Nobody Special

Mine always drew pretty well through the drain hole. I wouldn't make a solid fuel furnace without one. Heck, my last propane one had one. If you have a crucible come apart and your metal doesn't drain out the bottom, then hot or cold, it suuuuuuuucks trying to scrape it out without damaging the refractory...with good crucibles and proper treatment, they don't come apart often, but you should always act as if it could. I used to make sure my furnace was elevated, and put dry sand underneath with a small well in it just in case.

Haven't been through this one. His $50 dollar knife shop was okay. I too would reccomend Steve's book.

Good evening, There's worse fluxes than charcoal out there, or you could cover the crucible. What's your furnace design? My last charcoal furnace burned through charcoal fast, but got to melting temps ridiculously fast. Are you using hardwood charcoals? At the least, avoid briquettes like the plague.

If you feel bold enough, you can also put it in a tote with the acetone/ATF and drive around with it in the bed of your truck. The vibration often helps with stuck parts.

I'll take rabbit stew, but you can keep the vinegar. Understand why they do it though, rabbit can be tough. It's really good in a gumbo.

There's a trick to getting to the middle of the blackberry patch. Thick boots and pants, and trample your way in caaaaaarefully. Make a path, then maintain it. Don't whack anything with a machete, you'll yank it to your hands every time. If you have to cut some at head level or higher, long pruners or pole pruners work a treat, or even those whatayacallums, chainsaw on a stick things. Long bill hooks work okayish, but your arms get tired. Straight in, and if it's a big one, make additional paths off the first one. I pick a lot of blackberries every year and make a sack wine from it. Strong, sweet, and I sometimes add a little sugar right at the end when I bottle to make it carbonated. And now that I think about it, blackberry vinegars are insanely good, and so are berries pickled in brine and let to sour, like pickling vegetables...if you like your berries salty.

I like hardwood charcoal for the fire, and soft charcoal to start it. I'll do that for smoking too. If I put softwood in to burn, it feels like I'm flying through the stuff. Perhaps rodents aren't so much a problem, as he was just rabbit-ing on. Not to rat him out or anything.

Good evening, Have you tried hitting soft wood, or plastilina clay? The marks left will tell you in a hurry how your hammer is impacting it. Plastilina is a great material for trying out ideas anyways and you're not sure how much stock to use for something, or the exact way something is going to move.. Keep it cold, and use light blows. I second the well dressed hammer.

I never cast under water, but I tried a technique for making pellets and shot I found in a metallurgy book somewhere a few times. Basically, you dripped it into the water and they formed round droplets. I worried about steam, but outside of a little spitting, it never turned out to be an issue. I also found that with aluminum, I could get sometimes get little strands to form. Had trouble getting consistent shapes and sizes. Dunno, haven't tried it in about 13 or 14 years. Now I think I would worry about steam again. So, four years late on this post. Whoops.

Welcome, nice to have you.

You don't have to tell me from moisture content, Sonny Jim, I've had a hive or two in my time, and will again after I buy my next place this month. Probably not as much as you. I'm a bit north of ya on Whidbey Island. I've had a few sweet meads come out okay, depends on how sweet you go. I've got one I prefer though that I do with champagne yeast and simmering plain ole raisins in the starter as a yeast nutrient. I know it's a bit of a dated technique, but the final product is wonderful, feels a little like a honey beer, and has a fairly high alcohol content. With blackberry, you might consider doing a "sack" melomel. In the older sherries, they'd add syrup after they racked a couple of times so the initial sugar didn't get too high and kill the yeast. You can play with it to adjust sweetness and alcohol content, counteract some of the astringency. I'm still not sure I'd trust most fruit wines past two years or so. You also might try a little bit of honey as the sugar in a homemade fruit vinegar. Homemade vinegars beat anything you can get at the store. I've got an excess right now. Had about ten gallons of...what was definitely not pear and apple mash...that I didn't get around to this winter came out as good as half the vinegars that I made deliberately. They benefit nicely from aging too.

Better than a lot of them. Sometimes the owners kill them in the walls without knowing better, and then the fermented honey starts coming through...which you would think would be lovely, but you also have all the wax moth larvae and bugs that get in after the wax, honey, and dead bees, plus mice, you name it. It's naaaaaasty.

My first ones were...ugly. You're not doing too bad. Keep practicing. They'll get there.

He was good, I liked the Jerry Lewis version better. Well, it should be easy and cheap enough to experiment. If it doesn't work, can give it to the kids or try something else to stiffen it up. I dunno. Finally about to get a place of my own up here and set up shop again, mostly propane this time, maybe dip down to Georgia to pick up the rest of my tools. No telling what the kids would get up to with four lbs of silly putty.

Mr. Powers, with all due respect, I are a Texan, if slightly misplaced at the moment. Even we have standards...as far as beer cleanliness, at any rate. Not sure which is worse, spilling beer on a good horse, or spilling good horse in your beer.

Hoof picks from half a horseshoe sell well with the horsey people. Bottle opener on the back end is optional. I dunno, never been sure about using the same tool to clean gunk out of the frog and open my beer. They seem to sell either way. Easy to forge too.

I had to read up tonight enough on the concept of self as an illusory construct. Now I've got two youtube jokers peddling me chemsitry and physics the same way. If I want solipsism, I prefer to get it from Decartes, not Dmitri Mendeleev, and I'll stick to Terry Pratchett for consensual reality theories. If the sky looks like a blue duck, and walks like a blue duck... Also, is it still blue up there? You're even further north than me, sun went to bed an hr ago here.

Good evening, Something else you could do if you have a large enough piece of plate is to set it up on edge to get maximum mass under the hammer, and put a series of different radiuses or dies into it. Still no heel or horn, but there's ways around that as above. Google Brian Brazeal anvil and you'll find an image easily enough, probably on iforgeiron somewhere. Here for example...

So, I was reading up today on silly putty (one of the kids asked something technical about it. don't ask), and I found out it comes in different stiffnesses, some of which are used for their adhesive qualities and/or for industrial purposes. They used it on the space shuttle to hold tools, and there's an astronomical laboratory that uses it as a backing when they're grinding mirrors. I'm not sure it would be cheaper, but it got me wondering...There's gotta be a dollar store that sells the stuff around here somewhere. What do youse guys think?

I just went on a trip through their titles and clicked on a video here and there. That hurt my brain. They apparantly claim that Iron and Aluminum aren't elements, but that water is, that salt, NaCl contains water, and that the Philospher's Stone is real. This isn't even good alchemy.

Good evening, I'm getting to the party late. I agree with the TPAAAT method all day long. Save your money, and wait. If something below quality pops up or too high price, pass. The first one will come, and then you'll start finding what will feel like three a week, even if that week comes six months from now. Try the farm auctions, I always did well at them, and even if they didn't have anything directly blacksmith related, they were a great place to pick up tools cheap, sometimes obscure tools or hardy tools. Got a blower and a nice 75 lb Columbian at the last one I got anything blacksmithing related at for about $90 each. If you don't get anything else, go get a big regular hunk of 4140 or 1040 at the scrap yard. It's cheap, comparitively, and you can harden if you like, or not. It will work harden some, and if you put a ding in it, you don't feel bad about hitting it with a flap disc. Or you can turn a rectangular block sideways and do a Brian Brazeal style anvil with the built in dies. Heck, even a big chunk of mild steel works okay, if not as nice as something a little more high carbon.

Sure, when they're not stealing your rawhide mallet. Sneaky booger. I MISS that dog.

Well, the last one I tried successfully was this metamorphic goop they have around parts of Atlanta called gabbro I think. It's got a little basalt, and olivine, and quartz, and I dunno what all. Kind of a Heinz 57 with a lot of grainy crystalline structure to it. I found out it was tough driving fence posts, and figured anything that hard might work to pound on. I used to break it out of the holes with a chunk of tractor axle, and that was a job and a half. Worked pretty well, and you could find a flat-ish piece and dress it, to a point. Not as fun as a Columbian, but it worked.

There was a TSP substitute at one of the paint shops I tried a couple of years ago when I was playing around with that gladius. I wasn't thrilled enough with the sword to post the end result, but the chemical worked fairly well. The one thing I hate about bone is the smell when you cut or drill it. Like burnt hair or fingernails times sixteen. Tried boiling alone too, but wasn't happy with the results. Too short, and it left greasy goop in the center. Even the ones that looked alright after leaked grease on a hot day. I dunno. I didn't stabilize any of it, it's all in GA in my storage unit with most of my other blacksmithing stuff. Should be interesting to see how the bones cleaned using different techniques held up and what's falling apart when I get down to get it.

Did someone say Norfolk Southern??? Congratulations on the hammer. Are you in the Alex Bealer group? One of the Goat and Hammer crowd? I need to get back down there, half of my stuff is still in storage in Marietta, including my best anvils.