SJS

I don't care if it did have Brooks cast into the side, it is an ugly pig of an anvil;-) I wouldn't turn it down for the right price if the rebound was good, but I would likely only use it as a sledging anvil. I have this thing about ugly horns.... ;-)

cartoon physics... Its like politics its all about the optics of the situation. Its about perception and what makes you look good, it has nothing to do with reality. I prefer Truth, and beauty, and reality. Form should follow function!

​Yes, Ethan mostly, with milder tools with a normalized heat treat, and well dressed struck ends you should be safe enough. Spalling doesn't happen very often even when you do everything wrong, its just it can be disastrous when it does. You just don't want to be one in a million that way. What a lot of us believe is you should establish safe working habits that work across a wide range of situations. If you only work with your own tools, then that practice is probably safe enough. But what about if you are at a conference, or if someone gives you a set of fancy Brent Bailey tools for Christmas, its the exceptions, and the odd situations where habit takes over that get you in trouble. If you were to come to my shop and work with me, and struck a tool with your forging hammer, it could end badly (your hammer face gets all garfed up, the end of the cutter spalls, I freak out;-) The principle is to protect yourself from an equivocal situation, where you think its safe, but it actually isn't. We are all training ourselves, consciously or unconsciously. With my tools and technique it is rare for me to need to redress either end of a tool, other than my thin round punches. I have a hot cutter that I have used for 10+ years, and have probably never resharpened. It is convenient and faster to use the normalized tools and just use your favorite forging hammer. As long as you are conscious of the issue, when you are in a strange situation, you will hopefully remember... My copper and bronze mallets take a concave face after a bit of service. A note about hammers with a DEEP concavity, your struck tool ends need to be long enough that the hammer doesn't hit your hand with and inch or two of the tool sticking up past your hand... My old favorite bronze mallet took on a VERY concave form, I started to cave in the eye, and had to rehandle it several times before finally retiring it. I am tempted to recast it into a new hammer head... In my copious free time...

After learning the hard way I make it a habit to use a brass or copper mallet, or an annealed steel hammer to strike tooling. I have a large stock of S7 and H13 tool steel drops. So most all of the struck tools that I make are made of fancy air hardening tool steel. Which means they are HARD all the way through, and when they spall they have a LOT of energy. Most of my forging hammers are softer than my tooling, and if I hit the tools with my hammers they lose, and I have to redress the faces. Using 4140 and coil spring for your stock for making your struck tools, and using them as forged and just normalized like I remember Brian teaching. Your hammer should be harder than the struck end of the tool??? But salvaged steel is notoriously unreliable in how it behaves, some times it normalizes like you expect it to, and sometimes it air hardens unexpectedly. Not to mention that even when a tool is normalized, if you beat on it long enough many steels will work harden, and can still spall. When a tool spalls the word shrapnel is really descriptive of what comes off, because it is hot, is moving fast, and can tear you up. It can hurt you, someone you love, or someone in the crowd watching you... It is a liability you don't want to mess with. Always keep the struck ends dressed back to prevent mushrooming, and it is still safer to use a softer mallet. With a copper mallet you don't deform the tool, and the mushrooming of the mallet isn't really of much of concern, because the chunks that come off the soft mallet don't seem to have the energy of (work) hardened steel. Best practice is to use a softer hammer on struck tools. Lots of people try to "engineer" their tools so they can just use their forging hammer for everything... But what happens when you get a fancy chisel or slitter made out of some hardened tool steel, or when the tool mushrooms and work hardens. Think about risk management, everything we do is dangerous, how do we minimize those risks. It only takes one accident to change your life forever, and you only have to protect anything you would like to keep... Which would include your family farm and your business, a personal injury attorney with a liability law suits play for keeps! A little due diligence with a belt grinder, or right angle grinder helps keep your tools in properly dressed, and safer.

I have a 14# straight peen like that, nasty brutish thing. I don't remember if you can see where it was made, but the shoulders on the face are in bit better shape. Never liked that hammer even when I was younger and stronger, would flat wear you out. I used to break concrete in the hot sun with it... I told a guy that I didn't know anyone who could swing it properly, he thought he could, he proved me right, at the expense of the uniformity of a billet of Damascus that we were gang sledging. Heavy hammers slow the cadence when your sledging. Ideally when your team striking you are all well matched in size, strength, hammer weight, and speed. It throws the work off if one guy is off cadence... I know that there are guys who can use the bigger hammers and do a good job, (Bruce Wilcox had some boys who could bang out some work with a real mans sledge, not to mention Tom Clark, Uri Hofi, and Ahmet Levi:-) but I haven't met that many personally... For Most people you need to work up to the bigger hammers, it just doesn't seem to be something that people can just pick up and be tolerably accurate with, or work that long with, on an occasional basis. Better a smaller sledge that you can swing fast enough, accurately enough, and long enough to get the work done. Too many people want to rush to a BIG heavy hammer, thinking it will do more work, and it will... on you, and/or if you can swing it fast enough, accurately enough, and long enough to get the job done... My wife used to sledge for me, I have a beautiful 8# rounding hammer sledge, but the last time she did that was 12 years ago, now my oldest is 15 and nearly big enough to sledge for me. I will be taking a class with Nathan Robertson on hammer making where we will be sledging for one another, maybe they will change my opinion;-) Hopefully I wont be rushing the strike, or lagging behind... ;-) Team Striking is a lot of fun, a lot of work, and will wind you, but a huge amount of fun. I plan on bringing my 6# straight sledge for striking tools, my lovely 8# Rounding sledge for forging, and a 10#? cross peen because, might bring a few more including the brutish 14#er...

One of the situations where: Just because you can, does that mean you should??? And personal experience trumps theoretical knowledge every time... :-) I don't have time to do all of the cool things, I could do... So I have to pick and choose the things that I NEED to do myself, and the things that I really want to do myself...

Yah I have noticed that the manufactures of these different products don't feel bound by the junkyard steel lists at all, or even the ASTM lists. That is why Billy Merritt says for doing junkyard Damascus you should try to stick with known quantities, like John Deer mower blades for commercial mowers like on a golf course. Find a brand that works on the mower, and in the forge like you want, and then stick with it till they change the steel on you... For random scrap blades that people just give you out of the blue, cause your a blacksmith you can use this, I can see how that can be a crap shoot...

I thought I remembered that mower blades were L6 or something comparable? A little Nickel, and some Chromium for wear resistance, have a little bit of shine (some brands have more shine than others) when you pattern welded with a file and or some leaf spring??? I can't remember which brand of lawn mower blades Billy Merritt said had a particularly good flash when welded up in a billet.

Jr Strasel had a neat trick that he recommended. If you overlap the ends just slightly, then do filet welds, you can get it all hot and forge it out and it will almost look like a forge weld. Lots of ways to get the job done, find something that works for you, your tools, and your skill level, hopefully it will end up being aesthetically pleasing as well... Always strive to do better.

Look at the brazeal style hammer making vids on YouTubeYouTube. It will show the "camel hump tools;-) use something like that to keep your cheeks from getting dented...

You only have to protect anything you would like to keep...

I just noticed that the dimple impression is teardrop shaped, that is a nice touch. I like that! It is the little things that differentiate between; good, better, and man that is the coolest thing I have ever seen... :-) Pretty nice design.

So did you go look at it, did it have decent rebound, do you have a new anvil??? Enquiring Minds want to know???

How and what it is mounted on and to, makes a big difference too. A well mounted anvil will make less noise, it might still ring loud and hard, but it will make less than if it were loose and could vibrate more freely. A really nice wasp waisted Haybudden or Soderfors will ring quite a bit even bedded in silicon, clamped to a metal stand, a chain wrapped around its waist, with big magnets under the horn and the heel... It will help, but it won't get rid of it all. Just the nature of the beast, they are hard oddly shaped tuning forks. But doing your best to deaden the ring is better than loosing all of your hearing in the higher pitch range. And Tinnitus isn't very much fun, and you should do all you can to avoid it... If your anvil has excellent rebound and very little ring you should be thankful.

Skill is making some thing hard look easy. Excellence is preforming something difficult with a high level of skill. Maybe not that hard but a lot of experience and skill displayed in efficiently getting results, I love that kind of thing;-)

Do you guys distinguish between an open die hammer, or closed die hammer. Here I haven't heard the "dies";-) in a power hammer called anything else... I do remember noticing you guys called them pallets occasionally:-) Kinda like you guys call a rivet header, a snap. Part of the American experience I suppose, taking a little bit of information and the traditions from Europe and then making up the rest, because we had the freedom to do it... Lots of apprentices and journeymen smiths came over here and opened up their own shops, and they had to be creative, it introduced a divergent element to our development. My main professor in college was Vernard Foley who is a historian of science and technology. There was some interesting improvements to some tools due to the unique perspective of colonist here in the US. The American felling ax is an improvement over 'traditional' European felling axes, because the instant center of rotation is moved back into the center of the handle. It is easier to use, and the handle tends to vibrate less as I remember. The American scythe is just different, it tends to be much heavier and better suited to clearing brush, than moving grass or even cutting wheat. It is definitely not easier to use... The American tradition of over engineering comes from the early pioneers where they wanted a tool that would last forever, that and skilled labor was rarer, and raw materials were cheaper here than back in Europe. Its funny I have heard that most of the hinge barrels made here in the US were welded, and that it was more common for lighter duty hinges to just have butted barrels, again probably an issue of perceived durability. Even deeper in the rabbit hole;-) famous for going off on a tangent.....

Yah that is the style of tong clip that Tom Clark used to teach how to make. He would often do one or two as a warm up before a demo. He also recommended that as a general practice, if every time you were out in the shop you made a clip or two you would have enough fairly quickly. He also was an advocate of forging a nail or two as a warm up. It is nice to have a warm up exercise project, something that you can work on in a relaxed manner, and still focus on improving your skill. Often times people who are just starting out bounce around doing all kinds of different projects, and don't end up being very deliberate about improving specific skills. Choosing a simple project that you repeat over and over again, allows you to focus on improving that project, and all of the processes involved in that project. You can do S-hooks, or J hooks, or leaves, or bottle openers but the goal is to get better. You can sharpen your skills, and improve your finished product. As you practice you get faster at doing it and the project gets more consistent. As you repeat the process over and over it becomes programed in your brain and your muscles, and soon you don't even need to really think about it much. I used to have a lot more of those clips, but between my kids coming into the shop and hiding things in the slacktub, and them flying off of the end of the tongs into the grass at demos, or getting left at some conference where I was contesting... ;-) I only have one or two left... I need to make some more, I do like that style I just don't keep a lot of small stock in the shop, and I will have to get some 1/4" round just to make tong clips from...

Very nice, very nice indeed;-) Nice tooling set up, and a nice clean basic bottle opener or 60;-) I like seeing your pics...

Speaking of wording that helps you understand concepts better;-) This is probably a great time to introduce a Clifton Ralph-ism. (I think Roy Bloom did a video with Clifton's permission called "Clips and Cow Pies" which is focused mainly at farriers but is still probably useful anyway ;-) Imagine that your steel is a big wet juicy COW PIE... Now what is going to happen if you drop a bowling ball on it? Its going to spread out evenly in all directions around where you drop it. Now what will happen if you drop a brick on it? It will mainly fly way from the long sides, some from the short sides, and very little at the corners... Now if you smack it with a stick, what will happen? The Pie will fly away from the stick, perpendicularly to the axis of the stick... The same thing happens on a smaller scale with different hammer shapes. A rounding hammer or a ball peen moves the steel in all directions around the face of the hammer. A square (like a Hofi or Czech style hammer), or rectangular faced hammer (like a French pattern) moves off of the edges more and a bit less off of the corners. Then with a Cross peen or a Straight peen most of the movement of the steel is perpendicular to the peen, you get a lot of stretch and not much along the axis of the peen. You can use one shape of hammer to spread, and bevel, and fuller, but you can also take advantage of different hammer shapes to increase your efficiency with those operations. With Brian's "die" concept and with the tilting hammer technique using the square shouldered rounding hammer you can squeeze these out of one hammer. The Brazeal style rounding hammer is kinda like a nice multipurpose tool. The Hofi hammers with their heavily crowned square faces are also very handy. Like I said in a previous post, I like to use several specialized hammers to do those same processes. Generally a specialized tool will do a better job at that one operation than a multipurpose tool, but if you can only take one tool with you, then you are probably better off with the multipurpose tool. The other advantage to the Brazeal style rounding hammer, and the tilted face technique is that you aren't switching hammers in the middle of a heat, you just tilt and go... I do tilt the hammer face as I work to do specific things, but I don't want to be forced to do that too much, because I don't trust myself. There are a few operations where I tilt the hammer, and I lock my hand position too much, and that is hard on my hands (like drawing clips on a horse shoe...) So I try to be careful not to put myself in a situation where I would be tempted to lock into a position that would hurt me. We all have to recognize where our faults are and try to either retrain them, or work around them. Keep hammering, keep learning, and keep thinking, its the only way to get better at this...

Glass blowing and lampwork are fun too... and Raku... There are lots of fire arts. I couldn't quit if I wanted to, which I don't. I would still fantasize about forging things, and how to do it...Whenever I am not otherwise occupied there is a very good chance I am thinking about forging, or teaching, or building tools...

The only way to end an addiction is to replace it with another... I'm thinking origami it is light, worst thing that could happen is you get a paper cut, and after a long weekend of demonstrating folding swans, and Darth Vader heads it would be SO much easier to load up.... maybe buy some fancy paper...

Got it. Goop eats floors. Scrape as much goop out each time you fire off the forge. Nothing fixes that kinda bad so don't let it get bad... Check! ;-) I still have most of a pint of ITC100, I think it was only 65$ when I bought it... I washed the floor with ITC100 when I bought the forge... Probably should have done a wash or two of Satanite, then the ITC100. Probably would make it easier to scrape up the goop.

Its a puddle at temp... No I am not welding in it and using flux. Just doing production work with piles of steel in there all hot for a little too long. I probably need to try to tune things a bit better with the pressure and the ball valve. I normally run it full out, so as I forge out thinner I need to get in the habit of turning down the pressure and the volume of gas I am using. In that way a coal forge is easier, you just crank less as the stock gets smaller... But I don't pull out nearly as many sparklers out of the gasser than the coal forge;-) I just leave a puddle of scale in the bottom when I am working 6-12 pieces at a time... Its a pain to tear the body of the forge down and replace the bottom brick, and the liner is in good shape except for the puddle. I will see about getting it up to temp and scraping some of the junk out, and then throw some kitty litter in there, til I get a welding plate to stick in there to catch the goop as it drips off.

NC Whisper Momma two burner blacksmith model with open end ports, the bottom is a hard fire brick split I am pretty sure.