Chinobi

put it towards the middle of your chest IMO, down at hip level puts it much closer to the path of flying scale. the utility of the pocket depends on what you tend to do, how you do it, and how frequently it is done, to be perfectly vague. its a handy place to keep a chunk of soapstone, a centerpunch, some kind of ruler, pencils/pens, or a little skewer to use as a substitute finger for pointing at hot metal :) if you find that you don't use any of those with any great frequency (or any other small items) then it might not be worth the effort. I think even if you don't have a use for it in mind right now, the presence of a pocket will lend itself to figuring something out eventually. also, just about everything mentioned in that list can either be retrofitted with or can be bought with some kind of clip so it can be clipped to a shirt/belt/whatever. edit: actually, if its cannibalized from a jacket does it even cover your up to your chest or is it just from the belt down? you could make a pouch that hangs off the side or back in that case, or just include a little flap to cover the opening and protect from debris finding its way inside.

happy to help :) I wanna see a picture of this though, 20 gallon copper pot filled with cooking apples has got to weight quite a bit!

I don't have it with me right now but Mark Aspery's third book has a procedure for making a cone frustrum (is that the right word?) for the ring project. basically making a truncated cone from a piece of flat bar with the ends cut at an angle, scarfed, and then forge welded together. seems like the same procedure as what you would require, just a different scale and application.

I email them to myself and save to my desktop, then upload as normal. If there's a direct way I'm all ears!! :) Preferably without needing an app, but I'll check out tapatalk as well

that's one of my favorite quotes :) and my notebooks are cluttered with considerations resulting from its application :P

Sounds like a new market sector for you Glenn ;) IFI branded shop notebooks! Hand em out like business cards when you run into members at events.

that treadle looks deceptively simple :ph34r: mustn't convince myself to want one!

make your upper die taller, or stick a block underneath the bottom die to shim it up from underneath (or both). that way you don't lose the functionality of having a really deep throat for oddball shapes, sizes, tooling, etc. big solid installation like that does seem to lend itself to a mechanical hammer too :) beautiful tool!

Oh yea, salt :) I usually have a bag of jerky in my back pocket and snack on that throughout the day because I tend to just drink plain water. I went through a quart of straight powerade(no, not all at once) before lunch on a hot day and that was one of the most uncomfortable feelings ever, dilute that stuff if you want to drink it all day(your body may vary).

at the forge school this summer (los angeles) they had just gotten in some brand new chili habaneros, and they had them set up on tables directly opposite each other. so working with them meant a brand new twin burner propane forge with the mouth facing directly at me on both sides. more than once I went and soaked my head in the sink! after they staggered them it became easier to dodge the dragon when I was working, and I make a conscious effort to step away between heats. if you swap your anvil and forge location that might allow the forge to vent more directly to atmosphere and keep you in the shade while allowing you to get at your anvil, PH and press with equal distance between them. having a big door doesn't guarantee good circulation either, if there is a window you can open on the other side that will allow air to actually flow through the shop from one side to the other.

its a neat effect, and it seems to at least marginally assist in keeping the rust at bay on some of my small items.

whoa, is it actually that purple, or is that just a trick of the light(and my monitor)? pretty slick work :)

Happy birthday Frosty! You are an inspiration :)

can anyone elaborate on adding baking soda to the vinegar to aid scale removal? that strikes me as counterproductive. vinegar alone works, I have a huge jug in my garage from Costco for just such purpose. baking soda alone is reported to work "when in a concentrated alkaline solution" (courtesy of wiki:baking soda). and baking soda is amphoteric, reacting to neutralize both acids and bases. this leaves you with sodium acetate, water, and CO2. sodium acetate doesn't seem to be particularly useful for anything in this context. This is the engine that drives the old 'volcano' science fair project, all that foaming you see is the acid and base reacting to eliminate each other. found a couple of other old threads that discuss neutralizing shop acids (muriatic, sulphuric, and vinegar etc) by [carefully!!!] mixing in baking soda '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> ptree, is that similar to the 'black phosphate' finish that you can find on some harbor freight hardware?

Id say the fastest and easiest to get written information (almost a book) is right here. and unlike the text books, this website covers pretty much EVERYTHING. if you have some inclination towards what part of blacksmithing you want to get into start in that subforum and prepare to lose the next several hours reading :) otherwise, just click on something that sounds interesting and start reading. if it bores you start again. no need to procure a book only to have to return it if you dislike it and spend all that time to get it. once you have found a subject or two that you find engaging THEN would be a good time to start your library of more specific literature. you might also read through the book reviews subforum, that will give you some opinions as to the quality of the texts as well, more than what you would get from the jacket or online purchase reviews. if you want a very basic general blacksmithing text I can recommend from my shelf: Mark Aspery's Mastering the Fundamentals series, The Backyard Blacksmith by Lorelei Sims, and The Complete Modern Blacksmith by Alexander Weygers (haven't finished reading this one yet) Good luck!

Museums with extensive arms and armor exhibits would be a fruitful place to look, bring a sketchbook if they don't allow photos. I have picked up a few 'weapon' encyclopedia type books from the cheap table in front of the book store, lot of photos and some descriptions, but no detailed spec's. Hit up the book reviews section here on IFI, and the knife and sword subforums as well, I'm sure there will be mentions that will help you. I think hirasoulas authored one that was geared towards swordsmithing, but that's just a WAG based on a memory =\

hard to recommend a precise fix without being able to see where it went wrong in person, but there are a few things you can do to mitigate the problem. These are just things that I learned from Mark, instructors at the school, and Mark's books (IIRC MTF Vol 3 has more and more detailed cross sections and information regarding the subject than vol 1, and I haven't had the time to get into vol 2 yet) when starting the slit give your chisel (or slot punch) a half blow at first and eyeball the placement, if you start off center it becomes that much more difficult to end in the center, realign your tool and give it another thump, rinse and repeat until you are satisfied. if your chisel bevel is not symmetric the tip will drift towards the short side as it penetrates, causing your hole to end up non perpendicular to the face you are slitting. counteract this by rotating your chisel 180 degrees every time you take it out to quench. it may feel like you are holding the tool vertically, this may or may not actually be true! a friend, mirror, or videocamera will all reveal this. your hammer strike might not be coming down totally vertically (especially if your working height is less than ideal for the thickness of stock and length of your chisel to the struck end) which can cause the force transmitted to be at an angle instead of vertical. mitigate this by making sure your tooling has a loosely crowned top so the impact occurs more towards the center of the tool rather than catching an edge first. mitigate also by rotating the piece you are slitting (if possible) 180 degrees periodically so if there is any drift you can oscillate it and end up roughly centered overall. last time I did a big slit/drift (hammer eye in 1 1/2" square) I had to realign my starting slit 3 times because I wasn't centered between the opposite faces and used a lopsided vice to 'correct' which made it worse, and I was frequently rotating everything. bang bang bang, quench chisel and turn it 180 deg, bang bang bang, quench chisel and rotate workpiece, bang bang bang, quench and turn chisel, bang bang bang, quench and rotate workpiece. etc etc that's about all I have hands on for, im not very good at straightening out crooked or asymmetric punching yet so you are on your own there :) you have demonstrated a level of skill far above and beyond anything I could hope to match so I hope this isn't too entry level to be of assistance! good luck :)

I was thinking that would still be a problem, the whole bar would act as if it was at forging temp, can't work with differential heat = Maybe instead of using a forge to heat the work zone use something else to chill the remainder of the bar :)

Just spitballing a thought here, could this conceivably be used as a way to practice forging technique with real metal (vs clay/plasticene) without lighting up the forge? Bang away on a piece to practice xyz skill until the stock is too small or mangled to be of any use, maybe take some pics to document progress, then bang it into a lump to fit into a pot, remelt and cast into an oversized bar ingot, forge down by a third to refine the grain (if thats the right ratio I'm recalling and that still works on pewter at room temp, it that needs to be done hot it could be saved up and done later) until you get to whatever parent stock you desire, rinse and repeat. Do the lead free pewter's behave the same way? Don't know very much about pewter so my apologies if that's all just stupid on the face of it =\

Quikwerk is an older vice manufacturer, and that stamp looks different than the one on my own, so that might be from a different era as well, or it could be a size difference. Mine is a 5" 65 lb'er, I asked pretty much the same questions and Frank Turley was kind enough to look up a few tidbits of information about the company for me. nice to see that the square nut is common to both, I was thinking that it was aftermarket on mine because my pivot bolt is so short that it doesn't clear the top of the nut as it appears that yours does. *shrug* still works! I paid 140 for mine, which was pretty fair for my region, cant help ya on the pricing relative to Alabama, but mine is about twice the size =/ get that beauty mounted up and into service regardless :)

no problem, hope they will at the very least provide some inspiration :) if you want to get really woodsy with it you could try to locate a long narrow river rock, maybe 5" long by 3/4 or 1" diameter and include that as part of the handle. forge the spine of the opener to sit flat on the underside of the stone, maybe wrap around it at the base with kind of a fishtail or some other detail if you want just iron and stone. you could also wire wrap it with the copper to secure it and give it a very tribal feel. rinse and repeat with driftwood or some other natural found object as well. just make sure that you don't use a very porous or otherwise weak object that might crumble or break when subjected to bending in use. I gotta add that to my own to do list :)

neat twisted handle there, kinda makes it look like a natural cord wrap. I have attempted a couple of times to inlay (hot and cold) copper and brass into iron with varying degrees of success and failure. you could carve, mill, file, or otherwise groove the handle and hammer the copper wire directly into the handle (cold) and then sand it all flush to add the pop of color without changing the surface texture. you can do the same by drilling shallow holes into the handle and basically riveting little chunks of copper wire into it to create a studded/speckled look depending if you file them flush or leave them standing proud. you could also punch clean through the handle and then rivet larger diameter copper into it to make a knobby type handle from two metals. this would be a very good project to apply out of the box thinking and attempt something unusual. while the concerns about copper handling are generally true, I don't think they will become an issue unless you are using that bottle opener for an extended period of time (at least that's how my hands would respond, YMMV) iv never had copper leave any marks on my hands while working with it (sanding/polishing operations excluded) except for the one copper ring I made and wore for about a day, that one left a green band on my finger. you may end up with some of that 'metallic' smell from use, but again if you are just using it to open one or two bottles and not working it for an extended period of time you shouldn't smell like you have been sorting change :) a wax finish should provide some protection from the contact, and a clearcoat finish will be a little better still.

possibly redundant, but there is a significant population of CBA members in and around the bay area, he would do very well to look into membership and trying to link up with any of them. per the website there is a tool making demo not 20 miles west of foster city happening a little west of pillar point harbor this weekend on the 18th. happy to hear that he has moved to CA, his previously posted work is really inspiring, hope to run into him at future events :)

ok, majorly disappointed in the scanner right now, but heres a couple of pages from mine. one is a pattern for some leaf hooks intended to be for scarves, belts and things of that nature for my mom's recently remodeled closet. the other is a sketch of what I want the hinges to look like on a cabinet/bar my fiancé and I built a few years ago and never installed the doors =/ all the rest of my drawings have so much illegible annotation all over them they are just not pleasant to look at, these ones are mostly pictorial :) sorry, scans are white on white and impossible to see pic 1 ==== ==== pic 2 ==== ====

Bout time somebody else from SB surfaced! :) welcome aboard! you shouldn't have too much difficulty getting stuff shipped in unless you are really shoestringged, at one time I priced out firebricks from home depot, lowes and amazon and if memory serves they were fairly close in total price but varied widely in actual cost versus shipping. Look up laguna clay out of los Angeles and high temp tools online. If you want to split an order of brick or a roll of kaowoolto take advantage of bulk rates feel free to PM me, might be the kick in the pants I need to commit to a design and get a fire lit at my place finally!