Keganthewhale

I searched but couldn't find anything on actually forging the threads for screw vices. I'm assuming this has been done at some point in the past so I assume there might be some book that has the info, if so, can anyone point me to that book (or books)? Or if anyone has experience forging one I'd love to hear about it. I was wondering if you has a top/bottom die for a single thread on a press, then work your way down till you had enough threads, could you effectively forge one out like that?

So I'm getting one of those fancy 16 ton coal iron works presses soon and I want to make it as useful and efficient as possible and I know tooling is the name of the game! I personally like the idea of using standard top and bottom tools within reason because you should be able to use them everywhere, from power hammers, to strikers, to under the fancy press. But would love to have pics of your favorite tooling and how you use it!

so then the only reason to have any solid shape other than a pillar is strictly to have enough mass to keep the hammer from moving? it doesn't help in any other way?

i'm not building one! its just strange to me that the idea is thrown around (and it might have been sand in other parts of the hammer as a whole just to add weight) and i am seriously just intrigued as to how that energy transfers, and how the shape of the anvil affects it efficiency. just like how you don't do the majority of your forging an inch in from the hardy hole on a london pattern, because the mass isn't directly beneath where your hammer falls and that makes it less efficient.

So after looking at a number of threads and reading through more pages and posts than i can count i've decided to ask the question! how does the anvil work on home made power hammers? everyone says that solid is better, of this i have no doubt, but my question is more specifically how does the blow transfer and reverberate through that material? for instance, in the helve/krusty/rusty style of hammer everyone wishes they could their hands on a rail-car axle due to its substantial girth and solid weight, so its easy to see how the force from the tup would travel straight into the piece that you are working on and down into the anvil. But now imagine the three following anvils, the 6”x36” square tube filled with sand and topped with a heavy plate, the 6”x36”square tube filled with lead (and for the sake of the example lets say stacked blocks that you somehow had the time to acquire that much lead and cast it into bricks that are close to the inside tube size so in essence its solid) topped with a heavy plate, and the last filled with 1/2”x36” square bars topped with a heavy plate. So now we have three identical in appearance anvils for a power hammer, which one works best and why? Now how would that same energy transfer if instead of it being a pillar it was a slice of a pyramid with each prospective filler: llllll llllllllllllllll lllllllllllllllllllllllll llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll would it transfer the same? Is it just the mass that dictates how efficient it is? I'm curious as to what everyones thoughts are on the matter.

pictures would be great! everyone loves pictures!

Also being in the military and having similar situations or working with C-wire or anything I've taken to working with nomex gloves that I cut off about 1/3 of the finger length but my palms are protected when working with shorter pieces that the dragons breath heats to a bit more than I'm comfortable with. These are similar to a pair I work in (http://www.mcguirearmynavy.com/US-GI-USMC-Nomex-Gloves.html )and I enjoy them and they have saved my from many a burn from slips or thoughtless touching. I also was issued smalls when i needed mediums which is why i originally cut the finger tips off, but now they are my go to gloves for everything except cold weather. I second the rock climbing gloves, belaying gloves are sturdy and they come with full finger or fingerless, but I've never forged in them seeing as my nomex are thoroughly fire resistant.

It is awesome that you were so consistent without jigs or anything, i'm impressed! i got contacted by a consignment gallery to make house numbers for them to sell, not what i would have done of my own accord, but it is what they asked for! Sorry that it is so far away, i know it will be difficult to see any detail.

As a current Marine I know several people that are interested in it and come over to forge, however we aren't the guys that see combat, soi can't speak from that angle. However, it's a great way to destress and work out the day to day stress that accompanies the military lifestyle.

Being in CA, where coal is either hard to find or expensive when found, I would suggest propane. That is unless you have plenty of space and access to pallets or lots of wood to be turned into charcoal with a retort.

If you put your location on your profile there are often smiths close by who help each other out.

All I know, is that when I got it, the face had puddles of welds on the face ad sides, what you are seeing here is after an hour (or more) of using a grinder with a flap disk. But as you can see the entire face still has what seems like pitting, but it's deeper than any pitting I've ever seen on anvils before. But I will adhere to what is being advised and it will be used as it is. Although the wife will probably be using it, I'll stick to my first fisher :)

Here is the face as a whole The hardy hole and the damage done when they tried to plug it and weld it in An a close up of some of the arc gouging.

I am sorry for getting defensive, but I understand where you are coming from and hadn't realized how important a statement as to how I appropriately came by it would be as important as it is. If you had just posted you had Steel, it would have been fine. You made an open statement it came from the railroad. That is a resource that some smiths may not know should not be used to casually collect salavge, it should be stated how you got RR properrty to prevent someone else from getting arrested from not knowing.

If it's marine corps property and was given to me then I don't see where the problem is. If anything it would fall back into the person who have me permission (site head), not me.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pics beforehand (which was I'll thought on my part!) so when I go see it next I will take some pictures. Hopefully the remaining arc gouging (which is the first time I've heard that term, but explains it perfectly) isn't as deep as I originally thought. But I'll get some pics up as soon as I can.

So I have a friend who does some metal sculptural stuff with his shop but he rents from another guy, well the other guy was given a fisher a couple years back and was going to take it to the scrap yard because it had been in someone's shop and it had been welded on and all kinds of abuse. So he have it to my friend, who already has a Vulcan that he likes and uses, and being that he doesn't use it much he gave it to me! But beside the buildup it is a lovely anvil. (This is my second fisher) anyway, the face had been welded on, they had taken a 1" round bar about 4" long and jammed it in the hole and welded one side to the anvil, my wife and I removed that with some drilling and crafty sledging (to no further damage to the anvil which is about #130 if my guess is right, it's smaller than my #150 but not by a whole lot). I then took a flap disk on my angle grinder to remove the raised portions that had been welded onto the face, but here is still some pitting that is bad enough to show in the work that it would be handling. So my problem comes in that I don't want to grind it down till it smooth because it only so much of a hard face, but it is still pretty unfortunate. I was planning on taking it to a welder I know to repair one of the edges and the part of the hardy hole that the welding had melted away when they tried to plug it, but he said he would have to do some preheating, will the preheating do more damaging than using the hard facing rod would help? Is it worth hard facing the entire face to get it to the point where it won't show in the work?

I understand what you are saying, and I know this is a bit off to the side of the topic at hand, but when I was first tought to forge weld they brought in a bucket of old horse shoes and had us scarf the top of one tip of the shoe, flip it over and scarf the opposite tip. Then you would clean off the scale, overlap them, add flux, then bring to welding heat and it's one easy hit and it usually welded for first timers (providing they were at the appropriate heat and cleaned/fluxed beforehand)

If/when I try it I will be sure to let the wisdom or error of my ways come forth and share my experience.

I am most certainly not asking anyone to go out and do research for me, but I am indeed calling upon the wisdom of those who have more experience than me. I am sure that for myself and for most of the people on IFI knowledge of the craft in most cases is something to be shared not hoarded, and if someone were to have tried it would this not be the place to look? And if it is not found then to ask? And I very well might try it when the means allows, but for the time being, since I do not have the means as of yet I was wondering if anyone either shared my curiosity or had any previous experience or knowledge of it. An what difference does it make for you type something here versus someplace else? You are clearly going to type something somewhere regardless, however you are choosing to waste your time typing up something as useless as chastisement without correction or caution. However, Thankyou ThomasPowers for explaining to me the reasons behind why is a waste of time.

So even though you are adding oxygen and hydrogen and propane together, and whatever is in the atmosphere should you not produce enough hho for it to be the only thing drawn in, it could very well burn cooler?

I don't know how interested you are in buying components, but you can buy beer/wine bottle torches, and it's basically just a wic with a stopper that can adjust how much wic is available (the workings of an oil lantern essentially) then you can make the stand and put little beer bottle torches out and about.

My idea wasn't to get it hotter than normal, merely to use less propane psi. But again, still very much hypothetical, my brain just gets curious but doesn't have the means to test it in many cases, do I dig for information among the wiser. :)

Well thankfully there wouldn't be thousands of cubic yards of only hydrogen and paint with lead in it haha I was thinking a car battery doing the separating and a solar panel doing the charging of the battery, and yes I understand that's ridiculous, however, I'm really just thinking in the hypothetical, not something I am willing to pour precious time and money in for unknown results. I've just seen them use a small hho generator to create enough gasses to make a little torch out of, so as to a supplement a propane forge.

So I spit this question out in the chat room last night and got some fun answers in return, but I want to know If anyone else knows what will Happen! So here is the idea: I have a diamondback forge which normally uses propane and whatever the oxygen content of the atmosphere around them. Now what would happen if I were to take an HHO generator, which uses electolosis to separate water into it's dual gassious form: hydrogen and oxygen. So these generators produce the gas (aka brown gas) on demand, which means you can't you really store it because if you do it will eventually recombine back into water, which means you can't pressurize it. So, if it were to flow into the intake, what will the effects be?