Buzzkill

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?

Thanks for the tips. It was kind of a head-slapping "duh" moment for me, but I hadn't thought of that.

Maybe, but with the thermal mass of the oil it will hold temperature a lot better. Toaster ovens tend to bleed heat badly, cycle frequently, and are therefore much less likely to provide a steady temperature. Don't get me wrong. I use one for tempering, but if the temperature on the fryer can be reasonably controlled and maintained I think it could provide better results.

It took me almost 10 seconds to find this: As Thomas Powers explained, you did not indicate whether you wanted actual powder or billets made from powdered steel. If you spent much time here at all then you should know that asking what's BEST of anything is a ridiculous question. Unless we know your hierarchy of importance for your wants/needs you are asking people to read your mind when you phrase it that way. Is price your biggest concern? Is it more important that your finished product holds an edge for a really long time, or is being able to sharpen it in the field a major issue for you? Does the steel need to flex a lot and return to its original shape without breaking or is it ok to be very hard and inflexible? The list goes on and on. When we pointed out that your question wasn't specific enough to give you a suitable answer you effectively blamed us for your lack of information and our apparent inability to read your mind - and you're still doing it.

I'm pretty sure their opening song states clearly that there is indeed baloney in their slacks.

Edge retention is closely affiliated with hardness and toughness tends to increase as hardness decreases. The bottom line is there are a lot of good steels which can have a reasonable balance for blades between hardness and toughness. However, when you ask for the best steel you have to be very specific as to exactly what you want to make and how it will be used. Even then you will get different answers from different people, since we all have different experiences and information. If you are just beginning then you'll probably want to stick with a simple steel in the 10xx series. If you have the ability to precisely control forge and tempering oven temperatures with ramping capability and/or oxygen free atmospheres and/or cryogenic tempering equipment then some of the more complex alloys may be the best match for what you want to do. Since we don't know exactly what you want to do, what your skill level is, or what equipment you have access to there is no way for us to give you a meaningful answer to your question.

The amount of dragon's breath coming out of your openings is largely dependent on the amount of fuel and air entering the forge. The color of the dragon's breath can give you some information about how lean or rich your burner is though. A lot of blue flames coming out of your openings indicates fuel burning at the openings rather than inside the forge. We usually want a slightly fuel rich burn, but either too much fuel or way too much air will result in lower temperatures than neutral, slightly rich, or slightly lean flames. One caveat though. It seems that some lining material, like Kastolite, has a tendency to produce a lot of orange flames for a while. To me it seems like it has diminished over time though.

Yep, but you might want to skip the Anvilania national anthem.