Jump to content
I Forge Iron

Ian

Members
  • Posts

    642
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Ian

  1. LOL Strine, if you don't know I'm not telling As for flying the Chopper Coup, last thing I flew was a Vigilant glider when I was 14 I'm living in my own place now mate but it's only two miles away from Choppers and he has a fridge big enough to store beer at his place :D
  2. Hey guys, always nice to see everyone getting together for a chinwag. I'll be sure to look 'youse blokes' up if I get over to Western Oz in 'The Bumble Bee' . IAN
  3. You always get one, don't you? As an Object d'art that's actually very good Strine, any chance of a demo on that? You know where I am :D
  4. It was my privelidge and my good fortune to have talked with Ralph, both on the forums we visit as Smiths and through emails we exchanged. I never truly knew just how bad his illness was effecting him until the news of his death came. I'd like to say that in my talks with him I found a man with an incredible amount of dignity and an innate sense of right and wrong. I had talked with him about my trip and he'd promised me that when I came over to the states next year we would share a beer over his forge. It is with heartfelt regret that I now find that this will never happen. It is my loss entirely. I'll keep that drink ready for when next we meet. Ralph Douglas was a GOOD man, a brave man and a special man. I think we would have been good friends in person. It was my privelidge to be his friend at the end of a keyboard. Dawn, my DEEPEST sympathies to you and your family, if there is anything you need or anything that I can do then PLEASE let me know. He was a special man and he loved you very, very much. "He was a man who danced on the side of the angels". Goodbye my Friend, you will be remembered. Ian
  5. Karl, Got to the 'edit post' option or 'Reply to Thread' option and scroll down the page. Just under the window you type in is another box with 'Additional Options'. There's a button labeled 'Manage Attachments', click on that and you'll open up a new window. From there you can either upload a file directly from your computer or put in a URL from a photo hosting site like Yahoo Photo's or Coppermine etc etc. If you download from your computer then make sure it will fit by resizing it (maximum for most file types is 39.1KB) A link will then appear in your post. Clicking on that will open the picture for everyone to see. If you use a Photo hosting website and a URL then someone else will have to give you a step by step because I've never done it that way! :)
  6. Check out a book called 'The Blacksmiths Craft' . It's available online (as an Adobe Acrobat pdf file) for free at: http://www.countryside.gov.uk/Newenterprise/economies/craftpublications.asp Scroll a third of the way down the page to see the available titles. You want to read through part two of 'The Blacksmiths Craft' specificaly as that deals with heat, colors of heat and what jobs can be done at the different heats. Hope this helps a little P.S. There are 8 titles there that are worth downloading and reading and they're completely FREE!!! :)
  7. Ah classic STODGE!!!! You know if there's one thing I missed while being away was a really decent Yorkshire Pudding, actually ANY kind of Yorkshire Pudding The folks in Europe just don't know what they're missing, at least before I came home I managed to introduce it to a few. Here's my own recipe, the ratio's can just be halved or doubled depending on the servings you want (this makes 6 decent sized puddings): 2 Cups of plain flower 1 Cup of eggs (as many whole eggs as it takes to fill the same cup you used for the flour and milk) 2 cups of whole (unskimmed, full fat) milk 1/2 tsp of salt 1 tsp Black Pepper (finely ground) 1 tbs beef dripping, melted Beat the eggs together as if you were going to scamble them, then slowly add them to the flour in a bowl and mix in gently until you have a thick almost paste like mix. Add the milk a small amount at a time and stir in gently with a whisk, keep adding the milk until you are happy with the thickness of the batter (this may take the full two cups, but if not it's not a problem). It should be a thick batter, nothing like, say, a Tempura batter. The consistency of double cream, maybe a tad thicker. The big mistake people make with Yorkshire Pudding is to beat the living daylights out of the mix with a whisk, all you want is to combine the ingredients into a smooth batter, if you whisk it too much it may not rise properly and thats what a 'real' Yorkshire Pud is all about. I know it sounds strange but try it both ways and see which rise most often. The other trick is to let the batter stand and settle for half an hour in the fridge while your heating the rest of the BEEF DRIPPING in the pudding pans, when the mix comes out of the fridge just GENTLY stir it if it's seperated at all, if not then leave it well alone and just pour it into the SMOKING hot pudding pans. Thats the other trick to getting your puddings to rise, the fat in the pans has to be smoking hot. Apart from that follow the cooking times Basil gives you above, but keep an eye on the little Devils, I've seen them rise so much they start lifting up the shelf above! LOL Remove when the top edges are just starting to turn a dark brown, everything else should be a lovely golden colour. Make sure that you serve them with a really good gravy, it really does complete the dish. My favourite gravy is liver, sausage and onion gravy. Just cook the sausages and liver with some sweated onions IN the gravy mix in a deep roasting pan (the one you'd roast a chicken in works well) and then strain out the gravy. The sausages taste amazing, even though they are pale and the liver will crumble on your tongue. Mwaah! Bellisimo! p.s. As a twist you can add a splash of white wine vinegar to the mix for a bit of bite, finely chopped mint if your serving them with lamb, all sorts of things. Experiment! This really is a simple and filling bit of Classic Stodge from my birthplace, Gods own YORKSHIRE! :)
  8. Welcome aboard Mark This is a site dedicated to helping folks who want to learn how to mash metal into somthing beautiful, useful, strange, whatever! A wise man said Knowledge must be shared or else it lies dead in the mind, so feel free to share yours, it's what this place was built for :)
  9. Could be miles off the bat here because I can't tell just how big that anvil is physically. Anyway, the 17 1/2 could be Stones, which is an English stystem of weight still in use here today. A 'Stone' equals 14 pounds, so potentially that anvil could weigh 245lbs. From the look of the photos I wouldn't bet money on that though, just a thought
  10. If you're going to cast the handles onto the knife blade then T-Gold raises a very good point about lost wax not being the ideal way to try this, burn out temps are very high and unless you can do it in an inert atmosphere (doubtful) you'll get scaling on your steel, this would present a problem as far as the metal bonding to the blade goes. Even if you drill the tang to help with keying you may still end up with a rattling handle after some use. Then you've got the problem of a hot piece of steel in a very delicate mold, where would your anchoring points be for the blade in the mould to keep it aligned, and to stop it rattling loose, especially if you were using centrifugal casting? That in itself makes me nervous as an idea. Vacuum or vacuum assisted would be the only safe way and to be honest I just think it would be way too problematic to waste time trying. I certainly think that sand casting is THE best way to attempt this, cope and drag seem to lend themselves to this idea much better, you can carve wooden patterns and experiment a little, as long as there are no undercuts in the pattern I think you've a lot of scope to play around with. I have done a fair bit of casting, including attempts to cast one metal onto another (Silver onto gold). The main problem is making sure the surface of the metal being cast onto has a suitable texture for the new material to key to properly (usually undercuts and such are used in jewellery) and ensuring it's as clean as you can get it. The suggestion of drilling holes into the tang seems to be a good one to my mind if your going to try sand casting, because your not making scale on the blade you can cast onto a clean surface. Heating the blade as much as you can without causing scaling 'may' help because the Aluminium will chill as it hits the blade and this might cause shrinkage porostiy and problems with getting a decent and complete cast. Also make sure you have nice thick risers so any shrinkage you get (and you will get some) can pull additional liquid from them and not from around your cast handles. Of course the problems of heat treating the blade and such are beyond my experience, I've done a lot more casting than I have blade making. I think Aluminium would work well for the handles but I'm not too sure about it's strength with regards to use in the cross guard. Brass or bronze might be a safer bet for that. This is an idea I wondered about myself a long time ago but never got round to trying. I'd love to know how it works out. As an aside... Most genuine sword furniture was made in three our four pieces. The cross guard was made first and secured (firstly by being a tight hammered fit to the shoulders of the blade and then by the edges of the tang opening on the top of the guard being peened to wedge the sides against the tang) then the pommel was made and secured (the best way was to hot peen the tang over the pommel at the base after the pommel has been hammered onto the tang tightly) and lastly the grip was placed onto the tang and fixed in place ( wooden slabs, glued, then wrapped with thin muslin type material soaked in glue, then cord binding with more glue, then the leather, formed wet and stitched in place). This is according to a conversation I had while visiting Peter Johnsson (pretty much the best Sword Smith in Sweden, and highly respected throughout europe) and watching him work. Have a look here http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/johnsson/swords-museum.htm ) I've handled the Svante Nilsson Sture sword Peter made and I can tell you he is genuinely passionate about making the 'real deal' and that sword was. :)
  11. LOL, first thing I could grab that wouldn't bounce the flash back at the camera ;)
  12. Hi folks, there's been a lot of discussion on forge welding and I posted that my first ever was just a simple billet, so here are two pictures of it for folks to look at. Nothing earth shattering, but it's just to show that if even complete novices like myself can do it then there's hope for anyone! enjoy
  13. I really like those Doc Reminds me of being camped out by a lake in Sweden and being woken up the next morning by a strange "swiff,swiff,swiff,THUNK"!! sound. Got out the tent to discover a bunch of Swedish pensioners next door practicing their axe throwing skills with a HUGE ( to my eyes ) double headed throwing axe and managed to persuade then to let me have a go myself. One of the younger chaps had two little bearded axes he was throwing as well, which brings me to the relevancy. They were pierced too, in the shape of a star burst (8 pointed star). Any way I really liked them and those sort of reminded me of them, great work. :)
  14. LOL! You'd have to hit that puck pretty quick Roger, otherwise you'll be digging in the snow to find it! Superb! I really like the way you forge stuff for current events too, very funny :)
  15. Can you imagine 'The Doc' using anything else Thomas? :)
  16. I agree with the above post, a clean fire helps a lot. Here in England a lot of older Smiths don't actually use any flux, just a very clean fire. A new fire is still burning off a lot of the impurities from the coal, and you can use this time to pile up coal around the fire to coke up a little for when you start to forge weld. A simple billet is what I started with but a folded over weld, like you'd find on the end of a fire poker is a good place to start. If you have access to a welder you can make a billet of several pieces stacked on top on each other and tack weld a bead on each end to hold then together and to put them onto a handle so your not faffing around with tong juggling. Make sure the metal is clean before you stack it. Make sure that you heat the metal evenly (turning it in the fire so each side is in the blast) and allow it to 'soak' for long enough that the metal is at the right heat all the way through. Everyone has their own ideas of the right time to try to weld, but if the metal is sparking then its burning, your looking for the point when the steel has a sheen to it like melted butter does on toast. Others will say as soon as you see the first spark, it's all relative. Time and experience are the best teachers here. I'd also recommend reading ANYTHING written by Dr Jim Hrisoulas as well. He's an acknowledged master of pattern welding and posts on this forum under the moniker of JPH. He doesn't tack weld his billets together but wraps them with wire to keep them together, I'm not that clever yet Someone told me the only way to get really good at forge welding is to try and do at least one everytime you light up the forge. Good advice. Let us know how you get on. p.s. A safety note: The fire and metal will potentially get VERY bright so staring into/at it for any length of time is not recommended. There are tinted glasses on the market, but I don't know the in's and out's of them.
  17. That really shows the pattern nicely Dennis, sweet! I like this style of knife, like someone said, makes a good 'eating' knife and also good as a ladies knife for 'ye olde' time re enactments. Think Viking :)
  18. ....those darn beavers have been in my scrap pile again. These guys are getting pretty smart, last season I saw one of them wearing a hard hat on the banks of the creek. I'm gonna to have to see Joe Bob Thorton about using his....
  19. My advice is simple, by all means try it but DON'T rely on it or expect major things. Been there done that, answered emails as to why a handmade sterling silver chain had a reserve of
  20. Fantastic!!!!! That last shot nearly made me fall off my swivel chair laughing! Nice one Roger
  21. I reckon you just nailed that one for him! Sterling work sir! Ian 8)
  22. Hello Johan! Welcome to Iforgeiron, it's great to see the folks from Sweden coming to visit! I managed to meet a few of the members of Antracit in person not so long back and was introduced to your site by my friend Tom Sjunnesson. It's well worth the time to visit, is it still possible to translate the site to English? I know when I looked there was a link to do so, unfortunately we aren't anywhere near as good with Swedish as you guys are with English! :oops: It's great to have you aboard, hope you enjoy the site as much as I do. Ian 8)
  23. Hi, I'm afraid I can't really help you much as far as the ins and outs of how and why Adze's are made the way they are but I can certainly point you in the direction of an expert. The gentleman you should try to speak to is called Jon Dahlmo, he's one of (if not the) best wood working toolsmiths in Norway and Scandinavia. He will certainly be able to tell you how to make the tool you want, he speaks fair English but his wife is fluent so write him an email. His website and email address are: smia@dahlmo.no (email adress) http://www.dahlmo.no/ (web site) If you explain why your writing and tell him that 'Ian from England' said he was THE guy to talk to he might just help you out. hope this helps till others chip in. Ian
  24. Glad to hear Dawn's out of surgery okay Ralph. Fingers crossed that everything works out for the pair of you, it's a tough road your on. One step at a time means your always going forward. Good wishes from over the pond. Ian
  25. I've seen exactly that idea used, albeit with a splined socket in the floor as opposed to a square tube. The spline for the post came from a car drive shaft end and the socket from same vehicle. The builder (a Master Smith called Erik Gjendem ) said he used splines because on a peice of equipment like a pipe bender he needed to be able to set the tool at more than just 4 angles so he could maximise the space he had, also the splines held up better under stress. The hole in the floor was smaller and easier to cap with just a bit of plastic, no risk of tripping over it. just a thought.
×
×
  • Create New...