Quenchcrack

Stan, let me second the recomendation of HWoolridge and invite you to visit the Houston Area Blacksmiths Association. Many of our members own small farms and ranches and might have use for some of your surplus items.

The man who stole my stuff was attending a birthday party at his grandmothers house down the street from me. He didn't live in my neighborhood. He put all my power tools beside grandmas house where he planned to have a friend bring a truck to load it up. For some reason, he put my demo tool bag inside the house, in the laundry room under a pile of laundry. Well, the neighbor across the street saw him taking my stuff and called the cops. They busted him sitting on grandmas porch. She did not know the tools were in the house until about a week later. She brought them down to my house and returned them. Nice lady.

Thanks, jb, I sent him an email and we will see if he responds.

My thanks to all who did the detective work. Michael made the hammer that was stolen from me last summer and I wanted to contact him about making another one. Fortunately, I recovered all my tools, including the hammer. Michael and I met in the Pub across the street years ago. He made me a hammer in exchange for a relief carving of his smithy. below. I recommend checking out his website as he is an accomplished smith and ironmaker.

I do not speak from experience but I would make sure I kept the stone dry and out of the weather. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recall reading that some granites will absorb a small amount of water. Placing a red hot piece of steel could cause a small explosion of steam and launch a shard of granite at a vulnerable spot.

A beautiful job! It does your heart good to see these old tools lovingly restored.

Jan, cow horns? What did they do, rendure them like horses hooves and apply the molten goo to the ironwork? Yuk! I may still try your black parafin recipe if I can find some blacktop down here.

Shipping from Brushy Mountain was $8.53 bringing the total cost to $12.53. Rudys Honey is $7 per pound INCLUDING SHIPPING. Drenched in Flame, before there was Rustoleum, smiths would wipe bees wax onto their newely minted products to inhibit rust...at least for a while. It is applied while the iron is at a low heat, say 150-200F. If you apply it too hot, it will just burn off. If you get it to melt onto the surface and it looks wet, spread/wipe it out smooth and just let it cool and polish it up. And don't forget to wire brush the iron to a shine BEFORE you wax it. Jan, your receipe sounds pretty waterproof! I use bees wax just because it is a traditional finish to forged items. If I want it to last outdoors, your stuff sounds effective but so is paint.

OK, referring back to the original question about making mild steel into wrought, most of us do not have a blast furnace in our back yard and could not make cast iron to feed into a puddling furnace. If we had a puddling furnace. However, there are a sizeable number of smiths (especially bladesmiths) who operate simple bloomery furnaces and produce wrought iron as they did 160 years ago. This seems then, to be the only logical way to make wrought iron if you wanted to make the real stuff at home. I would not argue that the greatest tonnage of wrought was made with cast iron. Many thanks to the people who corrected my mistake. Bipolarandy: would you mind explaining what you meant with this reply to Alfie?: "Alfie, short answer, yes, long answer , not in your shop." Are you saying he could hold mild steel at welding temperature to make wrought?

If anyone uses beeswax to finish their hand-wrought treasures, I found this site that sells one pound blocks for $7 including postage; Rudy's Honey - Livingston Texas I switched from beeswax to parafin wax when my only source was Woodcraft and they must think beeswax is yellow gold. Besides, the bees just look better when you wax them with real beeswax...

I went to this site: anvil's ring iron smelting article rather than Wackypedia for reasons already mentioned. I learned there is indeed a way to create wrought iron from cast iron. However, that is not the bloomery process. The blast furnace came much later in time and could produce large tonnages of cast iron which was recombined with the high-silica slag to form a variety of wrought iron. I don't know how holding mild steel at a temperature above the welding temperature would re-introduce the silicate stringers that make wrought iron what it is.

When wrought iron was originally made in a bloomery, there was no blast furnace to liquify the iron and no pig iron could be made. It came out as a semi-solid as I explained in my first post. The working of that semi-solid produced wrought iron. The process you describe does not produce wrought iron as the silicon appears to have been removed while the iron was in a liquid state, a state that wrought iron does not achieve.

Wrought iron is the product of a bloomery furnace. This furnace is a precursor to the modern blast furnace but it lacked any way to force air (and thus oxygen) into the furnace. Because of that, it did not get hot enough to actually liquify the metal. Iron was produced by reacting iron oxide with carbon monoxide that resulted from burning coke or coal in a low oxygen environement. What resulted was a big blob of metal mixed with the melted limestone, silica from the iron ore, and irregular inclusions of carbon. The entire mass had to be pulled out of the furnace and worked (thus the name "wrought) into a useable form. The working squeezed out some of the impurities but much of the silica stayed and the extra carbon got oxidized away. Wrought iron is basically pure iron mixed with silica stringers. While the bloomery process is the simplest and oldest method, the puddling process uses cast iron from a blast furnace and mechanically entrains slag into it while decarburizing the iron to produce what is also called wrought iron.

It does look like a stout old bugger. No, wait, that's what people say about me......

Looks great....I think. Maybe next year Santa will bring you a camera with a flash? :-)

After a week or two of wondering if someone would try to steal the moveable part of the crane (Houston area, remember) I just took it off and now leave the boom in the garage. When I need it, I put it back on the post that is bolted to the bed and frame. I coated the inside of the post with Lithium grease to prevent rust, too. I am begining to evolve a design for a pallet with lifting eye-bolts at the corners and some heavy duty rope to hang it from. Thanks for all the input!

Anvils might work harden over time but the effect would be very superficial. I doubt you could find evidence of work hardening deeper than .010" unless the surface was very soft to begin with. To work harden the steel, it needs to be COLD deformed and since most metal worked on the anvil is red hot, the heat would tend to stress relieve the cold worked part and the effect would be eliminated.

Very nice, I particularly like the details on the leaf. Gonna try that.

We'll keep you both in our prayers, Jr.

I like using W1 and O1 for simple blades and you did a fine, job on this one, Feukair. The crack on your first blade might have been because of the very thin cross section. When I use W1 for thin blades, I oil quench them. The very thin cross section will cool very fast in oil but the oil is less severe than water. I have actually used a stream of compressed air to harden O1 on thin blades. Just point the tip of the blade into the air stream and it will cool in a few seconds. You can quickly get the blade below a black heat and then oil quench it, too. Remember, martensite BEGINS to form at about 700F IF you have cooled fast enough to miss the pearlite nose. It finishes forming near or below room temperature.

rthibeau, thanks for your generosity. I suppose I should learn how to do it myself, though. Biggest problem is finding a tight-fitting container to burn it in. I have seen small brass containers that were said to be used for the striker, the flint and the cloth. However, how delicate is the cloth once it is burned? Wouldn't the abrasion of the flint and striker tend to break up the cloth into tiny bits? What else would be useable in place of char cloth? Maybe a tiny, authentic leather bottle of Scout Juice? :-)

Does anyone make and sell the char cloth to go with the strikers? Is there a way to make a bunch of it quick and easy?

Pshhhhh...OK, I just opened a fresh can of worms. You will usually get little or no tempering if you just re-heat to the same temperature and hold it for the same time. To get additional tempering, increase the temperature slightly or the time. This does not apply to the transformation of retained austenite where a second identical temper will get you some EXTRA hardness.

Steak turners, knife & fork BBQ sets, chisels, drifts, just to name a few ideas.

Beautiful work, too, Mark.