Buzzkill

Here we can fairly easily get 20 Mule Team Borax, which is sold as a laundry detergent booster. Strangely enough it's manufactured by Dial, which is a subsidiary of the German company Henkel. Since I have no working knowledge of India whatsoever I don't know if there is a comparable product sold through outlets that provide laundry soaps. If you have welding supply stores you can usually obtain fluxes there which contain borax, but even if not, most fluxes sold at welding supply stores should work fine for forge welding. As for the gunk I have to defer to some other members with experience doing cable welding since I have none. It's something I plan to try so I'm interested in the responses as well.

After seeing the piece there's no way I would cut it. That should make a fantastic post anvil. With the shoulder and flat spots you have some great places to help you clamp or fasten it to a stand. You may also find specific uses for those shapes if you lay it on the side sometimes. My recommendation is dress the big end, use it for a few months, and then if you think of some adjustments that can make it better you'll have some working knowledge to base them on. This is just my opinion, but that needs very little grinding and no cutting to serve you well.

A picture would be great. However, in general if you're just grinding you probably won't get it hot enough to ruin any heat treatment. If you can touch it without burning your hand it is definitely cool enough. If you're worried about it you can grind a little, stop when it's getting hot, let it cool, and continue working. If you start to see temper colors then definitely stop, but with that much mass it should be hard to reach that point.

You've probably heard this before, but injuries you get when you are young tend to come back to visit you again when you are older. You may not be bothered for 25 years, but when you get into your 40's they start haunting you again. I can't speak with personal experience beyond that, but I've been told it doesn't get better. I said that to say this: You need to get whatever you are using for an anvil to be stable at a comfortable height for you. This will significantly reduce your chance of injury and it should also significantly improve your performance. For most people a comfortable height for the top of an anvil is at their first knuckle when standing straight, at the wrist, or between those two places.

Mine is half and half. Even after using it for a couple years and only a couple minor adjustments I like the option to quickly and easily move a couple of the pieces up or down. There are some spots which are definitely better to weld in my opinion. One place for me was the bolts for the wheels on the flat platen. I ended up putting the bolts through the holes with the heads on the left side as you face it, getting them squared up, and then welding the bolt heads to the plate. Before that I had recurring alignment problems with the top and bottom platen wheels.

I'm not really sure what you're asking us. I only saw one picture of a section of rebar. Is that before or after you worked on it? If it's not the shape you want it to be in, then fire, hammer, and anvil can provide the solution. Other than that we really don't have enough pictures or information about what you want to know to answer in a meaningful way.

Majidii, welcome to the forum first of all. Secondly, fiberglass is not a suitable substitute for ceramic wool. If you're planning on building a forge then the materials in the chamber must be able to withstand the heat of forging. You should be looking for materials that can withstand a minimum of 2300 degrees F (1260 degrees Celsius). Thirdly, without knowing your location it will be difficult for us to suggest where to get materials. If you could update your profile to give us a general idea of where you are in the world we might be able to offer better suggestions. It would also be worth your time to look at the Forges 101 topic to get a good idea of how to build a good gas forge: https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/47439-forges-101/ We have a few members from South Africa. Hopefully one will log in soon and may be able to point you in the right direction.

I was wondering who would go that direction. Now I know

I'm more of an ampersand blacksmith, but each to his own.

Welcome to the forum. We always encourage people to put their location in their profile since the answers to some questions are location specific and it may turn out that another member is within visiting distance. It looks like you've done a little more homework than a lot of people who visit here, but I have a couple questions and suggestions. What do you mean by ceramic coating for the wool? If you mean something like Satanite or Kastolite you should be fine. For the floor of the forge there are much better options than IFB. You've probably noticed that they are a bit fragile, so they get damaged or destroyed fairly quickly from steel moving in and out of the forge. Also, if you intend to forge weld then the flux will eat through them very quickly. High alumina kiln shelf about a half to 3/4 inch thick works out pretty well or you can cast a floor out of something like Kastolite and it will be durable. On to the forced air part: First, it's a bit of a myth that forced air burners are more efficient than naturally aspirated burners. If both are tuned right they will use the same amount of fuel and air to produce the same amount of heat. Where some people get confused is that blown burners typically run at lower pressure, so they assume that means less fuel used. Naturally aspirated burners use a very small diameter hole for the fuel and higher pressure, while blown burners usually use a larger diameter fuel inlet and lower pressure, but the volume of fuel used is pretty much identical, again assuming both are tuned properly. For a blown burner you want valves on both the fuel line and the air so you can adjust them independently of each other and fine tune the flame. The down side is when you adjust one you have to adjust the other in order to keep the same type of atmosphere in your forge. You can do this quickly when you get used to it, so it's not that big of an issue. Of course you also need power to run one, unlike a NA burner. You should be able to make a blown burner that will work, but you may need to scale down to 3/4 inch or possibly even 1/2 diameter pipe for your final burner tube. If fuel efficiency is your main concern and you have basic shop skills and tools I'd highly recommend taking a look at Frosty's T burner and going with a half inch diameter burner. You can find the instructions here: https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/43976-t-burner-illustrated-directions/

There are several ways to reduce the formation of rust on blades. If you go with a forged finish, the iron oxide layer formed is different than rust and tends to be somewhat protective against rust. Finish is also important. The closer you are to a mirror finish, the more resistant it will be to rusting. Leaving the tempered finish on a blade provides a small amount of rust resistance, but does rub off with use. Bluing, browning, or "pickling" can also produce a rust resistant layer, but it will also rub off in use. The best way in my opinion to keep rust from blades is to wipe them with a thin layer of oil or wax to keep the oxygen away from the steel and therefore prevent rust. There are some other coatings, such as powder coating which can provide a more durable layer, but cost can be prohibitive and/or leave an undesirable finish. You could paint a blade too, but that wouldn't be my choice. Another thing to keep in mind is that certain liquids or fumes from liquids can cause or speed up the rusting process significantly. Any strong acid will have this effect. Hydrochloric (muriatic) Acid fumes reportedly will cause rust formation even 20 feet or more from an open container. Even the vapor from vinegar can increase rust formation on steel. Hope that helps.

I second jlp's recommendation. I had a similar result as you with some coil spring. However, it did actually harden as was proven when I tried to take a small warp out cold. It snapped cleanly and then I discovered that only a relatively shallow layer didn't harden. Yours may or may not be the same as mine, but it's worth exploring. Here's what I made from that particular coil spring: https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/48558-first-dagger/

First, the disclaimer: These are all guesses, but I don't have enough info to provide anything more than that. It could be the "wrong" kind of steel, but that seems a little unlikely for a hammer. A lot of old used hammers are some combination of mushroomed, chipped, and cracked. Any cracks will most likely open up a lot more when you forge, so it's best to grind any cracks completely out before forging. Lastly, and this will seem odd at first, it is possible to be both too hot and too cold at the same time. Here's what I mean: If your fire is raging hot and you put the piece in, the outer portion will heat up and start glowing fairly rapidly. However, the center of the steel may still be at black heat. You could have a situation where you are burning the outermost part of a thick piece of steel, but be below forging temperatures in the middle. The thicker the piece, the longer the "soak" time should be. This comes back to fire management.

I definitely made some assumptions as to what alloy was probably being used. There's also a reason I used the word "may."

I have a few observations for whatever they are worth. First is your tempering color. It looks like you may have drawn the blade back a little softer than is usually preferred for a knife edge. Next, I'm not sure your blade wasn't/isn't straight. What it looks like to me is those areas you circled were hammered thinner than the areas around them. When you grind you have to take more off the thicker areas in order to get down to the thinner areas. It just takes practice to get reasonably consistent thickness across a blade. This is especially true when starting out: Forge thick and grind thin. Also, the heat treat itself can cause warping. The thinner the blade the more likely it is to warp during the quench.

In the second picture of your first post it's quite obvious that your drive wheel is way out of alignment with the bottom wheel of your platen. You can get by with a small variance, but not that much. As already mentioned you can check the alignment with a straight edge and adjust the motor location to get it right. The further out of alignment you are, the more friction created and therefore the hotter your wheels will get too. With my grinder the closer the tracking wheel is to the same height as the top platen wheel the better it tracks as well, but that could just be my build and not a generalization.

Momentum, inertia- however you want to phrase it. The more mass you have moving at speed the more it wants to continue in that direction. When it grabs you have to provide the equal and opposite force or it gets ripped out of your hands, assuming it doesn't turn the disk into a shrapnel grenade. A 9 inch disk has approximately 1.65 times the area of a 7 inch disk. If they are made of the same material at the same thickness that's already a significant increase. If the 9 inch disk is thicker it's even more. The difference in RPM's does come into play, but right now I don't feel like doing all the calculations to see which one exerts more force when it grabs. In general though, smaller = less damage when things go wrong.

I thought they called it rice coal due to the Rice Krispy popping effect

Looking good. You've probably seen this before, but imho the ceramic belts are worth the extra cost. They cut better, run cooler, and last longer than the alternatives so the up front cost is more than offset by the performance.

Thanks for the link. I looked around a bit and also came to the conclusion that there wasn't really a better "cheap" solution. I ponied up for a gallon of the Juice and so far have only stabilized one piece of elk antler, but if it stays liquid and treats as many pieces as I think it will, the cost per stabilized piece will be fairly insignificant. It is a little pricey up front but appears to be worth the cost. If I run into anything negative I'll let you know, but so far so good.

I'm in the transportation business hauling mostly bulk liquids in cargo tankers made from stainless. After repairs we usually have the inside passivated with a weak nitric acid solution and then the repaired area polished. The tanks are either 304 or 316 stainless steel. My understanding is that stainless will generally get the chromium oxide layer which significantly retards corrosion anyway when exposed to oxygen, but passivation is much faster and provides a more uniform layer.

I'm kind of partial to Monty Python's take on philosophers in their "Bruces Philosophers Song."

Assuming you are casting this so that the axe eye is vertical you could make a post in the shape of the eye from whatever material you would use if you were doing lost wax casting. If you embed that in your sand that should retain your eye shape and you can just chip it out after the bronze cools - I think.

That is fantastic! Your snakes are getting so good that I think a lot of people would mistake them for a live critter at first glance.

Don't overlook the possibility that someone in the past had a sense of humor similar to Thomas Powers. Didn't he say a couple times that he was going to leave behind objects for no other reason than to confuse/confound people in the future?