yesteryearforge

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