DSW

It might help to set yourself up either a spread sheet or use a program like Quickbooks to help with things like this. The idea is when you buy material, you note down how much and what you paid for it. Then it's a bit easier to track and account for what you use and it can give you a rough number to start from when thinking about estimates. I know it's a real pain to do this. I absolutely HATE office work, but I'm finding more and more I really NEED to track all the little sundry things so that I'm not the one paying for stuff like that. I will note one other thing. My small supplier keeps a notebook in the warehouse with the pricing per foot noted. The guys pretty much know me and I usually just say Hi and tell them I need to check some prices and they hand me the book. I'll often note down not only what I need now, but also take a few notes about materials I might need later on for reference. Last time I was there I remember noting that just about any mild steel round or square stock under 5/8" was $1/foot or less, and flat bar 1/4" thick or less under 1 1/4" wide was also $1 or less. That gives me a good rough number to work out an approximate material cost for steel on most small projects. Anything bigger I can get quoted when I need it.

I thought that was accomplished with pin striping! He just needs to add his own flames right? LOL

You probably won't be easily able to locate any of the other "types" of ASTM portland like Type III, Type IV or Type V as they are "specialty" portland's used primarily in the concrete industry. Type III IIRC is "high early" and develops strength faster than "standard" portlands do, often used for precast work. Type IV is slow hydrate and takes longer to reach full cure but is "cooler" and doesn't develop as high a temp while hydrating. Used for massive concrete pours like dams. Type V is for high alkali conditions if I remember my structures class. Adding an "a" to the type number indicates an air entraining mix for freeze thaw cycles. IE Type Ia, type IIa etc. What you might be thinking of is sometimes referred to as "masons mix" or "masonry cement". That's where they mix portland and lime together and bag it so the mason doesn't have to be bothered with both. I ave no idea if the added lime will mess with the mix or not, but I'd just avoid it and use the plain portland myself. I'm curious what "recipe" you are going to use. I've seen a bunch of different mixes and suggestions and an always on the look for others to file away for later reference and use.

Best examples are usually attached to the end of your arm... LOL One thing I had trouble with in my drawing class was hands. A key bit of information my instructor gave me was to look at the proportions of the parts of the hand. Looking at your palm, the fingers look to be equal to that of the palm itself roughly. However note that that is only really the case if the hand is wide open. If you have your hand partially closed, the "fingers" actually extend back roughly 1/4 of the way across the palm. That's because the knuckle on the back of your hand falls in that location, and that's where there is a "crease" in the palm corresponding to those knuckles. It shows up better on the back of your hand because of the knuckles. Same goes with the thumb. The "thumb" doesn't stop at the palm like many draw it. It goes all the way to the wrist. I kept drawing this "plate" with "stick" fingers attached. That's fine for very rough drawing, but if you don't have the fingers extend back into the "plate" and get the proportions right, it looks all wonky. Once I started really looking at the hand, my drawings improved, but they still need a lot of work.

Sounds like a drug dealer selling crack..... :D

Tagged for reference. Nice job. Eventually I'd like to do a natural gas forge in the garage since my gas line is right on the other side of the wall for the kitchen, and if I enlarge the garage like I want, the house connection would be right next to the new back wall. I never thought much about what to do if the blower died. A remote gas cut off will definitely be in the game plan so I can shut the gas off inside the garage, but away from the forge location, and I'll have to study your pitot tube design in greater detail when we get to that point.

I'd suggest starting by adding your location so we know where you are located. Many local blacksmithing groups have open sessions where you can go and watch and learn as well as get your hands dirty and try it yourself. PABA ( Pennsylvania Artist Blacksmith Assn) usually has at least one forge set up when they have a meet that is dedicated to letting people try blacksmithing as well as allowing members to do quick demos to help others learn. . You might also find one of the guys here who would be willing to help you along, assuming we know where you live roughly.

My 1st suggestion would be a masonry supply house for fire clay. You want a real supply house, one that caters to the industry usually vs home owners. Almost all the ones in my are carry fire clay. Also well drillers use bentonite clay often to seal around well casings. I've seen that listed in a couple recipes IIRC.

Here's a link I have that can help with setting up your torch. Heating tips ( rosebuds) are listed near the bottom. Also listed are the SCFM's for acetylene so you can get a quick idea if your tip will exceed the 1/7th rule for the size cylinder you have. http://dennisalbert.com/Welding/WeldingTipGuide.htm

Good to have you with us. Nice little engine you made there. You'll be building your own power hammer in no time! :lol: The stuff is out there. You just have to look harder some times than you do others. Best bet is to get yourself involved with a local group. Often guys will locate items like forges and anvils and hold them until they find someone looking to pick one up to start. That or they've upgraded and don't use their original one anymore.

Nice. I'll have to put one on my "to do" list when I have a chance.

Grumpy you might find some useful ideas in this thread where I swiped the picts from. The OP is a welding instructor and often has quite a few great ideas and tricks up his sleeve. http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?87051-Do-you-have-your-part-correctly-clamped-before-sawing-it

I have a chunk of angle that I welded a pad on to that I use when clamping round stock in the saw. My regular computer is down so I swiped a similar pict off the web that shows what I did. The angle allows you to get a bit more "grip" than just the flat jaws would alone, but I will often still back down the down/feed pressure as well.

You might take a look at Jack Olsen's benches that were featured in a past issue of Popular Mechanics and Car craft. He uses the same folding bench idea. http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?40704-Looking-to-build-a-Foldable-Welding-Table-Any-ideas&highlight=folding+bench http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?58471-Congrats-Jack-Olsen-Popular-Mechanics-Feature&highlight=folding+bench

I don't know looks pretty good to me. Now some of the stuff I made when I started out was pretty scary... In fact much of it still is! :lol:

As far as shipping overseas, speed costs generally. It's much cheaper to ship on a slow boat vs fast transport. You'd have to start contacting shipping companies about container rates. I had to do all the leg work on something like this years ago when I was in Scouts for a merit badge. It wasn't all that hard to get the info and that was long before the internet. If you can find a small ship with extra room going over, sometimes you can get really decent rates since they are hauling empty space anyways if your load isn't huge. A 20' shipping container full of anvils sounds like a huge amount. a pallet full might be a better quantity. I've seen how many ASO can get loaded on a pallet if stacked well at one of my industrial suppliers and I can't see you selling 40 or 50 that might fit on a pallet right away. Even a small container would hold several thousand anvils.

Tractor Supply had some issues in the past about taking cylinders from other companies in trade when they shouldn't have. The ones near me won't take anything but their own stuff in exchange any more even if you can prove ownership. I think it had something to do with the settlement of the lawsuit brought against them. You'd have to check with them. I'm also not sure how well received the Thoroughbred cylinders are at most local welding suppliers after that. I'd check with the LWS to see what their policy is 1st. TSC is quite a haul for me, so I really don't bother with them for gas. My LWS is only a few miles down the road and I've got 2 other places within a few miles that I could go to ( Airgas and one independent) if I really needed to. I would recommend shopping around for gas prices as prices can vary widely, even from the same supplier. I was lucky that when I set up my account, the counter guy was really cool and set me up with the same commercial prices the shop I was working at was getting. I know some guys who use other locations often get banged for more money on fills than I do even for the same size cylinder. Some times it can pay to open an account as they often will give account holders a better "deal" on gas prices. ( I know I get an extra 5% off on paint with my supplier because I have a "commercial" account. All that usually means is they ran your credit and put you in the system. I haven't ever even bothered to change my account to my business name. One note on gas prices. It's almost always cheaper to buy in "bulk". I can get my 282cf O2 cylinder filled for about $5 more than it costs me to get my little 100 cf cylinder filled. A big portion of the price is tied up in transport charges, hazmat fees, testing and so on. Those "fees" don't usually change whether it's a tiny 20 cf cylinder or a 330 cf one. They don't break down the costs that way on the invoice, but that's often why more gas isn't all that much more money. One other nice thing about having an account. Should you find yourself with a rental or leased cylinder for some reason... Most places won't bat an eye at exchanging it for a similar gas IF you have an account, even if you don't have that cylinder listed as being rented. I used to get hassled when I'd borrow a large cylinder from a buddy of mine for bigger jobs. I'd want to take it back full since he was nice enough to let me borrow it. It was a real pain to get the counter guy to do an exchange on occasion, but ever sine I got my account with the same company, they don't ever ask any questions. As long as I have an account with them and a cylinder with their tag, they exchange it no questions asked.

Nice job. One thing you may already know is those ceramic range tops don't heat pans well that are not fairly flat and make contact with the surface. Thus the flatter you get the bottom for more contact, the better. I wonder if going at the bottom with a flatter wouldn't help take out some more of the hammer marks. Usually with food service items, the smoother the better so they don't have nooks and crannies to collect crud and bacteria. Probably not a huge issue with a fry pan though at the heat it usually gets used at. I might be tempted to make a round faced flatter if I was doing a bunch of these. That or just weld a 1/2" thick 3-4" dia slug to an old "hammer" and radius the edges a bit. The smaller size would transfer more power to the bottom to help clean up the marks better than that big one you used. The only other side note is that 1/16" is typically closer to 16 ga than 14 ga. That makes it easy to remember. 14 ga would come out closer to 3/32" on most of my gauge charts. Gauge thicknesses do change with material, so 14 ga alum isn't the same thickness as 14 ga steel or brass.

Size wise they look like what are typically considered "owner" cylinders, so they should be exchangeable with no issues. Acet was tested in 03, the O2 cylinder was tested in October of 01 and had a 10 year test. The acetylene looks to be roughly what my 75 cf one is, and I'd guess the O2 is around the 100 cf size. MGI around here is Messer Gas Industries. "Small" cylinders like these sometimes have blank neck rings, some times are marked "Owner" and some times have the gas company name on them. Typically when they hydro the cylinders a gas company often recollars any ones they have that might have another companies name on them. It's more advertizing than anything else as almost all companies sell rather than rent small cylinders. If in doubt, one option is to agree to meet the seller at a chosen supplier. The deal is if they will swap them for full ones no problem, you will pay for the fills and buy the cylinders. That tells you that you can at least get them exchanged at that supplier if nothing else and you start off with good cylinders full of gas. Some guys are willing to just look at the cylinders and will be up front about if they will exchange them without actually doing the exchange. However I've run into any number of counter guys who are jerks to put it politely and won't give you the time of day, or who try to tell you you need to pay for stuff you really don't need to if they think they can snow you and put some cash in their pocket I'm sad to say. I know my guy would take them and exchange them no problem. Chances are he wouldn't even bother to look at the hydro dates and wouldn't charge me the $15-20 hydro charge. That said, I make a point of being on a 1st name basis with him even if I don't do a ton of business with them. I also have an account ( ever though it's a cash account) and I take him a card at Christmas with a $20 bill in there and tell him to pick up lunch on me. Little things like that go a long ways when I need small things taken care of.

I like the new front design, but I think you'll rip your hair out with the cedar shakes, trying to fit them in between the timbers. I'm not quite sure how you plan to build that front wall. 2x6 might not be the way to go on the end walls. Without really thinking on it much, my 1st thought would be that thicker members might have been a better choice. That way the beams take up the entire wall thickness plus still extend on the front. The way it's drawn, I see the truss sort of stuck on the outside with a frame wall behind it to hold the shingles. Certainly serviceable, but you sort of loose the charm of a timber building with a "cheat" like that. I'm reading that front view as the front wall itself. If the truss is forward of the front wall and there is no truss showing, that's a bit different, and it would radically change the look I'm seeing. I'm also guessing the iron work shown is simplified for the drawing. I'd be doing a nice branch type forged plate for each connection to again display your skill.

I love how the design "flows" out of the handle and "dissipates" like smoke. I find that really attractive. Great job.

You used to be able to download Autocad for free as a student or trial version. My helper told me he could access all the functions, but if he went to print, the free version had a water mark that covered the drawings. He did most of his work on the newer version, then saved it as an older format my version would accept and we printed from my computer with no issues. Never tried to use them as a DXF file. I learned Autocad eons ago in school. My "current" full edition is something like Autocad 2000. The newer ones are somewhat easier to use with the pull downs, but I still use most of the text commands I learned originally since I can't always find the pull downs I want. If you are looking to do cut programs for CNC plasma, Plasmacam is supposed to have a fairly simple program that lets you quickly draw up cut files and so on with out a ton of the engineering stuff other cad type programs have. It's not cheap however ( don't know if they have a trial version or not). You might be able to locate someone with the program to see if it's worth the investment for what you want to do. I played with it a tiny bit quite a few years ago when a friend bought his PlasmaCAM, but I haven't touched it in probably 10 years or more.

One of the biggest keys to things like this is a good fit. Masks like this are NOT a one size fit's all sort of thing. They come in Small, Medium and Large for a reason. If they don't seal, they won't protect you. Also guys with facial hair will need to possibly shave to get a good seal. I worked one job where we had to go do service work at a chemical plant. 1st thing we had to do when we walked thru the door was get fitted for a respirator. They handed those of us with a beard a disposable razor and a can of saving cream and pointed up towards the wash sink to shave. No clean shaved face, no entry. With the newer laws regarding lead paint removal, masks like this are becoming more common. My paint store has a better selection of 1/2 masks than my welding supplier does. Also more places are training their staff on what it takes to help fit customers with these. The quantity of forced air supplied welding hoods has also grown over the last few years. More and more companies are offering them now.

You might take a minute and add yourt location so we know where you are at roughly. Location can often also play a part in whether an anvil is "good" or not. In some areas anvils are hard to locate, and what might be marginal in other areas may not be such a bad deal. I often suggest guys think about the future as well. If you are in an area where anvils aren't super common, it might pay to grab something semi-decent so you have something to work on if the price is right. Later if you find a nicer one, you can always sell the original to someone else who's just starting out and recoup a decent portion of your original expenditure as long as you didn't pay stupid money for it. I'm constantly upgrading my tools as I locate better ones, either selling off or trading the older ones I don't have a need for any more.

I picked up fire clay from my local masonry supply house.