Ramsberg

GAS MASK!

I am begining to think that "ciladog" is actually the "deceased" Howard Hughes. . . have you tried case hardening steel in a box packed with fingernail clippings yet. . .

. . . or they dug trenches around the hammer to stand in. . .

For tongs check out this thread on "The Ultimate Tongs" http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/16260-the-ultimate-tongs/page__hl__%2Bultimate+%2Btongs Kinda a one size fits all deal. To adjust tongs, one heats up the grippy end of the tongs and holds the work in then, then lightly hammer it so the work fits. Honestly, tongs don't take up much space. A metal horizontal rod 24" long can easily hold a dozen of them, closer to two dozen if they are light and packed in there. Riveting can be tricky. Firstly one must make sure that the surfaces that will rub together at the tong pivot point are flat and smooth. If when making them the finishing blows are done with the pivot contact point of each part of the tong on the anvil, they should be flat and smooth enough to slide. Secondly, when pounding in the rivet, do so hot. For a rivet I just use a bit of round stock that will fit in the hole easily. Cut the rivet so that close to two diameters in length of the rivet sticks out of each side of the tongs. Then put the two parts of the tong together with the round stock in place. Place the tongs in a medium intensity fire with one side of the rivet facing down, heat until said end of rivet is close to yellow, then flip the tongs over and heat the other side of the rivet. This can be done with one heat per side of rivet or two shorter heats per side of rivet to keep the temps more even. When you take the tongs out of the fire the body and pivot point of the tongs should be rather cooler then the rivet ends. Have a pair of pliers at hand to squeze the two parts of the tongs together so that there is no gap between them. Then place one end of the round stock/rivet on the anvil and hammer it square on the other end of the round stock. It takes a medium hit, softer is better then harder, since when upsetting stock like this the key is to hammer directly in line with the axis of the round stock. After a hit flip the tongs over to see if the other end is upsetting in a mushroom manner or bending over to one side. It should be mushrooming evenly on all sides. If it is then go back at it until the ends of the round stock, now rivet, are flattened out. DO NOT quench the tongs after this operation. Instead, grab the handles of the tongs and work them back and forth while they are cooling down to a black heat. When they reach a black heat they should be nice and loose and then you can cool them the rest of the way in water if you like. That is the way I do it. Some other people heat up only the rivet and place a bit of thick paper, such as an index card(don't know if that is what they are called over there, just thick card stock) between the two halves of the tongs and this allows enough room for free movement when the rivet cools. The rivet shrinks as it cools and will make the tongs tighter. The paper will get tore up and work its way out and free up the tongs. I should also note that when hammer the rivet, with either method, make sure that the tong halves stay tight to eachother. If there is a big enough gap then the rivet will upsed in between them, that is bulge out a good bit, this will cause a major issue with the use of the tongs. . . well not that major, just cut the ends off of the rivet and try again! I would like to urge you to try your hand again at making tongs. If the chrome plating on the grippers you are using starts to burn off it is a very bad thing, that stuff is deadly toxic, NO joke! Caleb Ramsby

You really need to make some tongs. Not only do they greatly help with keeping your holding hand away from the fire and hot work, as well as align your body in a better position. Making them is good practice for hammer control, forging to a size, forging duplicates and fitting two pieces together. Besides wearing eye protection, also consider wearing hearing protection. Any hearing loss is LOST! Caleb Ramsby

That hot cut hardie advice is very good! Early on I was using mine and instead of twisting off the cut off piece, I hung it over the far edge of the anvil and smacked it off. . . without removing the hot cut. Just before that I said to myself, "Take that hot cut out before you hurt yourself you dummy! " , I replied, "Nah, it is just a little smack" Well, of course the smack was too hard and the hammer flew down propeling my pointing finger onto the hot cut. If it had been just 1/4" over it would have sliced though my fingers tendon! To add a bit to the other fantastic advice. Working with another smith at a forge is akin to dancing. . . except there isn't always a clear leader. If I am sharing a forge or anvil I like to discuss with the guy or gall what shape of fire they will be requiring, if they will need any help with punching or other operations and things of that nature. That way one of you isn't suprised by what the other will be doing. A big part is fire control, especially sharing a fire. At a meet once, me and another guy were sharing a coal forge, bellows bottom blast with a side hood. Then a rather well intentioned third guy walked up with a bucket half full of pea and dust coal(pea as in the size of a pea, as in a beanish thing) he said that he had been collecting the coal fines for a while and wanted me to have them. Wow, I thought, that is rather nice of him. I was actually at the forge at the time so I was looking around for a place to put the plastic 5 gallon bucket, when all of a sudden he dumped the whole thing on top of the fire! I had to quickly poke a hole through the stack of raw coal and then pump like crazy while scooping it off to keep it from absolutly filling the shop with smoke. The guy had good intentions but. . . If you have a local blacksmithing group and plan on attending it a lot, something I would suggest is to not do much of anything your first time there. Most of the people show up rather often and if it is held at the same place, they will have staked out their "territory" . As in where they place their tool box, which anvil they use, ect. That helped me a lot for sure. If it is a one off event, then it is a different story since everyone there is new to the place. Caleb Ramsby

A few pry bars of various sizes would be a good idea. Leave them soft as in don't quench them, let them cool slowly after forging. They will eventually bend, but by that time you should be advanced enough in your blacksmithing to make proper heat treated ones. There is a lot that can be done to make a custom hand forged pry bar work and look bettern then an off the shelf one. Caleb Ramsby

Number one in my book is not to just grab a tool and start using it, unless it is yours. A few years ago I was at a small local blacksmithing meet and had my open top wooden box of tools with me, it was against the wall so as to be out of the way. I was at the anvil pounding away when out of the corner of my eye I saw a new guy at another anvil swinging one of my hammers. That upset me a bit, but when I noticed that it was my greatgrandfathers blacksmithing hammer I felt like ripping his throat out! Needless to say, he was rapidly aware that he wasn't welcome to use my tools anymore! A blacksmiths hammers can be rather personal items, as is their anvil. Besides that, the best advice I can give you is to tell the other smiths that you meet what you DO NOT know as opposed to what you do know! Personally I have learned a great deal by doing that, much more then if I had blabbed on and on about what I thought I did know. Caleb Ramsby

Yep, I ran out of questions that could be asked before I got to that. The great issue with how the handle is griped is how to properly describe it with words. Especially in poll question form. From what I have observed, both from myself and other smiths, the shape or shaping of the handle often dictates how the hand grips the handle and visa versa. I do believe that a little bit can be learned by what options above were NOT chosen(in this poll) , compared to what was chosen. Such as, thus far no one has said they use factory stock handles. Caleb Ramsby

Thanks for the input guys. This little poll of mine simply can't encompass all of the variations that smiths hammer handles take. I conducted this poll because there is a lot of information about what shape of hammer head people use and how they swing their hammer and hold it, but not a lot or at least I couldn't find much, about the exact shaping of the hammer handle. Even if I could put 100 options in the poll, I don't think it would be enough. Also, it appears that a lot of smiths switch up between not only different weights of hammers, but also different lengthed and shaped handles in a day of forging. Well, I gave it a go, but I don't think this poll is nearly as effective as the hammer handle material poll. I must also admit that the poll questions and answers I produced here are rather confusing. . . even for me! HA!!! Thanks again everyone. Caleb Ramsby

I am conducting this poll because my poll on hammer handle material indicated a near unanimous vote for wood and also indicated that there are a great deal of different profiles used for hammer handles. It is my hope that the results of this thread may give people ideas as to what else to try in regards to hammer shape. I have enabled multiple answers for the first two poll questions, seeing as how some may have multiple preferences for the first poll question and the second question is actually three questions in one. If anyone has a preference for which there is no answer in on of the questions, please state it in the thread and I will add it to the possible answers. Caleb Ramsby

I would like to give a big thanks to all that have contributed to not only this poll, but also this thread. Especially in the frankness of those who have posted on this thread. Caleb Ramsby

In light of the lack of significant published studies regarding the "healthiest" hammer handle material to use, maybe peoples preferences will shed some light on the subject. Caleb Ramsby

Well, I dug up what I believe to be the study that Trez is referencing: http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~ljentoft/projects/hammers/hammers.pdf I also dug up another one regarding vibration transmition of various tools and its findings are the opposite of the above: http://www.theergonomicscenter.com/research/product_eval.shtml In short the former study indicates that the wood handle transmits more harmfull vibrations and the later indicates the opposite. To me unless a study involves 30 or more test pieces and repeated by otheres it is inconclusive in its findings. Also of note is that in the later study they reference the contact area of the hand to the handle and "discomfort ratings" . The later of which indicates that they actually had people using the hammer and filling out questionairs as part of the study. Speaking of people, I think that I will start a poll about which handle material is the most comfortable for the user. Caleb Ramsby

My preference is for wood. My pros for wood are that they can be made out of "sticks" laying around, they can be made to fit any hammer head, they can be made very smooth and shaped to fit ones hand and grip preference. My cons for synthetic are easy to discover if one simply reads the above and replaces can with can NOT. Well, that isn't strictly true since they can be made to do such things, except I have no want for working with increadibly toxic chemicals and compounds to produce them! For me what it really comes down to is the feel of the handle. Although the synthetic handles transmit more damaging vibrations through the handle in labratory testing then wooden ones, I don't grip the handle firmly as the machine does in the lab tests, so to me that is a mute point. Some smiths grip the handle more firmly and for them the synthetic handle would transmit less vibrations. Just one guys opinion. Caleb Ramsby

I have always used zarf and finjan as test words to determine if a dictionary is any good. Now I am going to have to add spelt and spelter to the test, especially how many definitions there are for them! Sometimes these tangents are just as informative as the straight content of a thread. Caleb Ramsby

The burner will operate differently when it is actually shooting its flame into the forge. In other words, if you get it to burn perfectly in the open air, it won't burn right in the forge. You won't know what adjustement to make until the forge is done and the fire is blasting into it. Caleb Ramsby

Really cool blower! I recall seeing pictures of a blower very much like yours. I believe it was on this site, maybe a year or two back. Caleb Ramsby

Hey Justin, Have you considered turning the anvil around and using the other edge? Some guys have the horn on the left and some on the right, most have it on the left, but if you turned the anvil around and had it on the right then the main edge you would be using would be the one that looks very clean. Beyond that, I would like to second not grinding that edge, except for that cracked chunk. That has a danger of shooting off with a hard blow or cracking further into the anvil. Mainly, USE it first. If sections of the anvils edge leaves marks on the work, then smooth out the sharp bits of that edge, if not then it is OK. Caleb Ramsby

Hey David Einhorn, Just curious to know if you hold the balanced hammer in your hand differently and/or have your hand closer to the hammer head then with your other hammers. I mention this because both Hofi and Brians techniques are to hold the hammer handle rather close to the head. This produces a DRASTIC reduction in the torsion which the hammer head exerts on the mechanism of ones swing. That plus the loose, sideways grip also reduces the torsion. Both of the above allow one to experience equal or lower stresses on ones body with heavier hammer heads. Holding a six pound hammer with just a few fingers gap between the head and ones hand makes it just as easy to swing as a 2 or 3 lb hammer held at the end of a long handle. The above is the real "balancing" of the hammer. I am not trying to be a smart alec or anything(well maybe just a little, can't help it! ) but, when you are forging with your regular hammers do you strike only square with the two faces of the head or do you twist or tilt the hammer to strike with the various edges of the head? Just curious, since the more one knows about the how and why of other peoples hammering techniques the greater ones abiilty to personally advance in their techniques. Caleb Ramsby

Hey Timothy, Add a handle bearing(to cut down on elbow grease) and a magnetic head(to make the anvil pull the hammer towards it) and I will buy a dozen! Caleb Ramsby

I was thinking the same thing about lack of oxygen. Those gas forges can sneak up on ya, since they don't make visible smoke and the poisones gases don't make a noticable odor. That plus the heat can kill. My grandparents were dairy farmers and used the old trick of running cool water over the wrists for a few minutes to cool off, it works rather well. What is even better is the afore mentioned wet towel wrap on the head. No cold fluids INTO the body, cool on the outside and warm on the inside. A cool wet towel around the neck also works wonders. Stay safe! Caleb Ramsby

Hey Mitch, I used to use the ear buds, but had to stop. . . they were damaging my hearing! My issue with them was that, while yes they do isolate ones hearing a bit. When in use to actually drown out the ambiant sounds they need to be turned way up. Which in turn is actually louder then what you would normally be hearing! Kinda a double down situation. Simular to driving with the windows down at high speeds with the radio cranked up. It doesn't sound loud at the time, but get off the highway to a stop, then park the car, get back in later and it sounds LOUD! Caleb Ramsby

Hey Matt, Welcome aboard! You can gain a sigificant volume of knowledge about the dos and don'ts of forge construction and/or purchasing by reading through some of the threads in the forge section of the site. Here is a link to the solid fuel forges. Solid fuel being coal, charcoal, anthracite, coke. . . corn. . . pecan shells: http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/64-solid-fuel-forges/ Here is a link to the gas fueled(propane or natural gas) forges section: http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/65-gas-forges/ Go through them and try to find subject lines that look like a question you want to ask, there is a lot of information in them! A good thread is the "Show me your forge" thread. It is rather picture heavy and also long, but it will show you just what working forges can look like. Caleb Ramsby