HWooldridge

Coal is about as variable as wood so it's hard to comment even on a single seam as it may vary within itself. If you find something you like and it's available economically, I always recommend buying as much as possible to prevent having to chase it later. The Cumberland Elkhorn stuff I have seen from Ky is pretty good but have also seen very high quality from Illinois, Alabama and Georgia. I think it just depends on finding a good quality smithing coal with the right specifications that's affordable.

I tried some honey mead but it just wasn't quite right on my taste buds. Much prefer dark bock beer for social occasions and Bushmills Irish Whiskey for serious work.

No problem anywhere I have been. The storms raised some shortages near the coast but you should have no trouble going thru the northern regions. However, be prepared for $3 a gallon so work your cost estimates accordingly.

OK - since nobody else "volunteered", I'll prepare a demo on this (me and my big mouth... ). Gimme a day or two - I took a second job to make ends meet so I don't have quite as much time in the shop but I'll get 'er dun...

...semblance of a living instead of wasting our time on things that don't put food on the table. Anyway, as I was saying, I had decided to build a fire when...

Here's my way: Take a piece of 1/2" square. Chisel down the middle of all four sides. Make sure the cuts are centered and run for the same distance - I use center punch marks on each side to help while it's hot. Not much depth is needed, just a clean straight groove. Heat and hammer back to square because it will have deformed. Now, you will have a piece of fairly square material with a small thin slit on each side. Heat and twist 1 time for every inch of slit area - in other words, a 4 inch slit area gets twisted 4 times. Hammer the twisted area flat so the piece is square again, then reheat and twist in the reverse direction half of whatever you did the first time - the 4 inch example would be reversed 2 times. You will now see the pineapple effect. You can twist tighter or looser on either first or second pass but take note of the process so you can repeat it. I use the 2:1 ratio because it's easy to remember while I am demonstrating.

I went the low price, craft show route because I have a production background and can really crank out product when I want to. Not bragging but I can outproduce about 95% of the other guys on "apples to apples" because I build jigs and fixtures to help get it finished quickly. I price stuff at $100 an hour but some of my items wind up at $7 each because they are so quick to do. Almost everything I make is less than $50 each. HOWEVER, you have to sell a lot of stuff to make any money. It's great to make a high hourly wage with very little overhead but selling a few hours per week does not make a living. I could not make it work and took a day job to supplement my blacksmithing. I know two other accomplished smiths who went the other way. They are very high priced and do outstanding work but do not care if they get much traffic because they only have to sell one or two pieces to have a good month. In hindsight, I like this way better and may pursue that business model at some point in the future. Think about what you want to be before taking the plunge.

A large anvil does not make a better smith - remember that Francis Whitaker's weighed 150 lbs. In fact, they are sometimes a hindrance so don't waste your money there and too many tools do not make a good smith either. You are very well set up for a fledgling smith - the only thing I would add is a treadle hammer but that can come later. In the meantime, be a sponge and soak up info - and make sure you go to college to get a degree. Anything is better than nothing but a BA in fine arts would be a good start if you want to continue in this line of work.

12K BTU is on the low side but might be perfectly fine if the other parts of the spec are favorable - i.e., moisture, ash, sulfur, coking ability, etc.

I normally use a total of 4 tools. One is a shovel, one a very small (1/4" stock) poker with hooked end (like your straight poker but a bend at the end), one is a rake with a pointed nose that does double duty and the last is a pair of long nosed pickup tongs (which I use like your clinker tongs). I can get by without the shovel but use the rake constantly so that is the one tool I can't live without.

I built a single speed, 2x72, junkyard belt grinder and now can't live without it so I'm sure you'll get addicted to the Grizzly pretty quickly. It's not a Bader but it's also not as expensive.

You are getting carbon precipitation which leads to embrittlement. D2 is a fairly high carbon tool steel and the chilled area around the weld is getting so brittle that the stress causes the weld to break. Like JR said, 10018 would be better but the best thing would be to TIG it with a D2 filler rod. The Carpenter and Crucible tool steel websites used to have some good info on welding - as did Uddeholm. I have not looked for it lately but you might try a google search and then do a little reading.

...get the axle fixed. I have a sinking feeling that the toolbox was "borrowed" just like the rest of my stuff. You know how kids are - "...my stuff belongs to me and so does yours". At any rate, I also need to get into the shop and get a fire going, but there is always more work than I can do in a day. Oh well, like the old saying goes - it keeps me out of the bars and off the streets so I'm off to fix Smith's problem first, but then I'll have to decide whether to...

...that a huge oak limb had fallen in the night. It glanced off the chimney and punched a hole in the roof so we had some extra work that day. Fortunately, the roof wasn't in great shape to start, so a few shingles would do the job nicely. Old Man Schumann was due in at 9:00 for repair to his...

Glenn. This storm is now going way east of me but members of HABA (Houston Area Blacksmiths Assoc) will be affected. Anyone near Port Arthur, Beaumont or on the border with Louisiana will probably have some trouble. This will be as bad as Katrina - just in a different place.

A variation of hammer-and-bucket: Get a 4-6 inch diameter piece of pipe about 2 feet long and the next smaller diameter that will easily fit but make that one about 4 feet long. Weld a plate on each piece so one end is closed. Put the coke in the big pipe and smash it with the smaller one then dump out the pieces.

We are two hours inland from Corpus Christi. Depending on where it hits, we may get 100+ mph wind and 10-12 inches of rain or we may get almost nothing. Tornadoes are a bigger concern than the hurricane. Generator and chain saws are gassed up - we plan to ride it out.

Coke should have some amount of constant blast because there are no volatiles present to keep it burning between heats - so you may have to go to an electric blower or mix in some coal so the stuff will continue to cook when you stop cranking. I don't know what to tell you about the size - if this is a steady supply, maybe you can make a crushing jig and a pan to catch the small pieces when you break it up. Does a vise smash it better than a hammer?

Glenn, I have several stories about pinch points and finger grabbers. We had one job that required the operator to mill a short sprue on a part. There were signs posted all over the place stating NOT TO WEAR GLOVES when operating this machine. Of course, we had an operator go to the machine and start working without gloves, then an hour into the shift, he decided to put them on - although he never could explain why later. In less than ten parts, he caught the tip of a glove in the revolving mill cutter and removed the first digit of his right middle finger when that old Bridgeport just chewed it right off. I did not work at this company but a local firm had a fatality in a pinch accident a few years ago. They were in the die-casting business and over time, the maintenance crew disabled most of the safety interlocks on machines (with encouragement from management). One night on second shift, an experienced operator was trying to pull a part while the press cycled. He was too slow and with no interlocks, the platens closed on his head and shoulders with 300 tons of clamp force. The worse part was that no one found him for about 20 minutes so his corpse was cooked onto and riding the moving platen, with the machine continuing to shoot metal into the mold. A bad scene all the way around... We all need to stay safe and pinch points are a real hazard in a lot of circumstances, including the blacksmith shop. For example, the space between dies on a power hammer is an obvious pinch point but some folks still insist wiping the dies by hand when the machine is running. I think this is unsafe practice and won't allow it in my shop but I still see it in other places. I could go on but I'll let someone else talk... :lol:

Here is a "war story" that I saw first hand. We had a fellow in the machine shop who was nearing retirement with his eyesight starting to fail from cataracts. The supervisor felt sorry for him and let him keep working. His first bad injury was trying to manhandle a steel plate that was too big for one man - even a young strong one - so it fell and mashed a finger, which left him off work for a couple of weeks. Very shortly thereafter, he was draw filing in a lathe and got severely injured when the file caught in the chuck and flipped. Even though he had a handle on the file, the tip came around and layed his arm open like a filet knife. This was a two month recuperation and resulted in partial loss of hand movement. After he returned, he jumped on a fork lift and promptly knocked off a sprinkler head, which flooded part of the facility. Needless to say, he was encouraged to leave after this. Unfortunately, much of this could have been prevented by dealing with the eyesight problem in the beginning so it goes back to "root cause analysis" - something we should all practice. Many (most) things in life can be summarized in statistics or numbers. I worked at a large company some years ago and their safety officer had some interesting information related to accidents. In short, there are good statistics that an average number of minor accidents will lead to a major one and so many majors will lead to a death. Therefore, it is good practice to eliminate all the minor things because it builds a culture of safety. Accidents still happen but a culture of bad housekeeping and obvious safety issues makes the likelihood much greater. What this means to us as blacksmiths is to look at your setup with a jaundiced eye then get your friends to come over and do the same. Cords lying on the floor, flammable materials too close to ignition sources, uncovered grinders, etc., are all things that OSHA finds regularly in their inspections - so we should do the same in a home shop.

In general, more carbon is defined by more bursting sparks. A piece of low carbon will throw a good spray of sparks (orange to my eyes) with little branching or bursting while higher carbon will have a shorter stream with multiple tails. Take a piece of known low carbon (A36 or 1020) and touch it to a grinder then take an old file and do the same (don't use a farrier's rasp - they are often surface hardened). These are the usual high and low extremes of what is seen in normal use so gauge the spark appearances with your eye. Alloys and wrought or cast iron are markedly different from the above so it's best to take a known piece and compare it to what you are testing. At one time, I kept various small pieces of known alloys, including stainless and tool steels, for comparison to pieces that I tested. These have gotten away from me over the years but it's a good practice to observe if you encounter a lot of scrap steel.

Bruce, Do you know off the top of your head how many episodes?

I checked the station schedule again and it appears the Forge and Anvil show on RFDTV is being premiered on Mondays, then the same episode repeats all week. The one for tomorrow is on hand-held tools like chisels and such so might be worth watching if you have ready access. Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out how many episodes are in the series...H

I'd weld two pieces of 1/2" square to a bit of plate with the right distance betwixt them then make a top tool (also out of scrap) that fit the inside dimensions. Heat the stock, place over the lower jig and swat the top tool with a treadle hammer.

I can get 3/16 square cold rolled locally and I also have some 1/8 square from when I used to make skewers - you are so right about it cooling fast!