HWooldridge

All good tips - I might add only that adding tong clips or clamps really help keep the off hand from tiring. Even if the jaws fit well, holding the reins together takes more energy than just holding the weight of tongs and work.

My grandfather was a 'smith in his early life and became a carpenter in his 30's. Of course, both trades required swinging a hammer so I asked him once about roughing up an axe handle. I had gotten a job as a teenager clearing a vacant lot and bought myself a brand new axe for the task. His response was that you want a handle silky smooth because anything rougher will tear the skin as it slips through your hands. I did not take his advice and cut a bunch of finger grooves in my axe handle. At the end of the first day, my hands were bleeding. He promptly went to the hardware store, bought a replacement handle and installed it on the head. He then sanded and whiskered it smooth like a gun stock and finished it with some Danish wax he kept in the shop. I had no more trouble with my hands and learned a good lesson - so all of my hammer handles are shaved thin and sanded smooth as a girl's face. If you are having trouble hanging on the hammer, leave a small swell at the very end of the handle. This will help it catch in your fingers and be less tiring by day's end. Knives and guns and such tools do not slip in the hand like a hammer. I personally do not think you will like a handle wrap for the reasons I've stated - but it would be easy to try and no harm done except for some leather wasted.

Actually, I have seen a small number of swords at collectors' shows that have very long grips. Who alive today can say that such a sword did not exist in 1550?

I enjoyed that - thanks for posting it.

I have the same welder and simply use WD40 once a year. Spray all the contacts and run the dial thru the ranges a few times. The difference will be like night and day after you are done.

No, they meant "forging and drilling" but the translation didn't work too well. I don't think forge-drilling was the intent.

That thing is longer that most Japanese are tall... Seriously, I would love to have watched you work on it. Would be even more fun to practice a little iaido with it. It definitely qualifies as high art.

It was called "Closer to the Heart" - here are three stanzas excerpted... And the men who hold high places Must be the ones to start To mould a new reality Closer to the heart The blacksmith and the artist Reflect it in their art To forge their creativity Closer to the heart Philosophers and ploughmen Each must know his part To sow a new mentality Closer to the heart

Folks, I think we had a gamer visit us (Warcraft or a similar interactive computer game). The secrecy and esoteric nature of the questions would lead me to to that conclusion. He needs info to build fantasy weapons in hyperspace but can't reveal anything without putting himself in jeopardy with fellow gamers. The only wrinkle is that the people here doing it for a living don't have much patience with questions that are farfetched at first glance. I doubt it's any more sinister than that...just my 2 pence.

Here is the definition, note the last line: "An LLC has some characteristics of a corporation, but it is not one. It does offer some of the benefits of a corporation, particularly the limitation of an owner's liability. An LLC provides lawsuit protection, credibility, tax savings, deductible employee benefits, asset protection, anonymity, the ease of raising capital, creating a separate legal entity for personal protection, an LLC has a broad range of powers beyond that of a sole proprietorship, small claims court benefits, separate liability for corporate debts, and perpetual duration. When you form an LLC you create a separate legal person and you are a shareholder. LLCs are preferred because they combine the limited liability protection of a corporation and the pass through taxation of a or partnership. The downside to an LLC is that it does not offer the free transferability of ownership, perpetual existence, and the ability to be owned by a single individual." I have been involved in two LLC ventures. The one I am dissolving right now simply costs me franchise tax every year and doesn't provide any real benefit. Nothing can prevent you from being sued but usually the limit will be on the assets of the company. That scenario potentially means you put all your tools into the business and lose them in a court fight. BTW, homeowner's insurance will seldom protect you in this situation - if you are worried, obtain a small insurance policy and call it good. If you get sued, the opposing attorney will likely be aiming at a settlement from that. I'm not an attorney or accountant but I sometimes play one on TV - plus I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night...:-)

One of the old ABANA Anvil's Ring magazines had an article on a shop in Germany that was using a compressor to drive several coke fired forges. I'll look through some back copies but I recall it was written 10-15 years ago. I think Frosty's idea is a very good one. A venturi will pull in plenty of fresh air while allowing the pressure to be kept low. I haven't done the math but you could run a 2 inch line along the wall behind the forges and have the branch pipes come out from there. Put a regulator on each circuit and build the venturi like Frosty described.

This subject has been discussed a bit so you may want to do a search. A compressor is an inefficient and costly way to run a forge. Instead of a simple fan/blower, you are compressing the air and then regulating it down to a lower pressure. It can be done but would only be worthwhile to consider if the facility has a more important need for compressed air. It's a similar analogy to using air on a steam hammer - in the old steel plants, steam was readily available so was used on the big hammers but an air compressors makes more sense to run one in a small shop. Not many people will install a 150hp boiler just to run a hammer - same analogy for a compressor on a forge. If you want to do it, each forge will need 250-400 cfm at a pound or two static pressure. That's about what a typical electric Buffalo blower used to produce and most of those would run two forges without much trouble (blower opened up and a damper on each fire).

Almost every stuck one I have ever seen was reasonably easy to move with a good cleaning or soaking overnight in diesel. It's usually mud dauber nests and/or old stiff grease. I recently restored a 400 Champion that had sat for about 40 years inside a barn. It could not be turned with the handle so I soaked it in kerosene for a few hours and started turning the fan forward and reverse - due to the gear reduction, this will almost always move the gear train. It cleaned up fine and worked good as new with a little oil in the box.

I appreciate all of the responses. I should explain that the fees I paid include credit card processing for last year but the website hosting fees were $480 for the year from Yahoo. That was OK when business was good but the price of gasoline has sent the craft market into the dumper - I'm still doing custom forge work and machining but I'm moving the website ASAP. BTW, I did all the work on my site - photos, graphics, text, etc, but I used Sitebuilder - which probably only works in Yahoo. I think I'll reduce the site map using Sitebuilder and then migrate it to another service provider. Richard, PM on its way to you. Thanks again for the input...Hollis

You may want to do some searching on this site as I think this subject has come up before... You also need to define "success" since a living for one person might not be worth doing to another. I used to do the craft show rounds and never made more than $1000 a month - most weeks were MUCH less. One July, I made $100 across three craft shows. However, some folks are very successful - the best craft income I ever heard stated (that I believed) was about $50K annualized but he was selling wood furniture and doing a show every weekend, plus that was long before gas was $4 a gallon. You can demo if you want but it's more to worry about and a lot of places will only let you sell wares because other vendors won't appreciate the coal dust landing on their quilts and antique dishes. Therefore, you need to take plenty of stuff before you go - no sense running out of wares. People like choices so if you sell iron crosses, try taking three types. I was most successful with fireplace sets, plant hangers, BBQ tools, hooks of all types, iron crosses, triangle dinner bells and pot trivets. However, you just never know - I once sold 3 sets of fireplace tools one weekend at $300 a pop. It never happened again but like I said, you never know... The primary problem with craft shows is that they put you in the same category as cheap Chinese junk. People attend with $50 to $100 in their pockets but they don't intend to spend it all in one place. I was given some advice 25 years ago that I have found is still true, which is that you will quickly become known as a custom commission 'smith or you will develop into a craft's fair vendor. Neither one is better than the other but I have always been more successful with architectural and custom work since the budgets usually fit the amount of work involved.

Outstanding work, Steve - I hope you earned something at least in the five figures for it...

I'm hoping some of the computer gurus can help me with this question. I started a website through Yahoo! in early 2004, which has a Merchant Store with secure credit card processing and all sorts of other features I don't need. I built the website with their propietary web program, called SiteBuilder. Although I've gotten a lot of work off the 'net, most of it is custom so it's completely unrelated to the Store features or processing CC's. I'm paying almost $1500 a year in website and CC fees with not much return on same from since the stuff I sell over the Web only amounts to about that much income - so I'm working real hard just to break even on the services. Therefore, I'd like to move to a simple website with 4 or 5 descriptive pages, a links page for other sites and an email address to contact me. My question is, how best to do this? Would I be better off approaching Yahoo! for a drastic downgrade in services or simply migrate only the pages I want to another ISP? I registered the domain name with Yahoo so I also don't know if that causes a problem trying to move. In any case, I'm looking for suggestions to cut costs...Thx, Hollis

Wetting your coal seems to make it last longer - at least it does for me, but I am using slack coal (mostly fines) so I don't get a good fire unless the coal is wet and packed around the fire. I start the fire with dry fuel and then add the green coal while continuing to pack from the outside as the fire burns hollow. I have never measured consumption but a few nights ago, I worked continuously for about 3 hours and the actual usage was perhaps a coffee can's worth of fuel.

Slag (clinker) formation is a function of blast, fuel and type of work. Forge welding generates more clinker than just working in the fire. Therefore, we have three variables but only one is subject to much variation for you and that is fuel - because a reasonable blast is necessary for welding and you are making Damascus. Sounds like you are using coal and your friend is using coke but the two fuels have different management techniques and heat characteristics, so you might want to try some coke with your side blast (this assumes you have an electric blower - it won't work well with a hand blower). Clinker also tends to flow downward with gravity and clog bottom blast pots to a degree, which is why the movable clinker breaker came along. You can make a deep fire with a side blast by piling the fuel up high and burying the billet into the mound so based on what you've said, I think you'll be happier sticking with what you know...but that's just me two ha'pence, eh?

I like both but the dagger especially appeals to me (of course, I've always been fascinated with "toothpick" knives).

I say "two-air" - I also hear some folks say "tweer" but I personally never cared for that pronunciation.

It looks like a Vaughan rivet forge. The British version of the portable bottom blast. Of course, I am simply speculating...

A seam at the waist is normal for some welded anvils - don't let that bother you. A few pics would be helpful but it sounds like the second one might be a good choice. However, the first one could be a Fisher (which does not ring) so don't dismiss it out of hand.

Addendum: I posted this note in response to a question about lining a forge sometime in March 2005 but I'm not sure if it still resides in cyberspace. Glenn, you are welcome to post as a sticky or a blueprint, if one does not already exist with this information. I might also add I lined a forge with this clay recipe about three months ago (March 2008) and it is holding up fine with no cracks in the refractory - I hope it helps someone... Lining a Forge: I lined a Buffalo forge that has the lips an inch or so above the iron hearth and it turned out well. The process is based on something I learned years ago when I used to help my grandpa build houses. In addition to carpentry, he did some rock work and one thing we would do occasionally is reline fireplaces. On horizontal areas, he would make up a mix, apply it dry and level, then spray water on top. This would rock up in a day or so without cracking. The mix I used (based on his recipe) was 3 parts mortar, 3 parts clean sand, 1 part fireclay and 1 part dry lime. I mixed it, poured in the hearth to a depth that was flush to the top of the firepot and raked it smooth, then sprayed only enough water on it until the surface was wet. I let sit two days before making a fire and it had hardened nicely with no visible cracks anywhere. I think the minimal amount of water helps eliminate the cracking. Coal Forges: I have seen more badly constructed coal forges than good ones in my life. A lot of folks make their own (which is perfectly fine) without a basic knowledge of not only how but why it works. All solid fuels need some amount of air pressure to burn properly. You can have too much velocity with insufficient pressure or too much pressure without enough air movement. The two extremes can be illustrated by a couple of examples. A light wind blowing on a campfire will make it hotter but only the outside of the fuel pile burns because the breeze can't make it to the interior. Conversely, hooking an air compressor to a firepot will make a fire but any amount of pressure much over a few pounds will blow the fuel out of the pot. The reason why bellows and centrifugal fans work so well on a forge is that they generate the right combination of both air supply and pressure. Too big a blower (like a large, electric squirrel cage) will lead to excess fuel consumption, more clinker and an oxidizing fire. In addition, a squirrel cage can be "stalled" because they are designed to move large amounts of air - not push it thru a mass of burning fuel. Conversely, too little air will never allow the fire to reach its proper potential for heating. The proper size air inlet to the fire is also important. I'm sure a lot of folks have used grates drilled with a bunch of holes but 1-3 larger holes is better. One of the best homemade firepots I ever saw had a 1/2x3" slot cut in the bottom. The pot was entirely made from 1/2 inch steel plate and there was no clinker breaker. This arrangement made a nice hot fire with a center about the size of a grapefruit, which is about like a commercial pot. I recently exchanged notes with a professional British smith who uses a side blast. It is simply a piece of 1" heavy wall stainless tubing as a tuyere and aimed slightly downward into a molded mortar "duck's nest". The coal is piled up in the hearth and forms it's own bed in the depression. Other fire shapes can be made by employing fire bricks to redirect the blast. This simple arrangement works well and eliminates all the Rube Goldberg creations that get built in back yards. The smith said he can easily weld with this design and some of these forges have lasted over 5 years in daily use. I use a coal that generates a big clinker in a hurry but it was cheap, gets hot and cokes well so the only disadvantage is the dirt. Therefore, I have learned to build a fire and use it for a half hour or so then let the clinker cool for a couple of minutes. At this point, there is enough to usually pick up in one piece while I try not to disturb the coke around the pot. I can usually clean the fire and get back to work without breaking the whole fire down. If I have one piece of advice about fire tending, it's that less is usually more. I have seen a lot of people that tear the whole fire down on every heat or spend the entire time digging up the coke ball. A fire has to form a natural bed to work properly and it takes a few minutes for this to occur. A good coal smith will replace the piece for the next heat and rake a little coke on top. As the fire burns hollow, the sides are pushed in a bit. This gentle management is done during every heat - you don't work for an hour and then tend the fire all at once.

Very nice - I admire both the form and detail.