Ian

John,
I'd be very interested in the Saw and the Vice, I've already got a Denbeigh no 6 flypress. One question about the saw though, are the blades still available for it? If getting replacment blades isn't going to be a bind I'll definately take it off your hands. If you or the bod selling it is willing to stick them both onto a pallet I can arrange for a courier to ship them over to London. I might be able to 'lend' a van but it'll probably be cheaper to freight them. PM me and we'll try to sort out some dates for pick up etc.

I was taught to cut all the way round the piece on the hardy tool then either break off or hit the piece just to one side of the cutting edge until your through.
If you have worries about hitting too hard you can make a hot cut hardie with a 'shoulder' and a cutting edge in the middle thats slightly lower. That way you'll strike the shoulders rather than the cutting edge if you keep hitting it square on (this is only guaranteed to work if your hammer head is wider than the cutting edge and you're happy to use the 'break off' method). If your cutting edge is wider than the hammer or at the same height as your 'shoulders' then position the stock to be cut right next to the shoulder closest to you and hit with angled half faced blows (so that the face of the hammer is lower at the 'shoulder' and higher than the cutting edge) you 'should' hit the shoulder closest to you before the cutting surface.
I prefer to cut nearly all the way through and then break off, and I agree also that a hot cut hardie with a vertical edge on one side is very handy.

took 30 seconds to find

Tools for Rehandling, Handtools for Trail Work, MTDC Pubs

Hope you mend as good as new Jerry, glad it was not your family too. My thoughts are with you for a FULL recovery.

Have to say that while it's a shame someone died at the end of the day if they were drink driving they only have themselves to blame. We all know its WRONG and after losing a close friend several years ago to a D.U.I. my sympathy for anyone caught drink driving evaporated. I hope the lesson is learned by the other two.

If you want an alernative method of making centre lines in square stock you can use a 4 1/2'' grinder with one of the really thin cutting discs (over here they go down to around 1mm) Find a long shafted bolt that has the same size thread as the bolt hole in the grinder for the hand grip. Grinders have two and the bolt will go into the opposite one from the grip. Cut off the head and forge it to a point, about half an inch up from the threads put in a bend of about 45 degrees. Screw it into the bolt hole, from there you adjust the point to touch the side of the bar while the blade sits on the face, use a locking nut to secure the distance and the run the grinder down the bar. A bit of practice will sort the depth of the cut but you can end up doing it in one pass, then use a chisel to get rid of the slope at the ends of the cut.
You can save a lot of time on a job this way.

Very nice Bully

Good to put a face to a name too, even one as ugly as mine (what is it about Uncy Chop Chop and students who look like axe murderers? LOL)

Just ragging youse bloke. Nice set up and I'm sure Dale will be able to tweak it a bit more for youse too. Agree with Frosty though, my fire fighting gear is all near the exits. I'd rather be fighting to get in than fighting to get out.

Have you 'got' that sense of contentment yet you get from being next to the fire waiting for your steel to get to temp? Or put a 'face of the day' on the anvil yet? (the face of the day is the person or persons who've got right on your nips, you simply imagine the anvil is their mug and whale away. GREAT relaxation therapy, especially in your line of work. Try it LOL :D

If it was me I'd add a 'wedge' of material to fill the void. Do the wrap around and then insert the wedge, get it all up to a forgewelding heat and weld it up. Kind of like how axes were made many many moons ago. I saw a few examples in Sweden, made by a specialist in archeaological reproductions and based upon original viking finds. The wedge was discovered when the finds were X rayed.

Olly,
are you referring to the contents of the book or the book itself? If you mean the book itself then you can bind it with metal. Some ancient books had elaborate lockable bindings, examples of which I'm sure you could track down.

I'd do a bit of repousse work for the covers with some (very) thin ornate strap hinges llike you see on church doors. If you use thin ply to back up the metal covers then you can sit the 'book' inside that. I'm afraid book binding isn't an area of expertise but I'm sure others can advise you as well.
Most people know about using cardboard for a books cover but there's no reason you couldn't do it in steel, copper, brass etc etc.

that and surrounding yourself with fellow addicts

Good on youse Bully, it's great ta see someone getting off their... backside and actually doing it instead of just rattling around spouting about how they're forging a great longsword out of coathangers etc etc etc. Wish more folks were like that.

I was paid a compliment (to my mind at least) by the local council man Hugh, who came to look at the progress we've made on the Farm today.

He said '' There are Do'ers and Talkers, you're obviously Do'ers, keep it up''

No fear on that LOL.

Same applies to you, keep it up mate.

The core skills of Blacksmithing are not difficult to grasp, you draw and taper, you slit and punch, you bend and twist, an so on. Refining your ability to use the techniques to produce beautiful work is where the real skill comes in. Most people can write but not everyone is Shakespeare.
Enjoy your hobby as just that if thats what you want to achieve. If you really want to do this for a living then the time you invest in gaining skill will be repaid by the work you can do down the line.
Less than five years ago I wouldn't have known one end of an anvil from the other. Thanks to the guys here (you know who you are) and a lot of others I'm running my own shop in the guts of London and producing work that people respond positively to.
It took PRACTICE, some more practice and just so we're clear a bit more practice after that. I still reckon at being at about 30% of where I want to be skills wise, and your welcome to check my gallery to see where I'm at.

my 2p

Mcraigl,
I met Brent Baily at Alan Ball's Hot Iron Muster in Oz a while ago. He was the demonstrator on the day and ran a weeks course after. I still have a centre punch he gave me, still not needed to redo the point yet. Very nice bloke and an excellent tool maker who knows his stuff alright. He showed me some of his work and the pattern welded stuff was gorgeous.

Hi there,
If it's a Brooks (or Brooks Vaughn) then it's an English made anvil, thats a long way from home Vaughns still make new cast steel anvils and you can order one and they'll ship it anywhere if your willing to pay.
As to the decency of Brooks as a tool all I can say is I own three of them. 1 1/4 CWT, 1 3/4CWT and a 2CWT.
The 2CWT gets used the most and is virtually mint, mine throws the hammer back at you and I do mean throws. Brooks have a serious ring if you hit them without hot iron in the way but magnets take the teeth out of them. I love mine, they have a great 'feel' to them. That said there's a few brands I'd like to try (Kholswa, Sodofors, Grunfors, Nimba etc) but I first found a Brooks and I liked them so when others turned up I grabbed them and wasn't dissapointed.

I use coke not coal but the lighting proceedure is the same for me. I screw up a few sheets of newspaper (round half dozen) into balls. I have a few sticks for kindling (about 1'' square say, 6 inches long, about a dozen). Light one ball of paper and toss it into the pot, stack on the others and the kindling. Start the blast on it's lowest setting, wait until the kindlings caught then scatter a few handfulls of fresh coke over the top, up the blast a little more and wait until you can see a few of the coke beans have started to go. Add more coke to cover the fire and up the blast a little more, if needs be open the fire slightly so the smoke catches and burns. Within five minutes you're ready to forge.

Mike, if the tumble dryer don't work then go to your local auto wreckers and rip out the fan from a car heater. It'll have a three or four speed control built into the wiring loom to the dash controls.
It'll run from a 12v Battery or a charger and provide plenty of air. It'll just take time to seperate it from the car, but you can take some of the ducting as well.

It should be pretty cheap too.

hope this helps

Nicely done version of a leaf, I'd happily put it up for sale after a demo

I do for the UK, but not for the USA. We found our supplier through an Automobile Radiator Repairer, they use it to repair the matrix etc.on car radiators.

excellent step by step, makes me confident the book will be a good one Mark.

You can buy the tin and flux premixed. Paint the item with the mix and then hit it with a heat gun. A blow torch will work too but it's far easier to burn the tin. The heat gun works much better.

Dave, for the smaller widths just cold chisel your line and snap it in the vice, or put a square bar under it and pop it with a flatter while your stood on the other bit. I've 'cut' a bit of plate both ways.

I agree, the horn of the anvil is an obvious fuller, I've seen several blokes use it that way for roughing out points etc.

Alwin,
If your hitting with your right hand rolled (so your hitting with the right sided face of the hammer) then the thumb that would be parallel to the hammer shaft is now on top of the hammer as it strikes. As you point out, with a rectangular handle the thumb then absorbs the impact. Not as bad as those folks who do it all the time though.
I like hammers with an almost round handle for just this reason, my thumbs always off to the side even if I decided to hit with the side of the hammer. It's nothing to do with the tightness of your grip that keeps the blow true even with an entirely round handled hammer. The blow is struck and the energy imparted so even if the hammer head turns afterwards it's already done the job. A fairly light grip can control this sort of movement. I learned that from a Norweigan Toolmaker called Jon Dhalmo who said to move the metal anywhere you wanted you turned the face only and swung with the face already turned, not trying to twist yourself. He was also dead set against any kind of slipping blow, and yet I was shown a technique by Brian Russell for making sharp square corners without thinning by mainly using slipping blows. Both are world class Masters, who's right and wrong?

As to your second question I'll pose you one instead. If you imagine a ball and chain swinging around and the kinetic principles involved and then imagine a hammer attatched to a hand and arm etc I'd ask which is more important, hieght or speed?
Hofi has based his system upon among other things biomechanics, and if you follow that then you can't go far wrong.
Everyones swing is in constant change, by dint of being a movement, but they follow general patterns that can be learned. For fine light work you might only use your wrist, but for heavy work you'd be using your entire body.

Trick from Jnr I believe. Find a suitably thick piece of angle iron about 3 or 4 inches long. Cut down the spine half way and bend the flats out to 90 degrees. Drop into your hardy hole first then put the hardy tool in. It resizes the hardy into a corner.

Halleluyah!!! Sing it from the mountain Brothers! One has seen the light! LMAO :D

Beautiful, I really like both pieces

Not to sound condescending mate, but if you don't know that then are you really sure you should be messing around with propane?? Potential Darwin Award there bloke.

On my system you turn the regulator anti clockwise to increase pressure and clockwise to turn the pressure down/off. Same with the valve on the propane bottle itself. Anti clockwise opens the valve, clockwise closes it.
That said:

I SERIOUSLY RECOMMEND ATTENDING A LOCAL GROUP BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE.
ANY FLAMMABLE GAS CAN BECOME EXPLOSIVE IN THE RIGHT CONDITIONS.
LACK OF KNOWLEDGE WILL ONLY EVER INCREASE THE CHANCES OF MEETING THOSE 'RIGHT' CONDITIONS.