thingmaker3

"Art is what you can get away with" and I'm beaver, not beehive. B)

Perhaps it would help if I spat some chaw on the floor first & stuck my thumbs in my overall straps. Carbon gozinta or comzouta steel twice a much iffin you keep it at temp twice a long, an' trey a much iffin you keep it at temp trey a long - all else what bein' a same. Carbon gozinta or comzouta steel four times a fast when you gotsit twice a hot, & nine times a fast when you gotsit trey a hot. (Gotsta convert to that there Kelvin scale.) Agin all else what bein' a same. Iffin ye got twice a difference atween what's in and what's out, it move twice a fast. Iffin ye got trey a difference atween what's in and what's out, it move trey a fast. Iffin what else are a same fer both, y'know. Now deep inside (an deep fer a whale is more 'n deep for a briar-bush thorn where the sun don't shine) the carbon move slower than at the outside. Twice a fur in mean four times a slow, and trey afar in mean nine time a slow. All else bein held all steady & what not, as per usual. So, yeah, thin stuff'l gid'yup a right finer 'n a big 'ol honk. Any questions?

I've recently subscribed to Marshall McLuhan's definition of art.

Clay, including fireclay, is best used as a binder rather than a structure. Clay is used to hold the structure together. Use only enough clay to get the structure to hold together. Use as little water as possible as both shrinking & cracking are caused by size change during drying.

Those specific anvils had never been in a fire, had they?

Most people define "forging" as "faking a signature on someone elses check." It is only we obscure minority who use the word in it's technical sense. This is why technical dictionaries exist separately from general dictionaries. But, yeah, faking someone else's signature would NOT be the same as using a heat-lamp on sore muscles B)

I would do the same as Teeny. 2" Parent stock would need 4" to make a 12" round taper from round stock, or 3" to make a 12" round taper from square stock. (Most of the numbers a blacksmith needs to know are "3" and "4" or their reciprocals.) Then neck down for the bend. Then butcher the tennon for the hardie hole. Then bend. I'd use 4140 or 4340 if I could get some cheap. And I'd put Padawan to work as a striker - most 2" bars are bigger than I am. Filing something from "roughly round" to "very round" is a lot easier than most folk think. Just roll the file backwards while pushing it forwards. (Tip of file goes away while rocking up, handle goes toward work while rocking down.)

I just wasted five minutes trying to find out what kind of metal it was. Then I got the joke. Feeling stupid now.

You quench only the edge and leave the spine to air cool?

I only play at metallurgy, but here's a bit from George Krauss published in 1980: "The desired results are accomplished by heating in temperature ranges where a phase or combination of phases is stable (thus producing changes in the microstructure or distribution of phases), and/or heating or cooling between temperature ranges in which different phases are stable (thus producing benificial phase transformations)." George Dieter wrote a whole book about what happens inside metal in response to external forces. (Things like crystal deformation, slip, grain boundry strengthening, strain aging, and fun stuff like that.) No heat involved. The ASM books give definitions of specific heat treating operations (annealing, tempering, etc.) but a half-hours worth of searching through the ones I have did not turn up a definition for "heat treating" itself. They all seem to assume the reader knows what it is.

One can indeed change the shape of a piece of steel with heat alone. Anyone who has run a welder knows this. Some weldors can intentionally correct a shape with heat alone. Does that count as forging or as heat treating? Or niether?

Inconel is hot-hard, like stainless. D-2 has a very narrow forging range - hot-hard below said range and brittle & crumbly above said range. Wootz must be forged carefully if one is to get the best visual patterns from it. The inital cake must be decarburized prior to working or it will crumble. The kris knife has some extra steps in forging which are not needed for a straight dagger. Leaf blades are also a little more challenging than straight blades.

State Farm also has a bad record of low payouts for claims.

Heat treatment is the intentional change in temperature to bring about an intentional change in microstructure. Forging is an intentional change of shape performed at an unspecified temperature. Forging of steel can be done at room temperature with enough force. "Hot forming" is forging above a critical temp for the metal - ie forging lead at room temperature. Microstructural changes accompanying forging are seldom the primary intent of forging. See also: ausforming. So my answer is a firm and unshakable "maybe."

The problem here is the qualifier "generally believed." Ask ten blacksmiths the same question and you'll get at least eleven different answers! Lets' try a literary tack instead. What is it you want your characters to do or be? You want "a smith so good he can X?" You want "a weapon so rare that Y?" Something else?

Gonna try to mangle me up some o them Italian style acanthus scrolls.

The horn of the blown anvil points opposite to the horn of the base anvil. http://www.anvilfire.com/news1/index12.htm or http://www.flickr.com/photos/91663677@N00/page23/ But are those particular anvil-blowers right handed or left handed?

http://www.bamsite.org/

They'll cut dovetails, tee-slots, convex curves, concave curves, ridges, profiles, gears, sprockets, keyways and more. They'll do most of what a milling machine will do and some of what a lathe will do.

Check with your LOCAL friendly informative fire marshall. They tend to be great people.

Similar to what exactly? Are you a huge fab shop? An individual artist? A farrier with a van? Big architectural stuff? Ren faires & craft shows? A school? A retired accountant purpously running in the red for tax purposes?

I dug a little... MSDS for ths stuff shows "hazardous" ingredients including potasium salt and chromium oxide. I also found this: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4007302.html Titanium would not have to be listed in the MSDS as it is not hazardous. Larry, can you put some of what you treated under the microscope & see if it has titanium carbides? :P

Diffusion rate of carbon in steel is directly proportional to time, exponentially proportional to temperature, directly proportional to the difference in carbon content at the boundry, and inveseley exponentially proportional to the distance from the boundry. So, yeah, thin steel gets better result.

I've only made one, and it was not "traditional." (It was for branding the registry number of a local beekeeper onto his hives.) Getting the letter and numbers right took me all afternoon. Each little adjustment to one bit knocked everything else out of place. I wound up using two pair of pliers (scrolling tongs would have been better) & a fine tip torch. My hat is definatley off to the folk who made/make these the old-fashioned way!

You can hang around my shop anytime, Eric. Flux or no.