Chinobi

I don't think I grabbed a cutsheet for the sticky Tommy from the CBA conference but you might be able to get a copy from them.

Thanks for the extra material as well!

Johnsons paste wax works well also, i buy it at hardware stores and use it without any mixing, warm the piece but not too hot or it will darken like you wish to avoid

The conference was a lot of fun and very educational :) good times hanging out with old friends and making new ones!

Mad Max would be proud James! Epic work as always :) that would indeed make for a tremendous T-shirt, but also as a patch! (you can send some to me to model for you) :-D

Position your anvil and tools in such a way that allows you to pull items out and get to work on them without keeping your body too close to the dragons breath, you don't want to be in close quarters with it, especially if you have to bend over to grab a dropped tool or a hammer stashed on the floor. Makes it a lot more pleasant to work when you don't have a huge fireball right next to you while you are already hot and hammering!

Simple trick to keep long rods cool enough to handle is to put them in the forge at as much of an angle as possible (while still heating where you need it heated). This keeps more of the rod out of the direct path of the dragon and out of the 'line of sight' of reflected IR radiation from the interior. You can also look up 'air curtains' or use a wet rag and a dipper to keep it in check. Of course if your forge doesn't throw much of a dragon then you don't need to bother :)

Benz-o-matic propane torch to light my gas forge.

This. Those long stem lighters are awful!

More oriented towards a classroom setting, but drawing inspiration from one of my instructors, I forged myself a little 'hot item pointer' so I can point to exact locations on hot work without needing to risk fingertips :) made it with a little flattened clip at the end so I can hook it to one of the D rings on my apron.

i dunno what the traditional solution would be, but you could install a blind pin somewhere in the system, probably drilled partially into the front of the middle vertical bar and countersunk into the inside of the collar to make it invisible. basically a shear pin to prevent it from slipping down if it does indeed expand too much when heated, much the same way a coat hook with a single screw would be fitted with a pin or spike on the back to prevent it from rotating around the screw.

Edit: or, nix the drill entirely and champher the outer 4 corners of the triple bar bundle for the same width as the collar material to create a recess in the edges. Install your collar into that recess so they will key into each other and lock together that way.

If it's anything like the one we brought to a demo(mercifully didn't need to use it) last year it's actually hollow!

Weird, no, not for that reason anyway ;) just makes you a good learner :)

Speaking of which, thank you for the schooling!

That's the intuitive reasoning but it's actually reversed. A blower moves air, restricting either the intake or outlet reduces the air being moved so the motor is doing proportionally less work. The louder whine you hear is the blower spinning faster, not the motor working harder.

 

Hair drier motors rely on the blower moved air for cooling but if we're restricting all the air we turn them off instead so that's not a big thing.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Ah, thanks Frosty, I was thinking primarily in terms of operating with the intake partially covered to choke the blast and the subsequent reduced volume of air available to cool the motor, not using the cover to fully choke (turn off) the system.

caveat: if you restrict the intake on something like a hair dryer(I wont pretend to know anything about a proper forge blower) the motor can potentially overheat as it will experience resistance it was not designed for in that condition, much better to divert a portion of the blast AFTER the blower than to restrict the intake.

It's possible the raised design was pierced from a thinner sheet and soldered/brazed onto the backing. The design on the hinge looks like it would be very difficult to chase, so it would seem to be engraved or soldered.

looks like you guys had a lot of fun!  i really enjoy getting to forge with a friend working on the next anvil over, makes it that much more pleasant, and an extra set of eyes and judgement come in handy more often than you would think, as well as the benefit of extra hands or a striker!

roughly 25 miles to get to the steam and gas museum(home of the blacksmithing school), id jump on that in a heartbeat!  I believe they run exclusively coal forges, which is quite the experience :) their staff are friendly and knowledgeable as well.

 

welcome aboard!  hope to run into you some time in the future :)

Look up the North West Blacksmith Association (NWBA) and see if there is anyone within range that you can link up with, im certain you can find someone who will welcome you into their shop to experience the process with the right tools in a safe environment.  I think you will find that experience infinitely more enjoyable than what you have described so far.

 

if you want to play around with cold forging you could go for copper (though i cant think of anything offhand that would be somewhat off the shelf and contain a good sized piece that can be salvaged).  copper can be annealed on the kitchen stove and then worked entirely cold until it work hardens, then anneal again/rinse/repeat.  

 

check out this thread as well where we were exploring the possibility of forging tin/pewter cold and the recycle-ability potential of it, never came to a conclusion though =/

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also, if you are intent on continuing to work using your gas range as a heat source i wouldnt even bother picking up tool steel, i dont think you will be able to get it up to the correct working temperature, and if you could you would need to set your anvil(or anvil substitute) up in the middle of the kitchen and actually hammer it right there, which unless you live alone, is not going to go over well with the other people in the house! (not to mention is hugely dangerous)  Tool steel is harder to forge than mild steel even at the correct forging temperature, working it too cold would be quite a chore especially with a light hammer, plus working tool steel too cold puts a lot of stress into the metal, so it will be highly likely to crack and break, which is really depressing when it happens a few hours into the project!

 

long post short: find someone with a proper shop and ask to spend an afternoon under their guidance, or find a class at a shop or school affiliated with NWBA and get your feet properly wet :)

 

Good luck!

ah nuts, I neglected to check if you were going to make it to Vista Andrew, I would have looked for you!  Did you end up going after all?

 

Drake, welcome aboard!  Take your time pulling equipment together, if it doesn't feel right or seems too pricey don't be afraid to walk away.  there will always (most of the time ;) ) be another one somewhere else, and failing that there are plenty of annual and semi-annual conferences with tailgating sections :)  pull up a chair, snack and beverage, pick a section and start learning!

My bad, just checked the ones I have, they are 16oz

Look up 'spark testing' as a general guide to composition, it's not conclusive but it's a start. You can also test harden and break one and check the results. What exactly is your project? Plentiful cheap rivet stock, or large quantities of really tiny knives...? Many members here have produced very fine blades from old files, which are typically high carbon and can often be found on the cheap at garage sales and swap meets etc.

You can also call the manufacturer and ask them what the composition is, they may not divulge, but you have nothing to lose by asking.

Presuming you are in the US (phone doesn't show profile loc so sorry if you already updated that) you can get a 12 oz ball pein from harbor freight for 3$. Is it 'great', far from it, will it get the job done, definitely.

Heh, I only really learned what they were watching James Austin demonstrate forging a Viking style axe last weekend. It was a really interesting and extremely well thought out and methodical process! I'll probably pick up a copy of the DVD when it eventually is finished. Maybe by that time I'll have the chops to warrant attempting it :p

I had the image that Calala posted in this thread

 

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stuck in my head, search the site for 'hardy(or ie) hole vise(or vice)', all are 4 or more characters so it shouldnt complain, directed google led me to that one.

It's going to look pretty strange but so long as you don't have a lot of slop in the shank it should be effective. Might include some overhangs on either side of the mounting plate that are snug to the sides of the anvil to keep the shear force felt by the shank in check if you do any significant bending or twisting

 

edit: link ate the rest of the text, had to clean it up. (twice...)

strangely motivating :) looks good, I like that its super compact too.  you might be able to gain some more mass without upping the total size by starting with more material around the eye and forging in some langets or big cheeks like a brazeal style rounding hammer.

start with the topic 13 threads below this one in the same subforum titled 'food grade copper and solder', then move on to the ones involving tinning, then just switch to silver entirely :)

 

 

Ignore the "13 threads down comment", threads are not static and order will change based on what else gets posted, normally the new posts are at the top, but that can be reset by users personal preferences. . the thread is here '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

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post number 10, brian answers the same question regarding fullering on the type of tapered shank curved blade cut off hardies he demonstrates and cites applying the same principle to hammerheads as well.

 

i dont know for how long but last i saw Brian was on a demo circuit through california, so i suspect he is still on the road.

you might also find this post useful, check out the 'rustic blue copper', i think its the same process frosty has in mind (not the raku one, there was another discussion of that process that came up as a sidebar in this thread '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>), and its definitely one of the safer recipes compared to the others!

 

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as is customary, the price for information here is photos :) hope it turns out well! (and safely if she goes with some of the other chemical cocktails)

look up the sculpt-nouveau products, I had the opportunity to talk to a few guys who use their patinas over the weekend and they had nothing but good things to say about them.

 

are there specific colors or patterns that she is trying to achieve?  heat patinas on copper can be quite striking but do require some experimentation to control.  I think it was a member here who suggested preheating the piece in the oven to bring the whole thing up in temp but not to the point that it starts to oxidize on its own, then your torch will only need to bring it up a little farther to start seeing colors, rather than needing to wait a long time and then overheat one area and have the color run too far.

 

flip through the copper section, non-ferrous heat treating ('?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>), and I think the chemical versions have been discussed pretty well in alchemy too.