anvil

Lol, i have a long and passionate relation with my hacksaw's. When cutting with a hacksaw in my shop, not getting rid of boogers and traps in the wilds, you have to be aware of saw kerf, a silly couple of millimeters can be critical. It can really screw up your day when you are cutting the hinge joint on a 3 knuckle barrel and forget,,,

rockstar, You have done your mesa/butte analagy before. Thought id put forth my thoughts based on just that again. For those who dont know we two are pretty much diamectrically opposed in our views. We have a number of interesting similarities. Roughly the same age, we both work in construction, and more to the point we do our work on and around the front range of Colorado. Our differences are our views on craftsmen. You've indicated you and your firm dont deal with craftsmen. You have also stated your reasons as to why. Not very flattering, but not wrong, just out of context. However your beliefs are based on the work needs of the mesa, not the butte. In this post you mention that you have worked with 500 general contractors these last 17 years. Only three of which may be from the mystical relm on the top of the butte. Since '83, when i hung out my shingle on the butte, im pretty sure ive come across 497 GC's who feel as you do and for the same reasons. They apply absolutely to the work ethic of the mesa. They absolutely do not apply on the butte. And those three others realize just that. Let me give an example. If you go to the hardware store looklng for siding, you will see a photo veneer pine on chipboard for say $3 a sheet. You will also see a photo veneer of black walnut on chipboard for $40 a sheet. Correct? (Prices may vary and the price difference may be bigger). Why is this? Its because they are not selling quality, they are selling the thin facade of quality. When these 500 GC's are looking for black walnut siding, I have no doubt thst their opinion of a craftsman who makes real black walnut paneling would be no different, and for the same reasons as your views on 'traditionsl smiths". You cant afford the product, and you cant afford the time. And any craftsman who tries working on the mesa faces just that problem. And that, my friend is the basic principal of business on the mesa, he who presents the best facade of quality makes the most money. It does not apply on the butte. True quality, not even the finest facade of quality rules on the butte. Two different realities, two different esthetics at play. So who do I work for? I work for the man who hires the GC that is your client. If i come on the job before the contracts are awarded, Your GC, and thus your firm will not be asked to bid the railings, they already go to me. Its made clear to the GC that I work thru the owner, not the GC. We are separate entities. If I come on the scene after the bids are accepted, the owner pays off the cost of the fabbed rails and indicates the GC is no longer involved, and the job goes to me. Your GC, your firm, and i suppose your fab shop are paid and get a freebie. All pay, no work, and no breach of contract. Thats life on the butte. One last point, since both your #3 and #4 have to do with the economy. Without a doubt, your GC, your firm, and every one down the food chain are affected by the economy. However, those owners on the butte are rarely affected by the economy. So when the crash comes, and you are madly hunting work whether butte or mesa, the clutter is gone on the butte and we craftsmen of all sorts are easier to spot and we remain busy. Thus, we are not affected by the economy, as a general rule. I suggest that any GC, firm, or individual who seeks success on the butte, put real and true quality as their primary esthetic. Even the best facade of quality will only fool these folks for a little while. Thats the primary reason they come and go.

Even with electricity in a shop, Got to heat it up to forge it anyway, might as well cut it hot.

A splitting maul works well as a struck tool.

Very cool. Heres mine doing what willys do best. I have 2. This '62 and a '47

yea, with maybe a motto like,, " Under the speading pronghorn rack, The Pronghorn smithy doeth stand" Pretty original, huh?

A zither is a musical instrument. And i played one as a kid in Germany Lol, and i am left handed! Hows that for a filled nitch?

Hey, I drive an old willys, what can i say.

There is another way of looking at it, particularly since we are all blacksmiths. Lest we forget an old blacksmith saying. "Spend a minute in the forge and save an hour with a file". Now we all know a grinder is much faster than a file, so if i want to make a file be as fast as a grinder, i guess ill just spend two minutes at my forge. Then i wont need a file. And now my file is as fast as my grinder, Such benefits,,, more time playing in the flame, no noise, nothing flying around, no electricity, and best of all, i dont have to buy all those grinder consumables. I call that the ultimate grinder ppe.

Howabout "the Pronghorn Smithy". Ive always liked just plain ole "Xyz Blacksmith Shop" no frills and like our craft,, simple and direct.

Looks pretty good to me.

Never had lime harden anything ive annealed. I imagine if it absorbed enough water to have any affect in any way, one might see the consistency change. Perhaps clumps? Naa. I do live where its pretty dry, but i doubt that has any bearing on it. If it hardened steel instead of annealing it, I suspect some other cause. Works good in an outhouse too. Also when cleaning stalls. Lest I forget, its great in a garden.

I wouldnt dwell on it,,, its kinda pointless. BTDC,,, behind the danged curve?

I prefer lime. It is very fine, very dense, and very cheap. Because its so dense it has a natural tendency to settle and compact sround your piece.

Riffler files are your best friend, and dont forget to make a safe edge where necessary on your files

All of what comes next only applies to those who wish to make a decent to great living as a traditional smith. It is not a pathway that will give you anything quick. There are as many unique pathways to success as there are working smiths. This was my pathway and it worked. "faster better cheaper". As opposed to what? china,india,mexico imports? Other working smiths? For the former, you dont need any smithing experience. For the latter, 5 or 6 years experience is manditory. Obviously you are interested in the latter. How do you gain those needed years of experience? Thats the catch 22 and depends on your personal situation and rhe 3 "D's"(desire, dedication, and determination). Age? Family? Personal resources to name a few. Time between hammer and anvil is critical. My solution was to serve my personsl apprenticeship as a farrier. It is one of the few occupations that a contemporary business plan will work with, finance a decent lifestyle and put you betwixt hammer and an anvil 24 7. That was my pathway. "short response time, or high quality, or low cost" The only choice as a traditional smith, is high quality. Forged iron is not,,, ever,,, in the relm of the other two. Like the great military strategists state, chose your battlefield. If you chose anything but quality, you will not be able to compete by hammer in hand with the other two. Cheap imports and fabrication at any level will prevail. I next began my own type of journeymanship. I did this during the last few years of my farrier business and it continued for another 7 or so years after i transitioned from farrier to blacksmith. During this time i wrnt to as many possible workshops and demonstrations as i could and worked for peanuts with any working smith thst needed help.. This evolved into a custom hardware business. I beat the streets and knocked on every door of those who did custom furnature, cabinets,doormakers and as many interior decorators as i could stand. It worked and this evolved into a rock solid business. This then opened the well hinged door to full blown architectural blscksmithing. "not good taking quality to an extreme" Do take quality to an extreme. This is your primary selling point. Of all the items you list, make it a point to max each and every one out on every job, from small to lsrge. Qualiry IS your product expressed in iron. Add more as you discover them. Eventually they will become second nature and the time factor will diminish. "Excessive detail, complicated design, and precise joinery may be appreciated by certain few". Your work and design will most likely evolve Twards simplicity,not because simplicity is the easy to create, but just the opoosite. Our joinery is just that, simple. Precise joinery is critical and comes with time. Think a few hundred pickets with a simple tenon on each end, all forged shoulder to shoulder to within a 64'th. Simple and beautiful to behold. "may be appreciated by certain few" Lol, this is your market. They do have the money, they do want, no, demand the quality and time is ususlly not an issue. You dont find this market dealing your business as if you are selling big macks, This market is usually not affected by the economy and best of all, if you presevere, there is plenty of room at the top.

I believe Robb's coal comes from the King coal mine, Hesperus, Colorado.

For most knives a 5 gal metal bucket with a lid works fine. If the oil flashes, just put the lid on and the fire goes out.

Check auto parts stores. I believe 5hats where I got my last copper brushes. Seems it was larger than a toothbrush, but works fine. You also might want to try applying a hot oil finish after you are finished with applying brass/copper. Do it in the same heat. It creats a pretty cool antique brass/copper looking finish.

Keep it up,, never stop!

This should be another thread, but ,,, traditionally,,, I'm not much at starting threads. If I created that intrepetation, then my bad. It's just not that cut and dried. Perhaps word examples will do better. I like Art Nouveau, so, let's say a customer commissions a Goya piece and If I'm successful, it will be a historical recreation. However if I am strongly influenced by Art Nouveau and do my own unique design that shows this influence, then what I now have is an original piece done in the traditional Art Nouveau style, a style that began in the 1880's or so and continues til today. Technique: let's continue with joining a light piece to a heavy piece. As a traditional smith, I would choose how I wanted to forgewelds it. There may be more than one traditional way. As long as I hit it with something, place it on some sort of anvil, heat it with whatever is handy and I pull it off, then I have done it as a traditional smith. If I use a mig, weld it, grind it, and paint it, I have done it as a "traditional" fabricator, a way that has been "traditional" since say the '20's. But it is not traditional smithing. Historical chooses a point in time and defines it physically such as garb, anvil style, type of fuel, etc. The important deal is it existed at that point in time, and no longer. Traditional on the other hand started "some time ago" and is still being done today. It is not a point in time, it is part of a continuum. Goya no longer forges iron, yet Art Nouveau is alive and well. Goya is a historical point in time whilst Art Nouveau continues on JHCC, I read that thread. Lol, I remember following it, but have no idea why I didn't add to it. Sounds like you and I are on the same track, Thomas is still thinking in his traditional matter, the rest seem to be using a variation on a theme. Any debate or discussion needs to start off with acceptable definitions for those in the debate, not "some people think,,,". That's what I'm trying to do, for my own self, come up with some sort of working definition of " historical" and "Traditional".

"Would you consider an item "traditional" if it looked exactly like a historical item but was made with modern industrial methods?" Absolutely. The question is, can this be done? Again, it depends on the tooling and techniques used. You need something to heat it, something to hit it with, something to hit it on, and something to hold it. And the end product must suggest an esthetic that says "forged". This includes finish, forged or filed. I don't know if acorn still produces much of the stamped colonial patterned hardware in the box stores or not. Prolly gone chinese, but you know what I'm talking of. This fails at every step the definition of traditional. Now lets look at the upper end of high tech made architectural details that are available for fabricators from the upper end specialty outlets. these are a fine combination of modern industry and traditional handwork. Scrolls, baskets, pickets, repousse leafwork, dozens of twists etc. And all made for the mass market. This work is the modern replacement for the work done by so many small shops found in every city during our long history. Railings done from the slums to castles. Made to be arc welded into upper end fabbed rails. However, if one were to forge a tenon on each end of one of these pickets, and it could pass for an "anywhen" piece of "traditional hand forged" iron. I suggest you check out what Tom Joyce is doing now with contemporary industrial forging tools. It blew me away. However, I would not consider this type of forgework to fit into a "historical" setting. Traditional yes, historical definitely not. Thus the reason I don't consider how you heat, what material you heat, type of hammer or style of anvil etc to determine "Traditional". To me it defines a point in the historical time continuum. Thus its "historical" and I tend to put "historical" as a subset of "traditional". " Some of the historical forge welded pieces with very thin stock where the welds flow seamlessly are quite difficult to do with mild steel without a lot of dressing of the weld areas" I thought this was what you were thinking of. Here's my take on that. If you had a hundred of these to do today, by the time you hit #20 or so, it would no longer be quite difficult. By that time, if not long before, you would know the proper temps to do whatever you want, and you would absolutely know the differences between working thin wrought or a36 and there would be no extra cleanup needed. The basic techniques for forging a light piece to a much heavier piece have not changed from day one to today. The temp you work it at has changed, not the techniques needed to do the forge weld I know this pic isn't as thin as your example, but it's as good as I can do. It would not make any difference as to how thin as long as I understand and am comfortable with the technique of forging this stock thin to thick. No extra cleanup, no burn. "single smith in a smithy is a rare exception historically " Lol, I'd take either side of this debate and enjoy it. The question to me is why? Why did the african smiths, as an example, use two goat bags pumped by a young kid and not evolve a two chambered bellows and work by himself? I believe that the norm in Africa was the single smith and a young kid pumping duo "kid" skin bellows. Perhaps it's because humans are more than less social critters. What I see concerning evolution of our shops across time is now we have evolved to single man shops as the norm at nearly level other than the heavy industrial side of our craft. And these changes are recent within nearly our lifetimes. After a few thousand years of multi man shops, we have evolved and adapted to technological changes that made this not only possible, but a business necessity to be single man shops. I believe the smiths contemporary with Yellen were the last of the multi man shop era. I believe that the smiths of Francis Whitaker's era, an apprentice of Yellen's, were transitional smiths who had to make major changes in technique in order to continue as "traditional" architectural smiths. They had to learn just how to do such simple tasks as applying collars to a 700# railing by theirselves. No longer was it possible to call over a handful of apprentices to lift the dang'd thing to do it hot. And, the finished collar had to function as securely and as esthetically as the " historical" way common to Yellen and before. Check out "the blacksmiths cookbook" to see his solution. The next gen smiths now use similar techniques to apply collars as those done by Whitaker and the smiths of his generation. My gen, us, all of us, now are the traditional smiths doing traditional iron for the next gen. Our way of doing collars will be the traditional way. Yellens ways are past history and if one were to set up a historical Yellen shop and demo for the public, you will need to have helpers and the skills to apply hot collars to heavy projects. A simple example to differentiate between historical and traditional. Not perfect, not done, but definitely evolving. Thanks much.

I enjoy these debates, Thomas, for whatever reason. Your discussion on the " new norm" is more a catagorizing of cause and effect, which is pretty self evident. I generalize it as changes in the cost of labor. We are in agreement. However, I made my statement concerning the above. I hope you will appreciate my humor. You in fact have perfectly described a very "traditional" situation. As traditional today as it was during the time of King Tut and beyond. The epitomy of the " government job". ;). Too many people standing around watching, a few supervisors and one poor sod doing all the work. Laying a piece of steel onto a hand hammer is a one man job. I made a point for the ones wanting to try this. You can do it by yourself and even without a post vice,,, nothing more but a hammer, an anvil, and a chisel. Using your next post above I will contestthe second half used in .y quote: "having only one person in a smithy is NOT traditional". I believe you made it quite clear that during the timeframe you have chosen literally every type of shop existed from one man frontier shops ala Jim Bridger to multiman shops in every major city. And why were there all this variety of shops? I think it's called supply and demand, not tradition. So let's go thru the rest of your long post for those who are interested in this stuff. Thomas and I are, without a doubt, and stand with two differing conclusions to the same facts. "Single authorship" a weird hangup? You mean when we identify a major work that we recognize as a Yellen piece, it's weird to recognize it as his? How should we recognize it? Perhaps as a work out of "some" shop that Yellen actually had very little to do with and instead celebrate far more the other 20 or so who did the actual work? What you miss with your examples is that when a person designs a piece and has a style of his own, he is hired(commissioned) for these very reasons. He then hires, or has apprentices and journeymen who have the skills to emulate his style exactly. This is what the client wants and is paying for. The client is not paying for a piece that some part looks like Joe, others like Fred, and over there is a Mildred flower. That's why we can look at a piece and absolutely recognize it as a Yellen. And that's how we Author it! "It's dangerous to ascribe modern ideas and methods to prior times",:. " I've run into a lot of folks telling people that what they are doing is the SAME as what was done in Medieval times": " except that what they are doing won't work with real wrought iron and coal wasn't used at the period they reference and the anvil they use wasn't "invented" till a thousand years later..." Alas, you must define " Same" to tie it to "dangerous" . It's only dangerous if, as you tend to do, make the concept of traditional be a subset of historical reenactment. It is not dangerous if you are working within an art history period such renaissance, baroque, art Nouveau etc. It then becomes a mark of your skill level. Understanding the details and techniques of these art history periods is critical for the one, knowledge of the proper linen and puffiness of your sleeves is critical for the other. "except that what they are doing won't work with real wrought iron" Please be more specific here. I have not encountered this situation. I have never been warned by those who I've worked with or studied under that any details that were originally done in wrought can't be done in mild steel. your last paragraph is covered by what I've said above.. Again, our differences seem to focused around you defining "traditional" as a subset of historical reenactment and mine focuses around techniques and architectural details that are prevalent in differing art history periods. Both pathways exist. We chose the one/ones we follow. For me I am fascinated that we, as traditional smiths, actually have so few techniques, and by varying these, the infinite number of incredible details we can create..

It is done easily. However it's critical to have a constant light source. Those colors in that chart change depending on the light. Heat treating outside takes a lot of experience. It's best done inside.

Here's some thoughts. Thomas, I'd say that the standard for the last 100 years has been single man shops. I consider this the new norm for the traditional smiths of our time. We do evolve with time and are creating the "new norm" for just what is traditional. Refer to my personal definition from a ways back. Even "back in the day" when the norm was multi people in a shop, I sincerely believe that "just because you could, doesn't mean you should". Meaning ironing a hammer most likely was then, as it is now, a single man job. I can't see any reason to waste labor, no matter how inexpensive it may be a d I'm pretty sure they did the same. Our craft is, generally, made up of pretty frugal folks. Here's a suggestion for cutting rags on a flat piece like a hammer face. Use the step of your anvil to back up your blows. Meaning, place the steel on the face and have your hammer blows be directed into the step. No vice needed. There is a pretty important reason for attaching your steel with rags to the wrought body. Relative to each piece you have a huge body and a relatively small steel face. You have to be very careful not to overheat it. If they are attached, and are relatively cool, you must be very careful to get both pieces up to forg welding temp at the same time and not burn the steel, which causes cracks at the very least. The steel being where it is heats up far quicker than it takes to get the needed part of the hammer body up to and heated throughout. So, cut the rags hot, then bring the whole wrought hammer body up to a light forge welding heat, next set the relatively cold steel onto the very hot body. The rags grab and then it only takes a few seconds for the heat of the forge and the residual heat of the hammer to bring the steel up to a forge welding heat. This is quick, efficient, and minimizes any over heating of the steel. Not to cut Jen's thunder, because her vids are great, but I suggest watching Joey's vid of laying on a face to a hammer. He does use rags, and you can't lose by doubling your how to input. Also, when I talk of "men in a shop", I'm sorta old school and mean this in the generic sense.