1860cooper

It's funny with anvils, if you don't have one they are hard to find and expensive. Once you own an anvil they seem to come out of the woodwork and are cheap. I work on a rail initially, then as soon as I cut it to look like an anvil then I ran across a 200# Trenton for free, then an American 150# dirt cheap.

Wow, lol. Too true. I am on the wrong side of that fence right now. Maybe I need to make a clay decoy of an anvil and wait in the bushes for some to show up.

Cool... do you mount your barret on it too?
How does it work for footing? Do the legs get in the way?

What is suspected to be a copyrighted photo removed and link inserted.

Yeah, well you guys just saw my C400 crank blower. I like Jayco's idea of strapping an electric fan to it temporarily. I might have to do that. I'm probably going to go with a bellows for reenactment stuff. Haven't decided what bellows will suit me yet, course, I haven't decided what forge either so I guess I have a ways to go on that front.

Heh, yeah when I looked at them my first thought was 'tuyere on steroids?'

Have some rotors from an F-150. Would I want to use that steel for anything?

Will those work though? They're round and my hole is oblong.

Just mostly from farming experience I've come to appreciate Milwaukee most.

Thanks for all the info. Very useful. Glad to hear I can change out the ball bearings.

Yeah I'll say the steel doesn't have to be hardened. I was working at a museum, upsetting a small piece of 3/8 mild stock, I was holding it on end with the tongs hammering it down... I probably kept hammering after it was too cool, it abruptly shot straight away from me and hit an 8yo girl who was watching me, behind a split rail fence designed to keep the public a good 10 feet away or so. You know when the steel doesn't bounce off skin, but sticks instead? That's what it did to her, but she shook it off quick. Still it burned her good. Her parents were there and saw the whole thing, and THANKFULLY were understanding. I had a burn kit right there so her mom fixed her up. She cried a lot but her parents weren't irked. Of course I felt really bad.

Since then I think I used larger tongs, didn't pound so much on cooling steel when set on end and turned a little if there were people standing at the fence.

Picked up this Champion 400 a couple weeks back. Looks like its in pretty good shape, other than the classic grease leak issue, and one bearing is making a little noise. There is enough sticky grease in the gear case I think the gears are spared from undue wear. I'm optimistic that this blower might serve me well for a little while.

Lots of grease inside the fan and all along the pipes. I've been chiseling it away with a screwdriver but I wonder if there is a better way. I've been thinking the whole thing could use a sandblasting, but I don't have the means to do that.

My main question is the pot. The blower hole is rather large... will need some kind of grating for sure, and the pot is as you can see in the pictures... large and loose. I'm debating whether I should make a clay insert to lift it about two inches and even everything out. What think ye? What would you do with this thing if it was yours?

Okay, I'm just curious. What on God's green earth is the actual liability for just having a strong mailbox? Isn't using an M80 the liability? Is there even one court case someone could cite?

Sometimes it gets my dander up how some people bend so much over the perception of liability. If there is any truth in it, that's fine, I'm not complaining. But when there isn't... life is too crazy anyway to sweat the imaginary, I think.

A friend of mine had a friend who was mailbox bashing about 8 years ago. After smashing a box real good he was watching it and laughing as they went, only he didn't see the garbage dumpster coming. It actually killed him. Said friend played the bagpipes at his funeral. Really sad. Oh, I have an idea... lets not be stupid!

From what I gather from most businesses it takes 3-4 years to build a reputation if you are aggressive and make a lot of good contacts. Its all about networking and knowing the right people. Everywhere you look there are artists and artisans being paid to make things (some deservedly, but others you're like, what the heck?). So somebody is doing it, its just a matter of getting in the loop.

Some people get in by developing niches, others by being general... its a matter of strategy and what works for you and what market there is or could be developed. Its complicated, in any industry, but motivated people are successful every day.

That has been my experience with my own web design business and my observation of others. For me it was a matter of doing it part-time till I landed a good contract, then I could take the plunge into full time, but there have been a lot of hungry months in-between.

There used to be a really good set of plans online, but that was years ago and I can't find them now. I did find this:

Bellows

Yeah they basically do the same thing as a spike. I have seen them used in conjunction with spikes and I have seen them used in place of spikes.

I think the idea is that under the weight of rolling wheels the track flexes which has the effect of wiggling the spikes out of their seat (like pulling a nail with a hammer). Track maintenance machines have to frequently hammer them back down. I think the idea of the spring tie holder is is allows some flexing without pulling out of its own seat.

I would guess the steel is pretty good because it tends to be used on mainlines, in situations where you have heavy trains moving at high speeds. They tend to use much better steel on those lines than they would on a spur line or somewhere trains always move slow. I've worked with spikes that have ranged from extremely soft to extremely hard, so I really don't know what they are until I get them heated up and under a hammer, but generally the larger and newer spikes are better, and I think the spring clips are of the family of better steel, at least in terms of track.

My first blacksmithing experience was at a museum, and I had to dig up coal that had been left from WW2 (for an old army power plant). It was horrible acrid stuff but I didn't know better till a curator got be a few bags of good stuff. Makes all the difference. Coal will always be a bit stinky, but low grade coal is just plain bad news, and I think lungs take enough from good coal I wouldn't mess with bad coal anymore.

lol, I like the stipulation "chronological". Cuts past the people you know are going to post 18 with 30 years experience.

I'm not laughing, I'm gasping for breath. Those things were old 5 years ago. My phone takes higher rez pictures! (true fact)

Umm... you could try sending some pics and we can just see what happens. Or do you have any friends that have something newer than a steam powered digital camera? I mean... wow... that would be sub 1 megapixel and really something between 3 and 10 megapixels is normal.

A floppy holds 1.44 MB... even if one picture took the whole floppy, that's still 1.44 MB... many cameras take pictures that are 3-5 MB apiece.

Do I know I'm loading my wagon... yeah... and its not like I have all the time in the world, but like I said, this kind of thing is fun to me.

You can e-mail pics to jonathandevine at yahoo dot com.

LOL. Ummm... no.

I've done stranger things though.

1860cooper is unique to me to this forum, since my normal screen name has no relevance to blacksmithing. I wanted my emphasis right out in front because I am finding getting into 19th century coopering so pathetically difficult (most coopers are either modern, or 18th century).

I don't mind people knowing I am Jonathan Devine. It's just that the convention with screen names is that you find your unique name, because there are lots of people out there with the same real name as me. In a sense a good screen name is a better identifier than your real name, at least on the internet. In switching back to real life that might be different.

Just figure out what formats your cameras support (I assume its digital), I can take anything but different formats store and compress information differently, some are lossy and some aren't.

The best picture is one with some cross-lighting contrast, and different colored light. This could mean putting it near an open door and letting sunlight (blue) hit it one way, and the indoor lights (yellow or green) hitting it the other. Avoid making hotspots with flash. The more of the full spectrum of light you can capture the better, but when in doubt, go brighter.

BTW I found the rest of the letters.

For the record, I work with Photoshop for a living, and I can isolate and modify colors we can't even see, so that the end result is details we wouldn't normally catch. I was able to do the below with your picture. If I could get it in a raw or tif format I could do better.

Looks like it only serves to reinforce what you figured out already.

If people have hard ones to read, if they can take the right picture, by all means send them my way. I love this kind of thing.

Cooper,
What tools are you looking for. I have some old coopering tools I mean to use again someday that I could photograph and get dimensional data for you. They are all from the period your interested in, give or take a decade or two.

I could use a lot of tools! You can count all the tools I have on your fingers, but I did manage to get some important (and expensive) ones.

The most specialized things I need is a croze and sun plane. Also any curved drawknives (concave or convex). A good short adze. Truss hoops. A shaving horse. A short broadaxe. Compasses for measuring heads.

Basically I need almost everything. I all have is the spokeshave, froe, and block plane (and a few sundry things).

And I'm quite willing to pay what it is worth if it's something I really need and its a good sound tool.

@Jerry: I don't live far from Newberg/Dundee (25 minutes). I'd be cool to see his operation. It's probably modern, but it would be useful nonetheless I'm sure.

@Niel: Robert was telling me about that. Its a bit of a long haul but it sounds interesting. We'll have to see.

Hey Jerry,

I don't think I'll make it back for the steam up. I'd sure be interested in whatever other venues y'all haunt in the near future. Do you have regular OBA meetings or something?

Yeah my generation (and younger) have a zero attention span. I used to do 3D modeling and we'd get a lot of young guys that wanted to make their own spaceships and make their own version of Star-Trek episodes. Most of them would realize pretty quick that it takes a lot of time and discipline to make anything interesting, and would quit.

So yeah, I can see how the same thing would hold with smithing. That's why you sign up for a quick $200 course, right?

We just need a blacksmithing version of the Dance game... you know the one at the arcades where they step on the squares... hammer hammer peen cut heat dip heat hammer... feel the beat... :P