,, every nook and cranny. I was one of those chosen for a full search,, very complete, I must say. No doubt I was pretty PO'd at this. When they did my locker, they took all my Hong Kong tailor made clothes and tore off the wrappers and left them in a jumble on my bed. Then they found their big score! Picture these three gents dressed in immaculate whites from hat to shoes. Hmmm such a moment. They opened a box and found a huge black lump off,, yup,, my coal. But they knew they had the goods hot in hand! By they time they all touched it, rubbed it, and gave it a taste test,,, They had black smudges all over their faces and whites, from head to toe. They turned to me with a puzzled and rather disgusted look and asked,,, "what is this stuff?" I answered rather smugly whilst trying my best to not breaking out in a huge laugh,,," You should have asked me that first!". In case you are curious, do any of you know the difference between a faerie tale and a sea story? A faerie tale begins " once upon a time" and a sea story begins,,," This is no ____!" Well, this is definitely a sea story,,,

Cool story and help yourself. My family and I were the caretakers of this 200 acre ranch for 30 some years. We had 17 horses and the two donks. About half the horses were ours. We raised Paints and quarter horses small time. He paid us $100/month and supplied hay and grain. We lived a half mile down hill and up the other fork where my shop was, two sides bordering national forest. I've got 2 daughters born and raised their with that ranch being their personal playground. Tough life and prolly the hardest job I ever had. Somebody's got to do it.

I don't have music in my shop, no particular reason why and that may change. Turley spoke of "The Dance at the Forge, and thats me to a tee. The sound of my hand cranked blower, the heat in the forge and the ring of my anvil are my music. My dance is kinda a John Hartford two step.

Actually the lighter colored one is Telly, the momma burito

Most don't know of the Rulison Project. How stupid can you get, to use a nuke to free shale oil and natural gas for energy use, and not even think it would be radioactive. I went by there a year or so ago and the radioactive warnings are still there. Wonder how that affected the water table. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Rulison