Ian

I hope Philips OK, sounds biblical in the scope of the disaster. That said he's a Tyke, just plain harder to finish off than most.

Thats not faster than someone can blink unless my Maths wrong. LOL. Drawing faster than your adversary can react is the real test, 460 milliseconds would likely do.

As far as having an impact to a maker in England goes I see little here to concern me. Illegal to 'BUY', seems to be the big Hoohaa here, I see no mention of the word 'Sell'

Beside which, if I do make a japanese style Katana then purely by dint of being a hand made replica I think it falls outside of the 'wall hanger' bracket this legislation is aimed at. I'd also guess my prices would keep non serious collectors/enthusiasts away.

Good excuse to play with Sketchup Frosty :D

Thats 300 to 400 milliseconds or 3/10th to 4/10th of a second on average apparently.
I think I'd like to see that with my own eyes
Youtube?

She's getting there mate, like that home made pulley

If its 280lb then it's twenty stone. I can lift that. Used to do it every day BTW Dale Try? Do or do not, there is no try :)

Ow do all

Theres an anvil for sale at a local auction, its a double bicked type, the measurements are 39" long by 5" wide. The base is 17" wide. There's no height except including the stand at 28 1/2". The Auction list it as aprox 200lb in weight. Thing is that seems low given those measurements. Can anybody give me a better guestimate than that?
You can see some damage to the top so this thing has to be heavy enough to warrent my attention, budget has to stretch :)

I might be way off the mark here, but we've used dimmer switches of a high amp rating to dial in the speed of the forge blower (which is a motor after all) could somthing similar be done to create a variable speed grinder? Even proper dedicated speed control boxes are available here, but they're expensive. Still if they'd work they'd convert a current cheaper non VS to VS right? So long as the control box and cheap grinder worked out at a decent saving on a true VS grinder I don't see a downside.
Thoughts?

Titans, Gladiators and Centurians.....

Titans come from Greek mythology and were a race of Elder Gods who were in charge before Zeus (The Son of a Titan himself) and the rest of the Younger Gods came along and beat them up to take over at the top of the Greek divinity league.
Gladiators were paid fighters who fought in the various Arena's around the Roman empire. They would fight against other Gladiators, convicted criminals and even wild animals for the paying publics entertainment. As a side note the thumbs down actually spared a fighters life contrary to what the popular conception is.
And lastly a Centurion is a Roman military rank, denoting an officer in charge of a Centuria (strangely this wasn't 100 men but instead 80) from whome the name originates.

And before anybody asks, no I didn't do a web search, just visited the Library a lot as a kid.

I've seen a pretty neat vertical forge design, with the burner in the lid pointing down but failing a rather wordy explanation of it you should PM Glenn Moon (Moony) from down under. It's his design so he might have some photo's, I've only got a shot of it in the far background, hard to see.

He's right you know....
:)

"Keeping it real" in a post apocalyptic world......

Characters find sign posts, tear them down. Take them back to basecamp. Build big, BIG bonfire (always looks good on film) and throw signs in fire from upwind. Go have tea and cakes well upwind and in a brooding way until fires burned out. Recover signs (now happily free of nasties) and set to making spears. They would have some sort of safety gear for Oxy cutting and for welding, no ifs buts or maybe's. Its a fundamental. Now grinding without eye protection is indeed 'do-able' but in a very similar way that russian roullette is 'do-able', not my kind of odds. You have to assume the characters have some smarts, if not them then certainly your adience has, and will hoot and cat call all thats not right.

Tres Bon Norman

Very nice John, very nice indeed. Glad to see a bit of quality coming over the pennines in the opposite direction for a change. ;)

Philip, there are two names you need to remember. Both gentlemen post on Iforge and both are Anyang reps for their respective countries. Glenn Moon (MOONY) is the man if you're down under, he's a great bloke and knows shedloads and John Nicholson (John N) is the man if you're on the English side of the pond. John also owns/runs Massey (yes THAT Massey) and funnily enough is also a great bloke who knows a worryingly large amount about how power hammers work.

Try PMing either of them and I'm sure you'll get some honest answers

Personally I got about 20 minutes go on a 25kg Anyang at Ironbridge during the BABA AGM. Great tool, really great. Guess who hauled it and a few others down there for people to try?

Despite the fact that this is a 'wall hanger' I strongly advise that you charge for the piece according to the work you've put into it mate, even if its for a friend.
I made an item of personal proctection for a very close friend of mine and didn't charge at all. Several of her colleagues have seen the piece and want one themselves but are offering far less than a fair rate to me to make them because she told them I gave it to her for nothing. End result is I'm not making them and they think I'm too pricey all because I didn't charge my friend what the piece was actually worth in my time.

Bear in mind also that every job you do for less than it should be makes it harder for you to charge what its really worth in the long run. A lot of guys and girls struggle to do this full time because other Smiths (usually it has to be said, hobbyists) aren't charging a real world rate for their work. I fully understand that they don't need or want to because it's not their full time job but they should remember for some it is. If everyone charged properly then more of us could do this and actually eat.

I have three proper hammers and one double pein hammer. My favourite and most used is the diagonal pein hammer I made with Glen Moon. Not sure on the weight of it, guess 3lb or over. Then I have a small 2lb Peddinghaus cross pein for light work and another hammer I made with Moony thats based on the classic Smiths ball pein. Both faces are round, one is really flat, the other quite rounded. All handles are wood, not a fan of fibreglass, don't like the shock transmition.

GOMEZ!!!
Thought me ears were burning

When I first got bitten by the Smithing bug I did what many of us do and did a Google search. That led me to Anvilfire and a huge wealth of information within their Ifi how to's. From using that site I learned about Iforge and have been using this site ever since.
Having used the two sites for several years I still prefer this one for several reasons, including layout, image content and regularity of new information and so on, but I would like to add one last thing, that has cemented this place as 'home' for me. When I was thinking about my trip and discussed the possibility of it on both sites and whether anyone thought a 'roving reporter' would be an interesting idea I was met with utter indifference by Anvilfire. The members were politely interested, the site admin never even replied. Perhaps they thought I was full of... well you know. Guess they know I'm not now, never have been, never will be.

Glenn on the other hand got in touch with me personally and asked me to post what I could, when I could over at Iforge, he felt it was a fantastic opportunity for the folks to see what the rest of the world was up to.

I agreed. I wish I had more hours in my day to get the rest of it all updated, but you know what? The skills I learned over the past three years thanks to both sites has meant I'm now self employed as a Smith, and I work seven days a week as a result. Soon as I'm in the black I can cut my hours enough to spend the time needed to try and do it. The odd hour here or there isn't even making a dent in the mountain.

I've been 'teaching' classes myself for a couple of months now (I say 'teaching' like that deliberately, I know sweet Fanny Adams about Smithing when I really think about it) and the course was tailored to what the people who took the classes wanted. By that I simply mean that they were shown the very basics of Smithing such as pointing, scrolling and bending etc etc, nothing complex at all, and then asked to come up with somthing they wanted to make.
I then explained to each individual in brief outline how the project could be done, what tools and material was needed and then let them do it under my overall supervision. As each new tool or technique was needed they were shown it.
Personally, while I can definately see the advantages to this style of class in terms of 'customer satisfaction' I do not consider it a class that is trying to teach blacksmithing as a whole for obvious reasons. I'm merely the man doing what I'm getting paid to do.

I could set out my own idea's of a 'proper' course, and when I'm running my own forge one day thats what I'll do :D

Not to sound overly harsh IN THE LEAST but if you don't have the basic skills required to make a forge (and lets be honest a shovel isn't rocket science) then you need to go and talk to a working Blacksmith or Farrier and throw yourself on their mercy for help.

Now, the shovel joke.... well strictly speaking that isn't actually a joke. A few thousand years ago forges were often scraped out of the ground, they were dug like an upside down Igloo, and often pointed with the 'igloo entrance' pointing into the prevailing wind. Bellows of course removed the need for a 'weather eye' and were a better idea and the simplest were animal skins over another couple of holes. The edges were covered in soil then the skins lifted and pushed into the holes to create an air blast. A bit of further research will fill in the other blanks on this system.

Today however I'd build a first time forge differently, especially if I was thinking of using it on a regular basis. Glenns oil drum forge is a good place to start from and is in the blueprint section BP0133 55 Forge and BP0238 Simple Side Blast 55 Forge. If you don't want to read that then quickly put, find an old brake drum, some bits of old exhaust of a size close to the hole in the brake drum, some old hoover pipe and the blower out of an old (but preferably working) tumble dryer. If I tell you that the fire needs air from the bottom then how the parts list comes together as a forge should sort of fall into place.

You could make the crucifixes that are on here or how about Lucky Horse shoe key fobs? Check Anvilfire.com Iforge section for the BP, the belt buckle is a great idea too.
Never made an acorn myself but I could think of a few ways. From one piece of steel I'd say start with round bar, then a side set chisel (butcher?) in a guillotene tool (think making a tenon but don't draw the tenon down). You can then upset the bar back into the lip (remember the lip of the 'tenon' doesn't have to be big, you only need that line that differentiates the acorn from the cup) which will also bulge the rod into a more rounded profile. Draw from the back of the lip down to a stem. On the other end you need to forge it into the shape of the acorn tip. Hope this makes some sort of sense.
There's probably a dead easy way but that's what popped into my head

Others will know more than me and will hopefully step up if I'm wrong but I know quite a few blokes who've used RR track for tools. In point of fact I took a chunk I had stored down to the forge I work at a few days back ( a 200 mile trip btw ) because I reckon it will make some very nice hardy tools. As to making a hammer I don't see why not. I might try one myself from this stuff.
Just to clear things up the 200 mile trip wasn't just for the chunk of RR. I also shifted all of my silver working gear (gas furnace, Reil style burner, burn out oven, vacuum jig, debubbler table, crucibles etc etc)

Thanks for posting that Case, exactly the one I was thinking of :D

I got six pairs of socks, same in grundies. Two aftershave/shower gell kits, a pint mug for morning coffee (Yes I really do need that much in the morning to function above an inarticulate grunt) a bunch of chocolate type stuff, a Billy Connelly DVD, forced to go clothes shopping and spend my own money (LMAO, got to love your Mum) and a calendar with everyones birthdays on it already. No excuse for forgetting now (I did say you have to love Mum didn't I?)
I also bought myself a 2 foot stainless steel ruler, a sliding right angle and a set of 6"calipers (they'll measure inside and outside diameter down to 0.5mm or 1/128") to try and get over the horror of clothes shopping

Best present was seeing just how much bigger my 9 year old niece Holly had gotten since I last saw her.

Why not make an electric heat treating oven? In fact I thought a lot of knife makers used a normal domestic oven to heat treat? If you can get the guts of one a simple kiln type box around lightweight refractory bricks would work well IMO. The refractory bricks are much better than the standard refractory in a cooker so it would probably get a lot hotter too, but remain 'dialable'. I've seen designs somewhere for a really nice electric furnace on the net. Think it was one of the british knife forums.