Jacques

I made my gas forge burners from galvanised since that was all I could get. The flow of the gas through the burners keep the metal cool, and only the very tips started to lose zinc after many hours. I also forge outside, making it a bit safer. For a breakdrum forge I would think it is equally safe with air being blown through the fittings the whole time.

Played this a long time ago and forgotten about it. 4.6 in 76.5 And a second effort 3.08 in 372 (that was interrupted by a conversation)

At work we occasionally need to tumble some stuff. We just use our concrete mixer, but we did buy some commercial media and a soap with a rust inhibitor. We did try sand and gravel at first but the media is faster. But it is very noisy and we don't have close neighbours.

My father's got one, exactly like that, included all the extras. He bought it before I was born.

I think soda blasting should be gentle enough. http://www.soda-brade.co.uk/#/about-soda/4539215752

I'm not a knife maker myself, but I've got a copy of "The complete encyclopedia of Knives" by A E Hartink. It is not very complete in itself, since it mostly ignore kitchen knives and only describe fancier handmade knives. I've written a short summary of all the types he describe, but once you start reading on all the makers knives it seems that there is only one convention, the maker describe the knife any way he want to. This book's types of knife are as follows: Bayonet: self explanatory Boot knife or dirk: Short blade with two cutting edges and point in line Dagger: long blade with two cutting edges and a point in line Dagger-knife: two sharp adges and a point not in line Hunting or sheath knife: fixed blade with one or two cutting edges Combat/military knives: usually dagger or dagger/knife, sometime with a saw edge Folding or pocket knife: self explanatory Survival knife: think Rambo Scout knife: basically the same as sheath knife, just shorter. Stiletto of flick knife: folding knife with spring loaded blade flipping out sideways Push dagger: blade at right angle to the hilt Spring-loaded knife: Blade shoots forward Butterfly knife: opening handle Throwing knife: like dagger with a blade heavier than the handle And then for blade shapes he uses the following: Clipped blades- curved tip, think bowie -californian clip - turkish clip -standard clip Drop point scandinavian blade Sheep's foot blade Spey point Tanto or chisel tip

I always use Bookfinder.com for finding second hand books, however the Mark Aspery books just seem to keep on increasing in value. I've been searching for a long time myself.

I've always wanted a belt grinder and has started to collect bits and pieces from the junk yard to build one. But a while ago I saw this belt grinder at a tender sales company's website, and made an offer, sight unseen and got it. It is in quite good condition, except the switch is broken, but I bypassed it. It took me about 10 hours to strip it down and clean of all the rust and reassemble it. The head rotate so you can choose between a big wheel, small wheel or platen. Now I'm the proud owner of a industrial belt grinder with a 1.5 kw motor. I paid about $300. And of course I just had to clean and put the safety warning back.

I thought I was the only one doing it!

For some reason I think that it had to do with microphotography. But I'm quite probably wrong.

First Smurf power hammer I've ever seen. But a fantastic job.

Looks better than my curves, they always tend to go funny. And tell him I say Hello from South Africa.

Today I finished a bunch of flowers. It was my very first attempt at mass production forging and I ended up with a few blisters and a very sore wrist. 29 flowers in total. I had access to a CNC plasma, so all the petals were cut on that. Total time for the project were 12 hours.

I measured up my anvil, made a CAD drawing of it, and machined two baby anvils on the CNC machine. A nice exercise in CAD, epecially the horn. Size: 100mm long and 45mm high. Wood, painted black.

Beautiful. Make me feel guilty for not doing as much.

I spend February taking part in Thing-a-day.( http://jacmal.posterous.com/ ) The idea is to do something creative every day for the whole month. And since I'm trying to blacksmith, my things were mostly blacksmithing. It was a very interesting exercise. The idea is not to finish or complete anything, but just to do something. Most of my things were the first time I even attempted something like it, so I'm really pleased with the result. Since I stop working at five, and it is dark at seven, and my forge is outside, all the blacksmithing projects took less than two hours.

Ain't love wonderful. Congratulations, it is a lovely rose.

A history of filecutting and how it was replaced by industrial processes. Materializing Sheffield - A Filecutter's Hammer from the Hawley Collection And a quote from that: "The speed at which early filesmiths could cut a file is not known, but at the beginning of the 19th century, a boy was timed cutting a three-square file, 5 inches long, with a 'double' cut, i.e. having two sets of teeth cut into each side. (Rees, 1819, 374). The file had 1,350 teeth and the boy made 225 strokes per minute, taking about 6 minutes to cut the file! Fremont, in 1920, writes that a filecutter using a five kilogram hammer (c.10 lbs) could make 88 strokes per minute, but averaged 50, while a hammer weighing two and a half kilos, allowed a filecutter to make 114 strokes per minute, averaging 75. This is a much lower rate than the slightly unbelievable rate of the 19th century boy, but the boy would have used a much lighter hammer."

We normally braze our woodworking bandsaw blades ourselves, since the closest shop is quite far away. Results is variable, but I've found that normally the blade doesn't break on a brazed joint, but of to one side. My record for a silver solder jointed blade is seven days of continous production work. All joints must be scarfed.

Welkom Nice to have another local to balance out all the foreigners. If you update your profile to show where you are it will make it easier for us to find you and you can also introduce yourself on the South African Highveld forum. Jacques

I spend a few days at the Kruger National Park last week and took a good picture of a Blacksmith Lapwing. And a Cheetah was nice enough to pose for me 10 meters from the car.