Ed Thomas

Strine: I forgot about this link on the ABANA site:
http://www.abana.org/downloads/education/threephase.pdf
Pretty much a duplicate of other stuff already mentioned here, but it's there for the downloading.

In addition to the information here and the links provided, you might want to peruse the discussion group dedicated to this topic on the Practical Machinist.
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/forum/3.html
With almost 12,000 posts, you should be able to search and get an answer to anything you want to know. And you will get a pretty good reply to any questions in very short order. Home shop machinists deal with this issue as a matter of course. The cheapest and best performing machines are almost always 3 phase, so thousands of folks build their own routinely.

I have a 5 hp RPC I bought from someone else. It will run my 5 hp 1945 metal shaper with no problem. That is because the power is the same; it's just the leg that the power shows up on that changes.

The static converters aren't the same thing. You really should match them carefully to the machine. So even though they are cheaper, they aren't as flexible, and their performance can be erratic. In several tables I've read, the real output hp is about 2/3 the stated converter rating. (I'm guessing technically it is probably 70.7%?)

RPC's are all over ebay. Just search on "Rotary Phase Converters". Or you can buy a kit from a place like this: http://www.rotaryphaseconverters.com/kits.htm

An excellent description of three phase power is available here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_phase_power Within the paragraphs on phase converters, you can click on links to rotary and static converters and see examples with a writeup on each.

Viscosity, temperature, and composition all play a part in the cooling rate of an oil. If it is an issue in your heat-treating, perhaps you should consider oils designed specifically for oil quenching such as item numbers 3202K1 and 3202K7 in McMaster-Carr. These are the part numbers for a 5-gallon container of normal speed (28-second quench time) and high speed (10-second quench time) respectively.
http://www.mcmaster.com/
You can see that the difference in cooling rate is significant. However, it is a moot point if you don't know your metal composition. Every metal type has a recommended heat-treating chart with guidelines for optimizing that alloy for a particular application. Guessing is usually futile.

For example, here are two pages on M2 steel:
http://www.suppliersonline.com/propertypages/M2.asp
http://www.pvsteel.com/docs/Tsb-118.pdf

Here's an example of the real complexity involved in crystal transformation in heat-treating: http://sb2.epfl.ch/instituts/Gotthardt/Former/Bataillard/Research.html You can see that it is not trivial. If you are a blademaker or machinist, then you pick your alloy, and learn its particular heat-treating demands, including the best quenching composition and temperature.

On this table, http://www.knives.com/heatreat.html you can see at the bottom the relative shock rate of different quenching mediums. It is interesting to note, that the agitation (how fast you move it around while quenching) has a very big impact on the cooling rate. You can see that according to this table, the shock rate of oil is about 1/3 that of water... all other things being equal.

Having said all this, if you are a ornamental blacksmith making ordinary shop tools, then use a clean vegetable oil in a can with a drop-down lid and go forge something. The difference in quenching behavior between oils just isn't significant enough for us.

A can like this: http://www.barcoproducts.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=650&DEPARTMENT_ID=111 with 5 gallons of vegetable oil has done me fine for years. The vegetable oil does not go bad. The lid keeps the bugs and mice out, and the fire in. The foot petal leaves your hands free.

DB: There is an excellent blacksmith group based near you: "Blacksmith Group Of the Potomac" (BGOP), with several hundred members. www.bgop.org There are several decent books out there, but if you can get to a BGOP meeting and talk with folks there you might be able to borrow or at least look at the books before you commit to a purchase. In my opinion, the two finest "How-to" books are:

"A Blacksmith's Craft" by George Dixon
http://www.artist-blacksmith.org/forge/articles/francis.htm
It is the first of two volumes; the second is still in the works. There is no finer blacksmith in this country than George Dixon, and his ability to capture the essence of the skills in pictures and writing is the best there is.

"The Artist Blacksmith" by Peter Parkinson
http://www.blacksmithsjournal.com/view-EXTRBK-01AB.html
Peter Parkinson is an artist in England and an accomplished blacksmith in his own right. His directions and guidance are the extraordinarily clear.

So my recommendation is to download the COSIRA books as BT recommended, and look them over because they are free and darned good. Then go to the next BGOP meeting and see what they have for a library. Find out what members live near you.

Finally, go to the National Cathedral and look at all the iron. I'm going up there this month to visit my son in DC and tour the phenomenal ironwork there again. There is no replacement for studying the real thing and then trying it out in your shop afterward. You get good in a hurry using the masters as inspiration.

There are plenty of other books and I have lots of them. Those two are the best.

Rver-Gazer: Well, you certainly have helped generate the liveliest discussion in the intro section to date. For which I commend and thank you. I hope that you continue to pursue your blade-making endeavors with energy and integrity, and that you share with us your successes and failures. Since I'm not particularly interested in blade-making, I won't be much use. However, I can always hope your forging efforts expand to include ornamental ironwork, which we all know is FAR more rewarding. Ha. :)

Glenn: The INTERNET is rife with disinformation and hearsay. Although not exactly "rife", this board is not completely exempt. Any time that someone posts anything based on what someone else told them or that they read, it is hearsay. It is not what they themselves have experienced. Hearsay is not good or bad; it is just less reliable than going directly to the source, and invariably diluted. This is a forum, not an encyclopedia. Of course people, including myself, will post hearsay in an effort to be helpful. The best information is genuine first-hand experience. Probably followed by eye-witness. But clearly, when you have a discussion on the history of anvils when the posts are liberally sprinkled with "probably" and "no doubt" and "I would think", etc., it is hearsay. That doesn't make it wrong, but it has little value except conversational speculation. I happen to enjoy conversational speculation. Just read the post KNOWING that that's what it is.

Disinformation is all over the place. You can see it in every post where people jump in to correct someone, such as right here in this original post. If we who know better from personal experience let someone post something that is in error, we are doing a disservice to all the people who search the net for information on blacksmithing. But that doesn't mean the post has to be eliminated. The whole discussion on power hammers:
http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1039 is riddled with speculation and disinformation. If someone were to try to make an informed decision on buying a power hammer based on that discussion, they would be at best, confused, and at worst, in search of a hammer inappropriate to their needs. So what? It's an entertaining discussion by people learning to use their hammers. Someone surfing this board needs to pay attention to that, and not assume it's a master class in power hammers by the world's experts.

If we were all absolutely right all the time and all knowing all the time, then we're probably done with this particular experience.

River-Gazer: Feel free to post here just as you are and say whatever you want, as long as you use language fit for a surfing child to read. The internet, even including this site, is rife with disinformation and hearsay, and you just have to wade carefully through it all. There is no way for you to know the quality and accuracy of what you read online, so take it all with a grain of salt. The more fantastic it sounds, the more suspicious you might want to be. If at all possible, meet with real, competent, blade-makers to help you sort out the legitimate from the fantasy.

On this board, we are very fortunate to have Jim Hrisoulas (JPH) as a member. On his site: http://www.atar.com/ you can read a bit on his credentials. Consider buying one of his books. And if you can meet him in person, all the better. I doubt you can find a better resource for what you want to learn anywhere.

Fortunately for most of us, natural selection does not apply or we wouldn't have survived this long. However, don't push your luck on this one.

Try things out. I'd rather hear of your failed experiments in forging and discussion on ways to improve than any manner of talk about equipment.

I'm not crazy about your forge arrangement. There are better (and cheaper) blowers than a wet-vac. There are lots of discussions on forges and firepots to peruse here and on other sites. See if you can find a good, operational forge doing work similar to what you wish to accomplish.

Let us know where you live, and maybe we can steer you to another helpful blacksmith or bladesmith close enough to visit.

Woody: You have exactly described almost all older anvils... "a slab of tool steel on a secure mount". The base of the anvil was welded in some manner to provide a secure platform for a steel plate. If you can duplicate the efficiency of that support some other way, then you have a decent anvil. Now, of course, it is cheaper and easier to cast or forge the entire anvil from some alloy and heat treat it so that the surface is the hardest part.

I am not sure what part of my post you misread to draw your conclusions from it.

Nick:

This is the man you want to talk to:

http://www.metalsmith.org/gall/latane/index.htm

He is very accessible and friendly, and very devoted to his craft. There is no one better at what he does. His email address is at the bottom of that link.

Daniel: I was about to suggest some reading of a previous post, but it looks like it's gone from when the server died. Dang. Several of us posted information on flypress construction.

The upshot of it was that making a flypress is VERY difficult for the average home shop. A fly press is not just an acme threaded rod in a nut inside a 'C' clamp looking thing. It is a fairly radical thread tooth, with several leads... at least three, though new presses are more typically four now. So you have to machine a multi-lead squarish thread, and then make a substantial nut in a fairly massive frame somehow to withstand the pressures generated by the throw of the press.

A simple single-lead acme threaded rod will not work. All you will succeed in doing is making a vertical vise. When the tool bottoms out it will bind, just as a vise is supposed to do because the thread TPI is too high. More specifically, the throw is not radical enough to let the screw rebound at the bottom.

If you can get an aggressive 3 or 4 lead acme rod, and can make the frame, you CAN cast the nut. The nut in mine, for instance, is made of high-strength tin babbitt and has held up quite well from my last rebuild.

Having said all that... I'm still trying to figure out how the flypress is part of civil war reenactments. I wasn't aware they were even used outside of machine shops during that time.

Woody: I never accepted that. Of course I never spend any time on that board, so it was probably hard to count my vote, eh?

Seriously, that is VERY arbritrary, as we've already said in our posts right here. Further, it isn't linear. Once you get above some decent threshhold for your own purposes... say 100 pounds or so... then the anvil doesn't have to keep getting bigger to get good performance with a bigger hammer. For example, one can quite comfortably use a 200 pound anvil striking with an 8 pound hammer, with good performance. That is only a 1/25 ratio.

Of course the mounting of the anvil probably gets more important as the pounding gets more vigorous. A decent stand with good mass and secure binding contributes considerably to the stability and performance of the anvil. A well-mounted 150 pound anvil will be much more satisfying to work on than a loose 300 pounder on a wobby metal stand.

Mr Smith: It was just as easy to screw up a small anvil as a large one. I've seen many delaminated small anvils. I worked on lots of older larger and smaller anvils and the larger ones have been just as good or better than the small ones. Further, if the edges of a small anvil are damaged (a real problem if the face is too brittle because it was cooled too quickly), you don't have a lot of anvil left to dress the edges.

Within reason, the face of the anvil doesn't have to be THAT hard. It just has to be harder than what you are forging, including the occasional mild steel cold work. Over the decades, the older anvils did work harden somewhat anyway.

In my opinion, that board's justification for a small anvil's superiority is just speculation and bunk. Good anvil makers knew how to adjust their heat-treating for the size of the anvil.

DB:

You didn't say whether you were in Washington state, or Washington DC. The ABANA conference is going on right now in Seattle. It ends tomorrow, as I understand it. www.abana.org

They always have several terrific book vendors there. I don't know how much it would cost you to get in for the last day, if anything.

Other than roaming vendors who set up at blacksmithing events, the only standing sellers of blacksmithing books in any quantity are blacksmithing suppliers, such as Pieh Tool Company www.piehtoolco.com, and Centaur Forge www.centaurforge.com.


Right now, the most comprehensive vendor I know of is: www.artisanideas.com

What sort of books are you looking for? Maybe we can make suggestions based on what you want.

Glenn:

I have read several times that a ratio of 3/100 is a good one. That is, for every 3 pounds of hammer, the anvil ought to be no less than 100 pounds. So if one expects to do a lot of striking with an 8 pound hammer, then the anvil ought to be 240 pounds or more.

This discussion used to come up a lot because of power hammer design and construction, since it is unreasonable to try to keep that ratio past a certain threshhold. For instance, a 300 pound hammer would be expected to have a 10,000 pound anvil, which is about what the whole hammer of that class usually weighs.

So the weight ratio is just a guideline, and depends on the type of use.

In theory, the anvil will never suffer damage as long as the forged piece is always hot, because it will be softer than the face of the anvil, regardless the size of the stock. In practice, we all straighten and bend cold iron on the anvil, and we all occasionally miss. I think wear and tear on anvils comes from this work, not the hot work. With several hours of continuous hot forging, the anvil face will get hot enough to steam water. But not hot enough to alter its heat-treated condition. At least I've never seen nor heard of that happening.

As the stock gets larger, it is usually easier to work on a larger anvil both because of the increased work surface, and the greater stability. But the size of the stock alone should not have any bearing on the wear of the anvil.

I know St. Francis used a smaller anvil and was adamant that it was enough. However, I have 4 anvils remaining... a 127# London pattern PW, a #500 London pattern Fisher, a 119# (50K) double-horn Czech, and a 260 pound double-horn Czech. The only one I use regularly is the 260 pound Czech. The reason is that top is more flexible. I can do small stuff at the narrow end of the flat horn, but I have a good working surface and fairly stable anvil for normal work.

I also think a larger anvil can be better for small work, because the hardie hole is larger so you can make more stable tools. I have made many one-piece roses using a hardie tool with a shelf that I made. It would be nearly impossible to do those petals using only an anvil face, yet a smaller anvil wouldn't support the tool I needed as well.

There are ALWAYS work-arounds. But in my opinion, the most flexible general purpose anvil is a 200 - 300 pound double horn, like the Nimbus, Pettinghaus, Old World, or Euroanvil.

If you never missed with the hammer, or beat on the anvil with cold iron, I bet you could work on any size your entire life and when you died it would look about the same as when you bought it.

Ken:

It sounds like you got a pretty good handle on it, then. You might want to mound up a bunch of coal,coke and let the blower go at it once the fire is going. If the air is strong and the fuel is good, the fire has a distinctive healthy roar to it. Try all the extremes... what you think is TOO much coal, or TOO much air, and so on. Get a feel for the behavior of your particular forge. They really can be very different sometimes. Sometimes it takes a little effort to find the sweet spots and the fuel/air balance for different heats.

Ken:

A friend of mine told me: "A firepot is to fire as a soup pot is to soup." His point, of course, was that the fire should be contained within the firepot, and the firepot should be deep enough to sustain an adequate fire. Your firepot is deep enough, but I'm not sure I've ever seen one with a slope like yours. Good rectangular pots have sloped sides, but seem to have a bit wider bottom... maybe 1/2 the area of the top? However, yours should still work.

My suspicion is that with your configuration, you won't be consuming oxygen as low in the fuel heap as other firepots, so you might want to compensate by mounding the fire higher. Regardless the shape of the firepot, a well-built fire is domed over the firepot, so that the piece of iron to be heated lays flat into the heap with about 2/3 of the fuel below it and 1/3 above it.

If attention to the coal doesn't fix things, then you might have other fire management issues. Coal itself, for instance, isn't directly all that great a fuel for blacksmithing. It should first be converted to coke. Your first fires will do that for you, but if you have lots of flame and smoke, you might have more coal than coke and it will be hard to heat the steel.

You said you have more than enough blower. Do you have specs? A good blower should probably be above 300 scfm. Hollis posted a terrific note on this awhile back but I don't know where. I hope he chimes in shortly.

So... your firepot shape is probably adequate and you have other issues. :)

There is always a delicate balance here. I feel like we should always encourage people to post and be comfortable sharing where they are without feeling competitive or inadequate.

However, another aspect of having a public forum is that it does become an online reference for people seeking information. Since there really is very little meaningful blacksmithing material on the internet (compared to, say, sports, politics, religion or sex) this site will almost certainly show up on an ordinary google search for help in blacksmithing.

So I think that if we are going to participate at all, we do have an obligation to carefully and considerately respond to posts we feel are in error or misleading. Not to be "right", but if we don't, then our silence could be construed as endorsing the information in the post.

If the information isn't important, no big deal. But in this case, I think the replies were valuable and I hope everyone, especially River-gazer, benefits... even though he didn't specifically ask for help.

bbb: You didn't specify the gender of the teenage virgin. Does it matter???

This question comes up a lot among the machinists. Here are links to the major discussions on it over the last few years.

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/1/14679.html#000000

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/1/10180.html#000000

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/1/9899.html#000000

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi/topic/1/5496.html?

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/1/5323.html#000000

If any of these links are faulty, just do a search in the general forum of:
http://www.practicalmachinist.com
Search on i beam using subject only (not entire message). That will get you these links.

You might also read some posts there on gantry construction. Perhaps a differently designed crane for your shop will do for you.

Fred: Bandicoot is no doubt very right, and his answer is very sensible. I try to avoid people like that.

The way I did it was to build my shop in one end of a small pole barn I'd built for tractor equipment when I first moved here. Then I started buying big tools, like the Gorton and a flypress and lathe and some power hammers. Well, not only was it frustrating to not be able to set these up properly, I started panicking at not being about to provide decent protection from the elements. I think it was my collection of tools that made me get off my butt and build a decent shop. If it wasn't for my irresponsible buying of bargain tools, I wouldn't have had any motivation at all. So my advice to you is to stop being so reasonable and go forth and acquire!!! It will make you panic. It will raise your blood pressure. It will make your wife roll her eyes. In short, it will make you feel ALIVE!!!

I don't know the answer to this, but a question I would have is a matter of duty cycle. Does anybody know if the wet-vac life span would make this an expensive solution in the long run? It seems like the dust systems I've heard don't have quite that screaming motor sound of the vacuum. Sort of a high volume lower pressure idea. Designed to run longer per cycle, in other words. Any thoughts on this?

Fred: Here is an interesting Horizontal Mill that might be within striking distance for you:

http://cgi.ebay.com/AMERICAN-L-A-HORIZONTAL-MILLING-MACHINE_W0QQitemZ7630768194QQihZ017QQcategoryZ12584QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Horizontal mills are quite handy. I have a small one (Hardinge) and would love to have a decent larger one. Again, most home shop owners gloss right over these tools, yet for some things they are much more useful than a vertical.

Don't forget that most of these machines are 3 phase so you will have to buy/make a converter if you don't have 3 phase available to your shop already.

Fred: I feel your pain. I have almost stopped actually "bidding" on ebay because of that frustration. About the day of or the day before the auction ends, I put in my max bid and just let it go. I probably pay a bit more for the few things I buy there than the snipers, but it's SO much easier on my head.

Don't get discouraged. I bought my 820 on ebay for about $700, because it was within a day trip to go get. Later, I watched for Gorton milling machines because they are built more ruggedly and are arguably better than the higher selling Bridgeport mills. Sure enough, I picked up a 9J (their largest one) for $600. But all my best buys have happened since these purchases. Unlike blacksmithing power tools, there is a considerable surplus of larger old machines. About two years ago, someone basically GAVE me a 1911 vintage South Bend 13" lathe with an 8' bed. I bought his torch set at a very good price and he threw in the lathe for free. It ain't purty or terribly accurate, but I just made a pretty decent bearing for my Beaudry on it.

Our local VoTech school has been even better to me. I've gotten lots of good deals at their annual auction.

Now.... what you might want to keep your eye out for is a "shaper". The medium to large sizes are basically going for scrap prices or less. I got mine for $100. These will do everything a milling machine will do, only they look better in a blacksmith's shop because they are usually 40+ years old. :)

JPH: Jens advice is excellent. However, I have worked in two shops with the dust collection system inside and it was tolerable, though I prefer to use hearing protection all the time. So if putting the vacuum unit outside is too hard, it isn't absolutely necessary. Like wet-vacs... there is quite a range on noise and power, so check the literature. As Jens indicated, it's a matter of usage. You wouldn't have it on all the time in the metal trades like you do in in the woodwhacker trades.

I have helped in installing the ductwork before, and everyone I know has put their own stuff in (these are all small shops, of course). So it can be done by you if you can afford the time. Pretty much like installing simple plumbing only less critical.

I couldn't tell if you picked up on what Jens was saying about loading. You can add vacuum hoses to each piece of equipment any time. Just like adding another electric outlet. Each outlet has a slide damper that you shut when not in use. That way, at any one time, the vacuum unit only has to draw through whatever you open for it.

If there is a Lowe's (or similar mega-hardware-store) near you, you can go look at the units and pieces to get an idea of how they work. Even the independent hardware dealer has parts for one. For example, here is the arsenal at Lowe's:

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productList&N=0&Ntk=i_products&Ntt=dust%20collector

Fred: I should mention that even though the last Logan lathe was made in 1985, Scott Logan still supports the lathe through his site:

http://www.lathe.com/

You can learn a little bit about the 820 here, and can buy the parts and operating manuals through him. Parts can cost more than the lathe, so try not to need them.

He also has a yahoo support group for Logans.

Matthew: You can get that sort of information directly and happily from the real machinists on that Practical Machinist forum. The search engine there works very well and you can read discussions on various lathe models. There is a South Bend section (just like this "Non-Blacksmithing" subsection). I have gotten oodles of information both to my own questions and from other discussions.

Here are two good places for what to look for in inspecting and buying a lathe:

http://www.lathes.co.uk/page2.html

http://www.mermac.com/

That first link is a sub page of: http://www.lathes.co.uk/ which is probably the richest resource on lathes anywhere. Here you can find a fairly detailed description and usually a good set of pictures of almost every model of every make of lathe.

I don't mean to discourage you from asking for help here, so much as I hope you'll find the machine-specific boards as helpful as I have. Sometimes it can be intimidating, but just like when starting out blacksmithing, you just jump in the deep end and take a deep breath. Surprisingly... everybody helps you just like here.

There is also at least one Yahoo group devoted to the South Bend lathe. I can't seem to get into Yahoo at the moment to give you the specific link, but I can vouch for it being a VERY useful resource.