Marc1

Don't even try that. Only if you want to make one ... And it will be nothing traditional since you will have to forge weld the ring back using an oxy.

123 grills ! now that is some job. How much time do you have and do you work alone? Personally I don't like the design of the scroll sitting on a round bar. To me it should be the bar passing through the cross member and extend a bit before receiving the scroll on it's end, preferably with an invisible countersunk rivet or screw. The diagonals are the least of your problem. Forge the scroll like those in the picture. Notice they are not flat but have a concave surface all around. There is where you diagonal will be held tight. As for the 3 point joint, if you forge/grind a good fit and allow for a good groove for welding, you can rod/mig/ or oxy weld the diagonal at the joint. (I would MIG weld it anyday). File it round and it will look a million dollars better than any brazing that will inevitably rust ... unless you silicon bronze mig it, but why bother? Properly welded that diagonal bar is going nowhere fast and the weld will keep it in place even with a less than perfect fit at the scroll end. Make sure you price your work properly and allow for good profit. Nothing wrong with profit!

Glad to bring you the light They are great anvils. We get bizerk here with a PW yet PW is made of putty compared to some european anvils.

Yes, those blowers look the part and from all the one I have researched they are by far the cheapest.

Hi Slag ... they are two different anvils.

I say you build yourself a nice bellow and get one Egiptian to man it, much cheaper ... oh sorry not man it ... person it ... geee, always offended someone

I am 50/50 on the rivet between scroll and diagonal decorative bar. 100 years ago, blacksmith making that sort of work would frown upon welding and would be masters in riveting at the point of contact going to extreme pain to do so and countersink the rivet and file all evidence of it being there. Being that the article in the photo is not European, and lacks a bit of detail, I would say it is possible that it is welded at the back. However ... the rust tells a story on older decorative work exposed to the elements. and none of the allegedly welded scrolls have rusted at the point of contact with the diagonal bar. A third possibility is that they are neither riveted or welded and just sitting pretty. Inf fact I can imagine making the space between both scrolls rather tight, work a bit of a groove on the outside of the scroll and tap the bar between the scrolls in position, nice and snug. A groove in the center of the scroll would make the bar snap in place. Next you oxy the joint and Bob's your Uncle.

Thomas is in funny mood And it is not Friday, it is Saturday ...

Car aircon fan make for good blowers. A visit to the car wrecker may give you a beter blower. A better alternative is a Dayton Blower 1TDN5 that sells for $54. I think that the wages for the human blowers would make the workshop unfeasible.

You can buy hair dryers for $9 on amazon

As you already noted, you can not do that joint with 3 members passing through and maintain the integrity of the grill. A close up photo from both sides will reveal that the section at 45 is purely decorative and not structural and was indeed welded on. If brazed or Oxy Acetylene I don't know. Quite possible there is a pin in the joint. The other end that sits between the scrolls is riveted for sure. That grill suffers from chronic rusting in those joints and that confirms to me that it is indeed welded. They have been battling with rust for a while judging from the cold galvo sprayed on. You could make a joint like that, and if it is one off, and does not need to be perfectly symmetrical like in that grill, you can have your horizontal bar and the 45 bar forged together at 45 and carefully shaped. The vertical bar with the eye, will need to be drifted to accept the joint, opened up at the back and forged back in place. A lot of work for little gain.

Open it up and disconnect the heater element.

Ok ... on second thoughts ... if you heat the things up and fold them in two real hot ... can you forge weld them together? If so, you may encase the hard part and have a semi normal piece of steel to work with. Worth a try.

Stunning work, and I disagree, the introduction is telling. There is a link between all arts, forging and writing are not unrelated. well done all around

I had no idea how "Borium" could be added to a horseshoe (since I was thinking in Bohrium) so a little google search gave me the answer Borium is a brand name for a tungsten carbide product made by the Stoody Division of the Thermadyne Company. The type of product is more properly called a tube rod or tube metal. Other brand names include Wear-Trac from Hartwell Industries and E-Bor from Amsterdam Farrier Supply. In tube rods, fine tungsten carbide particles are encased in a metal tube or rod made mostly of steel. This type of material must be welded to the shoe. Composite or composite rods are used for similar purposes, but are a different kind of product. In composite rods, larger-sized tungsten carbide particles are bound together within a matrix. So if that is surface hardening by welding, the only real way to get rid of it is to grind it off. I am not sure if it can be toxic to do wihtout a respirator, but if it is me, I would take the lot to the scrap merchant and swap it for something useful ... or weld them together as they are to make a sculpture.

I agree ... and in relation to your comments on how Google can be less than cost effective, you are of course right. There is an art to be found by Google and if you don't know how to do it you pay someone to do it for you. However the reality in business is that no amount of advertising will turn or make a business if that business is not offering value for money to the customer. Imagine trying to make vinyl popular again, or sell grease for hair to schoolkid, or Lada cars and advertise heavily for that. A lot of business fail, not because they fail to advertise or use the wrong platform, but because what they sell is not what the target customer wants. As simple as that. Then you have the other side, personality, attitude, customer service or disservice and all the other things that kill a business. None of them can be rectified with advertising not even with millions spent on ads.

Twitter and Facebook are good advertising platforms for some products but lousy for a large number of other products. Google on the other hand ... if you can pay enough to be on the first page of a google search, you are in business. If you don't, it is like not being on the yellow pages before 2000. By the way my experience with the balance between white and yellow pages is different. Either the same or less yellow than white. Today, they are completely irrelevant and as far as I know non existent. Their on line version, is outdated and full of old obsolete information. The collecting of personal information online without consent or with an implicit consent is illegal but no one is enforcing anything.

Unless you are interested in the antique value for a reason other than blacksmithing, rivet forge are of limited use for general blacksmithing and good enough for small stuff. i agree that $100 would be a fair price, but you guys get much lower prices than I can.

Mm ... forging on gelly ... too much spatter!

I like farrier anvils. That little shelf is very handy to start scrolls.

The argument that anvil rebound is meaningless because the hammer energy goes all into deforming the hot iron and therefore there is no rebound of the hammer is a nonsense argument. The hammer is only half of the equation when forging. The rebound with a ball bearing when testing an anvil is a TEST. This test is to indicate how much of the force applied to the anvil will be sent back into THE WORK, and how much will be lost into the anvil. The bigger the loss, the less efficient will your hammer blow be, and the more tired you will be at the end of the day. The idea that the more rebound the more will the hammer bounce back is another nonsense. A good quality anvil with a high rebound will not absorb energy whilst you work and all of the hammer energy will go into the work from above with the hammer and from below with the anvil and no, your hammer will not bounce back unless you miss. The "rebound-means-nothing" brigade fails to see the other half of the equation when forging. But I said this before. it's a moot argument not worth debating. Just a trolling exercise. PS If you need an illustration imagine to set your forging press die on a one inch thick rubber mat and start forging.

Yep ... having one or two ready made packing to lift the vice say 2" and 4" for different jobs can be handy. As much as your body weight at 2-0-11 is considerable , it is mobile and not the same as a block of concrete. It will have to do though. Filling the post with concrete may defeat the concept of mobile unless you have a forklift. I made a mobile stand for a parallel vice and made it steady with weight plates on the back leg I can remove or add more. You can also get creative by adding wheels that touch the ground after you tilt the base so much, and have long handles to do the lifting that can be removed or pushed back.

Before you think how to make the stand, you have to decide if you are going to have a mobile vice or a fixed one. It is of course way better to have the vice fixed for a number of obvious reasons, but sometime that is not possible so second best has to be mounted on a post and plate or tripod. I would consider wood for a fixed installation and would try to find an power pole, (no, don't go and cut one down) and cut 1/3 of the post down vertical and out forming a shelf to fit the leg and make it do it's work. Sink it in a 2 or 3' deep hole and pack gravel all around it up to 4" from the ground. Pour a couple of gallons of sump oil to deter termites and top it off with sand. (I am environmentally friendly and like recycling ) Or concrete in the ground steel SHS section. 4"x4"x1/4" or 5"x5"x1/4" ... plenty and some more. Mobile stand. i don't like them one bit, in fact anything that rattles and moves I refuse to work on. But ... seen plenty of rattling vice and anvils so a mobile stand can be made to work but it is way easier to make one all steel then it is to adapt some timber because you happen to have it. The most important part of a leg vice install is to actually design it so that the leg takes most of the weight of the hammer blows and is not just there for decoration tied in with a hose clamp or similar. Post some photos when you get going.

Hi Jack ... Solid rivets are still available. You can of course try ebay but the postage from UK or US is a bit heavy. We have a supplier in Sydney that has been around for a long time. David 0296444777

Wine tasting simile .... I suppose you are right, good illustration. My father in law used to drink cask wine and kept the red wine in the fridge and added soda water to it in the glass, and wanted me to drink with him ... After all once it is in the stomach it's all the same ... hopefully no rebound ... Ha ha ... not very technical but there is more than personal taste to a good anvil. It would be interesting to have a row of different anvils covered with canvas to make them all the same and with the face uncovered. Have a few experienced blacksmith try them one after the other and let them tell their 'feelings' free of bias from knowing the brand of the anvil used