Larzz

So far this has gone the gament from slight Head Bobbing (aknowledgement to the Head Bobbing Guild) to the Asian method of "thowing their entire body at the steel". This is all starting to sound painfull. I think I will stick to using a Hammer and if I need all that much "extra" force. I will pick up my bigger hammer. Now in order to detect and avoid the dreaded "Head Bob", also to avoid paying Head Bob Guild Fees, I will be installing an adjustable Head Bob Sensor above my anvil. It will be equiped with both positive and negitive feedback features. The direction of the feedback will depend on how I conntect it to the cattle fence leads. To get the best short term corrective actions I will leave the settings on "weed burn". After a short test period, I have determined that I do not suffer from the dreaded Head Bob syndrome, at least anymore. I have found two drawbacks to the above feed back method. One is the multiple horizontal lines etched across my forehead. The other is the lack of hitting force caused by having now become a "Head Jerk"er. :rolleyes:

Without commenting on The specifics of the listed company.. My brother-in-law is a retired auctioneer. He has run into both the bogus bidders (shills), who work for a company and enter bids to run up the price. They try to fall out just before the "real" bidder reaches his limit. And then there is the "Sky Bid" where the auctioneer points to a vacant corner and calls a bid. To find this kind of behavior going on in INTERNET bidding just restores my faith in humanity. For a while I was worried and thought the INTERNET was going honest and legit! The best advice he gave me was to know the value of what you are after and know your limit of what you want to spend. Don't get caught up in the excitement and overbid.

Repeat after me "Me Blacksmith, Me Make Gear". Keep saying that until done. Then take pride when finished and say "Me Made Gear, It run now!!" :rolleyes:

You might try contacting some of the larger forging shops and see if they could help you. Try to get to their engineering department for the best feed back.

For those of us that are not so far along..."Blacksmith's Apprentice" works on any Atari. The "Master" puts it on the anvil and you hit where the "X" is. The more correct hits the more points. Think astroids on steroid.. :rolleyes:

You got me curious so I looked at some pictures of my grandfather in his shop back in the twenties. In a couple of the pictures it looks like a Danish fisherman's hat (he was Danish) and in others he did not wear a hat. In the picture from southshoresmith, the hats look like my dads old felt hat. It was very comfortable and would form anyway you wanted it to. I wish I still had it. So I figure Grant is right and that there is no "blacksmiths" hat just a comfortable local hat the will work to keep the sparks out of the hair!

I have several of the torches, some brand new and some over forty years old. I find that on some of them I have to just crack the valve open to get it to light. After warming up for a while it will run higher. If the bottle is new, it seems to like the barely cracked position the best. When I use the long hose to a 20 pounder there is no problem. When the valve is barely cracked, (full flame though) I can use the bottle in any position. It seems that new disposable bottles are when I have the most problems. Probably due to higher pressure when full. Of course none of them work very well when solder drops into the nozzle end... The problem could be they are putting too much ethanol in the gas..... :rolleyes:

I have found that the working with the pointy end towards me does not work very well. I flicked my bic and wound up on the floor! Oh sure after I make the comment I see Frosty the very Lucky beat me to it! No wonder I can't get the dang thing to work rigth I am still working a day late and a dollar short. B)

He must of had a lotta faith in his "striker" while taking the picture!! :o

In northern Minnesota several years ago, two less then fully intellegent thieves were stealing the alluminum plates off of a high tension electric tie line tower. Unfortantly they took them all off one side of the same tower leg. End result, tower fell, they fried. Unauthorised recycling is not the way to fame and fortune. I quess they made the in-fame-ous part anyway.

Don't forget the seldom used "Deluge" system. In this case all the heads are open and the system is actuated by a sensor. An entire zone will open all at once. Now if Hollywood showed the hero/villain heating the sensor they might get it right. But as usual in the land of make believe " who needs the reality". Or as I say to the kid when he spots some totally idiotic scene, "because it's in the script". On the serious side, contact (or your landlord) his property insurance Risk Engineer or a sprinkler contractor. They can give you several methods to avoid setting off the head. There are sprinkler heads on boiler fronts and in foundry's so it not a hard problem to solve.

Very nice and thanks. As usual for me though, it is a day late and a dollar short. I was in the Seattle and Vancouver last year and don't expect to be able to get back for a few years. Darn! :(

Jerry, If they have a office max or best buy in the area you can get card readers that connect directly to the computer and read many different types of memory cards for about $20. I recently bought one (I have several different digital cameras) and they work better then the direct feed from the cameras.

Coal fired power plants have sold their ash to road construction projects for many years. It can act as a binder and increases the strength of the concrete. Lately the paper industry is looking at ways to use coal ash instead of clay as the binder in making paper. It results in a much stronger paper at a much lower cost. The only drawback, so far, is it won't bleach as white. This makes for an off-white paper. Hard to market, so far. Me, I use the ash and clinker in the muddy area's of my driveway, 450 feet of dirt and mud. The better half was going to use it in the garden but I mix it with the ash from my wood stove and it also burns waste paper from my home office. Too many toxins in the ash from glossy pages.

Kingfish, It might be possible to make a gun barrel with todays materials. I would definitely want to go to professionals to do so. There are many factors involved in just the selection of what materials to star with. Then the technique used to form the Damascus. The engineering research involved would be intensive. I would want a lot of NDE (non-destructive examinations) of both the material and final welded forms. Then there would be the "legal" tests of proofing the barrels. For someone to make one for you, there would be the liability issues also. If you made one for yourself, the question then would become are you expert enough (or have proper access to experts) to make one. Not something I would want to try. With the demand that has been present over the years for someone to produce the works of art that a Damascus barrel can be and still be function-able, if it could be done, one of the big gun manufactures would have done so. Since none of the high end companies will touch it I would question the risks of going it alone. Make one for the wall. It would be a conversation piece for years.

Looking good to me but as Phil said if you don't like them, Make another set only different! Welcome to the club!! :D

I missed the part where it said they were plated in Gold.

Just glad to here you are back and getting better.

Prayers and best wishes from Minnesota. I am at a loss of what else to say. Hang in there!

Just a quick thought. You might want to install the attachment bolts with the excess going down. Twisting a piece and catching the back of your hand on the exposed threads would ruin your whole day. I suspect though that you have already cut them off flush with the nuts.

Let me see, blacksmithing ends when it gets out of my smithy. Fabrication is what I do to change the form from plate, rod, or bar into something else. Some fabrication is done on the anvil, some on the leg vise, some with hand tools. My grandfather was a blacksmith up in the Dakota's and was very proud when he was able to install a shaper, run by the line shaft, back in the twenties. The line shaft was run by a 50 hp electric motor that also ran the little giant, drill press ect. He definitely considered himself a blacksmith first and foremost. Now the boys all became machinists with their mills, and lathes and they did not forge anymore. They did not consider them selves blacksmiths but were machinists or tool and die makers. So I think question is more of a "when is it hand made vs machine made". As indicated above some people consider the use of any electric motor to take it out of the hand made category. I wonder what they would say about the use of water-power? Personally, I would say the if I control the machine by hand it is hand made. If it is automatically made them it would be machine made. If I used the forge in the process then it is made by blacksmithing. Also as indicated above if the client wants a specific type of process then I would do it that way and charge accordingly. As Kyboy indicated, if they ask what the exact process I used was, I would tell them. If they didn't like the use of a power grinder. I would suggest that I could make one using the foot powered grinder or just a file. Of course the charge would be adjusted accordingly. Anyways I am rambling along on a subject that will generate many different opinions. All of them being right for the person making them.

I get mine from the Metal Smiths Guild in Anoka.

Not bad, not bad at all.

Figure out what the customer wants and them have it ready for them when they figure out what they need. In other words, know the customer and your business. Then figure out what you can do to meet their needs. If you don't have it figure out who does and send them that direction. I needed parts for the car the other day and the saleman didn't have it in stock. He turned to the phone, called two places found one with it in stock and had them give me the part for the same price as he would have. The other place honored the price (below their's). Now that was customer service at both places and I will go back to both again.

Now Thomas, I (can) Forge Iron but I just don't like to see my Anvil (on) Fire. :D