intrex

I forging a bark textured corkscrew handle with a drifted and riveted corkscrew.  Fully finished the piece and coated it in wax.  Had some people over for dinner and when i tried to open up a bottle of wine I realized that I had turned the screw counterclockwise so that you have to turn to the left to open a corc.   A few hours of forging and finishing to make a nice paper weight in the form of a corc screw.  

I am self employed, whats a vacation? 

Hey Ninjanvilman, 

I just picked up the torch today.  The hoses were grade T but they are pretty old.  I will be getting some new hoses shortly.  Thanks for the tip. 

Now I just have to find some tanks.  I am thinking about getting a 40lb propane tank from Tractor supply and then trying to find a used oxy tank and get it inspected.  There are a few on craigslist right now.  

Hey Jim, 

That was the other model I was looking at.  Wilder Forge is within 20 minutes from my house and I was planning to go check them out but decided to go with the diamondback forge 2 burner metalsmith.  The main reason was because his metalsmith forge can be opened up into a full clam shell so you can get awkward pieces into the forge.  Unfortunately they are so busy with orders that I still haven't been able to order one yet.  If they don't become available soon I will probably drive out to Wilder Forge to take a look at theirs first hand.  

Thanks for the feedback.  

One of the companies I work with is cleaning out their maintenance department and they offered to give me a very lightly used torch setup.  It doesn't have the tanks or torch tip but everything else looks to be in very good condition.  It has two regulators, very long hoses, two flashback arrestors, goggles, large cart, and two different style torches.  The whole setup has been sitting in their storage room for several years.  It sounds like it was only used a handfull of times at the most.  I believe it was originally connected to oxy/acetalyne tanks.

I am hoping to use it with oxy/propane.  I know that I need to get a propane tip for the torch but are there other considerations I need to look at with using this setup with propane?

I will be using the torch mainly for localized heating and maybe for cutting everyone once in a while.  I doubt I will ever use it for welding as I have a mig and can forge weld.  

I make a bowl with the coal that bottoms right at the blower then turn the blower on low.  Next I put a weed torch in the middle of bowl for about 10 seconds and then turn off the torch.  Cover up the bowl with coke or coal and turn up the blower.  It is the quickest and most reliable way I have found to get the forge up and running even when wet.  It isn't the most traditional method but is easy and quick.  

Hey VaughnT, 

The neclace started life as a conveyor shaft that I got from one of my clients.  I believe it was 1045 1/2" or 3/8" round to start with.  I ended up just giving her the neclace as is and let her decide if she wanted to use it to hold up a dress.  She has worn it many times just on its own and I don't think we are going to buy the silk to make a dress for it.  

It looks pretty awesome and medieval on its own.    

These are the basic steps that I went through to make it.

Draw out the ends from the center leaving about 2 inches un tappered directly at the center.  The tappers were around 10inches long on each side.

Flattend the center to about 1/4".  

Punch and drift the hole slightly offset to the bottom of the flattened bar.  

Scroll the two tappered ends (make sure they are both the same length after scrolling). 

Bend the piece into a circle with some type of jig (I use a large metal disc in my pole vice that is about neck width).  I have tried doing this without a jig and find it almost impossible to bend a nice round without one.  

Slightly bend the middle to end of the tappers down so the neclace rests on the chest and wraps over the neck.  (I did this on the horn of the anvil by trial and error)

Wire brush

Heat with a propone torch and coat in carnuba wax

That is a good question to which I don't really have a good answer, 

I have been smithing for about 2 years now and still have no idea where it is taking me.  

I have made about 20 bottle openers and corc screws, lots of tools (drifts, punches, tongs, hardies, etc), steel jewelry, some architectural work and just random strange steel things like a large steel letter D.  I usually work with any mild or spring steel I can find at the scrap yard and usually have a different random project every time I get to the forge.  

I am hoping to be able to make a Brian Brazael style hammer once I get the new gaser.  My current small rivet really struggles to hold a large enough fire to adequately heat the 2 1/4" axle I wanted to use as stock.  

I have built almost everything else that I use for smithing and am really looking forward to buying a new forge rather than building one from scratch.  I need to stay around 600 dollars total.  The two forges that I found listed in the original post seemed like the best options given the budget.   

Hello All, 

I am just getting over a horrible flu that turned into phenomena.  I have had mild ashtma most of my life and in an effort to try to be more lung healthy I am planning to switch over to a gas forge in the next few weeks.  

I am trying to decide between a 2 burner forge from diamondback and wildersgasforges.  Both of these manufacturers are within driving distance from my house and I am going to visit them in the coming weeks.  Initially I am leaning towards the 2 burner blacksmith diamondback forge but wondered if any of you had opinions on which way I should be leaning.  

Here is a picture of the Games of Thrones inspired choker.  I decided against getting the dress to go with it and will let her chose on if she wants it.  I also made my first cork screw for my mom but don't have any pics.  

I am only familiar professional paid cad software (Autocad, Solidworks, etc...), but I have a friend who is an architect and swears by rhino3d.  

Scratch that idea,  I just looked on their site and realized that it requires a purchased license as well.  They do give you a free 90 full demo though.  

Hey Jacobd, 

I am a little bit worried about the idea for the wife but I think it will be a winer if I can pull it off.  I will end up buying her something as well just in case the mideveal dress doesnt' work out :).

There are going to be quite a few bottle openers and cork screws made.  I am planning to make a drifted collar necklace for my wife as worn by Daenerys Targarean in game of thrones.   I just have to find a dress that will match the necklace now. 

Wow, 

The making of the teeth was completely amazing.  As one who has spent the last 15 years working with manufacturing companies to streamline manufacturing processes (many times this means eliminating skilled labor jobs :( ) it is great to see a company still making products almost completely by hand.  Unfortunately it is very, very rare to find US based manufacturing companies that are interested in investing or keeping these kind of jobs.  We would all be better off if there was a greater emphasis put on quality of products rather than always striving to drive the price down.  

Thanks for the suggestions, 

I will work on some type of bolster plate or shim to use the existing tools for the immediate futre.  I really enjoy making my own tools and will probably give it another go when I can find some smaller stock that may work.  I have some jack hammer breaker bits but even they are too small.  Maybe I will give a go at upsetting the breaker bit ends enough to work.  

I recently got a new anvil that is much larger than my original that I have had since I started smithing The new 309 anvil is amazing to work on but all of my hard tools are pretty much useless on it because of the larger hardy hole.  I tried making a new hot cut this weekend but failed miserably.  I was able to make my own tools for the old anvil with a 3/4" hardy (I think) with no problem.  

The new hardy hole is a huge 1 3/8" inches.  For the hotcut I started out with 3" round stock.  It came from the shaft of some industrial equipment that I got for free from a client.  I don't think it is mild steel but probably something like 1040.  

The main problem is that I don't think I can get stock this large hot enough in my forge.  I have an old rivet forge which I lined with masonry cement and formed a round fire box along the bottom around the blower outlet.  This works great for small work and I usually end up burning things very easily if I don't pay attention.  I had the forge packed all the way to the brim with the fireball as big as it could possibly get and after 15 minutes off dantes enferno level fire I wasn't able to get the stock up to yellow.  The best I could do was slightly bright orange.  I had a striker using a 10lb sledge and we still had a really hard time getting the stock to tapper down enough to make a long shank.  

Are there any tricks for working with stock this big other than getting a power hammer :)?  Are there any general guidelines for stock sizes you should use for making your own hardy tools?  I am also a little worried about the amount of force that was put on the hardy hole when forging the tool into the hardy hole while hot.  

I haven't been doing this very long so I don't have any super wierd requests but I recently made a giant necklace medalion (3lbs) letter D for a guy in a band named Drew of the Drew. 

pic.twitter.com/Dm7lx0iuIn

pic.twitter.com/K92omeChgh

Many thanks to everyone for all of the guidance with this anvil, 

I got sick of searching for a good stump and ended up building an anvil stand out of treated lumber.  The stand was made flat on both ends with the router jig method.  I then routed out a 1/2 square in the center of the stand on the bottom and a half inch template of the anvil base on the top.  The anvil was siliconed into the 1/2" routed template.  

It is hard to explain how much nicer it is to work on a heavier anvil and stand with absolutely no wobble.  

Several steel bearing tests on the anvil give a rebound of around 90% :).  

The only downside to this anvil is that I have to make all new hardy tools now :(.  

Hey Crazy Ivan, 

The only real differentiating piece of a turkey tail vs the false turkey tail is the polyspore holes on the underside of the mushroom.  These definitly have the small holes where the turkey tail deposits its spores. 

On a side note mushrooms are completely crazy little organisms.  There are soo many different variations it is mind blowing. 

Well it turns out they are turkey tail mushrooms which are not poisonous to eat but aren't really edible either because of how tough they are.  They are used in Chinese medicine as a cancer treatment.  Maybe I will make some mushroom tea :)

Hey Glenn, 

From my limited understanding Mushrooms and fungi are one in the same.  Mushrooms are just the fruiting part of fungi when the fungi reaches maturity in what ever medium (my anvil stand in this case) it is inoculated into.  

Hey Guys, 

I have a mushroom expert from NCSU that is taking a look at them and the spore print before we actually eat them.  I probably should have mentioned that in the original post.  

Hopefully this will be the anvil stand that keeps on giving.  If the mushrooms are what I think they are it sounds like it may fruit mushrooms for a few years :).  

My original anvil stand from a few years ago started to get wobbly so I made a pressure treaded stand and have been using the old stump stand to place tools on while forging.  We have had a ton of rain the last month and the stump has been left out in the open.  A few weeks ago mushroom started poping out of stand everywhere.  It turns out they are a pretty tasty edible mushroom that grows in the wild in NC.  We are gonig to be frying them up for diner over the next few days (after I get a spore print confirming they are what I think they are).  

This is a forge welded cable damascus opener that I made for a friend who is opening a craft beer shop in town.  It was etched in vinegar (didn't etch very well :( ) and sealed with carnuba wax. 

Thanks KRS, 

That is exactly what I was planning to do but with a significantly thicker plate (probably 1").   Having the mounting rod of both sides is a great idea.  I wouldn't have thought of that.