Ed Thomas

blacksmithtech: You might be pleasantly surprised. I've only used a forge like this with the lever action a few times. If you are attentive to your fire, it is more than adequate. It is also unusually nice and quiet. As I said before, I used a similar forge for years as my main shop forge, but I used a manual handcrank blower. I also routinely forged and forge-welded with it. It gets plenty hot in a hurry. You just have to pay attention and build and maintain your fire with care. Of course, you should do that no matter what forge you use. It may or may not be the ideal forge configuration, but it is certainly a valid one. Use it and enjoy it. Speaking of forge abuse... a friend of mine lamented that an acquaintance of his refused to give up the forge he found, even though he never used it for forging. He just loved the way it provided perfect air control to his charcoal briquets, so he turned it into a grill. He wouldn't sell it for any amount of money. My friend claimed that it did make awesome barbecued chicken. 8)

I used a similar forge for a few years. They work just fine. You just have to adjust your methods to what you are using. Instead of having a bowl of fire in a firepot, you have a mound of fire above the tuyere. Build a nice mound and keep it fed, and you will be able to do anything you want. If you ever choose to get a different forge, your current model makes a nice portable forge for demos and blacksmith picnics and such.

Hollis: You might want to shoot one more picture showing the vises in their work position in the shop. I think that is just as important as the mounting itself.... and as I mentioned, the issue I'm working out now. I'm going to wait until the hammers are completely set before I permanently mount vises, though. I want to get a feel for the work flow. around them. And what the heck is that railroad plate doing at the base of your vise :?: :lol:

PJ: I am re-investigating that very thing for my new shop, so I'm reluctant to give you absolute directions. But here are some considerations: 1) If you can, mount the vise on it's own VERY stable post, instead of on a workbench. That way you can work all the way around it. 2) Support the leg at the bottom. This is the only real advantage of a post vise over a bench vise -- you can pound on the vise and it is supported by the leg clear from the earth, if you mount it well. I usually forge a bracket with a hole in it for the bottom of the leg. 3) Try to find the spot in your shop which is easiest to use. Right now, with a completely new shop plan, I have a portable vise and am using it in different locations to see where it is most effective. When I find the sweetest spots, I'll plant the vises there, most likely on posts imbedded in concrete. Here are links to pictures of shops that have mounted vises, taken from here on iforgeiron's gallery and on forgemagic's gallery. http://www.forgemagic.com/bsgallery/bsphoto098.jpg http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10017/normal_P2060192.jpg http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10024/normal_easy%20helve%20010.jpg http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10022/DSC00749a.jpg http://www.forgemagic.com/bsgallery/bsphoto152.jpg http://www.forgemagic.com/bsgallery/bsphoto252.jpg http://www.forgemagic.com/bsgallery/bsphoto406.jpg http://www.forgemagic.com/bsgallery/bsphoto578.jpg

PJ: Vise sizes are usually just the width of the jaws. You can weigh it if you want, but usually if you say it is a 5" vise, that is enough size information for anybody. The jaws racked can sometimes be fixed by fooling with the bolt at the base of the pivoting leg. Look down from the top of the jaws and make sure that neither leg is bent (not likely). It is almost always in the plate or pin at that pivot. You can sometime pry them the other way, or remove and replace. If none of these seem reasonable to you, you can take a torch and heat the plate while bending to straighten. But 1/4" isn't much so don't overdo it.

Strine: Yes, you could do a bit of tooling to guide the shape better. One thing that Hollis wasn't pushing was that these elements were literally made by the hundreds -- often four crosses/leaves/etc per quatrefoil. Each quatrefoil would be one of zillions (or more :mrgreen: ) in a gate or railing. So I was trying to keep to a method that would come easily out of the fire, get forged and move on. You're right... there are lots of cool things you can do with this union, as seen by the incredible richness of Yellin's work.

Hollis: I think I would definitely forge-weld at least a little bit. Maybe only twice the material thickness. I don't know why I got so carried away. It's been a few years since I made any quatrefoils, so I guess I have an excuse. :oops:

Sandpile: There is no need to upset. There is enough material. Hollis: I did the exact opposite of you... I welded WAY too far down. Anyway, I just tried what I said and it works fairly well. The idea is to weld, and then use a pair of set dies, rather than fullering dies. That way you define the boundaries much better. If I had to do a few hundred of these this way, I'd make a die that swaged the top and the bottom of the 't' at the same time. Like yours, this is 3/8" stock. There is more than enough meat left on this (about 1/8") to pretty much shape the leaf any way you want. I didn't do any filing or tooling, but you can see the potential is there already. I like what you came up with, but it looks like you nearly hit the limit of material movement already to get that far. But if you had a few hundred to do, it would certainly be quick. Something teases the back of my memory about using dies for some of the quatrefoil elements. I'd sure be tempted to develop that if I had a whole gate or fence of these things. Loosely shape the weld, and smack it into a pair of dies. All done but the detail filing. If I can find another slot of time to play with these, I might work to make a pretty one. As you said, it is worth the effort.

Hollis: I'll see if I can get back out to the shop tonight and try this: Forgeweld the square stock back on itself, just like a quatrefoil. Neck the end and then again below the "arms". Fuller & flatten, and ornament. It looks like nothing added to the original material. So I think this should be routine. I might not get another chance at this for awhile if I don't do it tonight. :?

Glenn: I meant, did he indicate that he routinely used the wooden handle to forge weld in his own shop? I'm not sure what the advantage is.

Hollis: I think it would be just as easy to allow a bit more stem on the two side lobes and hammer just the end. That way it would look like branches, and you could bend them any way you want. Including folding the two side lobes up a bit so they look more like three individual leaves than three petals of one leaf as I tried to do here. However, I think there is a point of diminishing returns on this particular technique of splitting and fullering. At some point, it would be easier to forge weld leaves. If you right click on any picture on the internet, you get a menu of things to do with it, including displaying its properties (the last item on the list). So if you see something you like somewhere, you can right click on the picture, select "copy image location", and paste that here inside your post. Then highlight the whole link, and click on the "Img" button above the text editor you are using to enter your post. That will put on either end of the link. That tells the forum screen to go to that location, and treat that particular link as a picture. So if it is your own image, you can upload it to the gallery (or anywhere on the internet you like to store images), right click on the image while viewing it in the Gallery, and select "copy image location". Then when you come back here, just paste it wherever you want in the post. If you right click on the picture I posted, you can select "properties" and see where it is actually stored... in this case, the gallery. But as you know, I have a lot of fun posting pictures that are stored around the internet by other folks. :mrgreen:

Hollis: Yep, I meant Plummer... don't have that either. Is this roughly what you were talking about? I decided to try it just now and see if I'm getting the idea from your description. It is forged by splitting 1/2" square into a small 't' at the top and spreading the arms to be the leaves. I didn't labor over it to make it purty; just wanted to see if this was something you could use. Obviously, it would benefit with more care in shaping the petals and a bit of file work.

So it was for demonstration purposes only? Did you get the impression that he did that as a matter of routine in his own shop?

How big are we talking? I don't have Streeter's book, and am having a bit of trouble imagining what you mean. Can you draw a picture? As I understand it, you are trying to set up a solid flat finial, rather than an open figure like a quatrefoil. So it it a matter of getting the material in the right place before you flatten it? If so... maybe you could make a cross (a 't') and flatten the arms and top. That would leave the cross-section thicker in the middle, but that's okay, isn't it? You'll have a lot of contour and the bottom arm will already be in the right place. Sure wish I knew exactly what you were aiming for... :?

Glenn: What did Billy say was the advantage of using a wood handle?

Glenn: what an AWESOME score. An excellent addition to the shop!

My grandmother can beat up your grandmother

I forgot to include one of my favorite: Mindy Gardner Pictures of her work shown in an article at the ABANA site here: http://www.abana.org/membership/conference/2004/demonstrators/gardner.shtml

If you don't know these blacksmiths, do a search on their names and you might be a bit stunned. Some are ABANA board members and all are exceptionally skilled.

Yep, all the blacksmiths I know look alike. Elizabeth Brim Megan Crowley Dorothy Stiegler Amy Pieh Corrina Mensoff Christina Shmigel Susan Madacsi

Yes, we all look almost identical. In fact, you cannot actually claim to be a blacksmith until you've been screened by a committee for the proper wardrobe, beady eyes, and peculiar hygiene. These models are displaying the appropriate dress and inattention to cleanliness. Here we see a newer member who just barely tipped the scales enough for probationary acceptance as an apprentice. A few more stone and his position should be more secure.

Actually, that post probably didn't contribute anything. I just wanted to post at least one good WHHOOMPPHH Your blower in action :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

I never have problems in my shop because I use an electric blower lower than the forge, as irnsgrn pointed out. But the most spectacular incidents were in the open on an windy day with a hand crank. Almost every time we'd stop cranking, the gases would back up and WHHOOMPPHH in the blower. Pretty much any time I demo with a breeze going by, I can count on at least one or two blowbacks. Probably switching the blower to the upwind side of the forge would help.

Thomas: He already said he didn't have a power hammer. :? However, your concept works with a hardie tool on an anvil. Just weld pieces of metal on a plate with a shank for your hardie hole. There is a lot of energy loss this way, so it's better to get your stock close by regular forging and use this for final tuning. Just a quick and dirty bottom swage, in other words. I've never resorted to this for dimensioning, but have fabricated tools like that to swage collars and odd shaped railing.

What Hollis said. Then if you can't read it, try a pencil rubbing... put paper against it and run a pencil flat all over the area. I once found an entire secret map to the headquarters of... no wait... wrong cereal box forum.