Nobody Special

Slightly suspicious that the paint is Ford Motor Company blue? :D

Heh...needs more trebuchets. Also, never ever tell an Iraqi that Saladin was a Kurd...

Sure. And if you do it long enough, even taking proper safety precautions, you'll get all the injuries associated with it. Tennis elbow, mashed fingers, burnt...well, burns anyways, cuts, pinches, stuff dropped on your toes, small divots out of your skin from brushing against a grinder or sander. You could add throwing a pointy metal object at a concrete slab to see if it breaks if you want, sharpened or not, and may get away with it for awhile, but I don't think I'd want the possible injuries from when that one inevitably goes wrong. I once spent a very long evening in the Army filling out an incident report over a couple of drunk idiots with rubber bands and paperclips. Just paperclips. Included was the sentence "came into the CQ area screaming "my eye, my eye, oh my God my ****** eye!" Murphy's law is out to get you. Plan accordingly. I can live with a burn or a blood blister, but my experience in throwing things is that they bounce, usually in the worst possible direction.

Hi! Welcome to IFI. If you're looking to build a forge on the cheap and easy, may I reccomend to you the 55 forge? '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>. Nice to meet you, look forward to seeing your work.

The one that seems to come up for me, possibly more than the sword and horeshoe question, is "oh, you blacksmith.......so you have a watchamacallit....forge?" (occaisionally replace the word forge with anvil) Swear I'm getting to the point I'm gonna start telling them, "nah, i just bend the metal using duct tape, old jello molds and sheer willpower...."

I've seen them cut up and used as stands, one had a hole drilled in it and acted as a poker stand. Also seen them as a base for a fireplace tool holder stand, boot scraper, and other stuff.... Nice because it made use of the weight and the basic shape without further forging of the large stock once it was cut.

Wore my IFI shirt yesterday, not doing anything but helping wife at a stand at some festival, promoting her chicken hatchery and three times people approached me about making pieces for them! May use part of the profits to buy a couple more shirts!

H-B, looking at it and other Fosters, I think you're right. Thank you!

Oh yeah, didn't get it in the photo, but the E looks kinda of like the Greek letter Sigma.

Hi, picked up a mystery anvil for a song since it was "broken" :D and need help identifying it. English weights on the side, no apparent dots after the numbers. Fairly sharp corners. If it ever had a serial number it's long gone. Handling holes front and back, and one on the bottom only slightly filled with black widow spiders! Actually touched one before I saw them. Thank God they were dead. Weight says 1 1 20, but it only weighs 140, missing 20 lbs for some reason. :D Has a lovely ring when struck and although hard face is a little worn, rebound is around 80 percent. No depression on the bottom. Markings are all stamped in. One clearly says 1816 (date?) There's an anchor, and you can tell there was a name or something above, but all you can read now appears to be an E followed by a P, but frankly they could be an A and an R. Rubbed with flour for the photos. http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37796-ntm1/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37797-ntm2/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37798-ntm3/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37799-ntm4/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37800-ntm5/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37801-ntm6/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37802-ntm7/ On my way to help wife with chickens, but can't wait to get it on a stump and beat some iron. Thanks!!! Nbs.

Little ones are bitumous, other two are anthracite heating coal. http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37792-coal/

Anthracite is very shiny (unless covered in coal dust) and is definitely shiny when it breaks apart, tends to break with sharper edges too, and be a little harder/more brittle than other coals. Bitumous is softer and maybe a little bit more of a umm..tarry feel to it. Usually goes from a dull, flat look, to maybe a very low shine if all the dust is washed off of it. Bitumous also cokes (burns out all the tars and turns...well not light and fluffy exactly, but much more so) when heated, anthracite doesn't really. (anthracite also sometimes makes a crackly noise when it lights. Anthracite is often sold in big lumps a little bigger than your fist as heating coal. (at least around here) What you usually want is bitumous, probably varying from about the size of a dime to a quarter for most pieces, although if you get it in big lumps, its easy (although messy and tedious) to break up. Blacksmith's or metallurgic grade coal is preferred since it has less nasty contaminants like sulfur/phosphorus/gremlins, whatever that are bad for you and the steel. If you join a group they may do mass orders and sell to you at a reduced rate. I usually get mine from a farrier supply, but then it takes me a long time to go through a 55 gallon drum.

Always playing with new hobbies and historical stuff. Every once in awhile one sticks. I started looking at it about 10 yrs ago when I was stationed at Ft. Hood, Tx., decided casting would be easier to start (Ha!!!) and played with that for on and off. Somewhere along the way, picked up a wee cast steel anvil at a flea market and a copy of Weyger's book. In 09, shifted from big Army to the Guard and moved down to Huntsville, then got a job at a plant that processes Ti rod and Nickel Ti. Wasn't enough room in the truck for everything, so......my furnace got left in Tacoma and I was working 2 or 3 jobs at any given point for awhile, so didn't do much with metalcasting. Took a job working with the Guard full time in 2010 and moved to Atlanta area. Suddenly I had weekends and freetime again, and at a feed store, ran into some bags of coal......hmmm, it's a sign! Made a rr spike knife at about 1130 on a cold winter night with a shallow ditch dug in the yard with a hairdryer blowing through a piece of 3/4 pipe and the anvil sitting loose on the ground. Only took about 8 or 9 tries to get that anthracite lit and more lighter fluid than I want to think about.....sigh. Then on and off as time/mission, and another move allowed. Learned more this year than in previous two when I progressed from the Weyger's book (which is still a great book) and youtube videos to finding IFI and joining the Alex Bealer group in Atlanta. Starting to be able to look around the house and yard and find iron stuff that I've made here and there. Still a hobby level, still hooked, still on the small anvil, still love it.

I want to groan at the use of rebar, and the horns on the helmet, but I can't. Too cool. I love it! Awesome costume pieces, dude.

Nah, Griley (as in G. Riley), another IFI member. :) LUMP charcoal get's plenty hot, burns up, maybe twice as fast, and doesn't really coke. If you have good air control on your fire, it helps a lot. (might want to add an instant offswitch in addition to that dimmer on yer forge for when you're away from the fire banging on metal. A pedal switch works well, like one of those for christmas lights. Don't use briquettes for charcoal. They're full of sand and fines, and don't get nearly as hot. If you stick with coal, bitumous is preferrerable to anthracite, but anthracite'll work in a pinch, it just takes more air, burns hotter, and gives you less control, imho.

Something similar at 7:27 on this vid....