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I Forge Iron

Bryce Masuk

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Everything posted by Bryce Masuk

  1. My striking could have been better but I had fun and the hammer turned out nice. everything has been great down here and I have learned quite a bit
  2. you should make a few styles of bolts these are good things to have and complete the package on bigger projects you shouldnt be charging less than 10 dollars a bolt up to double that they arent hard to make and they dont take too long to forge the finishing takes time though make samples and build a shelf fill it up and as the work gets better scrap the worst of your stuff
  3. you could also weld a block on to the head of a bolt and forge that into the head this saves tapping them if you had to make alot of them you would spend more time tapping than forging for sure. doing it the right way is best though make them from scratch you should quench the shank right up to the shoulder when heading the bolt though usually if its a small bolt (1/4 shank) will have to for sure then at the end heat the whole thing up red hot and let it anneal
  4. doesnt seem like alot of fun to me but you gotta do what you gotta do your boy will be real good on that hammer pretty quick doing this all day once you turn it over to him. seems like alot of work what is the heat treating process on these things do you anneal them before you forge them then anneal after forging, then quench and then temper? or can you cut and forge them in the first heat? all in all its alot of work for the money, but good practice
  5. The one I have used is made by walter its called an anox gun I dont know how it works exactly I figure its low voltage 12 to 24 volts you put the ground on and hit the button and it cleans the weld of oxides you can also use pickleing paste for the same purpose now that I think of it its pretty expensive but you dont use very much its about 100 dollars for a small container but like I said it goes a long way. If you can tig weld nicely you shouldnt grind the welds unless your making a square corner or polishing it smooth
  6. If I ever have any money again at least I know where to buy a power hammers have fun with it larry at least you have a plan
  7. its been awhile since I have been able to use a real computer I have been posting on my cell phone so I couldnt really view the pictures all that well, but they are excelent Alec, you seem like a very hard working young man, you have really done a great job and I am sure the hardwork has really paid off for you and Brian and Lyle, I am sure it was really rewarding to teach you and a great lesson in itself. you can really go anywhere with your ability's I wouldnt be concerned with where exactly you head but rather heading in the direction that makes you happy. obviously you have something special going on in your head, the more you blacksmith the more you will find its mental than anything, maybe its because the physical aspect becomes easier or because you know what you want to do quicker. Not many people at your age have your work ethic, and the ability to stick to what they are doing, as a young person I had many hobbies and many of them became my life but I never really stuck to anything I would do one thing for about 3-6 months and then quit and start something new and do it everyday until I was entirely bored of it. I started blacksmithing when I was about 14 but I didnt have equipment or resources to learn from so I wasnt steady about learning it 1. taking anything electronic or mechanical apart and putting it back together (once when my dad went to work when I was 9 I took his brand new lawn mower entirely apart and attempted to convert it into a gocart) 2. guitar I used to play but now I dont 3. shooting 4. racing remote control cars (not cheap ones but ones where you would go to a track and race them) 5. Making knives (I started making homemade ones from lawn mower blade 6. setting traps all over our old property (once I decided to protect our tree's with welding wire I took a whole roll and wrapped it around all the trees in the front of the property because the linesmen were cutting and trimming trees. after I had the wire setup I simply plugged it into 110 volt power and burned myself (I think this was the same year I took apart the lawnmower) eventually I progressed and began to work on other engines gopeds and and chainsaws and then I was rebuilding small block chevy's and building up all kinds of things, that were loud eventually I would go and work in a machine shop it wasnt too bad but eventually I got bored and decided that being a heavy duty mechanic would be better and it was for awhile. anyways the point I am trying to make is that there are alot of things to do and to work with in the world and that you should experiance them as much as you can, just keep up the blacksmithing dont burn yourself out on it, stay steady with it but do it because you love to do it and not because you feel compelled to do it.
  8. Obviously alec has the most important thing, a positive attitude and a great desire to be a blacksmith. Everyone has all kinds of potential as we get older we lose sight of the real things we want and think of what other people are doing rather than what we wanted in the first place. I bet alot me people are looking at this any right now and feeling pretty self concious
  9. Using a electric acid gun works wonders on removing the black oxides from things like that but even just muriatic acid and a little time should get them clean pretty easy an anox gun will clean them almost entirely in less than a minute to finish you could buff to mirror if it had no pitting
  10. Hey its no big deal but it certainly wont hurt, little by little things are coming together. all it took was a couple years of dedication plus my birthday is in april so its kind of a nice gift to get april http://www.lincolnelectric.com/LEExtranet/community/newsletters/archive_detail.aspx?id=2481 its been a little while since I have gotten into the forge so I will be looking forward to heading to newham forge in hamilton next week and I will bring my video camera and try to get some footage of john on his massey hammer Glen mentioned making a forum to display my travels and hopefully will allow me to meet new people all over the place involved in blacksmithing
  11. Im not afraid to get turned down, if you dont knock on doors they dont open,
  12. I have been out in ontario for awhile now working and saving up to make this a real adventure I am going to work with brian brazeal in the middle of may I have a good Video camera and enough money to head anywhere in the world, I plan on putting all my footage once its edited and nice for free viewing on youtube and I am willing to record footage for people for their own promotion or instructional purposes. I want to work in the states and get ready to head to europe and do everything I can in this trip and learn as much as possible if anyone has work to do and is willing to give me a roof over my head let me know once things are wrapped up with brian I can come and work with you if your interested. I am willing to head anywhere in the united states where I can learn you can get me at monsterpirate@gmail.com or 905 462 4596 the most I will be staying in the united states is 6 month's because that is what I am allowed, after that I am thinking england or ireland is where I am headed
  13. I would suggest using something thicker than 16 gauge the problem with aluminum is that is cracks from vibration and stress alot easier than steel using about 1/8th will be better or you could using quite a bit of cross bracing or breaking if you have a access to a press break plus if your going to mig weld it its going to be easier to weld .120 with the spool gun your probley going to want .030 or .035 wire and you will need pure argon to weld aluminum you may find that its easier to build a frame out of channel and angle and than use sheet to close it up depending on your access to a press break
  14. I always thought all aluminum mig welding was spray arc? at least that is what I have always done, maybe short circuit works with large diameter wire? I would get the job first and get a used miller 251 or lincoln 255 with a spool gun. your going to want a 250 class machine its the way to go for general shop stuff
  15. No doubt you still cant do things the way you would with a helper, the problem is you need to find someone who is as obsessed as you are and you need to be able to pay them. Its funny because most people think that "skills" in society would be the basis in which you should be paid to a certain degree that might be right but the truth its more about how much money you generate or how close you are to the hand that pays the money. I can imagine that if someone worked for you for 4 years and you are paying them as much as you can say 22-30 dollars per hour when they could be doing something easier and get the same pay, (like driving a truck or whatever) eventually they will give into the easier thing for more money and less effort unless of course they truly have the passion to be a blacksmith. a power hammer or a press with a lot of tooling can do nearly anything involving shouldering upsetting and drawing out if you are inventive. look at the work of yellin and fritz kuhn and much of that stuff can be done better and faster by skilled men, as many as it takes like a rivet crew working as a team perfectly timed. I try to imagine that anything can be done in a instant, if only we are ready. It goes for anything and everything in life, whether you sing a song, paint a picture, or catch a football. the real trick of all of this with blacksmithing is that much of it you cant do without 2 people or more or done with any power tools it can only be done by hand, so somehow the smith's must have some type of bond or experiance working together with others in this fashion, too bad not much is around for us as north american's to do this, our society is mostly based around people working in massive organizations entirely separate from other people. on wikipedia it mention that there are nearly 900 000 people that in in the kami caste in nepal, whether they are all blacksmithing doing other things now is something that I really dont know about, maybe these people are getting striking experiance because they make most of there stuff from leaf springs they are probley hot splitting them from full size and drawing them down pretty close to the finished blade because electricity isnt that avalible to everyone out there and a torch is probley expensive compared to labour. they may make some amazing ironwork that we know little of over there,
  16. having a separate shop is much better in another way, once you leave and go there their are no distractions just work and you go there and you work 10 hours straight and you have nothing else no coffee machine and no phone. no bs no hold backs once you go there you work and you focus on that
  17. massive shop sounds like the best route, if it really sucks to drive there you could always be using it while building the new one I wish I could have a shop that I could store all my material in and everything plus the money to build a small shop could be put into tools for your shop or training
  18. things you can do to help are work the steel as hot as possible and maybe weld a bar on instead of using tongs on a short piece, or use long bars instead of tongs get a striker or taper the end like people said or use a 8lb hammer with a short handle (also good for straightening things) working as hot as possible is your best bet or else your going to hurt yourself doing too much of this kind of stuff, teaming up is the best thing you can do. hit hard and stay loose
  19. Leaving tomorrow morning I will still have the web for abit but once I am out of ontario I will be only able to use internet cafe's
  20. Has anyone heard of james burkes "connections" from 1978? book and tv series and then they also made 2 other series at later dates He goes into full details about all of this kind of stuff and he starts from when people first stopped being nomads and began to become specialized, invention of the plow and many other things. now we are super specialized! all we have to do is load the part into the machine and let it do the work lol this is the true downfall of society very few people will know how to survive when things dont function. but the reality is that we know its going to happen! the people of my generation, in canada at least recognize this everyone that I know in my age group wants to escape working a 9-5 and work off the land together in small community's its crazy it must be some kind of natural trigger because you wont find anyone with half a brain that is in my age group that doesnt recognize it, without food and water in a city 10% of the people may survive like when the persian's destroyed the roman's aquaducts they couldnt produce food or have clean water and eventually city's went from 100 000 people to 10 000. now they dont even produce food in any city a community garden usually wouldnt even feed the people maintaining it let alone anyone else. no power or gas in your home for a week and its minus -20 outside are you going to survive? can you fix it in a week? honestly though back to the topic, people have great respect for people with real skills these days because so few people actually do, I use my powerhammer in a regular suburban neighbour hood, no one complains about the noise because they know I am working. sometimes people would complain in the past because I would be working at 10:30 (not with the hammer) after I finished work but I stopped that I usually stop before 7 o clock now, I guarantee if I was making noise with something non productive people would complain. in the past it was pretty hard to start to learn much about blacksmithing, but now since it has been coming back alive I honestly can only see it growing because of the information on the web and better quality books for the basic's like mark asperys book's. I had the orginal edge of the anvil and sure it TALKS about what mark asprey EXPLAINS but it doesnt give you enough info to really figure it out and use it. I am sure that if we had more hobby smiths more people would be interested in buying blacksmithing work because you increase the exposure of the craft yet people who do it as a hobby usually arent able to produce the same things or at least on the same scale as a professional smith and if they were that good they would probley want to be a professional.
  21. Its not hard to catch something chained to a anvil ;)
  22. Yes I saw the chess board its amazing, I really think its a great piece of art I dont know where he comes up with his idea's its pretty awesome to see people making things like that, even with power equipment to make that piece must have been a very serious amount of hours. I saw the video of the making of it it must have taken along time with the fly press to make that happen he must have came and used your hammer or had strikers to draw out the bottom that supports each tile. Eventually I will probley be taking you up on that offer, right now I am trying to see what I can make happen in the states and ontario eventually once I regroup and organize my life heading to the uk will absolutely be possible. I would probley have the time of my life seeing all of the interesting things over there most of my family orginated in england and scotland and came to canada, my last name is Masuk but I am 1/4 or less ukrainian it just happened that way, my mom's father was a Manley and my grandmother is a Bell Irving my other grandmother is also from england. I would be interesting to see the family estates and such and view the land, as much of the uk seems to be very incredible both natural landscape wise and man made I already told myself I was going to head to europe eventually but I really wanted to make sure I was ready and able to do whatever I would get the chance to, the better I am the more I would get to do and the more I would learn. A W.B yeats poem is pretty fitting since he is from sligo, I havent read much of his work but I am intrigued now,
  23. I always thought there were a few good shops down there at least in virginia there are some good blacksmiths I know that for sure frank turley's subsitute teacher moved back down there to work with bunch of people in a large shop by today's means doing alot of restoration type work I would suspect all over the east coast.
  24. they would run a main to a breaker and run the individual machines of smaller lines coming to a specific breaker for each line. you could also run a main to 3 boxes and put a plug on each piece of equipment if it supports it, or you could also simply use a lighter line and only run things at specific times, say your welding your probley not also running the belt sander at load both at once or you would have to be smart and not let the compressor flip on at the same time as welding, having the machine on isnt a big deal but drawing a load is a different story. or you would provide enough power to run everything you will have to figure all that out depending on how much you want to spend and how perment its going to be, if you wanted to add a fuse to the box and run something off that it might be cheaper than running a new main off the meter and then a new breaker box. depends on what you need if you need more than 50 amps you probley need to spring for the whole system if you can run off 30 amp you might be able to use a 220 volt extension cord
  25. If you can go to england, Go If I could have I would have, not only are you going to get to learn about blacksmithing but your heading into the history of the craft because european's developed the craft into what it is now though the past, not only will you be able to see great art and historical sites its going to entirely change your perspective if you willing to put the work into seeing it and learning about it. eventually its my goal to head to europe and do the journeyman thing, life is out there its not in one spot if you want to be a part of it you cant sit still, there is too much time to do that for too long your idea's will come from life and you might as well have as interesting one as possible. you can see the quality of work produced in england though various people or people from england who have left and most of it lends itself to high quality of craft and style, by those who actually care about the work the same as anywhere else location doesnt mean everything
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