Quarry Dog

As I read this post I keep hearing this term "can welding" being thrown around and I've never heard of it, have no idea what it is, and would really like to know. I just did a cursory search on google, youtube, and the forum and found nothing that looked remotely close to mentioning it, as most results were "Can welding hurt you?" etc., etc. Is it like "box welding" for mokume and/or titanium, another term I've heard of in hushed tones and necromantic whispers, and have no understanding of, and which searches only provide "How to weld a box?" Pardon my ignorance if anything in my questions does not make sense. If anyone knows another post and/or Youtube video that details either one of these processes, that would be most appreciated.

It could also be that coal seams have inconsistencies in them. 1 bag of coal can be very different from another. I've actually unloaded 2 bags off of the same pallet, from the same supplier and seam that acted totally different. The first bag was unloaded in the classroom coal bucket and burned clean the whole day. The other bag was unloaded in the instructor/working forge bucket and was so horrifyingly clinkeracious that it formed a 1.5" layer in the bottom of the pot while 2 other guys and I were bending 1" round into dead-eyes for a replica ship. Somehow that clinker resulted in a 3/16" hole forming in the side of the firepot that ended up growing to be 2" around after 4 months and warped that whole side of the pot by the time it was replaced. I learned 2 lessons that day: 1) Clean your clinkers regularly. 2) Burning your work is not the only reason for the saying about "too many irons in the fire."

Has anyone else noticed that they changed the color of the packaging for borax here in the states? I remember that it used to be a crazy green color. It is white with a couple of white in blue text boxes on it. I just got a box yesterday and I had a hard time finding it because it blended in with the rest of the detergents so well.

The worst hammer injury I've ever seen was one time my dad hit his thumb with a hammer hard enough that the skin on the end split for about a half inch. Somehow nothing was broken. The funniest injury (in retrospect) happened when I was about 6. Dad and I were knocking down a termite eaten fence in a house we had just moved into at the time. We were standing about 5 feet apart when I went to knock one of the boards out with a hammer. Instead of the board popping off of the fence, the end of the handle bounced off of the fence. Read that again...the end of the handle...no hammer head attached. About 2 seconds later Dad is on his knees, holding his head and cussin' like it's nobody's business and I was a total wreck, thinking I killed him. Now that we think about it, he could have used a couple stitches. He learned a lesson that day, and taught me about it the next day by showing me how to properly wedge a handle into a hammer. I haven't seen a loose head on any of his hammer's since, and I'm pretty good about it too. I even safety-wire top tools so that they don't slide around.

I found my answer after a good bit of digging. Phosphorus burns white. So if you see a few jets of white here and there you should be good, but if it's a predominant color I wouldn't get the metal too awful hot, just in case. I also am not sure I'd want to breath any smoke that happens to miss the flue and drift towards the face.

Yeah, it is usually when I'm in too much of a hurry, or when I'm not paying attention, that I burn myself or do something that almost earns me a Darwin award. I find it amazing that I still have all of my major body parts. In all seriousness though, I am pretty careful nowadays, but I don't know how I made it past my teenage years, to the 28 I just turned last week.

4 safety ideas: Put a barrier of filter curtain/glass between the forge and your eyes. Completely isolate the focusing path from the user with non-flammable materials, in order to prevent stray IR/UV/overly intense visual spectrum rays Make sure there is a way to block light from reaching even the first reflector, like a black sheet, so that the mirrors can't accidentally focus on something while not in use. NEVER put your hand in the dang thing, unless you are dead certain it is off. I could just see someone pulling a Johnny Knoxville with this thing. :P Also, would there be a problem with scaling, since it's in direct contact with unburned oxygen as it's heating?

It cokes up good? If the coke has a nice blue flame (indicating a low of sulphur, as opposed to a yellowish flame), and it gets nice and hot relatively easily, I don't really see how it could get much better. I've used some "Smithin' Coal" that came out of Utah. It never really coked up right, took a lot of cranking, and the fire never showed any blue. I figured it would do as long as I use my heats wisely and didn't try to weld with it. How would one identify how much phosphorous is in a batch of coal? I know it causes cold-short steel, but would that affect steel at lower forging temperatures, or just near welding temperatures, or just while running a bloomery?

I don't know about the quality of the steel, but I hear chromium poses a serious risk of heavy metal poisoning. I wish I had more details on it than that, but I'm sure someone else will pop in and fill in the blanks, I'd like to know the specific hazards myself. I imagine most people that would explain further are probably more qualified than Wikipedia, just by virtue of experience.

If I recall correctly, I think I heard somewhere that Trenton made the ACME anvils for SEARS back in the old mail order days. Don't quote me on that though. The ringing noise of an anvil indicates that it is not cast iron, which makes a dull clunk/thud noise instead, and also that it is more likely not to have had a catastrophic internal/covered up failure that will result in forge welded pieces falling off. In other words it's usually a sign of most good anvils. I say most because Fisher anvils are cast iron with a tool steel face, and so are Vulcans, but I've heard that Fishers are the preference for Cast Iron anvile. I'm pretty sure that there's a good chance that your anvil has a wrought iron body with a tool steel face forge welded on. Of course I don't know that much about Trenton/ACME anvils and it could be made of forged steel, depending on what year it was made, and even the more recent anvils made of cast steel ring like bells.

I don't see anything technically wrong with it, besides the fact that you'd have to customize all of your hardies for it. As far as possible issues, I can't tell how good the weld is from that distance, and I don't know whether or not he used a good deformation resistant wire (my dad runs a T1 rated dual shield wire at his job) or rod for the top layer or two between the sledge head and the anvil, and I can't tell if he heat treated it when he was done. Other than that, good on him. Yeah, it ain't pretty, but a tool ain't gotta be pretty to be a good tool, and it might have some interesting functionality around the hammer head. I'd still have to make an anvil saddle with a fin on it as a good joke. I don't see that hammer as any more wrong than scrolling nubs, or that weird shelf on some artist anvils, or an upsetting block. This doesn't mean I would have gone through the trouble that he did.

I've been looking and I've found that there is actually a thornless cultivar called "White Shield." This variety is a male and so I won't get the fruit, but after some pictures I've seen, that may be a good thing, since that looks like quite the mess. Unfortunately I've also found that this plant is one of the many that are agriculturally controlled in both California and Arizona and noone will ship it. So it looks like I'm going to have to try to find it locally somewhere, or have a local nursery try and find a way to get it over here.

Wow, the google must be strong with you guys. @ Thomas: I'll try checking out those herbarias, and see if I can find a small tree/shrub that's ready to plant. @ Knots: If that doesn't pan out, I'd be happy to arrange a flat rate shipment with you when the fruits start falling. I know these things are thorny and hard to manage, but the benefits sound like they outweigh the issues, and it shouldn't be to much of an issue to just let 'em grow wild, especially if I weed out all the males after a few years. Does anyone know if they're hard to train into a standard(aka a normal tree)?

I found that book that I was read that stuff in. Forge Practice and the Heat Treatment of Steel, by John Lord Bacon, one of the many free books I've downloaded off of google books. I appears that the first bit I was referring to is what he called "pack hardening" which he seems to apply to steel. He refers to the same process as "case hardening", though he seemed to only apply that name to wrought iron. It's the carbon in the cyanide ion that gets baked into the steel. They used to use straight Potassium Cyanide as a case hardener for small jobs, or they would make a molten bath of it and then dip the work into it. This book goes into some depth about the whole process. It took me a week to read it the first time, and even then I felt my brain oozing out of my ears from overloading the central processor. I should probably reread it, as I have a feeling a lot of it went over my head. Google books has a lot of old blacksmithing books for free. They all pretty much seem to say the same things too, although with different little details here and there. Some of the stuff I read does not match what I've seen though. One particular old army manual comes to mind. Seems like a smith was trying to tell an inattentive private what to write.

I was wondering if anyone knows where I can get access to osage orange/hedge apple trees in southern California. I've read in some old books that It makes excellent handles, and that it grows fairly quickly, and is very adaptable. On top of that I have heard that insects don't like the fruit, and I also hear that it burns very, very hot. If I could find somewhere to buy some trees, I would love to plant them on the property that I'm about to put a house on.

Well, If I remember correctly, I've read that charcoal, charred bone, charred leather were often mixed with sand in a metal box for heat treating when you didn't want to cook the carbon out of the steel and when even heating was absolutely required. They were also used for case hardening, often with the box method minus the sand, as well as Potassium Cyanide, which I guess would go along with Hydrogen Cyanide, as they both have the -Cyanide ion, which is carbon and nitrogen. So yeah, all carburizing agents. I would leave the Cyanide alone though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide

I imagine a forge like that would be nice for long bends. It would have been amazing for those dead eyes I mentioned earlier. As it was we had to heat the things at least twice for all 4 major bends, and the fastest we managed to make one was 40 minutes. Longer heats would have probably halved the time that it took to make them. I know it doesn't really pertain to the original post, but I like the idea of that forge.

I would just make a seperate "mono-pod" stock stand with a wide base, or a sawhorse type stand for long stock. I've seen long stock drag a forge over onto it's side. It's very loud, very messy, and hot stuff everywhere. On top of that, with a seperate stand, there is no limitation to the length of stock you can hold. It comes in handy when you're bending 6 foot or longer pieces, which I've had to do for making dead-eyes for a full scale replica spanish galleon.

I image something like that would make an awesome demo anvil, like for a ren. fair blacksmith, or something more period correct like a civil war reenactment. It doesn't take much of an anvil to make a bottle opener or a hook, as long and what you have is properly mounted to a sturdy stand of some sort. That little beauty looks like it's in nice shape too.

Does anyone else have the issue of supposedly being "dominant" with one hand, but the only thing it's better at is writing, or really fine work? I can't catch or throw with my "dominant" hand, although it's good at blocking, I can still kinda write with my "off" hand. I can do most things with both hands, but my "off" hand seems better at most. I surprise a lot of people when I beat on steel right handed, switch hands when I'm tired, and then go full lefty when I have to write something.

I like your train of thought thomas, but I think that she would probably have confused as a gift for him, instead of a gift for her. People are funny that way. :P

If you're referring to the video I posted, that was done as an example of something that a lot of newcomers would not consider when trying to source a useable alternative to an anvil. The big lump of steel that operates as the face was the main point of that video. You don't really need the "horn" attached like that, you could make a couple of staples and fix it to the edge of that stump and it would work just as well. I figured that was a pretty simple concept. Some helpful solutions, instead of tearing down another post, might actually get the OP started on building up funds for a "proper" anvil, right?

Sounds like a good setting for the next Fallout video game. Fallout: The New Kingdom... Yep, that was nerdy. <.<...>.>...0_o

At that price point I don't think you'll find a very good anvil. Most likely the closest thing that would resemble what you're thinking is an ASO, which would be a waste of your $60. Instead, I would go scrounge around scrap yards until you find a massive piece of 3" or thicker steel. It looks like 70 cents a pound is the going rate for steel around there, so I would imaging you could probably go home with a 60-90 pound piece of steel at that price, depending on your bargaining skills. The most important thing to remember is that it ain't gotta be pretty. It just has to work.

Well, considering that San Diego's average yearly rainfall is just under 11 inches, we could probably use some of yours. Last year we got under 8, so that's officially desert status. The only thing keeping lawns green all across southern California is the aquaduct running off of the Colorado river. In fact that river runs dry 5 miles before it hits the Gulf of California because of all the water siphoned off by the aquaduct.