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Interesting tip. I would never have thought about it. I would be afraid to lose the residual heat that allows me to clean up the cut without an extra heat. Will try it.

I agree with Andy with the slight variation that I cut with the grinder if the stock is cold and with the hot cut if the stock is hot. I have not (touch wood ) yet hit the (straight) edge of my present hot cut. Of course I am careful and turn the stock before the cut is through and I bend off the last with tongs. There is practically always enough heat left to allow straighetning of any residual bends. Since I hold the stock with my left hand perpendicularly to the edge of the cut, I would need to tilt the hammer forward or backwards to hit the edge and again this is just a matter of holding the hammer handle at the right height - something I find easy - but I have hit a few nails in my youth and any slant would bend the nail.

I wish we had this type here too. They seem to make perfect adjustable bending tools.

That is the way to make cannons. You take a hole and pour iron around it. However, first you take a donut and eat the bread so you get a hole.

Yes shared genes are common. My area is full of my cousins 4th 5th 6th and beyond. The oldest ancestor, of whom I own an artefact, lived five miles from here in 1738. I am now reading a book(Swedish I am afraid) that discusses genetics history and movements. Miticondrial genes of Native American type have been found on Iceland. Obviously at least one woman followed the vikings back from America.

Both carbondioxid (letal concentration around 10%) and carbonmonoxide (deadly in any concentration since it accumulates in the blood) are colourless and have no smell. The dioxide is probably not a big problem but depending upon how the fire is managed a forge can produce dangerous amounts of carbonmonoxide. In the days of the tiled stove people were sometimes killed by poor management of the stove so this is not a danger to take lightly. Iron age dwellings (like teepes) had a hole in the roof and a conical or a wedge shaped roof and it worked but open fires burn the monoxide to dioxide. A forge does not always do that. You try to keep a reducing atmosphere in the fire ball to keep scaling down and that means production of monoxide that may burn to dioxide --- or not. Please read the stickies under 'hoods and chimneys'. You need to trap the combustion gasses close to the fire before they spread into the room. The problem with exhaust fans is that they often cannot take the heat unless built for the purpose and these are quite expensive. You can get away by using an old vacuum cleaner "backwards" and use the jet of air as an ejector in the flue but you need a flue. You can build a hood from scrap sheet metal pop-rivet or using sheet metal screws and you can build the flue in the same way. By using the vac-ejector. I get my smoke out through a horizontal 10' pipe of only 6" diameter and since the smoke is diluted by the air from the vack (and the room) the pipe is not very hot. Less than 200C.

Thomas, It was not me who mentioned hammers. The spear was also an important weapon. Odin carries a spear, Thor a hammer but I think that hammers were not in use in warfare until medieval times. Axes are not so difficult to make as swords so they were probably more common. I am sure you have read about the warriors who had to straighten their blades during battle.

I cannot agree more. I am using forced draft but before that was finished I lit the forge as an experiment - and extinguished within a couple of minutes.

I was taught to take it out of the fire when I observed the first spark but that applied to relatively thin mild steel. Cleanliness is a virtue but how do you get it clean when you are folding over? Say when making a dragon's head or similar stuff. The folding back creates scale that there is no space to remove. I rely on flux to take the oxides out and it works.

Yes that is the picture given by those who feared them. They were very successful sailors, ship builders and warriors but not more violent than their contemporaries and definitely not as violent as ISIS. The famous "massacre" at Lindisfarne was reported by a French bishop to a king in order to put fear of god into him. - "The vikings are God's punishment four your sins". We still have a letter from one of the "murdered" monks dated years after the "massacre". A large part of the viking journeys were for trade. The doctor was pulling his leg. There is no distinguishing mark for vikings - or for Scandinavians for that matter. Most Swedish people who are not immigrants have vikings in their ancestry. That is statistics not genealogy. However Sweden has not been in war since the napoleonic times. That is 200 years of unbroken peace. Yuu have 46 chromosomes, 1/2 from your father, 1/4 from your grandfather. There are about three generations each century - each halving the number of inherited chromosomes. Thus there is less than 20% chance that we have inherited any trait at all from a specific ancestor three hundred years ago. - unless there is a number of cousin marriages.

Thank you for writing it up. It is tempting to try as hardfacing on tools where the edge is on the side such as wood working chisels and sushi knives. I can imagine a way where more or less powdersd cast Iron is spred with flux on top of a piece of mild steel that is slowly heated to 1300 °C.

My experience is that it does not leak out but fills the room. I assume that the smoke becomes so diluted with room air that the temperature difference that would get it to the ceiling and then out is lost

That is an interesting statement since it means that you can follow your ancestors down to the 12th century. The numbers of familys that can do that is extremely limited. Besides, The hammers of those days were quite small - at least those known to the arcaeologists.

OK, I see what you mean but I find it less difficult to keep the handle horizontal on impact than hitting in the right spot.

This really seems to be alchemy but- The first time I read about it the source was not quite reliable so I did not believe it but I have now seen it in a more reliable source so I start wondering. My question is: Has anyone of you tried it? The magic procedure is to "smear" cast iron on hot mild steel and create a kind of case hardening. The cast iron of course has excessive carbon and it might transfer if both pieces are hot enough but.....

I have them at shoulder height and higher and I have not seen any fur on them. Also the fact that they are 6' away from any grinding operation may help. Screw drivers get furry, however, but I think the driver's ability to hold a screw outweights the nuisance.

I do not get it. A flat hammer will hit squarely even if it is a little off whereas a rounded hammer will hit obliquely if you are not hitting in the right spot. Are you seriously suggesting that there is an appreciable heat transfer from stock to hammer in the minute fraction of a second that the hammer is in contact with the stock?

I use a grinder with a 6" wheel to make them more pointed for hot slitting. Not difficult at all and meant no messing around with heat treatment of unknown steel.

I use magnetic holders used in kitchens for holding carving knives and screw them to the wall.

Welcome aboard. ontop of the very good advice you have alred got I woud like to add a snippet: A horseshoe needs tongs but if you start on a rod that is longer than a foot/foot and a half, you do not need tongs and holding directly in the hand gives you better control with less effort. You cut off when you are finished. It is a little like glass blowers method of working. Japanese swordsmiths weld a handle to their billet rather than use tongs.

Frosty, I assume you mean low voltage - or am I missing something here. I am tryimg to squeeze in a lab-unit in my budget. They suppy a voltage between zero and 30V (which should be safe) and amperages between 0 and 3A. There is a site somewhere that goes into detail and gives figures for mA/square inch etc.

There is also a Musee de serrures (spelling?) in the Marais quarters in Paris. I is dedicated to locks and locksmiths.

A piece like the fang should have a signature of sorts. That will strengthen you rights. There are thin lines somwhere between a plagiate, a copy and an inspired piece. All artists inspire each others and have done so for thousands of years. They still have individual traits so someone who is knowledgable can usually identify the artist behindn a work of art but may be unable to identify a copy as such. That must be true of bottle openers as well. To my mind (but I am not an American) you have the sole rights to reproduction (and it does not matter if it is a comission or not) but it might make more sense if you find a way to market the fangs without court procedures. I assume that the copycat in question is unaware that he is breaking the law - many are. I would send a registered letter including a reference to the law in question and demand a royalty and that your name be spelled out. It is not a bad sales argument for the copycat to say "Bronze cast of the original steel fang with signature of the famous artist" In my part of the world, a professional dealer must send a royalty to the original artist even if the piece has changed ownership a number of times.

How true all this is. In the production of small numbers of a machine, one of the big mistakes is in the pricing of bits and pieces. A single bolt takes the same overheads in sourcing, buying, storing, documentating and and and as a hundred or a thousand. In fact, for a single bolt the overheads are several times the cost of the bolt. A good design uses as few different pieces as possible and as few pieces as possible totally. It does not matter if a few bolts are oversized if they are the same as the other ones. For the buyer, the price of erecting the machine is an important factor that is often overlooked. If it takes weeks rather than hours o get the cheaper machine up and running it is no longer so cheap. I have ereected a production unit in nine months that took four years for the competition. My customer paid a bonus. The competiror nearly filed for bancruptcy. Another thing is that the important figure is the first one not the last one. The difference between 200 and 100 is greater than between 201 and 202. Put this way it looks as a silly statement but I have seen people haggle over the supply of foundation bolts and forgetting the price of the machine. The haggler was very happy that he had been able to get the bolts for free but they were useless and my foreman bought new ones.

There is a lot of very good advice above. I have seen the life of artists close up and I have learnt a little that I would like to add.. Selling artist's products is a lot about PR. A famous artist sells at a high price a not famous sells at a low price. The cost and effort in production and quality are of little importance. An good copy looks the same as an original signed print but it sells at a very different price. Any experiened art museum director may tell you that the stuff they had in the storage twentyfive years ago is now the prime exhibits and vice versa. If you set up business at fifteen, you should make use of the fact. There are very few fifteen year old professional blacksmiths around so make your friends tip off the local radio station and newspaper and pretend to be "very surprised" at the public interest. At the moment blacksmithing is not really "a dying art" but if the public believes it they are more prone to buy before it is too late so it might be good to hint that you are going into an uncertain business (which you are). The buying public does not understand how much skill and work there is behind a piece of blacksmithing so you should concentrate on things that are quick to make but look good. I know a painter who cannot make her living from her art even if it is very good because she invest too much time in each piece. I also knew one who made up to four paintings a day and lived comfortably on her art. When you are 25 and someone asks how long time did this take to make, you say something on the lines "It took me ten years to develop the skill so this piece has been in the pipeline for ten years." If you are able to make yourself known, the customers will come to you if not, you will need to get to the customers =exhibitions, fairs, demonstrations.