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Hi Ian, I'm very impressed with your retort design, I am looking to build something similar myself and I am curious about your reasons for the 4-6" bell mouth. one question survey :) a/ flue airspeed b/ firebox size c/ compensate for heat transfer d/ none of the above I am also wondering if there is any chance of going over temp while the wood is gassing fuel into the firebox? Did you consider a bypass to control this?

I think the difference is that holding the ends together you need to wind the whole piece up and tension it while it is still very soft to form the twist if you cross the ends only the bit where the rod touches twists and coils. The same problem happens with both methods one twist will straighten and twist off as the other coils around it if things get out of kilter. As bigfoonampa says steels with a high tensile strength will really make you work hard. If I had to knock out a 100 in a few hours I would build a pair of jigs and a twisting tool and do it horizontally like Frank suggests. lot more control and power if you are not reaching up and away from your body. sometimes going small scale with a bit of wire coat-hanger and a pair of pliers can help to visualize these things before stepping up to the forge.

fossil fuel is essentially plant material that has been decomposed without oxygen. There is nothing that you can do with oil,coal,gas that cant be recreated directly from plant material given a little brainpower and financial incentive.

the under bench towbar receiver is a good idea, the vertical one can be a little hit and miss depending on the attention to detail of the fabricator. :blink: when I build a welding bench!!!! Hate to tell you Rhett, but what you have built looks suspiciously welding bench-like ;) you are 95% there already. I would make it multi-purpose and use it for everything.

I have never done this before so it is not "by the book" but I figured since I am a farmer and have spent a lot of my life twisting wire. it cant be that big a leap from there. I have clamped a piece of 9/16 bar in the vice, heated the 3/8 rod up and bent the loop around the bar using my hand on the long end and some round tongs (or clamping multi-grips) for the short end. I have taken the two ends right past each other so they are almost a straight line pointing in the opposite directions then started the twist. You will find that changing the angle of each rod will determine how it curls around the other so you can correct as you go Once there is a couple of twists in the rod, clamp the free ends in the vice (note the angle) cool the twisting bar so you can hold it and thread it back through the loop and twist some more (using the bar to tweak the forming twist straight) Pull it out of the vice and close the angle of the two ends and keep going. I don't know what else to say, I haven't used a lot of heat for this, it was basically two orange heats with a oxy cutting torch because I had to stop to take the pictures. There is one twist not as straight as the others and there is a slight bend that could be taken out. After the first heat, It took roughly 4 minutes to do the twist including the second heat and photos. Hope this is some help to you cheers Yahoo I forgot to say, if you don't have tongs for holding round bar, try using a length of pipe to hold the short end to give you some leverage and control. It will probably work far better that ill fitting tongs.

Have you considered an outrigger plate to mount the vices out from the tables corners? I am assuming its not going up against a wall. or with the bench vice, hinge the bolts on the front edge so that you can remove the back bolt and the vice swings right over and hangs below the bench. it requires making a funny shaped bracket to get it to tuck right under the bench but its a great party trick! It would give you a big flat surface to work on when you need it. I do this with my mobile welding bench, without the vice in the way I can jig, weld and bend straight from the bench surface and clamp work on two edges. The vice on my bench hangs between the legs on one end or I can pull the hinge pin and take it completely off. first rate bench, well done!

I'm a big fan of brute force. I cant stand stuff moving around in the vice jaws while I am working. I have a portable vice with weight over the back legs (buckets of sand) and footplates on the front legs so I can stand on them to get some nice leverage to tighten the jaws.

Hi Joel, your hooks have caused a bit of debate over here, we are keen to hear how you get on, who buys them and what they are going to use them for. Oh, and more specifically what type of surface they are fitted on. We are assuming there are a lot of buildings with exposed solid timber around Kent, not chipboard, plaster, brick, stone and steel like they mostly are here.

>working with scrap jackhammer bits no point reinventing the wheel that 32mm shank will fit an atlas copco and a few others, if it has an airhole down the shank to clear the rock chips so it can rotate it is a jackhammer bit, if its solid, it fits a breaker. I reworked a breaker moil and chisel tip a few weeks ago, they both had cracks from a previous sharpening, consensus on the day was it was a cheap boron steel and the metal had been worked too cold. I snipped the cracked ends back and kept them above a dull orange and they formed up OK.

If I put together a shopping list like that for today it comes to $2870 (107 times the price) up from $26.80 in 1918 interestingly the hardie tool has increased by a larger percentage than the anvil and forge hardie tool..................$60 240x price increase gas forge.................$800 150x anvil 95kg Odwyer..$1050 130x hammer.......................$90 90x drillpress 25mm max.$400 90x big cast bench vice...$270 70x 2x tongs......................$50 70x tap and die sets........$150 50x ......................total...$2870 not really sure what that says, I mean about the price of blacksmith tools, not what goes on in my head.

Hi Joe, perhaps I can give you a couple of pointers on steel. the American A36 and Australian 250 are basic codes for hot rolled structural steels and are by and large pretty useless to a blacksmith or machinist as a guide to what it is. unless you are looking for some angle iron or c section to build with. A = ferrous 36 = 36000psi minimum tensile strength = 250 Mpa it kind of a generic for "mild steel" somewhere between 16 and 25 points of carbon with some manganese tossed in to improve the workability. (1% carbon is 100 points) as a blacksmith you are mainly looking for square and round bar (and flat bar if you make blades). round is available in all grades and sizes, square can be pretty hard to find if you are after a specific size or grade but it saves time, effort and fuel on some jobs to start off with a square section. the quickest and best way to get your head around grades of steel is to use the AISI or SAE four number system as the benchmark for everything, that way when somebody says "spring steel" you are mentally comparing it to a 5160 as a 1% chrome steel or if I tell you that most structural steel in Australian shops in will be "300" you are thinking around 1045. Dave Smucker has done a brilliant little guide called steels useful for tools it's a great starting point, print it out, keep it handy and pencil in your own notes on the differences between the various steelmakers products of the same grade as you come across them. offcuts are where you find them, the latest round of shop safety audits mean that some businesses are prevented from handling and cutting anything but full lengths of steel but they may be able to point you in the direction of the scrap dealer that buys their offcuts in bulk.

go to a yard sale and buy a box of old worn and broken files for $5, this will give you some cheap w2, 1095 type steels to practice with. it rusts but it sharpens close to O1. if you are looking for O1 a lot of companies sell their leftover steel to surplus steel buyers. You should be able to buy some plate or flat bar fairly cheaply if you are prepared to keep an eye on their stock list and wait for it to come in. it may not be listed as O1, a lot of O1 steel is sold by brand names ketos, colonial no6, carpenter O1, oilcrat etc. from my suppliers (in Oz) prices ATM listed at $3.00/kg and go to about $7.00/kg for O1 1070 for rough blades $2.00/kg

NS I cant do you a proper vector image that can be re-sized, I don't have the software, these are just rough ideas I stitched together while I am layed up with the flu. I'm sure there is someone around that can design you something with some polish about it. Here is another from the pile. I rejected it because the chickens face is too small for a touchmark, I don't think the beak would come out, but the layout looks OK

Daniel, technically the plate should lift off but depending on what is seized anything could happen, including damaging a gear or snapping the casting. Not all ottos are the same so it pays to do more thinkin and lookin and less levering and hitting till your sure you are not going to damage anything. first off it would pay to give it a good clean up with a brush or solvent gun and lots of solvent (kero or petrol/gas). then apply the penetrating fluid, I find that a good spray motorbike chain lube works well, especially if you have the patience to sit the part out of the wind and in the sun for a day or two to let it soak in. Have a look at the two shafts coming out of the case and clean any marks and burrs off with a file and remove the rusty stuff with some emery cloth or sandpaper so they will come out without grabbing when the time comes. It is worth a try to see if you can wiggle the fan shaft at this point, use a pair of over centre vice grips and clamp them across the fan shaft or slip the fan back on and try to move it backwards and forwards if any of the shafts start to move give them a liberal dose of your can of wd40/rp7 stuff and gently work them to see if they will free up. keep in mind that there will be a tremendous amount of torque by the time the last cog moves, if it wont move under some pressure and it springs back when you ease off, its about to snap a tooth or twist a shaft off. It might pay to put the brackets bolts back in while you are doing this to keep everything square. if it frees up like this, it will make things so much easier. if you can see the ends of the shafts rotating in the top plate you should be able to remove the bolts again and lever the plate while turning the fan shaft and work the plate off. if the shafts don't rotate, then you will need a good sized pin punch (close to the diameter of the shafts) to drive the shafts out of the bracket. you will need to get a torch and look at the gears to see which ones overlap and hit the shafts in a sequence so that the shaft with the big gear on the top is always last to move so the gears don't clash together and damage. if the fan shaft is stuck as well, then protect the end with a piece of brass to stop it belling up as you tap it with the hammer (or use a hardwood block as a hammer). Then again, if you hold onto the thing by the bracket with the case hanging below, a half a dozen swift hits on the rim of the case with a dead blow hammer and it would probably come apart. I cant see enough detail in the photo to make that call. good luck, let us know how you get on.

more rooster-y, bigger comb longer wattle, last one ...promise! My thinking here is that the forged object itself makes it obvious that its blacksmiths work, so I left the anvil out. A full detailed rooster on an anvil would probably make a great logo or embroidered shirt pocket. And the full YARDBIRD FORGE name could be used.

version 2 tougher lookin rooster that about as good as I can do for something that small, he needs a neck ruffle but I cant get them to look right type is century

how bout half letters half chook? that would get it real compact

Best money I ever spent was on a golf lesson. I think I got lucky. He showed me the basic principals of how the body develops and transfers power and how to recruit the big muscles so that the little muscles just perform minor corrections and wont fatigue. He showed me how to use my stance and back so that my shoulders and eyes cut a perfect arc and didn't wobble about. Then he took me through the setup routine to get the body in the precise position to hit the ball millimeter perfect. Then he demonstrated how a thing called "release" basically how a wrist roll after the ball is struck can precisely change the direction of the entire swing (letting the golfer draw and fade the ball at will). It hurt like XXXXX for 6 months while my body adjusted out of its old lazy habits and built up a few muscles I had neglected. The payoff has been enormous. I use these techniques and setup routines in almost everything I do. The only downside is that it takes that sense of spontaneous freedom away, when you do something perfectly first time without even thinking about it and it feels so good. The upside is it will be 99% perfect for the next 1000 times with a lot less effort and stress. I will listen to advice from anybody and if I can, I will ask questions about how and why they do it that way so I can make up my own mind, hand him the hammer and say show me what you mean. Unfortunately if you have a face like mine, and people think "he's two fries short of a happy meal" your going to get a LOT of free advice, and most of it complete rubbish. :rolleyes:

gone one order of magnitude too far Dodge, its 5 Thou (or mil) or 127 microns in Metric. I would suggest digging up the original certificate that came with the table install and see exactly what specs it was milled to in the first place. You are not going to flatten a table that was never that flat, especially if there was some tension in the legs when it was milled. I had a look in one of my books, the finest milled surface without blueing and scraping for a 19' long base plate would be DIN 876/I, it is listed as 0.00269" tolerance 876/II is 0.00539" 876/III is 0.01078" Best thing I can suggest is not to go for the flat number but instead creep up on it and aim for a tolerance, perhaps shift a few high and low areas 1 or 2 thou on the adjusters then re-measure. my gut feeling is that it is more predictable when you work against gravity ie, lifting the hollows rather than lowering the high points for the final tweaks but I don't have any paperwork to back that up.

looks like I was too slow with the Gandhi quotes that last one goes on a bit longer I think. "Its a tragedy of the first magnitude that millions of people have ceased to use their hands as hands. Nature has bestowed upon us this great gift which is our hands. If the craze for machinery methods continues, it is highly likely that a time will come when we shall be so incapacitated and weak that we shall begin to curse ourselves for having forgotten the use of the living machines given to us by God. Millions cannot keep fit by games and athletics and why should they exchange the useful productive hardy occupations for the useless, unproductive and expensive sports and games." Mass production is only concerned with the product, whereas production by the masses is concerned with the product, the producers, and the process. Frank Turley at his best. The public questioning and commenting while watching the demonstrating blacksmith. "Is that hot?" "Whacha makin?" "Ya ever been burnt?" "Don't you shoe horses?" "What's that black stuff you're burning?" "My grandfather was a blacksmith, but he was a real blacksmith!"

I don't see the value in a badly worn anvil, large radiused edges all over and blunt chipped corners don't do a lot for me. Where is the sense in spending big bucks on a 350# anvil for the solid mass and rebound, then spending half your life hammering on a dodgy hardie block that rattles around and absorbs all that energy? This video of Brian Brazeal's, forging a one heat tong blank is an example of what I am thinking. From a total of 98 hammer blows in 100 seconds I can count only seven hits that are flat on the anvil face. It's the most frustrating video to watch, I see something new that I missed previously every-time I look at it. As an experiment, I am tempted to buy one of those big dogs that has been really butchered and patch a few nicks in the plate, weld one corner and perhaps 2-3 inches of edge and see how it holds up.

it is all going to depend on your setup. double acting rams and a variable displacement pump will run all day with a pressurised tank and no cooling loop. hoses to and from the spool valve would be the biggest concern not the pump and tank. You can buy stainless hose covers and heat wrap if you want but I cant recall ever burning a hole in double braid, I have chaffed through plenty. I am not a big fan of vertical tanks I think there needs to be a certain amount of surface area to let any fine air bubbles separate out of the oil , much prefer a horizontal tank built into a base and the pump mounted just above it. cheers Yahoo

I do a bit of forging at a museum that uses charcoal. they have made an adapter to spread the air as it comes into the pot. imagine a shower rose instead of straight out of the tap. Its pretty simple they made a steel ring about 3 - 3.5" dia and dropped that over the air hole then cut a bit of plate to just sit on top that has a heap of holes drilled in it, only held in place with gravity and crud. No awards for slick engineering and I hate using it but it does give me a bigger hotspot and a gentler blast to work with on charcoal. Not much good if I forget to take it out and switch back to coke, have to crank like blazes to get any heat.

Hi Vaughn, Are you preheating some rods in the oven to drive the moisture out before you start? makes a big difference with low hydrogen rods makes em run a lot smoother and easier to strike. If you go down a rod size from 3.2 to 2.5mm for the first weld it will let you travel the rod slower and give you more time to lay a weld down, lot easier for a short weld, it will also let you get right into the bevel. you should be able to see the two pieces of metal melting under the rod arc and the molten rod piling up behind this, then a distinct lip line where the arc gas is holding the slag back then the slag swirling and setting behind this as you drag the rod. always have the piece of steel that will absorb the most heat before melting on the bottom (the flat plate) for the first weld so gravity works with you, the piece with edges and corners will melt very easily in the low mass areas. When i was starting out I would always set up a practice piece with a couple of bits of scrap plate and burn a rod to check my angles, travel speed and power setting was good before attempting the real thing. Bit of a grind to knock of the high points and a good fillet weld over the top and it should come up a treat.

couple of photos to give you some ideas. No Idea where the first one come from but it is the same firepot as yours. Looks a bit crowded (and clean) second photo was a temporary forge made in a rush for a demo day. Its just light sheet metal folded up and bolted with 2 inches of sand chucked in the tray, this pot is home made and has a flange at the bottom. it needed a flue for smokey ol coal but the dimensions are OK. I have shoveled some of the sand out so you can see the tray, its about 3 foot square. I like the 4 burner BBQ idea, I would widen the tray it a bit with a metal shelf along the front for some extra room and replace the cheap tiny plastic wheels with some solid foam filled wheel barrow tyres.