Reading Creek Forger

A few days ago I posted a request for advice on making trowels for my daughter to give to three of her Archaeology/Anthropology professors when she graduates this spring. These are three pics of the first one. The others will be different but this one provided some insight on design, strategy and technique improvements. Thanks for the advice.

You got me Charles what paper clips. I finished the blade portion but it looks more like a spear tip and not the sharper straight lines of the design at the beginning of the post. Some other flaws but I hope to bend the shank and attach the handle tomorrow then a pic or two but this may end up being a prototype.

I love all the comments. The question has taken legs of its own. So much the better. To clarify my daughter is graduating college this spring and she wants the trowels as gifts for her professors/mentors. She is the one leaving not them so destroying the trowels seems inappropriate as gifts unless she gets bad grades. Thanks again for the suggestions and the humor. I never got back to the forge today but tomorrow is looking good. Retirement looks even better. .

The struggle has begun. I started with 1" x 1/2" bar stock from a scrap yard. Forged a flat taper at one end then began to draw a small square taper for the handle and the shank. So far so good. It seems to be taking shape as I envisioned but I won't know more until after lunch. I'll post pictures when I get done if its not too embarrassing.

I like all those ideas. The bottle opener is especially cool. The steel choice is helpful too. What do you think of a piece of leaf spring as source metal?

Thanks for getting back so quickly Thomas. I don't have a power hammer so I will do all the work by hand. John, the photo you posted is absolutely beautiful. Makes me want to shop not forge but forge I will. The brass pin suggestion is a good one but I was envisioning an epoxy bed maybe a polished shotgun shell end as a ferrule. I don't know if the mix between antler and shell end would work well so I may save that idea for another project.

My daughter has asked me to make her three archaeologist's trowels (shaped like a cement trowel apparently) as gifts for her professors when she graduates. Any advice? I don't want to rivet the blades onto the shanks and I am planning on deer antler handles so railroad spike trowels won't work. More keepsake then tools for use so tempering is not as important as appearance but I hope they will be functional. .

An update on my attempt at a flatter. I spent about four and a half hours trying to forge it yesterday. Very slow progress, Getting the steel hot enough and keeping it hot took a huge amount of time. Started with a 4 1/8 inch length of 2 1/8 inch round mild steel bar and a coal forge. After isolating the intended flatter end with top and bottom fullers near the middle of the bar I was able to forge it square 1 1/4 inch square and about 4 1/2 inches long (the square half. Cut off about 1 1/2 inches of the forged end so it wouldn't come up against the swage black stand. The project is on hold for a couple of weeks until the shop is open again for Labor day. Lots of help from a couple of friends (holding the stock and some tandem striking) but pretty beat by the end of the day. I can see the evolution of the project but there is lots more to do.

Don't know about the physics but I love the visual. I am probably overthinking the process but I will know more Saturday evening. Its likely I will have multiple failed attempts before I end with a tool that resembles a flatter but that is no surprise and the journey should be revealing. .

Thank you Tom for the confirmation on hardening. Someplace I have a chart of carbon content of second hand metal sources and if I recall correctly the carbon content of drivelines is pretty low on the scale. Thicker does seem better at least as far as the flatter face goes (within reason). Frosty, when I was trying to plan my attempt I read about upsetting the intended flatter end and it seemed like a good idea but handling a hot piece of metal that diameter 3-4 inches long in the vertical plane seemed risky as well as imprecise. I was unsure if a 3-4 inch piece would have enough inertia to alter the flatter end sufficiently. I even thought about leaving the drive shaft in a 1-2 foot length which would certainly have enough weight to upset the work end but I was concerned the overall weight might be too much to control. I have about 8 feet of this stuff so I can make mistakes (highly likely) which I will hopefully learn from. Thanks to all for your contributions. Others thoughts are still welcome.

Thanks for the responses. Maybe more before I start. Someone else suggested drifting the hole before I upset the face but I am concerned that the whole will distort when I forge it through the swage block. It might be better to drift the hole before I finish the flatter end but I really have no idea since i have never done this before. Good ideas though. If the material is low carbon would I be able to harden and temper the flatter surface. I may be using terms incorrectly here but I thought I could only harder higher carbon steel.

I am planning on making a flatter this weekend. I have made a few hammers so this seems to be next in the progression. I have a piece of heavy equipment driveline, about 2.25 inches in diameter and solid. I think it is from a PTO drive. I don't believe the driveline is high carbon steel but it should be pretty tough stuff. Other than coaxing a couple of friends to act as strikers, does anyone have specific suggestions. I plan to use a short piece about 3-4 inches long (so its long enough to hang onto) then forge a square taper at one end so it will fit into the square hole in a swage block. I plan to then drive the metal into the swage block so that I end up with a piece about 1.25 inches square that I can later drift a hole into for a handle. I hope to end up with a square end (by making corrections to square as I go) opposite the tapered end suitable for a flatter, maybe 2.5-2.75 inches square and about .5 inch thick. Once I get the proper shape and dimension I can cut off any excess from the tapered end (and use it for another tool later). I can treat the flatter end with Casenite if necessary but I don't know if I need to. Any suggestions or advice is appreciated.

Maybe I am just being hopeful but any chance it was a bizarre kind of photo shop. Two anvils damaged in such a similar manner makes me hope its a hoax. That or an old attempt at destroying unauthorized copies?

Thanks Steve, we talked about it last year at the Weaverville Hammer-In but I didn't make in on Sunday to bring the anvil for you to look at. I will be there with the anvil starting on Thursday so we can talk about it then. Thanks for the offer. See you later this week. Fred

My only anvil is a Henry Wright, 108 lbs (at least at the time of manufacture). It was given to me so the price was great. I estimate its manufacture at sometime around the 1890-1920 range if I remember the information from Mr. Postman's book correctly. It has kind of dull,flat sound but at least my ears don't hurt. The rebound is satisfactory, probably around 75% on the initial test. The corners were chipped off but I was able to smooth out the roughest edges. Its pretty flat considering its age. I like it except it's a little small. I think it compares favorably to the anvils at the museum where I am taking blacksmithing classes and those range from Trenton to Peter Wright and all sorts of anvils whose manufacturer I don't know though almost all of those are much bigger, 150 lbs plus. I thought about having the face and edges repaired but I think I will save for a larger anvil.

Thanks Armand and wow. I thought i understood what others meant by a lower vice used for striking but the pics and comments made it much clearer. Much better idea than trying to weld a leg on the one I have. Now I have to go about gathering the pieces to try to put one of these together.

I got it at our local Ace Hardware so probably their store brand but it worked well until I tipped the forge over. I had originally cemented the drum to the inside of the pressure tank to reduce the almost 3/4 inch lip but when I tipped it over to load it the drum came lose and broke the cement filler. The re-bar tuyere remains intact so I guess I can live with the lip if I want to be able to take the forge to hammer-ins etc (at last until I build a more mobile one). Moving the forge around seems likely to loosen the fire pot from the hole in the pressure tank. BTW I called it refractory cement since that seemed to be the appropriate name but it may have been some other type of fireplace/heat resistant cement.

Nice work and good plan. Can't wait to see the finished product. I thought about using wood as a frame but a local plumber (& blacksimthing instructor) gave me an old pressure tank to mount mine in. I finished my forge last summer and used a brake drum as the fire pot. I think the brake drum came from a 70's vintage GM truck and was both a brake drum and a disc brake rotor so it had a large lip to secure the drum to the pressure tank bottom. I cut the bottom of the pressure tank off leaving a lip of about 3" above the weld to act a side wall. Cut a hole in the pressure tank bottom and mounted the brake drum in the bottom of a steel pressure tank. I used a thick coat refractory cement to hold four pieces of re-bar in place as a tuyere and fill up some of the space in the bottom of the brake drum while protecting it from the heat at the same time. The pressure tank surface works well as a holding area for green coal. It has worked well so far with no sign of breaking down. I attached four (should have used three) 3/4 inch floor flanges to the exterior of the pressure tank bottom and then screwed in 3/4 inch black pipe as legs. Finished it off with hand crank blower which supplies plenty of air through the flexible tubing another mentor gave me. Nice to be able to work at home though not as often as I would like.

Both of you have a good eye for detail especially since it was only one photo. The 'washer' (the one next to the concave one at the handle ball) that you spoke of turned out to be an old throw out bearing likely put there to take up space. It seems like the screw box is a little large for the vice so it probably came from a heftier model but I think I can make it work. I will forge a new washer tomorrow with a slot for the key-way against the other leg. Seems like whoever cobbled the thing together had some spare parts and used those to make a serviceable but not completely functional vice. No surprise it looks like it was run over since it was at a scrap yard and pulled from a pile of metal by one of the equipment operators. I still think I did OK on the find but now its going to take a little longer than I anticipated to make it correct. I paid $75.00 for my other post vice but I had to make a spring and mounting bracket for that one so the $28.00 I paid for this one seems reasonable. The extra forging work will make me better at what I am trying to learn so there is benefit to that as well. Thanks for the input and any additional advice would be appreciated

Mr. Powers, the more I look at the picture the more I think I understand what you saying (about both marriages and this vice). The large piece of metal (screw box?) appears to be protruding beyond the leg side seat and not intruding upon the pivoting leg on the handle side. I'll check it again but I hope its merely a case of the screw box not being rotated into a locking position (The key-way on the box is in place but visible beyond the leg which doesn't seem correct) on the leg side. Hopefully its only that adjustment and not the wrong box or a damaged internal on the leg. Thanks

Thanks to all for the suggestions, This is my third attempt to post the picture.

First a small brag then a question? Yesterday while "shopping" a a local scrapyard for small pieces of square stock I looked over and saw a complete post vice standing apart from the piles. The screw worked great, the spring and mounting bracket were still in place. Unfortunately somebody over the years had cut the bottom of the leg off, then welded another large piece of metal to damaged leg, sleeved it with heavy larger round tubing and mounted the leg to an iron wagon/cart wheel with metal spokes then topped it off by filling the wheel and spokes with concrete. This configuration made the mounting plate unnecessary. Cost .35 a lb for scrap iron. I didn't want the mounting base wheel so they cut it off. Ten minutes later I was the new guardian of an 80 lb post vice with 5 inch jaws but missing about 9 inches of leg. Now for the question. How and what should I weld on it to replace the missing leg portion. I was thinking of a portion of an axle shaft (which I also found at the scrap yard) or would something less stout be OK. I would have loved to save the wheel too but I didn't want to pay for that concrete (100 lbs plus) and removing it would have likely wrecked the wheel anyway

Mine suffered a similar malady. I losened the large nut at the botton of the vice, aligned the jaws then retightend the nut, works well and stays square although it gets hung up once in a while, binding on the bushings near the screw. I don't know if I would claim it to be surefire but it worked for mine.

I am actually more interested in the stand and was considering the anvil a bonus but I don't know anything about the quality of the anvil. No info on the weight but if my estimate is close, its going for about $1.40/llb so that is a decent price if the anvil is usable as an anvil and not a door stop or yard art. pic.

Do any of you have any information or opinions on Enderes Anvils. They are made in Minnesota. There is one that is available nearby through an estate auction. Its small and relatively new looking. It resembles a Harbor Freight anvil and I'm concerned it is more of ASO vs a usable anvil. I am guessing it weighs something around 50 lbs and is 13" long.