Ramsberg

Just wondering. If you said other, please elaborate. Caleb Ramsby

This forge is very simular to two that are illustrated in Haslucks Smiths work book. One has the round bellows below the fire pot and has a wet side blast configuration with a rectangular table and hood. The other(for which there are complete instructions to build) has the round bellows below a round fire pot/table, dry side blast and no hood. This may be a little off topic, but I have heard that copper tuyers last longer then cast iron. If both of them are dry. The claimed reason is that the copper is cooled off better by the incoming air then the cast iron is and the copper reflecting more of the heat of the fire then the cast iron doesn't have to get rid of as much heat. Has anyone tried or heard of anyone trying a copper tuyer? Caleb Ramsby

My favorite hammer is one that is composed of the head from my Greatgrandfather and a brazed in metal handle that my grandfather installed. It is a dual face hammer, I annealed and filed down the heads, one about the profile of a watch crystal and the other like the lense of a 1/1 vision eye glasses. It is about four pounds or so. I wrapped the metal handle, one of those that used to have leather rings around it so it is shaped like a small I beam, with twine. About 1" thick wrap. It works great, with the twine rather taught and a bit loose, balance, it gives great hammer control with a loose grip, isolation from the violent vibration that travels up the metal handle and the twine absorbs sweat and gives a good friction grip. Never had any blisters from it, or any other hammer for that matter.grin It always feels a lot lighter then it really is, I attribute this to the energy of my ancesters in it. . . Caleb Ramsby

Yep, sure have. At the local historical shop in which meetings are held(which I no longer attend), the single brick chimney handles two coal forges(both side draft) and one pot belly stove. The two forges feed right into the bottem of the forge from oposite sides. The stoves pipe enters the chimney about half way up or so, it just goes right into the side. As long as the main flue is large and tall enough there shouldn't be any problem. Actually, I recall the forges drawing better when the stove was going, I think that the added hotter gases from the stove kept the chimney pulling even when the forges were not going full blast. I hope that this helps. Caleb Ramsby

You are on your way! Having a V shaped cut where the tines are split is a big problem, this will make it much harder to clean etc. Make a rounded end chisel to smooth this V cut, an 1/8" or so dia rounded end on the chisel will work great, it doesn't need to be very hard or of great steel. Same thing with the ends of the tines. It looks like you used a grinder on them. Use a file instead if they need to be cleaned up. These should be round and if they do have a sharp point it should be a long taper, not as obtuse as the ones on yours. One thing that took me a while to get right when I was starting was keeping a flat scroll flat. Yours has the end of the scroll sort of twisted off to the side, this is generally not so good. If that happens, unroll it and start again. One thing to remember when starting a scroll is that 20 very light glancing strokes with a very hot bit of metal is much better then 2 heavy direct strokes with red hot steel. I like to make pieces that go from smaller to larger to smaller, or smaller to larger to larger. Yours goes from smaller(tines) to larger(twist main body) to about the same size(scroll). This gets more into the artistic side of things and is very debatable(a few years ago in England a guy got paid about $20,000 for his art exibit(by the city) is was some poo in a glass jar sat in the town square!). You are just three weeks in, so I am sure that you don't have your own style yet. Just keep thinking about how it is going to work, look and feel(not always in that order). Having said all of that, it is very impressive for just three weeks into it all. Keep it up! Caleb Ramsby

About the double bick being known as a engineers anvil. I could certainly see how the second flat top bick would come in handy when forging machine parts. Very fascinating. Caleb Ramsby

Bruce, A very enlightining reply! So it sounds like the double bick anvil was not absent from early american development after all. I wonder why exactly the London Pattern became so popular. It seems to me to be a mass production type of thing. Gazilla, Those are some great links, thanks! It is interesting that what appear to be the older double bick anivls there have the round bick turned up! Very intruiging. . . Caleb Ramsby

Philip, Thanks for the response, is your flat bick wider at the top then at the bottem, that is, is it undercut? Thomas, Thanks for the book referance, I will try to hunt one of those up. I could see how having a square block anvil and a double bick stake would have it's advantages. As long as the double bick was in easy reach of the block. Matt, As to the popularity of the London Style anvil, that is one of the reasons that I was asking. I had thought that mabey the double bick style was a recent incarnation and was just now catching hold. It appears that it has been around for a rather long while, just not so much on this(USA) side of the pond. Gazilla, Thanks for the great link! I am stunned by the mass of some of those anvils! "The Forge of Vulcan" painting is very interesting, seeing as how it has both a double bick stake and a double bick anvil. It is curious that both of the bicks on the main anvil have flat tops and only the double bick stake has rounded tops. Thanks everyone for sharing, this is becoming a very interesting discussion! A short personal story, years ago when I first started blacksmithing I had made a heavy table with a 2" thick by 18" by 18" plate of steel for my "anvil" and another plate just as thick but 18" by 8" hanging over and bolted down to the table as a "bick". The larger plate I just bolted down flat(I didn't know any better at the time, I should have been using it's edge instead). Well, I didn't have a round surface to bend the curves over, so I got very used to forging curves over the edge etc. When I eventually got an anvil I had a hard time getting used to using the rounded bick! Caleb Ramsby

Hi all, I am wondering if anyone knows anything about the origin of the double bick or horn anvil. They seem to be very popular with all of the modern companies who make anvils now, and I am wondering if it is of modern design or an ancient one. As a side note I am also wondering when contries in Europe began to add the bick to their anvils. I believe that in a lot of Asian contries they still don't use bicks on thier anvils. Yet another question, I would greatly appreciate to hear from those who have and use a double bick anvil, as to how often you use the second flat top bick and what you use it for. Thanks all, Caleb Ramsby

I have tried corn, corn cobs, wood pellets, charcoal brickets, wood blocks, sunflower stalks, real wood charcoal, coal, coke and anthricite in an old forge of mine. Corn kernels burn hot with a big fire, they would be much better if charred first. Corn cobs weigh almost nothing and burn up just as fast as you can shove them into the fire. Almost useless as a forge fuel from a steady use issue. Wood pellets burn much like corn kernels, except that the pellets are made of wood shavings and saw dust that is compressed together. The only thing that holds them together is the lignin placed into a semi plastic state during the high temp and force compression stage. When the pellets begin to burn and you add a blast they fly apart into a fountain of sparks. ANY stiring of the fuel with the air blast going will be like the fourth of July! They DO work and can get hot enough, but I wouldn't suggest them. Charcoal brickets are very simular to wood pellets in this way. They can burn hot enough but it is almost impossible to keep the fire from spreading and the sparks are intolerable. Wood blocks(I would split and saw them down to about 2" square or smaller) work but there is a big ol flame and more sparks then with charcoal or coal. Sunflower stalks have more hydrocarbons then wood and thusly produce a greater flame and more smoke when the blast is off. They will also get hot enough but unchared are a big ol mess, chared they are very light and burn almost instantly. Real wood charcoal is a brilliant fuel, properly made there is almost no smoke and it gets plenty hot. Coal of course is coal. Coke will also work, however one must either have a way of producing a natural draft to keep it going when forging or just keep the blast going all of the time. It sure gets plenty hot, but if you let it cool for a little bit, IT IS OUT. Anthricite is a lot like coke, except it is much heavier and harder. All in all my favorite fuel is real wood charcoal, it burns clean(that is no smoke, there can however be a lot of carbon monoxide, keep it ventilated.) hot and is very easy to go from a small compact fire to a massive fire to heat those big ol chunks of steel. Coal would be my second favorite fuel. Corn and wood has about 6/10 the energy per pound that coal has(this greatly depends on the btu content of the coal, wood and corn). Take this into account when comparing the cost of various solid fuels. What we really need to be working on is a coal making machine. . . Caleb Ramsby

After making a bunch of different stuff, such as a potters wheel and pots with it, painting etc. I got interested in carving wood and stone. I noticed that all of the best chisels were made by blacksmiths by hand! So I decided to learn blacksmithing to make some chisels, got a bunch of books and did too much research before I finally made my first forge. After a few years and joining a local blacksmithing group I still hadn't made a chisel yet, got hooked on making more artistic stuff with the forge and anvil. A very fullfilling diversion from my original idea of what I was going to make! Now I have my greatgrandfathers blacksmithing hammer, which my grandfather had brazed a metal handle onto. I anealed the head, ground off the mushroom(it had lost it's temper when the handle was brazed on), filed a proper profile on both sides of it(it was a machinist type hammer), then wraped the metal handle(which used to have leather rings on it) with twine. The twine wrapping works GREAT, wraped tightly, one has great hammer control, the twine absorbs sweat from the hand, and gives a cushion from the hammer blow. I greatly prefer it over a wooden handle. Caleb Ramsby

I too have a beard, well an overgrown(between one and two fists) goutie and moustache. Have any of you guys with the long beards had the same experience as me, that is, have randon people come up to you and complement you on the beard, or tell a story about how they tried to grow one long and it didn't work, or their significant other won't let them? I have also had people cheer me on, as if I were entering the last few yards of a tough race. "Hey, good job, keep it up!". What? all I am doing is, well not doing something. I never new how serious people took beards until I grew one, hear a lot of stories about how some ones grandfather was a beard grower too. Remind you of something? Something that I heard which may be of interest, is that the reason for the decline in popularity of beards and such was a fear of tuberculosis in the late 1800's to early 1900's. It was akin to the anti bacteria movement going on now, with the soaps and such. The media and activist groups declared that all men should shave their beards or via kissing their children and wives they would make every one ill and kill them! WOW! Caleb

Nate, This is just what I was talking about. It appears that the sights, smells and sounds of a blacksmith shop brings up some long lost memories to some people. What a great story of yours, there must be some magic entity in the air in a blacksmith shop. I can't see why so many people would lie about having a blacksmith in their family history. I can't recall many people having the same reaction about weavers. . . Caleb

As to the placing of a hands off sign on the blower, that is just what my Great Grandfather did with his blower at his blacksmith shop. You can see him and his shop(Frank Ramsby) at the home page of Anvilfire.com when it cycles sometimes or directly at: Wyllys and Ramsby - 19th Century Blacksmith Shop Photos The wild thing about, "My grandfather was a blacksmith" is, well what is a blacksmith? A direct definition of blacksmith is anyone that works hot iron with a hammer and an anvil. Back in the day many farmers made some of their own tools and repairs with a forge, anvil and hammer. To me they were at least part blacksmiths and any kid who saw them working the hot metal would, well. . . Almost every one involved in blacksmithing for a few years knows how to mig or tig weld, now that doesn't make us welders, but. . . There is a big difference between some one asking me if I shoe horses and if blacksmiths shoe horses. I don't, but my great grandfather sure did as you can see from the photos. However, he was an expert race horse trainer, who had a pet ram which followed him around everywhere. This leads me to believe that blacksmiths have always been a bit crazy. This is all a bit complicated, lots of people back in the day would buy a small anvil and bellows and make nails to sell in front of their open fireplace in the winter. They were blacksmiths of sorts, they may not have known or cared what a flatter was for, but they did for a while at least work hot metal. One thing that I believe brings up all of the "My Grandfather was a blacksmith" when they find out you are or at a demo is, well, when else would such a conversation be relevant. There arn't many people who are interested in hearing about some past reletive working hot metal, but if you are talking to a blacksmith, well my grandpa did that too, type of thing. I don't know, it is a bit complicated. The shop that my Great Grandfather had in Kirkland, a small town of 300 - 400 people, had about three other shops and all of these shops had at least three people working in them. That is 1 of 25 to 1 of 33 people in the town being a blacksmith, then there were the farmers who had a "blacksmith shop" in their barn. Then one could ask, how many people helped as a young kid or teenager in a blacksmith shop and then went on to other things, these were blacksmiths too. My friends Grandfather was a blacksmith, that is when he was a kid his father was a full time blacksmith and had his son help him and taught him many things. Now my friends Grandfather went on to start a heavy machinery dealership and repair buisness(cranes, bulldozers etc.), so he WAS a blacksmith at one point. All of this says to me that considering how many people were involved in blacksmithing at some point and the two sets of grandparents per person deal, reduces the number of people who have a "blacksmith" as a blood reletive(ie. grandparent of great-grandparent) down to 1 in 5 or 1 in 3. This to me is about the ration of how many people say, "My Grandfather was a blacksmith". Now the question is, how do you deal with the, "I want to" or "Will you" "Make me a sword"! I once had a kid(20 or so) ask me to help him make a 100 lb ax(yes one hundred pounds). When I asked what he would need that for, he said that he was going to use it in late at night, back wood, mock battles with his friends who had faux swords! I almost punched him, but instead just let that go and showed him the basic steps to making a small knife, then explained that making such an ax would cost at the very least $5,000 bucks, at least from me and even if dull would kill someone if you hit them with it, blunt force. That was that. That little experience also inspired the saying, "Even an idiot deserves a chance to learn", this is what I said to him as I handed him the hammer, not very nice, but I was making a VERY legitimate point in that moment(note: we were alone and he was at the time my sisters boy friend, now ex thank god). On the boy girl issue. I have noticed that the girls who are interested(of which there are many) tend to ask significant questions and actually LISTEN to the answers. Where the boys tend to ask questions and then not listen to the answer very much(although this is not true for all of them) and the grown up ones, tend to make comments about how I am not holding the hammer right and it would be better if I did it this way. . . Caleb Ramsby