Marc1

I see nothing wrong with that. It is a slow release flamethrower.

Very true about Christmas time. Worse time of the year for a lot of people. All to do with expectations and fitting in, mostly of our own creation. All the best to you Michael.

I bought a bunch of tongs off a guy at the flea market. He didn't know what they were, called them pliers and told me he found them diving off Manly wharf. They have some deep dimples of corrosion but surprisingly still open and close freely. I think I paid $10. If antique is measured by the amount of rust, mine are an archeological find. Should try a museum

You can buy those anvil made in China on Ali Baba for a fraction of that price.

JLP ... you clearly have a special skill in you. A few people have that skill with horses others with dogs or other animals. When I was a kid I used to climb trees to look into birds nest and the bird sitting on the eggs would let me touch her and stroke her as I was talking to them. They would stay put and did not mind me at all. This days I don't climb trees but talk to dogs and they seem to understand what I tell them. Go figure

It's a trap for Whatsis

Are you looking for a quarrel?

Ah oh ... a bolt!

I like all your videos. No pretenses, honest show of how it's done. I particularly like your choice of hammers that are on the light side. There is no need for 4 lb when a 1.5 will do. As for footwear ... reminds me of the way Japanese wear their socks ... anyway ... I suppose that it is better than barefoot

Anvils used in mechanic shops and metal work shops are used cold as a support to straighten something or rivet stuff together. Not surprisingly they get a face like that. If you understand that the face of a less than super hard anvil can get marks from a hammer, you can also understand that working hot iron on the face can correct some of those marks with time. Furthermore a less than smooth face will only make your work look more interesting. It is called texturing. You will get it by default. It is a nice first anvil even when a bit small for general blacksmithing. You will buy a few more in no time if you get to work and build up your workshop. Now find a few hammers, tongs and a forge and get cracking

What is a renaissance crossbow quarrel head? Something you use when you have a quarrel?

What an admirable find. I love all the marks on the side. Reminds me of the crackle on an old painting. The stump would probably be in your way depending how you work. I would dedicate some time and effort in making a nice heavy metal stand with a tie down like JLP has on one of his anvils. Fantastic anvil. PS Check stand at about 9 seconds in the video

I say it once more in a different and always respectful way ... It is not what you make, but how you make it. So ... in my view ... if you have blacksmithing skills, you can make a sculpture representing a water skier. You are using your skill in this craft to make a modern day artefact using ancient techniques. You are preserving the skill and making something meaningful for the public. Is the above effort less valuable than making a flint striker? Or may be an egyptian skull trepanation scalpel? Thousands of useless artefacts are reproduced every day for the sake of making something that was used hundreds of years ago, and most of the time with no way to know if it was really done that way. What is the purpose of such exercise? The challenge to make an astrolabe is the same than the challenge to make a coffee table. One is as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike, and the other has the chance to be in someone's home for decades. Just my view of things.

To build on a hill, you have two options really. You either level the ground and build on it, or you build a platform and build on that. For a blacksmith shop that needs to hold heavy stuff, be it anvil, stock, machinery, to make a platform you need to go floating concrete slab industrial size, heavy piers and footings. Doable but not cheap. You could of course build a timber floor and have the anvil on a stump that goes through the floor and down to the ground. To level the ground, you have two options. Cut in and have the shed on solid ground, or build a retaining wall be it halfway or all around and fill in with something that will not settle too much, ie rocks and road base for example. Retaining walls are subject to rules and regulations depending on your local building code. We need an engineers report for retaining walls over one meter in my corner of the woods. Of course if you build your walls on top of the retaining wall they will become the footings and be subject to other rules. if you go for the latter, Don't be tempted to concrete over the fill as soon as you finished. The fill will settle and your concrete floor will crack unless you make a slab strong enough to support itself up in the air, and defeat the purpose of the fill and retaining wall. A dirt floor shop is a good choice and you can add dirt to it and level it until it settles after a few years, and then eventually cover it with concrete.

Mm ... I assume we are talking steel right? Not wood carving. If you intend to chisel hot steel on a flat surface and hold the piece down with a clamp, what you are talking about is a strong table, like a welding table. You can make that easy with a piece of U channel mounted on 4 legs, or even thrown onto a bench. The cavity of the channel down will give you room to use a G clamp ot even F clamp to hold your hot steel. It will not stay hot for long though. if you mean working sheet metal cold, the same applies I suppose and the size depends of the size of your sheet. Now tell me if I got if right or not

i remember hitting a bush turkey as I was towing a boat. I was going uphill and doing so slowly, not even 60 kph and this thing was flying right next to my truck doing the same speed and just at the side window height. In one of those split second decisions I thought if this thing turns in my path I am not going to hit the brakes with 2 ton boat behind me so took the foot off the pedal and at the same time the turkey turned right in front of the windscreen. Fortunately for me, unfortunately for him, I got him with the corner of the curved glass that is stronger than the center. It flipped him over the car and landed on the side of the road. Because we were both doing the same speed the impact wasn't that great but enough to knock him off. On my way back he was gone. What we get a lot of, is ducks. I have to wash their poop off the pontoon all the time. Mainly "Pacific Black" and "Grey Teal" in great numbers. Fortunately their diet is grass and algae so it is easy to wash off. Can't say the same from the occasional Cormoran that stinks like a restaurant's rubbish bin after a week in the summer sun.

Ha ha ... I have actually "discovered" a few of those rock drawings representing different creatures and people. It was the old time graffiti. There is a hidden spot next of the Sydney Harbour with this sort of carving on a horizontal face made by what may have been malay that were stranded on a sailboat waiting for repairs. Representing their boat people working on it and some writings. The Hawkesbury river "monster" is only documented by some dubious photographs just like Nessie but has the added benefit of being written in the aborigine folclore going back a long time. Who knows! I can only say that a few times a year we get what is called a mullet run. A massive number of sea Mullet make their way from the ocean into the river and up the tributaries to spawn, a bit like salmon. They do so at night and many times I have been woken up by massive splashing. Gone out on the jetty and the water was boiling as far as the eye could see both ends of the river with Mullets. What was more impressive was that they would jump out of the water straight up a meter or so in large groups escaping what seemed to be a large predator that was chasing them. We don't get any large enough fish to do that at that speed up here.

But I have just posted rock solid evidence

Possum Monitor lizard Hawkesbury river monster

Your Opossum is the same as our Possum? The dog was barking at the downpipe overflow box the other day, so I went to investigate and found a big possum sleeping inside it. Since that leads to our drinking water supply I decided to evict him, but wasn't game to pull him out by hand. They can be vicious and this was way bigger than a cat. A bottle of water woke him up and a second spray decided him to leave. This things are as agile as monkeys and he jumped from the box down to the ground two stories below with the dog in hot pursuit. They are real cute though.

I feed my dog once a day and make sure he cleans the bowl. No food left overnight. About critters around here, Two days ago I called Chewy (my little Spoodle) back, because he run out the back and was chasing something in the bushes. Too many poisonous snakes around to let him wander out alone. The animal he was chasing was making a terrible racket so i went to investigate only to see a monitor lizard well over 3 meters long climbing a tree to get away from the dog. This are the smaller cousin to the Komodo Dragon and I have seen this beast dragging a dead kangaroo 10 times their bodyweight. Must get myself a night vision camera and see what I can snap. There is another reason for me to install a camera pointing to the river. Apparently my backyard river houses the Hawkesbury river monster, some ancient reptile with long snake like neck. That would be some picture to have

The original question brings me back to some unpopular observations I make about this craft. I grew up in a smith shop that made stuff for the customer to use. Some were custom made, other run of the mill production. All had an artistic component and all had a modern day use. Be it a lamp, chandelier, bed head, gate, window grill, table chairs, door hardware, decorative artifact etc. The blacksmith that worked in the smithy all considered themselves metalworkers and not some blast from the past with some museum curator duties, to reproduce stuff no one has a use for, or even know what it is. If I proposed to make a plow or an adze, they would have laughed me out of the shop. Why is it that today hobby blacksmith think, that their artifacts need to be "period correct" and that their projects need to reflect stuff that was made 300 years ago is beyond me. Blacksmithing is a trade that uses some ancient techniques to produce steel objects by hand. Try making a miniature Mini Morris. Harping on with reproducing ancient stuff makes the trade obsolete and irrelevant. It is not what you make but how you make it. In my opinion anyway.

That anvil had some welding done to her already. It's a weird sort of damage, it almost seems like they put a sleeve in the hardy and welded the edge. Besides the looks, the hardy is perfectly usable as it is and the rest of the anvil is in very good nick. Not sure what to tell you, Surely there is no need for any repair. It would be only cosmetic and risk softening the area around the hardy if it is not soft already from previous attempts. If you can overcome the urge, just let it be.

Try something more challenging. Are you game for a coffee table? They are not that difficult. And you can make them as simple or complicated as you want.

I agree that it is just a decorative object. You couldn't attempt to use the horn even for small work without tipping the anvil over. I do have a small 12 kg anvil but it is a swedish kohswa with very nice ring and rebound that lives a quiet life and would probably be good for some of the grandkids. That one is not worth your effort I think.