EricJergensen

In the industrial sense, wrought iron can't do anything steel cannot. It is a decidedly inferior material and that is why it is no longer produced. Iron (wrought or otherwise) has a significantly lower strength / weight ratio than steel. Even its weathering properties are hugely outclassed by modern alloys and finishes. From an artistic sense, the texture - especially of low-grade wrought - can be very interesting. Historically, it's significance is huge: if you smith for history, it's The Thing. If you want to connect with historical work, there really is no substitute. It's a challenge. It's softer. It's more forgiving and finickier. It explains many habits and best practices (part of the whole Square->Octagonal->Round has to do with how slag inclusions in wrought lead to splitting).

Abrade the face: file or sand or grind off the scale layer so you can see temper colors Temper with a 7/8 inch square stock / turned eye / heated: he uses 7/8" square stock to form an eye-shaped bar that can be heated to a high heat and inserted into the eye of the hammer as a source of tempering heat. It needs to be fairly close to the eye shape so that there is enough contact for the heat to move into the hammer. Head above vice jaw: not sure where you got that, but probably from the part where he describes an alternative for tempering using a torch as a heat source with the already tempered hammer face covered with a wet rag and clamped in his vise. Heat stop / block are commercial pastes that absorb heat (presumably by melting). Haven't used them, but they would be handy for shapes not easily covered with a rag.

Ausfire: even here in the states you will find that when someone is being pedantic, "camp oven" is the unit with the feet on it and "Dutch oven" is the unit with no feet. All of mine are technically "camp ovens" and therefore rather awkward to use on a wire rack in a kitchen oven, but great for stacking with coals on camp out.

I'm not a fan of IR reflective coatings. You want a forge to have "thermal mass". That way it heats stock quicker than the flame alone can do. An IR coating just inhibits the absorption and release of heat from the lining. Cast-able refractories generally tend to be only modestly good insulators. That makes them decent at absorption and release of heat, but not ideal for keeping heat inside the forge. My experimentation so far has led to to favor an inswool (or equivalent) outer lining with castable inner. The thickness of that inner layer is a compromise between forge-heat-up time and large heat reservoir. It could be tuned to match your typical stock size as well. A thick layer for heavy stock that will need lots of heat to get to temperature. A thin layer for small stock that cannot benefit much from a large heat reservoir. You can also adjust this by putting hard firebrick in the forge if there is room. IR coating fans report time from lighting to first hammer blow, not time for an at-temperature forge to heat a piece of hammer stock. It might be that inswool with IR coating + firebricks is the best approach (durability aside), but I plan to make my next forge about 3/8" of cast-o-lite on 2" of inswool. I'd use thicker cast-o-lite on a 3-burner beast like yours.

The plating is a problem. Chrome plating is not your friend (and there is nickel under that IIRC). Burning the chrome off will create hexavalent chromium. Nickel isn't as dangerous (IIRC).

I'll second that: tons of good info here at IFI. However, you'll have to dig and piece it together. Starting with a good book that covers the basics will save you time and give you more context to understand information on IFI. One perennial favorite is "New Edge of the Anvil" by Jack Andrews. Borrow it from your library.

Typical processing order is: Forge, Anneal, Machine (if applicable), Harden, Temper, Finish (file, grind, machine). Annealing before cold work is a big change. Annealing before hot forging isn't likely to make any difference you can feel (tho it can make grain-size differences). Annealing before hardening is usually important, tho not terribly critical for a chisel (if I needed the chisel *now*, I'd skip it). All of that said, tongs are likely to be mild steel and not hardened at all. (Tho a pair of tongs cooled in the slack tub from a visible heat just might have enough carbon to be accidentally hardened.)

I use Bouton safety glass with the wire mesh side-shields. They do fairly well on fogging. The downside is that the quality seems to have dropped on the fit of the side-shields. (They hinge like the temples for folding them up, but are too small/tight to fit against the frames when "deployed".) I have no idea if paintball goggles meet any appropriate impact specifications. I strongly suspect they do not.

They both claim the right things. The first link has only a vague indication of impact resistance. The second is clear as to the safety specifications followed.

Joppa Glassworks has NA ribbon setups for kilns (mostly). Also shows a small NA firebrick forge.

Yup. Looks like you've probably drawn too much temper. You'll have to re-harden.

(Actually, horses pulled stuff for centuries before anybody tried to ride. Only after breeding increased size significantly could riding be considered. Chariots came long before Cavalry.)

anvilfire has a steel temper color chart that is close to what you want, probably. It has 1040, 1050, 1070 and 1095. You could "interpolate" 1040 and 1050 for 1045. The bigger picture here is that you don't have 1045 with *precisely* .45% carbon. (In fact, the ranges could be such that a single piece of stock could meet both 1040 and 1045 specs! And something purchased as legit 1045 might have less carbon that some 1040 sample.) Your temperature isn't that precise. You don't know heat penetration in the metal. And, a manual quench is fairly variable too. (Especially variable on section size. Ask the bladesmiths. Thin sections quench to much higher harness for the same heat and quench medium). All of that to say, you can look up something on the chart, but that's only roughly what you may have achieved. I like the charts,. But, I try to keep in mind that it's just a ballpark. Unless I'm using engineered quenchants in precise conditions and heat treating ovens and identical stock sections, I can't expect more. swedefiddle is spot on: best harness tester is the using the resulting hammer ;-)

Wow

eseeman: why not hot cut them? Better yet, hot cut on off "on demand" and now you've already got some heat in your work...

It sounds like Mark Aspery's "Mastering the Fundamentals" series might be a good next step for you. He does detail the building of a monkey tool in volume one. And, he has a nice detail of the classic "wizard" bottle opener that might give you some ideas as well.

ausfire: Looks like the second set is designed to "shear" instead of nip. I'd agree with your guess that it's a modification / re-purposing of stock nippers. Maybe one of our many farriers will know...

Mark Aspery details the build of a filing vice in Volume II: Mastering the Fundamentals of Leafwork

It is a bit light and won't last terribly well. I might weld a couple of pieces of small angle or other handy scrap on either side of the bottom (vertically) to keep the top aligned. Main benefit of it is I can fab it up faster than I can pry one of my kids off of the PS/3 to hold a top tool (or the work) ;-). Swing fuller is a more substantial solution.

ausfire: might consider throwing together a spring fuller using the same stock you intend to wrap with

http://www.pineridgeburner.com

Forging to hex (instead of square) is used in this video (making a hammer-eye drift):

Probably 400°F or so. Mix in some additional air to cool it down (i.e. gang in a open pipe).

Blacksmithing is now an art form and a hobby. Just as printing technology hasn't eliminated oil and canvas painting, nothing will eliminate blacksmithing.

"and as soon as the colour is gone out of it I'm back to the forge" You need to stop way before that. Colour is a bit hard to communicate in text, but "orange" is at the low end of working temperature for this alloy. "Red" is too cold. By the time you can't see any color (i.e. "black"), it's 300-400°C too cold. "soaking" Thick pieces of metal can get very hot on the outside while still being much cooler on the inside. So, you will have to heat large pieces longer than you might expect so the heat has time to penetrate to the middle.