EricJergensen

My main ride: http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37159-vision/ My once-a-week ride: http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37158-mizuno/ My former ride (for ten years, before I met a particularly pedantic cop): http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37156-tempest90/ My coal hauler (good for about 600lbs): http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37157-99civic/ My minivan, not pictured, can haul more but then I have a coal storage problem ;-).

Nice! That looks like a fairly broad / blunt pein. What are the rough dimensions of the square face and the pein? Did you glue on the handle? Eric

Coatings burning off are probably dangerous. I'm pretty leery of coatings when I forge or weld. Might be worth clarifying why fire looks like it does: carbon burns blue. Hence the blue flame for your propane torch. However, soot (little pieces of carbon - and other junk - that didn't burn) glows from incandescence. So, that's where the yellow to white colors come in. Carbon burns blue and heats up soot which glows yellow to white. So, saying you have a blue flame is kinda normal. If you had some vapors well mixed with oxygen you could get a flame much like a torch (which is well mixed O2 and hydrocarbon compounds). Eric

Water loses some of its effectiveness as a quenchant because water vapor bubbles form right by the steel and insulate the steel. The detergent and jet-dry change the behavior of the vapor bubbles in a way that helps keep water against the steel.

I think the widened opening of your hood is really cutting down on the ability of your setup to draw the smoke. This is what the draw on mine looks like: (This is approximately the super sucker hood design.) The flat flange around the edge forces all draw to be from the "front" concentrating the draw over the fire. Your cupped flange does that but it also makes the opening much bigger than the pipe dramatically slowing down the air velocity exactly where you want high velocity. I think you'd get better much better smoke draw if you just had the pipe longer. Unfortunately, that would probably make things too hot for your pipe gauge. The hood (16 ga w/ 3/16" for the flange) allows mixing so the peak temps hitting my pipe aren't too bad. Pipe probably never gets above 300° F in my setup. Eric

It won't harden anything, but you wouldn't want handlebars fully hardened. That would make them brittle (subject to cracking and spectacular failure). Most of that process sounds like post-welding heat treating. (Without that dip in oil bit.) It would relieve some of the stress left in the metal by welding (if allowed to cool slowly -- no oil dip). Doesn't sound like that is pertinent here. And, 4130 is pretty forgiving on welding. In most cases it will perform admirably without it. The dip into oil sounds like hardening, but it would only be effective at a much higher temperature. If you heated the metal to its critical temperature (which I think would be about 1480° F) and did an oil quench you'd harden it. Then, if you tempered it by heating it to about 650° F you'd have something useful for suspension springs. 4130 is popular for bicycle frames (and aircraft frames) primarily because it doesn't demand heat treating post-welding. You can also get work hardening stress from bending. This 450-500° heating would relieve some of the bending stress but I'd guess a 7° bend introduced next to no stress. (Again, no fast cooling by dipping in oil. Turn off the oven and leave it in to cool slowly.) I'm not an expert in this. My knowledge only comes from basic blacksmith metalworking and some very basic welding.

Tell us anyway. Negative results are valuable. I've learned quite a bit by failure. We'll be grateful and sympathetic. (Tho we'd all be delighted to hear it worked.)

Trying to teach or coach this is tricky, but here's a mental picture that worked for me: act like you're trying to bounce the hammer off of the work. For me, this picture instantly let me loosen up and take advantage of the hammer rebound. I went from sore every time I worked to being able to hammer for hours. I think the root error I had was "follow thru", kinda like I would do in golf or baseball. Doing that on an anvil just fights the rebound. At the moment of impact, you shouldn't be pushing the hammer at all. This "follow thru" error is likely a side-effect of your issue as well, so maybe this picture will help you. Eric

Probably not a pool, just a really large slack tub...

Uhm, how does the bird fit in? ;-) If the bird is squished, the car is "heavy"?

Heat it up and go for it. Rust will come right off in the process. I suspect your "anvil" is flat enough. Most anvils that have been around for a while have surface variations ranging from chips and dents to overall curvature (ex: swaybacked). Eric

If your object is to get a useful tool, fabrication is a great option. The reason arc welding is a big trade and smithing is a hobby is that welding is very time-efficient. If you are trying to extend your smithing skills, then building tooling is great. I still think fabricating the first one is a good idea. Gives you a tool quickly and let's you get an idea of how you use it. Later on, use that understanding to make a tool you'll be more proud of. I can get sucker rod cheaper than I can get scrap iron, so for me it's not a waste. What I've gotten isn't tool steel by more rigorous standards. Works and hardens like 4140, which isn't bad. In a pinch, I'll make a cold chisel with it. (Canola oil quench, very light temper.) Makes nice tongs. Just don't get too eager with the quenching: you definitely don't want to harden tongs and I've cracked it cooling it down to work the other end. I've also cracked it working too cold.

Brian, As far as anvil stress, I assume a hot cut isn't going to transfer much force to the anvil. You wouldn't use this approach with a hardy-mounted cone mandrel or swage block, right?