ciladog

5 minutes in Photoshop

The supplier that I have been using for over 35 years just sold the business to the owner’s nephew and everything changed. Used to be that they had a shorts rack where you bought at scrap prices. Shorts to them were anything under six feet. You put what you pulled on a scale and paid by the pound. That price went up or down depending on the market. Now there are not many shorts in the rack and the price is up in the clouds.

Also, the nephew is changing the business form a supplier/fabricator to mostly construction steel fabrication so he doesn’t even want to stock small sizes and is often out of stock or doesn’t carry it anymore. And the prices for stock are almost double what you can get it for elsewhere. So my theory is that if another fabricator wants to buy steel from them that fabricator can not compete with the price this guy wants for fabricated work.

They also used to charge $5.00 for the first cut and $2.50 for each cut after that or not at all. That’s gone now too. And there is no making deals anymore. It cost what the book says it cost. Take it or leave it.

I buy 1018 all the time but it is cold roll ( flat bar ,square or round ).
I get decent prices but I buy an awfull lot of steel ( generally a mixture of stainless and carbon )
I have everything delivered in full lengths as most suppliers deliver twice a week.
You can generally get most cold roll in either 12 or 20 foot lengths ( if you dont specify they will sell you the 20 footers )

I wish i was closer to NJ so I could see this in person. My mentor has a Bull that is trying to destroy itself when the head goes up; I would love to modify his hammer with your adjustments. Excellent work! Any chance you will make fabrication instructions available? Aloha from Kauai, Steve

This hammer is amazing. INCREDIBLE. I got the chance to run it and I have never seen a hammer with more control, and more options to adjust the type of blow it delivers. I have run Say Maks, Anyangs, bulls, Ironkiss and LG's and not seen it's equal in the ability to pound the snot out of steel or kiss it lightly, or for the control over the stroke. it looks complicated but watch the videos and think about it, it's the best limit switch hammer configuration I have ever seen, dare I say, unlimited?

Hello, Kjzitur, I enjoyed your videos and your control without limit switches is an achievement for sure.

I'm not trying to heighjack this thread but my hammer does the samething with limit switches.

Very impressive indeed! But he is making adjustments to the linkage for different hammer patterns. Look at the position of the adjustable part of the linkage on the side of the hammer in both videos.

Nice job I was there too for the demo. Do I know you?

Looks like you did a great job finishing up where we left off the other day Ciladog

Over here in the northeast we have a nor eastern winter storm blowing through and since I don’t have satellite TV I figured I would take the time to post this thread.

This fall at the NEBA meeting at Ashokan Fred Crist was the demonstrator. He extensively used a bridge anvil that he had made that fit into the hardy hole of his anvil. He also used it in the post vise. I was impressed as to how useful it was and thought that I must have one.

A few days ago, Dick Sargent (AKA Doc on IFI) came by to my shop and we decided to try our hand at forging one. It started out as a piece of 1X3X5 ½ flat stock. After about 4 ½ hours of forging this is what resulted.

Dave, Like anything else you learn in blacksmithing, there is an art to it. Tending a forge fire is an art and you will eventually learn it.

Take a guess why there is so much room in the forge around the firebox. The answer is so you can pile up green coal around the firebox that you will continuously rake toward the firebox as it converts from green coal to coke at the edge of the fire.

Most blacksmith will use bituminous or soft coal that converts to coke when the volatiles burn out leaving carbon. It is the carbon (coke) you burn to heat the iron.

A lot of people that are just starting out think they can conserve coal by building small fires with just a little coal. It does not produce enough heat and it will burn out in short order especially if you leave the air blast on.

The fire also needs to be sufficiently deep so that the oxygen is consumed deep in the firebox before it gets to the metal you are heating otherwise you produce a lot of scale on the metal.

It’s not uncommon to go through 10 or 15 pounds of coal per hour and more it you’re doing heaving forging.

If you want to leave the fire and come back to it some time later (like having lunch) you turn off the blower and bank the fire with green coal. You pile three or four inches of coal on top and all around so you can no longer see the burning coke. When you come back (even a few hours later) you start up the blower and fire will come back. Rake the green coal back to the edges of the fire and you are back in business.

Seems like it wouldn't be too hard to make an adapter for 1/4 hex bits.

So this is my idea:

What if I took a 19 kg gas bottle and modded it to take unleaded petrol. Petrol gives off fumes that in a contained environment would essentially be a gas. If I drilled a hole at the bottom of the bottle and inserted a ftg for a compressed air hose and used the compressed air to create the same effect that the lantern worked on then I would have the required pressure to run a forge? I think.

Your 2.5" cylinder at 90 psi developes 442 pounds of force. I don't thing increasing the ram weight, as you discribe, will effect your BPM much at all.

John,

You should wrap the dies in foil for two reasons; to prevent decarburization and more importantly to quench slowly in still air. Put a piece of paper in the foil package with the die to consume the oxygen.

When you’re making something for your own use you can do just about anything. If the tool or die fails only you are to blame and only you may get hurt. Making tools and dies for someone else is another matter and should be done correctly.

I have made a fair number of large dies from H13. The dies are only as good as the heat treatment.

A 20 lb block of steel takes a fair amount of time to come up to even temperature throughout. H13 needs to be preheated to 1400-1500 F and then brought up to 1800-1850 F and held there. The soak time is 30 minutes for each 1 inch of thickness of the thinnest cross section. So a 3 inch high die would soak for 1 ½ hours.

Then let the dies (in the foil) cool until you can handle them with your hand at about 150-125 F and begin the tempering immediately. Yes, H13 dies should be tempered. Tempering H13 takes a long time, 2 hours per inch and they should be tempered twice. The second cycle should be about 50 F lower than the first. Tempering at 1000 F will give you a Rockwell C of about 48/50.

Now I realize that the above is an ideal situation and unless you have a heat treat oven or as I use, an old pottery kiln with a programmable controller attached to it, you won’t be able to be that precise. But the benefit of using H13 for dies is in its properties after heat treatment.


Also know that H13 should not be welded cold because it will create stress cracks at the welds. H13 should be heated to 900-1000 F before welding. I usually do any welding right after they come out of the tempering.

Joe,

You don’t have enough ore to make the process work. With only 3kg (about 6.5lbs) of ore it would be a very tiny bloomery. You would need about ten times that amount or between 36 and 27 kg. It takes more than 4 hours of charging ore and charcoal (about every 10 minutes) to develop the bloom.

I don't want to hijack the thread but I'm curious where folks are sourcing their 15N20. My local metal distributor has no such animal on the books, is there a common supplier/source for this material?

Well you da man, that is a beautiful ring for someone who just learned the craft.

Hay Thissideup,

Are you pulling our leg here? This can’t be the first ring you have ever made can it? And it’s only the second time you attempted to make mokume.

It’s a beautiful ring but I’m having trouble getting my brain around how you made it.

You used five loonies, a copper penny, some copper tubing and a brass fitting. It looks like you fused the stack together and then cut out the ring. Did you open up and flatten the tubing and fitting first? Please explain how the ring was made.

If I understand your question, you want to make a long socket head bolt. The way to do it is to forge weld a collar on the end of a bar. Once you have done that you get the bolt head good and hot, place the bolt through a bolster to support the head and drive in a punch of whatever shape you want the socket to be.


Wrong kind of bolt,hummm :huh:

Key-lock-hardy

Jake,

I respectfully disagree with you. You have a story to be told and you tell it so well. Much of what is written today that gets to market is just such BS. You have a real life story to be told.