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Got a post vise with 6" jaws. The only markings on it is "100" on one of the jaws. I'm guessing it means 100lbs, because the vise is heavy... Bought it for only $20. Gotta make a spring in a mount for it though.

The boss looks great. Most people round them off, but I really like the squarish lines on yours a lot. :)

Well, charcoal smokes the whole time you're using it. Bituminous smokes a lot while the coal is green, but after a few minutes you won't have any at all.

Craigslist is the best place to find an anvil. Sure, you'll have to drive to pick it up but you'll have a real anvil at that price. I've also seen nice brands of older anvils on ebay, sometimes they're overpriced, but sometimes they're not.

I think a Heller brothers rounding hammer IS the best hammer to use. Every heller hammer I have is amazing, I especially love my cross pein. They go for big money too, so I'd hang on to it if I were you. :)

Well, it is good to sprinkle a little water on the charcoal that lights up outside of the firepot to keep from wasting it. Other than that I only wet my bituminous coal.

Go to the scrap yard and buy a big hunk of steel for a few cents per pound until you can afford a better anvil.

I really want one of yester year forge's G2 Guilotine tools. n_n

I find 1 or 2 chicken eggs in my firepot almost every time I go out there. :P

If I were your friend, I'd be pretty mad if I found out you chopped up my gun for scrap.

I love the way you put little leaves on the collars to make them vines! It looks awesome! :)

Maybe they have a nice anvil and a power hammer on the other end of the shop and they're just demonstrating the primitive way of doing things. :P

Hah, I've been known to drive 200 miles just for the hopes of finding something like that (And I usually don't). :P

Yep, that's definitely it. Thanks, Thomas. It's a shame someone cut the end off of it. Think it'll still be useful for anything?

Well the end of it is mushroomed a bit, so whoever owned it was definitely striking it... and it is made by heller, who made blacksmith and farrier tools. Here are some more pictures at different angles: Oh, and I forgot to mention that it's large.The head is 8 inches long, from end to end. The handle is 16 inches long.

Okay, I live in florida where blacksmithing tools are almost non-existent at flea markets. Everything I have and know about are really only things I had to make out of necessity. I picked this up really cheap, and I wasn't about to leave it since it's a Heller (my favorite hammer brand :P) and it's so uncommon to find any good tools around here. However, in my year and a half of blacksmithing, I have never needed one of these. I see that it's struck with another hammer and the end of it is similar to a cross-peen, but can somebody tell me exactly what you'd use this for? I've tried searching, but when you don't know the name of the type of hammer it's really difficult to find it.

To me, I enjoyed building my own forge because I love 'creating'. Anything I can build with my hands and make beautiful I love, plus it's quite satisfying knowing that not only did you forge something , but you built the forge you heated it in and forged the hammer you beat the metal with, etc.

I made a wooden hammer and anvil for my son about a year ago. I rolled up some aluminum foil and let him bang on it, it worked pretty well and wasn't messy. He loved it. Yours looks a lot better than mine did, though. :)

Why? Because it's awesome, that's why!

Cheated or not, those things are awesome. :D

Is it just me or is the mount for it upside-down? Really awesome thing to dig up, though. :D

The most gigantic ball pein I've seen. :P I also got about a half pound Heller cross pein in really great condition (Heller bros makes my absolute most favorite hammers ever :D) for $10. I've got a 2.5lb version in the same style and love it.

The threads in this picture are just done like a corkscrew with a single piece of thin round stock. If you look close in the light part of the picture you can see it.

I love my vulcan and I've never had any problems with it...