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I Forge Iron

origami roofs

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Everything posted by origami roofs

  1. beginners mistake: hot shuts. man can they get away from you. early on I left them. when I started filing them out and realising how deep they go and fast, i changed my tune about them.
  2. a friend and I cut two home sized ones open just last week with a plasma cutter while they were full of water. the walls were nearly 3/8ths thick. jigsaw or sawzall cutting the 20 total feet of cut was not appealling to my friend after wasting three blades. these are to be bbq pits in their next life. I was more afraid of electrocution than explosion personally, since the tanks were filled to the top with water.
  3. my three favorite hammers are a 2 1/2 lb crosspein, a 24 oz ballpein and a 2 lb sledge for hitting cold metal. I wasn't sure how I liked the ball pein until i started forging with it and found it to be a joy to use. I have fit all my handles to me and find every one of them comfortable to use
  4. early american wrought iron by sonn. great book for project inspirations. pricy at about $125 but should be in the collection.
  5. this is a difficult craft to even approach. Almost everything in this forum would make no sense to me without a basic understanding of metallurgy and having been instructed by an actual blacksmith both gained from college. I think that a great number of questions rise here on the forums because the blueprints have been all but abandon. when I fist joined i forge the blueprints were in good order, easily accessed, and reduced the amount of junk posts here. as far as I can tell the blueprints have been all but abandoned except on tuesday at 9 oclock central standard time. Too be honest this forum has declined in the going on three years that the blueprints have been removed. now adays it is just rumor. why can't the new blueprints be permanently added the day of reveal. I think glen and them are deliberately holding the blueprints back to write a book.
  6. are the quarters planished
  7. if its got power anything(seats, windows, doors) those 12 volt motors and all the associated gears or pulleys i have been finding interesting uses for.
  8. When I was younger, my dad told me that the best way to hammer was to place your thumb on top. we often re-nailed roof decking down by hand because it was simpler than having too many nail guns running off our compressor and the fact that often we would be removing sheets of metal and then replacing with new ones as we went. not full tear offs like a composition roof. In my life I have broken my thumb 3 times which now has arthritis(not from hammering) and after a day of driving nails that way, the big joint in my thumb would absolutely ache, so I evolved into what would be referred to around here as the hofi hammer technique. when I was introduced to blacksmithing, I was happy to see that there are many supporters of this technique. I have been fired from a blacksmith shop for refusing to use the top thumb technique or any techniques that caused me discomfort. I thought tomato, tomato. Looked at as disrespect. you know what, two finger pinch grip on the shortest handle possible. My forging hammers handles are less than 11 inches long and I love it. doesn't stress my thumb,shoulder or my elbow. I can hit hard, the hammer seems to leap off the anvil, I have reasonable control, and the shorter handles allow more of the face of the hammer to be utilized. I found that my handles were too long while I was playing at the anvil, making little mockingbird hammer noises checking the rebound all over it. when I would be at the end of my anvil with the handle past the edge I found a few more hammer blows(near side to hand corners and edge) it felt comfortable choked up from nearly all the way up to the head of the hammer back a few inches and then at some point in the length of the handle I would find that it no longer felt right. That is the point that I cut my handles off. Since that discovery for me, I have modified most of my hammer handles according to what feels right for my pinch grip and the intended purpose of the hammer.(my little lightweight sledges ie 2-4lbs have longer handles than my precision hammers) I hate fiberglass and love steel handled framing hammers. they are constantly reliable and within reason indestructable. estwings are all right but I don't like the claw geometry. for me its the vaughn steel eagle 19 oz california style framing hammer with the waffle pattern sanded off. it is one butt-kicking hammer and the claw geometry lends itself well to punching holes in light gauge sheetmetal as well as plywood. light soil excavation. I can easily sink a 16 penny nail in 3 hits all day and can often drive them in 2 hits when I am on fire.
  9. I saw a welding blacksmith shop not too long ago with a mechanical plowshare sharpener. just set the disc in and it revolved and sharpened it. it had two wheels(dies) with bevels on them that just cold forged it sharp.
  10. i was under the impression that in alaska they don't cut into the permafrost but pour pretty much on top of the ground.
  11. If you plan on forge welding with your forge, then I would get the 2700 degree inswool.
  12. do you have to have a special tap for tweco tips? can you get the tap local? trying to build a torch.
  13. i believe that the standard bar height is forty inches . so you could just go to your local watering hole and see if you want to work at that height.
  14. who was the manufacturer, matt. sheeetmetal may have lower content than a36 due to the roll and die forming it undergoes so that it is more ductile
  15. austin community college in austin texas has a program that consists of smithing, power hammer, and toolmaking. I here that southern illinois had a school for artistic blacksmithing. William Bastas at austin is a pretty adept instructor and has worked around Hofi and Tom Clark. the school has a number of power hammers.
  16. I have made a mailbox post with collars and I was looking for finishing advise when I ran across this message and now you have me rethinking my approach. I am considering brazing the collars shut then painting. Another idea i had was to prime and paint then just oil or wd forty the collars to get a protective film within. any input on these two ideas would be useful. byron
  17. I should have qualified the price I was quoting. the price I was quoting was for a 132lb sahinler. sorry to scare any of your potential customers.
  18. The school I go to has a sayha and a sahinler in the 150lb range and a couple other smaller self contained hammers one of which a 33lb anyang. I have also used a small big blue style hammer with a 100 gallon air compressor. Those self contained hammers can whoop some metal, as much as you can throw at it. The big blue style hammer with air compressor worked alright as long as I was forging one iron but xxxx near quit hitting when I started forging two and three irons. a self contained hammer will cost ten thousand but they can hit all day long with out complaint. Big lue style hammers hit weak and you still need a beefy highvolume air compressor. I'll be building a mechanical hammer until I can afford a heavy hitter. My two cents.
  19. watching all those hammers at work is pretty nice. almost twenty minutes of heavy forging videos with that bell dinger.
  20. austin community college still has a smithing program. it's pretty fun. I have been seeing advertisements on craigslist for blacksmithing lessons in the austin area also
  21. my teacher told me what scratch introduced that cold rolled is a truer size than hot rolled due to no loss of dimension from scale.
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