yesteryearforge

Go to this site under tools then vises / there are a lot of examples of vise mounts

sometime you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you :?

This computer in general and this site in particular / plus having the whole world wide web at your fingertips makes the gathering of information and ideas so much easier and faster that you gain years of knowledge in milliseconds.

I use coal / Im not so sure that it takes any less time for nature to make oil or natural gas/propane than it does to make coal and Im pretty sure that my burning coal doesnt pollute the atsmophere any more than a lot of other things that I do / mainly garbage in the landfill / emissions from my vehicles / electricity / welding gasses etc.
Besides I really like everything about coal.
To me its like the smell of a campfire or a woodstove and its a comforting and familiar smell that instantly produces pleasant memorries. :)

Some of the real old silos have wrought iron support bands around them / most that I have seen are 3/4 or 1" round stock.

Tool are like life insurance / you can never have too much :lol:

Oh OK I must be dealing with imaginary heat

you can make your own pipe although I have not made any as small as 10 inches I have made pipe 16 inches.
used 16 gauge sheet metal / curl one end around and pop rivet then curl other end around and pop rivet then pop rivet along the seam
It is actually easier than it sounds but may help if you are bowlegged
best of all it requires no special tooling other than a hand pop rivet tool and you can get sheet metal up to 12 feet long fairly easy.
If this is a coal forge I doubt that the exaust stack would get hot enough to effect galvanized. Mine are painted steel and it doesnt get hot enogh to effect the paint but that is just my take on it / use your own judgement.

cotton clothing is great
I think you are a lot better off if you go ahead and sweat as wet cotton clothing will help keep you cool / a lot of people try everything that they can think of to keep from sweating when they would be cooler if they sweated untill they were soaking wet.
Loggers around here wear long sleeve denim shirts and when you see one they are wringing wet in temps like 97 degrees with 95 % humitity and dont seem to show any ill effects.
personally I drink a whole lot of water / it just happens to have caffein , cream and sugar in it. Since I was about 20 years old I have consumed approx 20 to 30 cups of coffee a day and very rarely drink anything cold.
I seem to take the heat better than most, whether this has anything to do with it I dont know.
I have box fans in my shop that are thermally protected at 110 degrees and some days they just cut off unless I have another fan to blow on them to keep them under 110.
I think Ill have a cup of coffee and think about this some more

Welcome Tinker
Sparky -- I like that
You probally just have a bad spot in the switch / It happens sometimes on welding machines on whatever you call the thing that sets the heat / maybe a reostat or something / I dont know the technical term as I am not a Sparky :lol:

I usually wear a welding glove on my tong hand / I generally use shorter length tongs or sometimes large vise grips and havent had a problem with slag or scale getting in the glove and they come off with a flick of the wrist when needed. But it all comes down to common sense , even my wife uses hot pads or oven mits when something is too hot to hold barehanded and I would hate to think she is smarter than me or at least I would never admit it to anybody but her :lol:

yes there are water hardening tool steels
they generaly start with a W as in W1 just as oil hardening start with an O as in O1 O2 etc.

if you would like I can send you drawings for some forges like I make
you can view them in the gallery section of this site.
there are only two potential concerns / the drawings will be in the form of a DXF file and you need a pressbrake to form the forge and firepot as they are made of 3/8 plate but I guess you could cut the pieces and weld them together as an alternative

my wife came up with the name yesteryear forge because of my desire to not do anything the more modern way. I own a manufacturing business with the latest machine tools and equipment and I will admit to using them to make anvil stands , forges, tooling and such but in my forge I try my best to be as traditional as I can.
A lot of smiths would like to have plasma cutters ,mig welders and such but I try to leave those at work and do things as they were done yesteryear as I truly believe that for me that is what attracts me to this addiction

not real sure of the weight but the size is 3 1/2 thick x 5 inches wide x 11 1/2 inches long

Rantalin
If you would like to send me your shipping address I will send you a piece of steel in the 80 to 100 lb range suitable for pounding on. It will be either 1018 crs or hot roll.

Im not so sure a coal fire in a forge can be refered to as an open fire.
Your town is an old one and there may be some houses or factorys that still use coal for heating or to fire boilers if so you have a legitimate argument .
The main complaint from town folk is the smell but lots of things stink, including their attitude towards coal smoke.

JPH
I actually do agree with a lot of what you say / by the way its refreshing to hear from someone that seems to know what they are talking about / I guess I should have been more clear but I was refering to using banding material , cable , chains etc where at best its a guess as to what the contents of the material really is.
modern saw blades are bimetal with hard teeth and soft backing but this is usually more for cost containment.
I agree that you would have to know what you are doing and take into consideration all of the constantly changing varibles / warm anvil,cold anvil,shop temperature ,heat of the fire to a closer control than most smiths today would admit to knowing exactly at any given time and all of this is before any given properties of the component materials are known / not assumed or guessed at / power hammer / hand hammer and the list of varibles could be almost endless.
I really expect to to get hammerd on this one but I really am curious as to how others do it

can anyone explain to me the advantage of a damascus or pattern welded blade other than appearance.
Im having a difficult time trying to understand how you can take several types and grades of steel and forge weld them in an uncontrolled enviroment and come up with something as strong or as good as a known type or grade of a good tool steel designed for a specific purpose.
putting aside all the folklore and magic I just have a hard time believing there is an advantage other than appearance

I use Lime / not the pellets but the powdered type, sometimes the piece will be to hot to hold the next day / It is a long slow cooldown that will anneal most anything and it is cheap and reusable over and over

when you are standing in the waiting area/ store of a cracker barrel resturant and you know what all those things hanging from the ceiling are and how they were used

My shop is realitively clean .Its not too much of an effort to keep it that way. If I dont let it get in to bad of shape.
I do paint everything before I put it into service . It doesnt make it perform any better but it sure improves the appearance of the overall shop.
I put a pick-up truck load of rock dust on the floor and it only cost 10 dollars for all you care to put on your truck, again its function is no better than the original dirt floor but it greatly improved the overall apperance.
You can see a few photos of my shop at the .net site under gallerys.
My color scheme is flat black and battleship grey.
Grey porch and floor paint in oil base enamel holds up very well and will take a surprising amount of heat.
I do have a junk pile that will rival most others , I just try to not let in find its way into the shop.
I think it is worth the effort as I allways get compliments on how good the shop looks and its just one small way to set yourself apart from the rest.
Another advantage to a clean organized shop is the saftey aspect for not only you but customers and other visitors as well.

well put Jr