monstermetal

Actually Ian Its been several years since I have been able to buy any new machinery. I really am losing money. Its been 4 years since I turned a profit and I am not far off from closing the doors. I am pretty burned out on working 3-4 thousand hours a year only to be worse off than the year before. Its the overhead that is killing me. Around $12,000 a year in insurance, $30,000 a year for a lease, $8000.00 in fuel $25,000 a year for the government, it goes on and on. At the end of the year there is nothing left for me except stress

I am a blacksmith, not an accountant. Thus is the reason why I am destined to wear old boots to my destitute grave. My all in operating costs were $186,000 for 2013 which was just about ten grand more than my gross income. At least the govenment made money off my labor. (Sales tax, B&O tax, Personal property tax, Property tax and so on.)

I just bought one that looks a lot like that with heavier legs. I'll have to see if I can find a number on it.

Bought another anvil, This one was on Craigslist in the Boise area. It took me 5 days to get around to sending my brother up to look at it so the argument "you have to catch the ad the moment it posts" is invalid. A nice, flat and clean 358 lb Trenton on a nice stand for $650. The guy also had a swage block I got for $125 with a stand and a 6" Reed vise on a stand for $50. I am going to have to start ignoring anvil leads as I simply cant afford to keep buying them even at give away prices.

And Iron Dwarf I think you have some bad information. Carver clamps are fantstic but they dont make any 10 ton rack clamps. They are rated in daN. The standard duty clamps produce about 2500 lbs of force and the big beefy heavy duty ones make about 6000 lbs of force. The standard duty long reach ones are only good for 1250 pounds of squeeze. The bar style clamps are even less. That is one of the reasons I use the Besseys. I like the Carver clamps but for the price the Besseys produce a lot more holding power. The largest series of Besseys will produce 8500 pounds of squeeze, over a ton more than the Carver and they are less expensive. For doing heavy work you need heavy clamps. If your doing sheet metal or light duty work I suppose its unnessasary to have clamps that will pull together 3/4" plate when its got a 3/8" warp I do wish the Carver clamps where a little more prevelent in the states. I would like to have some of there part clamps and deep reach clamps but I worry about ordering them online. I have bought clamps before that seemed like what I needed and then got them in my hand and they not been what I expected. At a few hundred bucks a pop its hard to order them just to see.

Maybe "Kant-Twist" clamps are good for machinests but they suck for fabrication as they simply dont generate any real force. I use Bessey sliding F clamps, The heavy series ones I use generate 4 tons of clamping force. the only C style clamps I use are heavy bridge clamps. A 12" bridge clamp weighs 40 pounds and generates 20 tons of force. (they also cost around $300 each)

I have tried welding various wrought items and what I think works best is a dual sheild MIG set up. The slag in wrought precludes using a TIG in my experiance

Strange, In the states that would be called a C clamp, Not a G clamp.

Hey man that is a fantastic ball peen hawk. Much better shape and style than most. I think if it was mine I would file the bottom edge flat to give it a "bearded" look but its great just the way it is too.

Here is a pic of the bearded axe fininished up. I think it turned out pretty good. Not sure how the 1095 bit will hold up, Might be a bit high carbon for a axe bit.

All the time you hear the sad story, Poor me, No anvils except for $15/lb on ebay (or something to that effect) We have stumbled on two this week. One a 140 lb Trenton that a guy who stopped by the shop had sitting in his yard and we traded him a Pexto stake plate for. And this one that I bought today on Craigslist for $250 A 200lb Fisher in perfect shape. It took a total of 20 min's from making the call till the anvil was in the back of my car. I think currently we have 8 or 9 anvils in the shop, at least 4 just kicking around in the way. None of them did I really dig for or take more effort than a phone call. But yeah, There are no anvils out there anywhere, ever. If its this easy on the West coast then they must just be laying around everyplace on the East coast where there actually was a supply of anvils.

Its a Aussie made Martenson, Actually 334 pounds, made in June of 1891. It was the only 334 pounder made that year and is odd since historicly they only made Anvils with a odd weight (it should have been a 333 or a 335) It has a Rc of 52 and a 1 5/16 Hardie hole that is punched slightly crooked. Yours in the condition its in should be worth $1262.80 Thats all I could find out from the "19" though.

Gerald You and Jim Austin have inspired me to try my hand at Viking style axes. Here is the one I was working on today. I got the 1095 bit welded in before it got too hot to play anymore. Maybe tomorrow I'll get it shaped the rest of the way and heat treated. And Thomas I know your a real guy and do real work. You have been around here for a long time. I dont mean to pitch a fit.

You know this is much why I quit posting on IFI, a guy wants to come show his work, a pointless toy meant to just be fun and creative. Instead we get off on a tangent about liability, handle shape and everything that is "wrong"with what was done. It can't be wrong because it's not meant to do anything other than look cool. There is no other one to judge it against. How many axes have you forged this week Thomas? This site seems like it has a whole lot of folks who do very little blacksmithing telling those of us who forge every day how we did it wrong. It's why I quit posting here. I got mentally exhausted of justifying and explaining every hammer blow to a bunch of armchair critics. With the exception of Mike Bondi I have the largest artist blacksmith shop on the west coast. I have forged and heat treated over 50,000 tools. I have made over a thousand pair if tongs so far this year and this is probably the 100th or so axe. I don't know everything, I learn something every day, but it really is discouraging when you play show and tell and the response is "well that's dumb, hope you have good insurance".

The Viking axes have a round tapered eye with the large end up, it seats on the haft with this taper fit. The handle could have the sides of the round haft flattened but the handle still has to be round with no part larger than what will pass through the eye

There are countless examples of Viking axes with round eyes, there is little need to speculate on the shape of the handle.

War axes have had round handles for thousands of years, and nobody is going to be chopping wood with a $600 fantasy axe. And for the record I have 2 million dollars of product liability insurance and won't be selling you one.

I probably am not the first guy to think of this, I know there have been some really nice hammers with bat handles on eBay lately. Probably not many out there with scratch forged axe heads though. The axe is 4 pounds with a war club on the back, It is 5 layers thick with a full length 4340 core and sharp enough to shave with. A lot of fun. I bought three more bats and more are in the works.

Nice looking hawks, I wouldnt throw either of them. I have a huge pile ( 20 plus) of mild steel hawks forged just for throwing, No sense in damaging a $200 tool by hucking it at a log with other bits of metal stuck in it.

Very nice

I have always cleaned the speaker on my phone with a magnet as well, Until I got an Iphone. The magnet killed the speaker of the Iphone first time I used it. So on my next phone I used a smaller magnet, It ruined that one too. I would guess I have killed at least a dozen phones until I found the Lifeproof case. Since using the Lifeproof I have done pretty well. Now I destroy lifeproof cases rather than phones. A case a year is a lot cheaper than two or three phones a year though.

Yep, The simple answer is they are not blacksmith tongs.

I am not sure what your "working mans" salary is but I am a full time blacksmith, About as "working man" as it gets and I have at least 7 anvils in the shop, One new one that cost a couple grand. Sounds to me like you just dont want to spend a few bucks on a real tool. If your driving a car/truck that is less than 10 years old but your complaining about a anvil costing a few car payments then you simply dont really want an anvil. I really get tired of "All the anvils are crazy prices" posts. A really nice brand new anvil can be had for around $5/lb which is just about what raw tool steel costs, At $5/lb anvils are cheaper than just about any other tool you can buy (by the pound) A "real good" hammer like one made by Nathen Robertson or Brent Bailey is going to cost you in the neighborhood of $50/lb A snap on wrench probably costs $25/lb at least. And as others said, The cost is moot anyway because if you take care of it it will be worth more than you paid when its time to rehome it.

B’s become available from time to time, I just found one for a fellow in California here in Washington for $10,000. When I bought mine it had a problem and I picked it up for $5500. If something comes up I will be happy to put you in touch. Although if you are set on a N model you will likely have a harder time. The only one I have ever seen for sale is the one I sold to Jesse James. I know he bought a bigger hammer and sold it to another fellow for $15,000.

This seems completely reasonable. I think it could be done in 50 days. I think you would need a year to plan and organize, A team of engineers and a budget of something like a million bucks give or take a few hundred thousand. If you could drag it out to a few years I bet you could get the price down to less than a quarter million. I would guess just to do the patterns, castings and machine work on the frame would cost $75-$100 grand doing them one off? I know for a Chambersberg 2CH back in the 80's when they still where in production they were $150,000.00 I would guess that machine with inflation today would be $250,000. That is a machine about half the size of the one you are setting out to build and I am sure you cannot build it as cheaply as a factory that was geared towards manufacturing hammers. Another thing to consider is what you are going to do with this 18,000 lb machine that requires a dedicated foundation and electrical supply once its done?