Marc1

Any screw, new or old needs to be 'matched perfectly', in order to work. That is why they have standard sizes. Standard diameter and standard thread pitch or thread count. It is possible yet unlikely that those screws are of some random pitch, as opposed to standard thread count, but any machinist worth his salt can cut a square screw and copy any thread count within reason. Time consuming but not rocket science. The question here is not if it can be done, but if it is worth doing. Meaning, will the new screw cost more than the vice ... a different version of: the collar is worth more than the dog

The difference between a beginner and someone more confident, can be measured by the willingness to undo and redo what does not seem right, and this at the drop of a hat.

Nice anvil. Will look much better once you have cleaned it with a wire brush mounted on a grinder, and oiled it. Automatic transmission fluid works well but stinks badly. I use a rag with some olive oil. It has those round shoulders from doing lots of work. Will serve you for many years. It is on the small side, depending what you are planing to make. Next is a good solid steel tripod to bolt it down ... then half a dozen of hammers, a dozen of tongs, a forge or two ... PS As for age ... it does not say made in England, so pre 1910 ?

I have a stand like Mark Dobson yet it walks when I need to bend stuff despite being over 100 kilos. . Planning to strap it down with steel cable to a small fixed point in the ground and tension the cable real hard. As for steel sizes, just checked my steel supplier. We have 100x100x5 SHS and then 89x89x5. Clearly made to fit inside the 100x100 that is 90x90 inside. Good stuff, no need to reinvent the wheel. Of course one could use any chunky size for the post, cut an 8" long section off to concrete in the ground and weld an extension inside the post that slides straight in the part in the ground. Could be a cross made of flat bar, or 4 plates welded inside each of the post faces and plug welded a bit further up the edge to keep them rigid. Perhaps a heavy plate around the edge of the pocket in the ground to prevent the post from being smacked inside the ground section ... now I hope you can see what you have done here Thomas ...

The screw is a goner. How is the screw box (nut) ? Those can be turned new in a machine shop, but it is kind of hard to do, that is why they mostly stopped using square threads. I was wondering if the screw could be repaired by rebuilding that section only and cut a new thread. Speak to a turner. But don't go spending too much, it is not like you have a Stradivarius.

That is a great idea Thomas. Post a photo when you'r done it. I may be just what I need to make. As

Laurel is good wood too, particularly Laurel Oak ...

Another area that may play a role here, ...and please measure your answers because it is easy to stray into forbidden territory ... is the new wave of 'equality' aka political correctness. I am of the opinion that in business, bias and prejudice are an essential tool. As much as they are wrong in everyday life, to a degree, they are a survival tool in business. Wildlife survives applying 'extreme prejudice' like the lawyers say. Normal humans, tend to be in business like they are at home and that is, in my opinion a mistake.

Agreed. However without specifics about the danger in question, the consequences for the contractor and alternatives at hand, it seems the most sensible choice. Many other alternatives, sure. I thought you were interested in the conundrum presented by those who don't seem to listen to sound advise. The answer is in their choices, their own assessment of the situation and the authority they see, real or percieved, in the originator of the warnings. Human nature. Tell a kid not to do something and sit back and observe.

You answered your own question. If we are talking poisonous snakes, there is no debating the degree of danger. So 50% of the warning's integrity is taken care of. Sure one could construe that the stranger is ignorant or a lier, but at the end, if the warning turns out to be untrue, you can shake it of with a laugh. Not much of a problem. A bit like those that flash the lights to the oncoming traffic pretending to warn them of a radar trap ahead ... when there is none. A warning in relation to a work colleague or potential boss or customer, implies a rethink of a relationship that you expected to be advantageous. Following such advise will cost you, it takes away from you much more than face. And my guess is that the more the warned person can lose from following advice, the less he will be inclined to believe it and the more he will try to find a logical explanation for your warning to be wrong. Someone with plenty of work to chose from will listen and shrug his shoulder and say ... not worth it ... and move on. Your credibility ... if you are the origin of the warning and everything else being equal ... is inversely proportional to the loss that following your advice will cause, and may be directly proportional to the other person's risk aversion. In relation to the scenarios you tell us about, such behaviour may be called sociopathic or psychopathic by psychologists, to me it seems criminal and mafia like. It will eventually end bad for someone. I've seen the entire board of a construction firm killed by one contractor who believed to be wronged. He put on his Sunday suit and brought along his Colt 1911 in .45 ACP and got all 5 members of the board.

i have done something on that line for 5 years now. This is what I do, I never pay anything with change, always with paper bills ( well, plastic bills really) and pocket the change. At the end of the day I put the change in a really big tin. The tin has a date on it so that I know how long it took to fill, and a purpose, that is what I am saving for. Usually it takes me about a year. At the end of the year I open the tin with a can opener, pour the change in a big bag and with some effort ( about 20 kilos) take it to the bank and put it in the counting machine. it's a lot of fun and every year I find it hard to believe how much I get out of this tin. Last year it was $1700. Could buy a little Reffi every year if I needed to.

Mm ... we don't have bears, wolfs, moose or big cats. That should count for something. Actually we do have big cats but the numbers are so low that no one knows where they are. And you sort of get used to lift the toilet seat before you sit down to check for red backs. And you don't go rummaging among a big pile of rocks or bricks, and you take a walking stick hiking, you never go for a swim north of Brisbane, you don't climb big trees in Sydney, and you somehow get used to the thought of swimming in the river even when you see the mullet run and the bull sharks behind them. Politicians on the other hand ... All is relative.

Cool, post a photo when you can.

Do you have a forge?

Yep ... had a few of those in my old work. I used to call them "histrionic personality" to be nice to them, and because no one understood it's meaning

J ... yes the moving jaw is a bit bent, and it seems others have done it and it is possible to heat and straighten it. You will need a large forge, a big anvil a big hammer and a big arm ... or may be it is easy ... don't really know. Or you can live with the bent side for now ... you can always revisit this ... and make a new jaw/face/pad/whatever ... for the fixed side. Bevel the edge all around, stick weld, grind flat and Bob is your uncle. Uncle Bob

Reading your post Charles, the case of Harold Fish (10mm handgun) came to mind. Sociopathic behaviour all around from probably normal people with a hidden agenda. That thought complicates matters even further. How can you warn others about ... (in your assessment) potential sociopath or potential sociopathic behaviour due to a hidden agenda?

Interesting subject. What prompted you to post this? I like the reason given for a dog to bait ... "joy" So if I am hiking and someone tells me he has seen a brown snake on the trail. If I am hiking with small children I'll pick them up or put them in my backpack and follow the trail making a lot of noise with my walking stick. In fact that would probably be my usual way to walk a trail in summer since the fact that someone has seen a snake or not, makes no difference. Snakes are there seen or unseen and there is no doubt in relation to what a snake does. When it comes to people, and people in the workplace of all places, things are a tad different. A sociopath does not have a distinctive colour like the brown snake or the red belly snake, nor a warning instrument like the rattle. So the warner in the workplace will have to have a very convincing way to convey to his interlocutor the risk involved ... or have great influence or known moral authority over them. If I tell you Mr X is a sociopath and to stay away, your can interpret this in a multitude of ways. You can think I am trying to discredit Mr X. You can think I am being paranoid and my reading of Mr X character is exaggerated. You can think I am weak and scare easily and you would not have any problems with Mr X, you can think another dozen different thoughts, and you can also think that perhaps, based on what you know of me, I can read people well, and that my advise is sound, and that it is not worth trying to test my diagnosis and so you stay away. People are not snakes or dogs fortunately, and we tend to give people a second and many more chances.

Is it really necessary to insult me?

I don't see how posting a third party price list from another country can be seen as advertising.

Kudos to Fuzzy age 13 for his attempt at making something.

Good posts all around. We have drifted from what is blacksmithing as opposed to blade smithing (or including) ... to ... what is art. I agree with jlp that one can see artistic value in the marks left by the hammer on a door handle, a bolt or a nail head. I was referring more to the interest in making everyday objects like gates, railings, hardware etc in the unique way only a blacksmith can. And I am well aware of the artistic talents of blacksmith in this forum. No need to go there. So what is art? According to the dictionary art is ... the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. However if you google what is art you will come up with hundreds of different and contradictory definitions of what is art. How about this: "The unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers and never succeeding" Marc Chagall "Art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionary" Paul Gauguin "We all know art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth. Pablo Picasso. Not surprisingly we will probably never agree on what is art and the artistic value of the objects made by others. We will love some, we will hate others, and others still, will leave us unmoved. It is not the percieved, very subjective 'value' of the art form chosen by the blacksmith that I wonder about, but the interest in communicating with others,, shaping hot metal with a hammer. Do the new aspiring blacksmith see blacksmithing as a way to make art? Or is it a way to make things? Or both?

if you build a steel box in the shape of a truncated pyramid with a slight taper so it is not in the way. Fill it one inch short of the edge with river sand and mount the anvil on a steel plate and let the steel plate and anvil float on the sand. Almost no sound nor vibration will be able to go down to the concrete. If you want to go the extra mile you could find a square piece of cork one inch thick and glue it to the base of the box.

A sand box stand should make things way better. A larger anvil will also absorb much of the hammer energy. I had a couple of crazy tenants next door for a few years but they are gone now. Not much you can do really. Probably associated with alcohol or worse. Having said that, I wouldn't forge on a Sunday afternoon.

Ha ha love the illustrations of my surgery inroads. Things you can do when you are the consultant surgeon 40 years ago in a backward country. The drill I used was a Black & Decker ... when they were made by Duncan and Alonzo in Towson and made to last. Surgery and hip surgery in particular is nothing different from skilled butchery combined with some basic carpentry skills. There are different degrees of 'learning' just like there are different categories of teaching. I can guarantee that after watching a few appendix surgeries a keen person can duplicate the results most of the time. The biggest obstacle may be the skin incision and the gag reflex. That does not make him a surgeon just like someone banging on a bar of reo is not a blade smith, however highlighting the shortcomings in learning was not my intention, rather I was harping about the loss of interest in the artistic side of blacksmithing. A previous reply that stated the lack of the testosterone component in forging a rose or a bunch of scrolls on a railing when compared to a knife may explain it in part. I believe that it has more to do with how things go out of fashion. When was the last time you have seen a forged bed head? I mean one forged not twisted cold by a machine? And who can tell the difference? Yes, 'what does it mean to you' may be an interesting question, even when we may not like the answer.