Jason L

George, I've seen your posts around here and I have to say, I believe you are more likely to be quoted than quote someone else. You and a few others here seem to have more experience than most and a life filled with experience is a quote generator. That's where all good quotes come from anyway. The failures and successes of those willing to try, that's where the best information comes from and it's why I don't do social media. Most of the people on there (not all) have no idea what experience really is. In my opinion, and I'm frequently wrong, the best experience comes from creation, not imitation.

But the leg vice was made for blacksmiths, maybe even by blacksmiths. They do it right, not right now. The vices I'm used to were abused in ways they probably weren't built to withstand. I feel like if something made for a blacksmith can't withstand something it's because no one has ever tried that something before. The one thing I know about blacksmiths is, if it can't be destroyed, they will destroy it, then rebuild it better. It's like a personal challenge with some people and they can be very imaginative

I like that one IDFCW. I'll have to file that one in the pile as well. It makes a lot of sense. Frosty, I can't say with certainty but I would be willing to bet that motivational speakers these days get most of their programs from great (or not so great) men and women of the past. I would venture a guess and say that nothing new has come out in the motivational world since someone figured out they could sell tickets to listen to someone repeat them as if they were new. These days I would imagine a motivational seminar being pretty much just an hour of memes in speech format. Little do they know that they could spend a few minutes on the gems and pearls and have a few hours worth of talking points

No doubt you are correct and I was clueless. I've seen that quote many times and may have at some point knew who said it but not anymore. These days I dole out those bits of wisdom to my friends kids so often that I can't remember where I heard them before or even if I heard them before. There's no telling how many quotes I've completely butchered. Wisdom may come with age but I'll never know because I forgot it all.

Lol. I don't think I've ever used a decent vice to be honest. I think every vice I've used had made more trips around the sun than me and led a rougher life (discounting the 80's of course).

Nice knife. I'd be happy to carry that. The next one will be even better and the one after that will be better still. Something to consider when making anything at all is the only difference between simple and complicated is the number of parts. As long as you know what shape the parts need to be, you can make anything you want. All you have to do is remove everything that isn't the right shape. Go buy a cheap knife that you like the shape of and take it apart. See what shape all the parts are and copy them. If you're skilled enough with heat treat and you alter the parts that don't work so well, you'll soon have a high quality replica that will beat the original in every way. using existing parts as templates will allow you to create whatever you want. It's all about shaping the metal. Forging, stock removal, it all serves the same goal, turn something into what you want it to be by removing or altering whatever isn't what you want it to be. I say, go for complicated first and see what happens. Worst case scenario, you learn what doesn't work and you can try something different next time. Best case, you make what you want and it works the first time. In either case you haven't lost anything but time and maybe a few dollars worth of materials. Just remember, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.

One thing I like about leg vises that I don't see talked about much is the fact that the jaws are always held in tension with the spring so the moment you start turning the screw the jaws start moving as well. I know it's not a deal breaker but when I'm working with a bench vice and I'm trying to get something clamped quickly that extra bit of turning to take out the slack is slightly annoying. Easily forgotten within minutes but when it happens I notice. That said, any vice that will hold what you're working on is the right vice if it's the only vice. The only perfect tool in my shop is the one swinging the hammer, but I don't think the people who tell me that mean it entirely complimentary

I have a supplier about an hour north of me in Bessemer AL that sells it for $18.50 a sack. The last time I bought a coupe sacks it came in old 50lb dog food bags so I'm not sure what it weighed. I called them the other day and they said they still had some. It's Moore Coal Co. Their website just has garbage collection on it but they do sell blacksmith coal.

That is a lot! I'm not sure what the yield on something like that would be but we would shell around 25-40 bushels of peas in a day with the old sheller that could hold up to 3 bushels at a time if we gave it a push start. Of course we weighed them after shelling, not before and a lot of those came in small bags or buckets. The new sheller can barely handle a bushel and a half. Our scales were all metal, top to bottom except for one that has wooden accents. All of the structural parts are metal though.

I know where there are three sets of these scales. I was working at a feed store until December of this past year and we used two sets of them daily for many years. They still use one set but have moved the other two sets to storage. I weighed all my anvils on them. Ours went up to 250 each beam and about 400# of weights. We mostly weighed peas for shelling, seeds by the pound and fertilizer by the pound. I'll never forget the time spent cursing the numbers on the beams for being so hard to see in the low light we had in the store.

I'm not sure how you insert air into your forge but when I was first trying to forge weld I was cranking the blower as fast as I could to get it up to heat not realizing that I was making sure there was causing the steel to scale more. Since I slowed to a crawl with my blower and let it take it's time coming up to heat I have no problems. I can even forge weld with no flux at all fairly reliably on small basket twists. Oxygen may keep you alive but it kills your welds. I always take my time and go as slowly as possible until the steel comes out. That's when I test my speed

They were just the hulls straight after cracking the pecans. They were just the parts that came loose after running them through the cracker.

I made my own probe out of mild steel and it worked just fine till I turned it into something else. I didn't even put a handle on it since I was mostly hunting creek banks and such with soft mud. I just bought a 3' piece of mild steel rod, rounded off the tip and went at it. It worked just fine with no problems at all. I did use it in rocky ground as well as red clay and it still did fine but I mostly hit soft ground with it.

When I worked at the feed store, the manager at the time bought us a wood burning stove and cut the gas so that was all we had to heat with. Since we were also cracking pecans at the time he had the bright idea to throw 30 lbs of pecan hulls into the stove all at once. DO NOT DO THIS! In a few minutes it was sucking air through any available gap, it sounded like a jet engine. Within ten minutes or so the entire body of the stove was glowing bright red and the pipe was glowing up to about 6 ft high. The metal tags attached to the door and the back end of the stove melted off leaving only the empty rivet holes. The damper had to be replaced a couple months later as well. I was sure the building would catch fire and tried to stop him but oh well. We got very lucky and the inferno subsided after awhile. I don't know about walnut hulls but pecan hulls get scary hot scary fast!

I'm looking forward to getting some pictures Chad and thanks for the wishes.

Make a wrench out of gallium and hit it with a hair dryer. He can watch them deform and drip in real time

I plan on buying new steel once I know that my body will allow me to continue (Notice I didn't say "if"). I want to do ornamental work but first I want to forge just one knife that I'll keep. So far everything I've made I gave to family or friends. I knew they would throw them in a drawer and forget about them so I wasn't worried about fit and finish. I'll probably mostly use mild steel for things like gate latches and such so the type of steel won't really matter, just so it's metal and beaten with a hammer. I've found a place that sells coal about an hour away so I'll be heading up there, maybe in a week or two. I'm in no rush. I've got too many other projects that I've started and not finished so I'll be busy for awhile.

I know this is an old thread but I made a call today to Moore Coal Co. in Bessemer Alabama and they sell blacksmith coal. So far it's the only place I've found that offers it. 80lb bags are $17.50 according to the lady I talked to. She said they would also dump a load into your truck if you prefer. I don't have room for that yet so I didn't think to ask a price on it.

Good info Billy. I don't have use of corkscrews myself so I never really think about them but there does seem to be more than meets the eye. Thanks

That's true but I'm not allowed to put anvils on my wife's bathroom scales so I had to use other means. She was afraid I would drop it and break or dent it or something I suppose.

I've opened quite a few bottles while fishing but I can't remember using a corkscrew to put a corks on a fishing line. Although the bottles I opened may or may not have caused me to forget a few steps along the way

That's quite an undertaking! I hope pictures are soon to come of the finished product! Hickory is kind of the default when it comes to handle materials these days. It's strong and good looking, just make sure the grain is good and straight. Nothing messes up a good looking handle like being broken due to poor grain orientation. Whatever you use, make sure it's not green or it will warp and/or split. I think the standard drying time was one year per inch of thickness at one time but I can't remember exactly. I know that someone else here has better, or at least more accurate information than me but maybe I'm in the ballpark here.

you can take it to a local place that has a large set of scales. We used to weigh things like that all the time where I used to work. It was great for starting the conversation on where to get scrap iron or more blacksmith tools, even new customers. Try a scrap yard or farm store. They typically have scales that they don't mind using for heavy iron stuff and they usually have some strong backs around to do the lifting for you. The large truck scales sometimes aren't set up to measure in single pound instruments but they should have a scale large enough that will weigh give you a pretty accurate weight. Also pictures help A LOT! If you could take some pictures and post them you are much more likely to get a knowledgeable answer

Oh, I'm not participating, I was just curious, that's all. My forge is down for the moment. As for making a corkscrew, I would think it would be relatively easy, relative being the operative word. Just a small piece of flat bar twisted with a point on the end. Now I've got to go look and see when the earliest corkscrew found was made and by whom lol.

Would a corkscrew count as a bottle opener? I would imagine it's more likely to be period accurate although I can't remember if I've ever seen a viking era corkscrew or not. Is that a thing?