Avadon

Fair enough, but I think you could make your own "panel" and incorporate it into the design without having it look like an 8x8 panel. I use the word panel loosely, because you can make it virtually any shape or size to work with the design of your shop.

I thought it actually had to be on the wall. lol.. talking to my neighbor he corrected me and said.. oh no this would be on the roof. That's not nearly as bad. But I would still want to do some custom look to make sure it fits with my design.

From what I have read, what I understand you are trying to do is create a super insulated, super tight shop with good air quality that is not effected by external conditions. This is a tall order to say the least.

That is the basic jist of it. Not to mention I will add acoustical cilps for sound dampening. But that is much much later down the road. First I just want to get it built and framed up. I've been looking at 2x6 walls with rigid 2" foam (silver backed) over the outside walls with OSB over that and housewrap over that. This is how a friend of mine did her home and she was incredibly impressed with it. I'm not sure if there is an even better way than this but if there is I'd love to hear it.

It has been a huge trend lately to build super tight homes, for example the R2000 homes. One of the big problems with these homes. especially at the onset was that the air quality inside was extremely poor (high humidity, contaminants, etc.). This was due largely in part to lack of ventilation. Once people started addressing the ventilation problem, air quality improved dramatically. You asked about Heat Recovery Ventilators. These are great in the winter, as you are exhausting warm air and drawing in cool air. However, they do nothing in the summer. (Heat goes from more to less, you can't transfer the coolness of the exhaust air to the warmth of the fresh air) In a blacksmith shop, I would never want to count on a HRV to exhaust the bad air (CO, fumes, etc.) simply due to the volume of air being exchanged.

That's what I thought but apparently these air exchangers do work in winter and in summer. Bringing warm air in during winter and cooler air in during the summer. http://www.aprilaire.com/index.php?znfAction=ProductDetails&category=16&item=8100 or so these guys claim on their product. I think I agree though that using the air exchanger for the volume of fumes during forging I'm going to be making would not work. Yet for Tig welding, where the fumes are fairly minimal, I've even welded in closed up shops, I think the air exchanger could probably do some/most of it.

What I would like to do when I have the opportunity to build a bigger shop is to incorporate a dual ventilation system. Sort of a summer / winter split system. In the winter I would want to pull cold exterior air through a solar air heater to preheat the fresh air. In the summer I would want a different system. What I have seen is people burying a network of 4-6" PVC pipes in the ground before they pour the concrete floor. By drawing warm exterior air through these pipes in the summer, you benefit from the thermal mass of the earth which cools the fresh air. Basically a geothermal thing. Just my dream, doesn't have to be yours.

Sounds great in theory. Probably does a bang up job, I just don't know enough about it nor have enough confidence to explain it to some local contractor who's looking at me like i'm crazy lol. probably about 30% of my slab is the part that is alread poured. No real great way to put heating conduit in that. But I could put it in the entirety of the rest of the shop and I would imagine that would do a good deal. However I always thought that it was the walls and ceiling where you lost most of the heat. I always thought the concrete did fairly well to insulate as it has so much mass and is connected with deeper in the ground. I remember touching my polished concrete floors in winter and they really didn't seem all that cold. They are sealed with a sealer. For me it was mostly being overcome by having no insulation in the walls. With serious insulation in the walls. I could probably have a window open and a fan in it and my little 220V heater on and still stay warm and that's not doing anything else. But that would be bare minimum. While i'm building this place from the ground up I may as well incoperate one or more of these techniques (the exchanger, the solar heating, or in floor heating)

I do think you are in for a challenge coming up with a well conditioned (temperature and air quality) shop space in a super tight building. The balance of having enough fresh air coming in, along with keeping it conditioned for temperature could be tricky. I look forward to following this thread to see what other people have to offer up. There are lots of good ideas out there.

I guess worst case scenario I could do what I did back east in my basement. Just install a furnace with several drops and when I am welding/forging in the winter I just pull in lots of cold air and expel it out another side and let the thermostat blast heat when it starts dropping to much. Not the most efficient way to do things but worked well for me for a few years. Usually a few hours of doing that the heater would only cycle on a few times. Similar to in the summer. However I usually never got that hot in the summer even on scorching days so I didn't run the central air A/C. Maybe it was just the thermal mass of the earth holding the temp.

Sorry but it wasn't the *insulation* that the earth supplied it was thermal mass. Super insulating your shop and then bringing in cold air is how you build a cold storage room! (or in the summer a hot box)

I was noticing just that (the really odd shapes) are forge welded together. I'm specifically interested in military forks and tridents. I'm a little unsure on ways to make them. I would guess that originally they took a piece of round bar and forged a W shape out of it (or rather UU shape if you will) and then probably thinned out or drawed out the center to make the center tine the same as the sides. However, there probably is a better way to do it especially for wide flat tines. Forge welding three pieces together seems like a pain. Any thoughts on that. How difficult is it to forge one giant flat blade mass and then go back and cut it out when finished?

No I plan on using modern steels and monolithic construction. I've noticed lots of those long straps but trying to find any construction notes on how pole arms are actually assemebled has been difficult.

Has anyone here installed a heat recovery air exchanger and if so how well did it work? The solar panel idea that Ben mentioned is pretty cool but i'm afraid it will detract from the outside archetecture and look i'm going for if I have a giant 8x8 panel on my southern face. I may be using existing concrete so no real way to put heating in that and I'm not sure if you can put radiant heat into concrete flooring? Sounds like that could be more problems than it's worth. I'm guessing that if I do some extreme insulation in the shop walls (which I am planning) than running a good size intake and outake fan would probably do little to actually change the overall interior temperature similar to how in massachusetts my basement shop wouldn't get super cold even when I brought in winter air due to the millions of tons of earth insulation all around me. It will generally only be me, just one person, so I am not looking at an enormous amount of fumes. I'd like to keep my forge mobile so I can move it anywhere in the shop or even pull it outside (it's on wheels). Thus the idea of incorporating some sort of exhaust system integral to the rafters/ceiling. This way anything that rises is going to be sucked out. Then bring in my fresh air at a lower point, perhaps window height or lower. That way my airflow would be from low to high instead of trying to pull from one side of the shop laterally to the other side of the shop. Wouldn't this be a better way?

In my old shop I had the basement storm windows and a fan in each window and I got an amazing amount of intake and outtake. Since the windows were at ceiling height anything that rose in the way of fumes was pushed and sucked right out. If anyone has any links or pics to people who have setup any systems I'd love to seem them.

RIght now the shop is 600sq feet. I'm thinking the first floor will be at minimum 1200 sq feet and there is a second story for paint/airbrush, shipping and design. Having an air monitor for CO is probably the best idea in the thread. That way if I'm doing something wrong or not enough I'll know it.

I'm site planning right now for my new shop. Basically pulling out tree's and seeing what dimensions can fit in the footprint of space I have available. I intend to build a very sealed up shop so I can weather the oregon winters and hot summers with ease. My old shop in mass was in a basement and I definitely miss it. Warm in the winter and cool in the summer because it had central air drops from the ceiling. I certainly can do the same thing in my new shop, or I could use a large electric heater and window unit A/C. Anyway my question is when you get a shop very sealed up and thermally insulated like this you do have to worry about welding and smithing fumes. One of the guys at the pro desk gave me some literature on an air scrubber. A pretty cool idea if it can actually handle filtering out tig welding fumes not to mention propane forging fumes (which I doubt it could be very good at all that. My other thought was to create some sort of high velocity inlets for fresh air and a sloped ceiling with heavy duty exhaust fan. This way I'd be bringing in fresh air and sucking out bad air and hopefully that would create enough flow throughto keep the shop fumeless. Of course doing this plan will destroy the idea of trying to maintain inner air temp. I'm curious what big factories do to keep their fab shops heated/cooled while still keeping the air breatheable. Any thoughts

Anyone have any good specific book reccomendations for creating pole arms? Also a bonus if you have any great video links.

Thanks a bunch,

Av

I've seen the blueprints on this vice http://www.abana.org/downloads/education/VerticalVise.pdf
"The Vertical Vise" and I'm wondering what the groups thoughts are on what is the best solution for a hardy holder. I have a home made anvil 377lbs that I want to attach a hardy holder to. Trying to think of the best way to do it. Thought about just buying a post-leg vice and welding the living heck out of it to the side of the thing. However that's not all that different than just using a bench vice as hardy tools don't really hold that well in parallel jaws from my experience. They tend to bounce around in smooth jaws and in toothed jaws they tend to really marr the shank of your expensive hardy tools. Wondering if something like this post vice would give me more purchase / grab on the hardy shank and really hold that tool in there. I don't think I would be using it for anything other than hardy tools. If I was to need that I could weld a post vice onto the other side as my anvil is just one big obelisk of an upright square.

Oh and I also thought about buying a post vice and trying to make special jaw plates like vertical jaws - attachment plates. However I'm thinking that could be really hit or miss as I'd have to actually create some support if I were to extend anything above or below the parrellel jaws as they are ment to grab things on the parallel not the vertical.

I already know about a welded tube with a shim in it to mimic an actual hardy hole. Ehh.. I'm not really interested in that. I'd really like a hardy hole of some kind that I can clamp the hardy in with insane force. I've upgraded my bench vices with much bigger stops so I can literally crank down on them with lethal force (lol) and I love the capability to hold things lightly or insanely. Haha

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I want to do this the best way possible.
Also if anyone has built this leg vice i'd love to hear and see the results form it.

Cheers,
Av

How exactly does one hurt oneself from heat treating / tempering stainless?

My Anvil is 715#'s with the stand. They are secured as one giant piece of mass. The anvil itself is a Nimba gladiator at 450LB's. It never jumps or moves but I never regret the purchase. Sometimes I see 500-600lb anvils and wonder... lol ;-) but I think 400+ is a good solid everday working anvil that will last you a long long time.

Unforgivin did you drill those through holes on the top. WOW If you did because that is quite a ways. I drilled through my anvil BY HAND with my portercable 1/2" drill. A testament to how well you can drill if you know how to sharpen a 1/2" drill bit well on a bench grinder. But even still it was a huge chore. Good looking setup friend.

Had a friend make Al bronze as I recall it was surprisingly hard.

As for toxicity of copper alloys the heavy hitters in my opinion are Be, Zn and Pb (in the order I worry about)

Be I won't touch or have in the shop. Be I won't touch or have in the shop. Be I won't touch or have in the shop.

Zn I take precautions and follow proper procedures

Pb I don't use as it's not that big in the scrap stream that avoiding it causes a hardship.

What do you all think of aluminum bronze? Anyone ever forged this stuff? It's really common on ebay in small quantities.

Check out these links.. these are extremely informative. Just found these over the last few days.

http://www.standardmetals.com/alloy.html

http://www.metalreference.com/index1.html

One other question, with the exception of leaded bronze, are any of these other bronzes toxic to the skin?

The ability to do tiny tig welds is really nice..(I'm all set up for it too) sorta cheat the difficult of forge welding or trying to make complex shapes out of one piece. I like that.

What do the other bronzes forge like? Are some better for bladesmithing like in handles and what not? What do the other bronzes finish like?

onlinemetals_com just gave me this cool link http://metalreference.com/Forms_Copper_Alloy.html
I am checking it out as we speak.

I want to make some very small rose pendants, pagan crosses, and misc occult objects ^_^

What are your opinions on the best bronze for small sculpture.

I just finished reading this http://www.bronzework.co.uk/Bespoke/bronzetypes.htm

and was curious what of these bronzes are the best for making small trinkets/sculpture/jewelry?

I guess we can rule out the leaded bronze so it would be between the

phosphor, silicon, aluminum and manganese...

I plan on hot forging these items and would like to finish with a deep rich dark brown color or even dark gold color.

Any thoughts would be appreciated from those who've worked these metals hot.

Very cool. Love the work!

Bad idea, you do not need to be "burned" to accept the skin cancer coming out of the arc. Friend of mine died due to t shirt welding, by the time he had any symptoms his body was so full of cancer there was nothing to be done. He was only welding about 5 years and was 45 yrs old.

Okay thanks guys.... definitely convinced after readig this. There are times I do alot of 200amp TIG welding. For hours at a time. Definitely do not want the exposure. Thanks. :)

Lately i've been wondering how safe it is to TIG weld in a Hanes short sleeve T-Shirt. I use welding sleeves that pull up under my short sleeve shirt and then thick rubber gloves over the sleeves. I've been doing this for years and no burns. I can tell the difference because if a sleeve falls down during some heavy welding you can get something like a light sunburn on that exposed area of skin. However over the years I was wondering why the chest area on my black hanes shirts started to look like they were getting worn out.. or bleached/faded look around the chest. Could this be from the welding? I've never had any burns on my chest. Do you think the light could be getting through? I'm wondering if I should start wearing something like a Dickies work button down shirt over my T shirt for added protection. I don't like the heavy denim shirts.. they are usually way to hot and uncomfortable to me.

Anyone have ideas on this? I've been tig welding forever and when I started I remember I used heavy denim coats. And I think over the years you get a little lazier. I got to imagien the thread count on hanes shirts is fairly low and loose. I just don't want to be radiating myself over time lol

Awesome my kind of artwork. This is a real picture frame! Wish I could have it in my house.

Thanks for the replies all. I'm pretty sure it was something of my doing. Either a screw that fell in between and bounced around between heavy object sitting onto of anvil and plywood that was ontop of anvil or something of the like. The plywood has not been penetrated so something must have gotten in between there and then all the up's and downs must have bounded that hard piece of metal into the face with fairly significant force. I'll just try the peening and as suggested.. forgetta bou it. :P

And failing this technique, what would be the next thing to try?

Grant Sarver once posted that if you plainish the ridges around the dents, it should push the steel back into place (assuming the steel ridges don't get worn away through use).