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Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Photos allowed no flash) Kartäusergasse 1 90402 Nürnberg Victoria & Albert Museum London. The whole town Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Schloss Eltz (castle) Anywhere in Germany really, old town, local history museum. It will take you a year at least.

I have learnt here (IFI) that in the US, rebar may be anything as regards to quality. In my corner of the world this is not the case. Rebar is made with a controlled analysis and a controlled thermal treatment. The reasons are that it must be possible to bend it and to weld it but it still shall have sufficient strengt. The most used quality has 0.17% Carbon. Do we know wether rebar in Australia is of US-quality or Swedish quality? I would be very happy to use Swedish rebar for anything that does not need to be hardened. I would not try to make a hammer head, however.

What do you estimate the cost for shipping the larger one to Sweden?? I assume it is in good shape. No need to be fast transport

A small part of my anvil edge is sharp and it is occasionally quite useful. In some situations it doubles as hot cut and sometimes it can be used to make a sharp offset (If that is the correct word).

There is not only one definition of ’Master’. This is one of those words that tell more about the speaker than about the subject. #1: A Master belonging to a guild was a person who had first learnt enough as an apprentice to get a journeyman’s letter or book from his local guild. He then made journeys from master to master; Working for each and learning more of the craft. Each master would write a short report about the journeyman’s skill and behaviour in the journeyman’s book. Finally, when he had learnt enough, he would make a masterpiece that was judged by the masters of the local guild. If the masterpiece was good enough he could be admitted to the guild as master. Only a recognized master could sell to the public. The guild had monopoly. Obviously there are no more such masters than there are knights fighting real wars with sword and spear in armour on horseback and they were a European phenomenon. Although guilds that have monopoly disappeared in the nineteenth century, some parts of the old system linger on. I own the journeyman’s book of one of my great-grandfathers and he journeyed around the turn of the previous century. He did not become a master. He became a foreman. You can still get a journeyman’s letter in Sweden after three years apprenticeship and a passed examination. After another three years study and work as a professional in the craft you may become a master. The master diploma is a document showing that you are a pro in your craft but has little legal significance. I am not a master and will never be since I cannot put in the required number of professional working hours – This has nothing to do with my skill or lack thereof. In Germany the title is still bestowed after examination by a state examination board and is sometimes a requirement. In Germany you cannot call yourself master any more than you can call yourself a doctor unless you have been officially examined. Alan may explain what it takes to be a master in Britain. #2: I am the master of my own house, actions and belongings – including my blacksmith shop - but that is not a measure of skill. #3: People who are skilled, or believed to be, or saying that they are, are called masters in countries where there is no examination nor standard nor tradition. This is where the confusion comes in. You may be called a master golfer or master thief or master anything and the media are the arbiters. I have great respect for those posters who refuse to call themselves masters. I call myself an amateur – a word that literally means ‘lover’ (of the craft I mean)

It depends upon what the forge is like. I do it very similarly to Frosty. I use a forge with a kind of valve in the air inlet. I open the valve and have the ash dump open. I then put a small ball of shavings from a hand plane over the hole and then smallish (yes pencil size or perhaps thinner) on top. I rake in coals/coke or whatever from the sides except at the very front so the little bonfire (which in size is close to what Frosty describes above) sits in a "tube" of coal. I usually start the fire with a little gas burner intended for kitchen work since the flame reaches down to the bottom of the shavings but a match also works. When the shavings starts to ignite the wood, I rake in more coal and start covering the top. When the wood is burning well, I close the valve (It leaks), start the fan and rake more coal over the fire. It always works and it is easier to do than to describe. There are some principles here. #1 I supply air from the bottom. #2 I do not force air through so early that it extinguishes the first feeble flames. #3 I rake in coal from the sides so that the wood fire is well contained and the flames are directed through the coals on top. #4 When I put coals on top I start the fan so that the air flow through the burning zone is maintained. My fan gives a relatively high pressure on the entering air and I regulate by strangling in the entrance valve. I think that is better than using a bypass since air flow is more independent of the resistance in the fire. There is also no risk of the entrance becoming blocked.

Thank you all for useful ideas. I am reluctant to use calcium chloride because chlorides are so aggressive on metals. Otherwise it is what we use on dirt roads to bind dust.

You are right of course Frosty but I do not live in an ideal world and he smithy was about as much as I had money and time to build. Sulfur and smoke is no problem with my forced exhaust. The problem is dust from the dirt floor. I keep an old bed sheet over the lathe at all times when it is not in use. I also keep a small electric heater underneath to prevent condensation at weather changes, The lath and the anvils are he only pieces with enough heat capacity to that have this problem. On the anvil I have a coat of linseed oil on the sides and if the weather looks risky I spray some thin oil on the top. I (now) know that linseed oil is slightly hygroscopic but it works well in my condition when everything is dry most of the time.

I agree with Alan. It must be one of the Parkinson laws. I have outside dimensions 4x4m (13') with a double barn door that is 1.5m (61") wide. Inside is net 3.8m square. The "triangle" is of course much smaller. Distance forge-anvil c-c is 1.45m (53"). That is fully adequate for the blacksmithing I do. The problem is other stuff than basic blacksmith tools. The shop suddenly became smallish when I acquired a small lathe. I am now trying to figure out where to put a drill press if i should find a good bargain.

I put a heap of fresh coals on to show the smoke getting into the funnel. The forge is not very big but I never get any smoke into the shop - unless i have the door well open when a wind is blowing. That tends to move the smoke to the side. Also when I am ligting the kindle there is not enough heat to move all the first smoke up into the funnel but that is over in less than half a minute and is very little smoke anyway. The only drawback is that the vaccum cleaner is noisy but I will one day move it to the outside of the wall.

There is a problem with my dirt floor (indoors) that I have to solve. The soil is fairly fine sand and I get dust all over the place. There is a minor nuisance in so far that my feet slowly shift the floor up to the bench and the anvil. It is minor because it is easy to rake it back when needed.

To me it looks as if someone had been using the anvil as a support for a wire. Say a wire that was running over wheels and needed extra tension. Somebody took the anvil and pushed it in place. I have no idea what sort of contraption that would be. I is just the look of the pattern.

Silver bullets were used to kill "hard" targets in European folklore. A hard target would be an enchanted stag, a vampire, a soldier or officer who never was wounded in battle or whatever. The idea was that an unusual target would need an unusual - preferably expensive - bullet. It has been rumored that Karl XII was shot 1718 using a round uniform button.

Really nice little pieces Glenn, Thank you for showingl I get ideas

I do not remember what I paid for the bits and pieces but I should think not more than 50 US$ for pipes and the fan was free. Cost of running: I should believe the fan uses less than half a kW so the cost in my place is lower than 10 cents an hour. The reason for my using this design is that I did not want to take the chimney through the ceiling which in my experience in my climate would cause me much more problems and cost. I did not want the forge to be at the wall since the wall is wood and since I want to have all sides free so longer pieces (which I seldom do) can be positioned any way. I also want to have access to the work bench which is adjacent to the forge from the back side in case I would want to put a plumber's vise there. This layout also frees wall that can be used for storage.

I thought you were. To me, a "base" is something on which something different i.e. in this case a steel plate is carried. However the misunderstanding was created by your contrasting "wrought" to "cast steel" where wrought obviously excluded the steel part. All anvils I have personal experience of have been cast steel so all I think know about other designs comes from this site and anvil fire. I believed that a wrought iron anvil is all wrought except a steel plate on top and that the weld at the waist was because of difficulties in shaping the whole body in one piece.. Is that incorrect?

Sorry. misunderstood. I thought you referred to the "base section" which in some anvils is cast Iron. You did write "base section being wrought iron vs cast steel" you know. easy for a foreigner to misunderstand.

Well, this is from my shop. The contraption pivots so when I clean out the forge I swing it backwards to get it out of the way. It would swing all the way up to the ceiling if I put some kind of hook that held it up.

I like the clean simplicity and the progression of twists from bar to bar and the rivets are really adding to the appeal.

I recall a British factory manager in an US plant that I briefly tried to advice. He were wearing dark suit, pink shirt and blackish tie in the plant and "dressed up" to jeans and T-shirt when we went to a medium fancy restaurant. Although I am not a youngster, this was not in the thirties but some ten years ago.

Willow leaves are even longer. Real leaves can have a lot of different shapes and are more varied than the "blacksmith leave".

Dear Mr Reynolds, I apologize if I dissuaded your wearing the cape SUPER SMITH. But on the other hand, as Steve pointed out (not using the word) You can wear the cape SUPER DEBUNKER.

Thomas Is cast steel a typo for cast Iron? It is of course vastly cheaper to cast iron against the steel plate than to manufacture a wrought body and the weld it. Am I right in assuming that it is also a method less prone to failure?

Thomas I love your historical outlooks. They give perspective on what I do. It is not at all that unusual to do the right thing for wrong reason. This tends to reinforce the wrong thinking and create what I would call superstitions. Of course, what works works but the theory behind may be wrong. I have a nice story: In a valley in California some people tried to grow oranges but the trees did not grow well. One of the orange farmers thought that there was an alien spaceship above the valley and that the aliens sent down electromagnetic radiation that killed the trees. He had heard about Faraday's cage so he put grounded wire mesh around his threes. The trees now flourished. So there must have been a spaceship; Right?? -----No. The soil in the valley was deficient in zinc. Plants need zinc in minute amounts and the guy had used galvanized chicken net for his Faraday's cages. Sometimes obvious conclusions are not drawn. This myth about copper contamination. We did it in Rothenburg and it has been common practice in Sweden. -- To braze in the forge using copper. If copper would contaminate the fire we would have had contaminated fires several times a week. But of course I have never heard about this myth in Sweden or Germany.

"they are part of blacksmithing mythology along with clean fires and no copper contaminents or the weld won't stick. " I am glad you mention "clean fire" as mythology. I have always wondered about that. None of my two masters (One German one Swedish) used the term. Obviously you cannot weld if it is not hot enough and since clinker does not create heat, one should obviously not have a lot of clinker. I mean either you have a fire that is hot enough or you have not. It is not a case of purity but of temperature. A hot fire saves time in heating so it makes sense to avoid too much clinker at all times.