the other dave

I built my swage stand to have the working surface of the swage at my anvil height no matter which way the swage is placed in the stand.

How about when you're going downhill with a heavy load on the trailer and realize there are no working brakes on the trailer? Suddenly the trailer is pushing you faster and more often than not, a sharp curve at the bottom of the hill has just appeared. Three words, " ditch, tree, or jackknife" come to mind.

found two more pictures showing three twenty foot half-inch rounds being twisted.

sorry for the delay, but here are three pictures of another twister like I promised. Note that there is a pipe used as the stationary member. Originally an I-beam was used but due to the large amount of torque used when cold twisting 1 inch square, the the I-beam itself would start twisting and lifting as the end of the twisting happened. So now a pipe is used and a piece of half-inch square is used as a guide and key. The pictures show three 1/4 inch by 5 feet being cold twisted into a wire rope. I've seen ten foot 1 inch square also twisted and it can twist up too twnety foot lengths. The wire rope is useful for edging around flat objects, making the edge of wire baskets and has even been coiled into a "lariet" for a fireplace set stand. The drive is from a portable pipe threader and the gear reducer is about 60 to 1.

You're right, dave mudge also has a homebuilt twister as well. His twisting machine is shown at Twisting Machine . Note that he uses a transmission from a lawn mowing tractor. I'll try to upload some pictures, tonight, of another LAMA member's twister showing his setup.

One of the LAMA members has a twister made from a portable pipe threader power head going into a big gear reducer. He routinely twists 1 inch square cold up to 20 foot long. I have some pics if you want to see it in action or need some ideas.

Made it through the hurricane unhurt. City is closed to returning residents till Monday at the latest. Lots of water south of Lake Charles and trees and power lines down everywhere. Most homes suffered only wind damage. The town of Vinton, LA, almost on the Texas / Louisiana border suffered a direct wall hit. Updates and streaming video about Lake Charles and other southwest LA areas can be found on kplctv.com . Fox and CNN are fixated on Galeston and Houston but the hurricane hit us almost directly. More to come tomorrow.

I'm a smith from Lake Charles and have moved off about 40 miles east. At present the wind is blowing 35 mph and gusting occasionally to maybe 55 mph. Light rain and occasional heavy squalls. I'll try to keep updating as the night progresses and during the next few days as we, the wife, the forge hound and I try to get back and pick up the pieces. Oh, the other dave is my num-de-plume since LAMA has Dave Mudge from the east side of Louisiana, David and David Bernard from the middle and me, the Dave from the far west side.

Besides hardware stores, have you tried your local Wally World for hardwood lump charcoal. Also check with restaurant supply businesses - someone supplies the charcoal for those grilled steak places. Or try hanging around a home barbeque restaurant and find out what they do with the wood ashes leftover from the smoking process, usually there's pieces of charcoal mixed in. And since you're at a college, check at the art department and see if anyone is using a wood fired pottery kiln. Or maybe you could head down to the beach and check the fire pit the day after the big bonfire party.

If you make a hardy tool from part of a jackhammer bit, the "drop" can be made into a hammer by slitting or punching inthe center, then drifting a handle hole, forging the type of heads you want and then hardening the stricking surfaces. One of the demonstrators at Ironfest this June showed making a rounding hammer from a piece of jackhammer bit. And last weekend we took a drop and forged the beginnings of a reposse' hammer out of it with a cross peen on one end and a round doming head on the other. Still a work in progress. .

One way is to use a 55 gallon drum, fabricate a mount for the vise and then fill the drum with water after it is placed where you want it. Also makes it relatively portable for away demonstrations. Another mounting method involves getting a truck rim for a base, welding a vertical pipe or pipes and then topping with a steel plate to mount your vise to. A third involves builing a tripod stand like the old pipe vises were mounted on. Important to decide what you are going to be doing with the vise. I mean are you going to be hammering metal held in the vise, trying to twist a five foot bar, grinding, welding or what? This affects how secure the want the vise.

I'm confused. If you are using a blown burner, (fan-forced air), then I think you should try the North Texas Blacksmith Site, http://home.flash.net/~dwwilson/forge/forgeplans.html. On the other hand, if you want to use an atmospheric burner, (venturi), then Ron Reils web site is great. Remember that if you use a blown burner system that the gas pressure is not important and rather the amount of gas you can get to the burner becomes the limiting factor, whereas, in the atmosmpheric burner you are relying on the pressure of the gas to move the air into and through the burner.

I call my hobby shop the "southpaw snail smithy". I'm left-handed, work slow and smithy is the old english term for the shop that a blacksmith works in.

What was a straight eight in?

A fair amount of things seem to find their way into my pickup bed when I am driving around. It seems that a Sunday afternoon and early evening ride around the neighborhood is always a good time for doing some reclaimation. Lets see, iron bed frames are always volunteering to become light weight angle iron for stands and brackets. And then those empty metal buckets from the dumpster at work become coal shuttles and small quench tanks at demos. Then there was the new style disk brake drum which transformed itself after I found it next to a trach can into the forge pot for my coal forge. A home weightlifting gym provided square tubing for my anvil stand. And a few blowers from evaporator coils on home air conditioners provide circulating air in the shop in last summer, though only the smaller ones are 120 volts.

Tom's not selling this lubricant, yet. But I know he said he is considering it. In the meantime, you could buy it from B3 or make it yourself.

I also use lubricant when drifting. And sometimes when hot cutting a big piece, for example 1 1/2 inch square or 2 inch round, putting some lubricant on the hot cut seems to help.

Well, let's see, one surfactant is soap, especially a liquid dishwashing soap. Powdered graphite can usually be found in hardware stores in a tube being sold as a lock lubricant. But moly disufide, that's more difficult to come by. And expensive. Soooooooooo...... I usually make my own lubricant starting with powdered graphite, add some liquid dish soap to make a paste and then add a little water till you get a black liquid. Dip a chisel in and when you withdraw it, it should have a thin coating of graphite and soap on it. And remember, dipping when your oil-quench tool is red hot is is too late and not recommended.

Two weekends ago we had Bob Patrick demonstrating at our annual conference and Tom Clark ws also there providing the air hammer for Bob. Bob was having trouble punching a hole and mentioned he likes to use anti-sieze from the auto parts store. For the second hole Tom says, " here, use some of my lubricant on your punch." Bob dips his punch in the stuff, lines up on the steel and bang, bottoms out his punch on the anvil with a single hit. "See Bob," says Tom, "'thats "ye olde slippery slick stuff '." I usually use high temperature anti-seize when punching, though it tends to be a little messy and will burn if the punch is too hot. "Ye olde slippery slick stuff" is three parts graphite powder, one part molybdenum disulfide powder, a surfactant and water. I've used it and yeah, it's about the best I've found to date.

Why not go with a side draft flue, horizontally throught the wall to a T and then straight up using metal duct? Saw this at Tom Clark's Ozark blacksmithing school and it drew so well I sometimes worried about losing my hammer up the stack.