Sam Falzone

In my opinion, if you're at the pont of thinking about a maker's mark then it's time to get one. I hope you do get make yourself one because the experience can be very inspiring. Even if you think your craft isn't good enough for a maker's mark yet, having one can really inspire you to get better. I was lucky to find a custom stamp maker near where I live. I contacted their rep, emailed him a jpeg of my mark and it was ready in 2 weeks. There was an initial $75.00 set up charge and then each stamp was $25.00 - I got 2 in different sizes and lengths. However, now that they have my mark on file, anytime I need to get another stamp made I don't have to pay the set-up charges and each stamp will only cost around $25.00 (price has probably gone up a bit). It's really hard to decribe the feeling I got when I first picked up MY maker's mark. I couldn't put them down for the rest of that night. The first thing I did was contact everyone I had ever given my craftings to and asked the if they minded I put my mark on the thing I gave them. Practically every single person actually insisted I put my mark on. It made me feel really good. Here are some pictures of my mark. Good luck with yours. Aeneas

So YOU"RE the guy I have to thank. I love this idea and if you can keep cutting them out and don't get tired of doing it, I will definitely buy more every year I'm at Pennsic (which is almost every year). And I will definitely buy the bolt tong blanks too. I'm already planning my Pennsic shoping list for next year and at the top is "10 sets of tong blanks" (I figured I should leave some for everyone else). This last Pennsic I bought 5 sets from Danr. Thank you so much!!! Aeneas

Irontree had a tent-shop set up at Pennsic. Great guy - talked to me about some book resources he had, and then when i emailed him after Pennsic because I forgot the titles of the books, he sent me 2 pages of other resources. I loved his forge set-up too. Aeneas

I'm looking forward to developing my skills to the point where I can make any type of tongs I need depending on what that need is. I'm not there yet. I know you only learn by doing, but it's hard to juggle work, family, home and time for my smithing (including having forge time since I still don't have a home set up). One of the things I love about IFI is the Blueprints section which has some great tutorials on making tongs. My problem has always been not knowing how to start. I'm hoping to get more practice soon. A great find I came across this summer is a blacksmith selling tong blanks. They were plasma cut steel blanks that had the rudementary reins and head shape and were pre-drilled for the rivet. All you had to do was draw out the reins to the desired shape, shape out the jaws to the desired shape, twist them 90 degrees and rivet together. The blanks take out half the work and have enough material that they can be custom shaped to whatever tong you need. I'm hoping to practice shaping reins and jaws with these and then move to making tongs totally from scratch. I also think these blanks are a great idea for making quick tongs (even if you're a seasoned smith and can make tongs in your sleep) and for practice for the beginner smith. I'm hoping to buy a bunch of them every year, so long as this smith has them. Almost forgot, I bought the blanks from Irontreee forge (thought I should give them a plug). Love it. Aeneas

A friend of mine uses a hairdryer with 2 speed settings for his home made coke-forge. He even uses it for small scale casting. Aeneas

If you click on the link below my sig.line, it will take you to the Viking age group I belong to and the pictures and notes from our experimental Viking iron bloomery furnaces we've tried out over the years (I love experimental archaeology). Great fun. Aeneas

This brings up a good question. At 150+lbs, $300.00 rounds out to around $2.00 a pound. Not knowing what the market price of iron/steel is - $2.00/lb sounds reasonable to me. For those in the know (or at least way more experienced than me) is $2.00/lb a reasonable price for an anvil? :confused: Or are there other considerations I'm overlooking? Aeneas

I use Royal Oak charcoal because that's the easiest for me to find. So long and the charcoal is natural lump charcoal and so long as it's good quality, it'll work just fine. Aeneas

Atticka, If your price range is between $100-200, it is within the realm of possibility to find a 100lb anvil within that range, and a CHUNK of steel makes a perfectly good anvil in the meantime (all the master swordsmiths in Japan have been using block anvils for hundreds of years (no horns). But everyone is right, save your money and maybe grow it a bit and keep looking for that great anvil deal (they happen, but you have to hunt for them). In the mean time look for a big chunk of scrap steel to work on. The junk yards and scrap metal yards are the perfect place to start. Things like chunks of RR track, fork-lift forks, or cuttings (drops) from steel mills will work great until you find your anvil. In the mean time check out flea markets, auctions, websites, put out adds in some local bulletin boards, heck ask around at some high schools or tech schools (a lot of school shops are getting shut down and you may find a school willing to sell you their old anvil). Look for a local blacksmith association or group in your area and sign up, - membership often has priviledges like insider information and sweet deals or trades. There are lots of options, and if you give yourself some time and try all possibilities, something may come up. If you have friends in a near-by town or province, you could even recruit them to help you look in their area - be sure to make your price range perfectly clear. If they score, you could always drive out to pick it up on a weekend. Good luck Happy hunting. Aeneas

I would recommend NOT using briquettes ... EVER - they are horrible for forging. You need to use lump charcoal - Royal Oak is a good brand - and you want to break it up into squarish nuggets as wide as your thumb (around 1" cubes) for the best heat. If you have a large open garage, you could still burn charcoal in the winter instead of propane. I think charcoal burns much cleaner than propane in enclosed areas ... can anyone else varify? Aeneas

Picture #2 shows it has some markings - likely the maker's mark. When you get it, try cleaning the area up and let us know what it says. Check for any other markings. aeneas

Very sweet find - well done! I'm with Frosty - that anvil is itchin' for a hammer. She can go straight to work. The guy might of meant that it was a "london pattern" anvil which is what your anvil is. I agree with Neal, it looks like a Peter Wright - he was a famous anvil maker who came out of the Mousehole Foundry in London to make his own brand of anvils back in the 1800's. Treat her right and she'll never let you down. Have fun. Aeneas

Hi troybart, If you've ever smithed with coal, then you've smithed with coke. Coke is the near-pure carbon left behind when all the junk has been cooked out of the coal. Usually, when your forge fire stops smoking after you've lit it and got the bellows or blower going, and your fire burns clear and clean, you've turned your coal to coke. Coke is what gives you your heat for forging. Charcoal is similar to coke in that it is also almost pure carbon, except that charcoal comes from wood and coke comes from coal. Also, charcoal burns faster so you need to use more of it than coke. But since both of these are excellent sources of carbon, they both make excellent solid fuels for forging. So if you have a source for coke that isn't excessively more expensive that the coal, I say got straight for the coke and cut out the first step cooking out your coal. No sense pumping more sulfur and other nasty junk into the atmosphere if you don't have to. Cheers - Welcome to IFI. Aeneas BTW, enter your location in the User control panel (User CP) so we can see where you're posting from. There may be someone local who can help you out.

Ever consider using charcoal? Used properly, you can do any kind of forging with charcoal, and you can set up a charcoal forge really cheaply. There is a great website with directions on making a laundry tub forge which will give you a much bigger forge area than a coffee-can forge. Also, I think if you use a propane or freon tank for your gas forge shell, you're going to have to buy a much bigger burner than a simple blowtorch like the one used with the coffee can. You're going to have a much bigger volume to heat up and that wee torch won't cut it (IMO). With the bigger burner, you're also going to need a regulator for your propane tank. -directions for washtub forge (you could use an old hair dryer for your blower) Charcoal Forge -a good source for regulators, burners and other forge parts Ellis Custom Knifeworks For an alternative to using a cut up tank for your forge shell, check out the thread topic "Ammo Can Forge" (you can use the IFI search button to find it). I've actually used this forge recently and it works really well (in case you can't find a good tank) It's good to hear from other Canadians. Good luck and have fun. Aeneas

For smelting iron, my opinion is that you definitely need charcoal -it works - I've participated in several iron-smelting weekends. And I agree with Archie, prepared right charcoal gives more than enough heat to do ANY forging job with iron or steel. While I've used coal before, I'm not that knowledgeable about types of coal, so I look forward to the education when one of our coal experts responds. Welcome to IFI - don't worry, your english is fine. Aeneas

An older friend of mine likes to talk about the "good old days" when you could pick up anvils, smithing equipment and tools at flea markets and auction really cheap because people didn't know what they were worth and they just wanted to finally get it out of their garage/barn because they were tired of tripping over it. Now they've all gotten savy ... ... I blame ebay. :mad: Aeneas

Hi Charlie, First off, welcome to IFI - you came to the right place. I think you asked a pretty difficult question to nail down Charlie. I'm willing to bet that you're going to get a whole wack of different answers because different people will have different ideas on what a good starter anvil is - and there is so much to consider. It sounds like you want to do a wide range of smithing - everything from simple hooks to bladesmithing, but there are other things a person has to consider, like... -how much money are you willing to spend? -how much space do you have for forging? -do you want to be able to move your anvil easily (like taking it to demos) and lots of other things. To be honest, the main concern for me in buying anvils is cost. Anvils can be really expensive - but if you're planning on making a paying career out of smithing, then you could look at the cost as a long term investment that you will eventually payoff (like a car). But if this is just a neat hobby, then you may find you have a more restricted budget. For me smithing is a hobby - I'm crazy about it but it will never be a breadwinner for me so I can't justify to myself to drop $400+ dollars on a big anvil (I'm talking only between 200-300lbs and that's if I look really hard and haggle like a fiend). For what I do, I find a 100lb anvil works just fine for me, and it is still portable enough to take to demos where I can move it without help. From experience, most of the anvils I've run across at auctions and trade-ins seem to run in the 100-180lb category and sometimes you can find a really reasonable price - some smiths on here have even said they have picked up anvils for free. You just have to be in the right place at the right time. But there are a lot of smiths on this site who started off smithing on a chunk of rail and have made that work for them - or other examples of big and heavy chunks of steel. As far as what the anvil is made of -cast iron or cast steel - my opinion is if you find an anvil has dropped into your lap, who cares what it's made of. If the price is right - run with it and start hammering. There is always later to get better toys. The important thing is that you start getting some experience under your hammer (I'm assuming that you are new to smithing, if you're not new please forgive my assumption but I'm writing this with the newbie in mind). So to sum it up, for all these reasons I think a 100-120lb anvil is a good place to start. You can always go bigger later, but I think this size is a reasonably good average for most work. It has a decent amount of mass and are reasonably easy to find and are reasonably affordable. Sorry for rambling on, but I hope it helped a bit. Aeneas

HOLY MOTHER OF @#%& !!! That's not an anvil - it's an aircraft carrier !!!! If I posted what I really was thinking I would get another email slap on the wrist for inappropriate language (... SEE ... I'm being good ... honest ...) I honestly didn't think they made anvils that big. That is a half-ton of sweet-anvil-goodness ... WOW ... I am stunned ... gob-smacked actually ... Aeneas (I think I need to go lie down ...)

A friend of mine made a plywood cover box that would fit snuggly over the top and horn of his anvil, lined it in sheetmetal, and attached a light socket to the top with a 100W light bulb on the inside of the box. He basically made an "Easy-Bake oven" for his anvils. In the winter he puts the box covers on his anvils at night and switches the light inside on. A 100W light bulb can create a lot of heat and it warms up the anvil really well, making winter forging easier. I thought it was a great idea ... I plan on copying it when I get my shop eventually finished. Electric anvil cozies ... gotta love it. Aeneas

How heavy do you plan on making your sword? I'm guessing the average bastard sword might come in at between 2.5 to 3.5 lbs? -plain J-hooks made out of 1/8" mild steel would be more than strong enough (-heck, picture hooks would be strong enough). -same procedure as drawing out and forming an S-hook, except instead of forming hooks on both ends of the steel, you draw the other end into a point and bend the stem at a square angle so you can pound the spike into the wall and have the hook below it. (if you need a picture i can post one tomorrow) -or instead of forming a spike on the opposite end, you could drill a hole through it to drive a nail and nail it to your wall. -make a pair of matching hooks and you could display your sword at whatever angle you like. Aeneas

Hi Scratch, Contact any local highschool that has a machine or metal shop. If they're equiped any way like the ones in Ontario, they should have a milling machine that can accomodate your drop. They should be able to mill out the majority of stock for your dish shape and all you'll have to go is the final grinding into the finished shape and smoothness. Give it a shot - it doesn't cost anything to ask.

Great job. I thought it was really well done and it clearly shows the skills i want to learn. I would love to see videos on ... tempering forge welding pattern welding blade forging making axes tool making making different styles of tongs (bolt tongs, wolf-jaw, square bit, etc) ... and those are just off the top of my head. Any other ideas?

I love how many different places around the world are found on this list. I would love to be able to travel and visit everyone on this list and just see their "brand" of blacksmithing. It is great to hear from you Frank. I hope you like it here ... Welcome. Sam / Aeneas Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who finds that "life" interferes horribly with the things we would rather be doing. I'm a school teacher and I find that I rarely have the time I want to devote to my hobbies (blacksmithing, woodworking, etc.) In my case, my classroom is also my primary forge shop, so I have limited access anyway. That means that one of my main long-term projects will be setting up my drive-shed into a smithy. I find that the time I get to do most of my projects is over the summer - I'm lucky enough to have an administration that allows me access to my classroom over the summer. This year my projects included forging 24 tent stakes, a tent-stake puller, 4 lantern-hooks, 2 ridge-pole sleeves for a 20x30 sunshade, a coal shoven, a coal rake, a lid-lifter (for a dutch oven), a long handle camp/roasting fork, and fabricating a candle-box to put behind a stained-glass sign out of sheet steel and aluminum. What I need to be doing (real soon) is to start making more "camp/fire tools" to sell (a local Black Powder re-enactor supplier carries my "iron-ware" on consignment) and I have an order for a set of forks and an order for a bunch of S-hooks that I need to get done before next summer ... along with a list of household projects (the "honey-do" list) as tall as I am and all my school-related work throughout the year. I need to be independantly wealthy. Add one more job to the list. Life is interesting - if you're doing it right Keep plugging away at it, life ain't a specttor sport. Aeneas

Thanks Hillbilly. I think I'm going to bring the idea to an old welder/Blacksmith I met 2 months ago (he did another welding job for me then) and see what he says. I've been meaning to go back and introduce myself and hopefully talk some shop with him. Thanks again for the advice. Aeneas