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If you want to call it a tanto, perhaps you should look up how they are made in the world where the word is appropriate. They are made in the same way as a katana just smaller. You have not shown any pictures so it is difficult to have some good idea about it. I would assume that if the guard is a thight fit it would be easy to use any solder that creeps in by capillary action. When you examine the pieces, Where did it come loose? Did the solder not "take" on the blade? or on the guard? A thight fit over the whole surface is very important when soldering or brazing (How is your filing?) and you need to have CLEAN surfaces. With a good fit and a guard that is not too flimsy you would even be able to use tin solder. You heated on the tang. Was the guard hot enough?

I do have the problems sometimes when there is a weather change. I do not worry about the anvil. If the weatherforecast says there will be a quick change from cold dry to warmer humid/rainy I spray it with a can of what I can buy here. The lathe is a different thing. I keep a blanket over it and an electric heater under the bench so it is always a little warmer than the surroundings. Other bits and pieces are less of a problem. They do not have the heat capacity to remain cold when the temperature goes up so there is next to no condensation. Of course this is in my climate and in my shop.

I do not know if I missed it but nobody mentioned the thermal capacity of the quench. Water has very high capacity. Clean water is 1 in Imperial measures (definition of BTU). Sea water is 0.93 and olive oil is 0,47. If we disregard Mr Leidenfrost for a moment; heat transfer from a solid body in a fluid takes place in a thin laminary layer. Outside that layer we can forget about the transfer. Outside, the movement of the fluid is turbulent meaning that heat transfer is so much higher. The thickness of the laminary layer can be calculated but that would be rather meaningless since the influencing parameters vary so much in a blacksmith shop situation and are unknown. One thing is clear though. The viscosity of the fluid is important. Any movement of the solid is also important. I should believe that the viscosity difference between oil and water is the most important difference between the two - and is dependent upon oli temperature. Termal conductivity the second, Thermal capacity the third. Agitation is obviously very important. We can get a stable jacket of steam if we dip a red hot piece in water and that jacket is probably as important as the laminary layer. Compare the difficulties in heat treating anvils. If the salt can do something to that layer it might well be important. However I assume that there are very little data available. Most research was done on boilers and they are neither running on brine nor heated so high that Leidenfrost layers form. Someone with a gas forge could easily experiment. Heat two pieces at the same time to the same temperature, dip them in water resp brine for a controlled time and measure the rest temperature after they have equilibriated. You would not need a very sofisticated setup. I cannot do it myself - I have no gas forge. Thickness of the piece is also important A thick piece has not only more heat. The distance for the heat to get to the surface is also longer. Common salt is not alkalline by the way.

What you write makes sense Smooth Bore. I will take a look at my own in the weekend. They are called "pinnstol" in Swedish which translates to 'stick chair' and are nearly always of the 'fan back' type.

Unfortunately it does not work on these. They rarely go out of their tunnels and would disappear further in the tunnel faster than any canine can dig it up. Besides I only have occsional visit from wolves a few times per year and they would not get through the fence that I have to keep deer, boars and other bigger varmints out. Small voles that do not dig tunnels are eaten by foxes, owls and other birds of prey. I assume a hungry wolf would eat them too.

Oops

Sure, sorry about that. Found it together with a good discussion. Thank you. I have voles, I tried the propane thing. It showed some of the exit holes but did not make them go away. I now have found out how to take them with a kind of oversize mousetrap. If someone is interested I will explain.

Details please

Yes the Mästermyr artisan (He seems to have been both smith and carpenter) would probably find a spoon bit more efficient to make. The question is Why would a present day maker of a windsor chair use a spoon bit? Is it because they can be made for tapered holes? The Mästermyr ones are obviously tapered.

Why would that type be used today? Are they in any respect better than the auger bit. I have a couple lying somewhere, inherited from my grandfather but I have never used them. Is it because they cut both ways?

Do you really need to make this type of spring fuller from spring steel? I make mine from mild and they have been working fine thus far. Easily available and easily worked. No problem with chipping tool or hammer. I tack weld to a piece of square tubing that has been fitted to the hardy hole. Since the bottom tine lies flat on the anvil, not much is needed to hold the contraption in place.

If you want to deaden the noise on the anvil you have, you should make sure that the contact between the stump and the steel is at the ouside end of the steel. Your piece of rail is not supported at all at the end . You have created a gong. Generally you want to get the vibrations down into the stump so some bracing may also be required. Test by wedging pieces of wood that can carry the vibrations down. Your shape is so complicated that it is diffcicut to guess what will work best. Experimet!

I am in no way offended. I forgot to put in a . Mortise belongs to my passive vocabulary i.e. words that I understand when I see it but sometimes do not remember when I need to use it. I very rarely use a dictionary when writing English or German so I sometimes get it wrong. However I think that I wrote routed in the thread 'Show me your anvil'.

I probably mean routered since I used a router. However, what do I know I am just a B--y foreigner

Just putting a piece of something on or below the heel will dampen the ring thus the magnet. I assume that it acts by allowing a slight movement that sucks up the vibrational energy. The chain should work in a similar way. The heel and the foot(feet) under the heel act together as a tuning fork. If you tie down the foot, the foot it will dissipate energy into the stand thus decreasing the energy the heel can broadcast. Thus you should make sure there is good contact foot-stand at the end of the foot. A very efficient way, is to connect the end of the heel to the foot (or stand) by wedging a piece of wood or something between them. This is very efficient but will sometimes be in the way when you bend around the heel. The heel of a London pattern acts as the resonating body of a violin or guitar thus the wedging prevents most of the transmission of the energy into the air. -

I have some remarks on that #1: It is unlikely to be Söderfors who put in the ad. It is the US based trader thus Söderfors are hardly responsible.. #2: We do not mean what 'forged' ment to the guys wo were involved. Also in those days Ad-people were not blacksmiths. #3: The seller wanted to get two points through: #A: The anvil cannot delaminate since it is a one piece design #B: It is not a cast Iron ASO. Thus I think the ad proves very little. As soon as the cast steel process was developed many Swedish steel works started casting anvils rather than building them. Anvils were a good sideline for a stel casting foundry Other products were more of the one-off type. There would have been no reason for them to use any other manufacturing method.

Biggundoctor just asked the important question. The best way depends upon weight and shape of the anvil. My 250 pound anvil sits on a traditional tree stump and has no other fastening than that it sits in a mitered 1/4" depression to stop it from wandering. Now this is a North Swedish design and that is less noisy by far than the London pattern, which is designed more or less as a gigant tuning fork. My small 70 pound anvil also sits on a tree stump but I have put four 4" nails around the feet. They are only halfway down and bent over the feet. That one is London pattern and tying the feet to the stump this way damped the ring considerably. It is important that the feet have a solid contact at the end if one wants to dampen the noise. (That ties down one tine of the tuning fork and taps the vibration energy down into the stand.) I make the bearing surface of the stump very slightly concave 1/16" or thereabouts.

Would a wrought anvil body ever chip like this one has? I would have assumed cast iron body at the first glance and considered it a very expensive doorstop. A solid piece of worougt iron could have its uses as stock for something.

I used "S-shaped" in lack of a better word partly inspired by the Chinese character which does not show the whole bow. The shape I refer to is when strung. The arrow is not pushed by the bow but by the string and thus the direction, speed and force of the string's ends are important. The possible speed of the bow ends is limited not only by the reaction force in the string but also by their weight. Thus a heavier bow of the same pull and geometry is slower. The speed of the arrow is higher than the speed of the bow tips because of the angle of the string and the more the bow tip movement is outwards the more the speed increases. It seems to me that the Mongolian bow is more efficient than the longbow in this respect. It is of course also more handy on horseback. That the mongolians did not use steel or other metal is not a reason not to use it now. The above refers to the ability of the bow to transfer the stored energy to the string. Another important factor is the amount of energy that can be stored in the bow when pulled. Steel can store more energy per volume than any wood Thus it is a rational choise for a crossbow which is pulled using a stirrup or even using rack and pinion. By the way I want to correct myself. It is possible to use pulleys also on a bow - provided that the strings do not interfere with the arrow. The string is not fastened to the tip of the bow. Instead both ends go over a pulley to the other tip. This allows a stronger bow to be used and increases the speed of the arrow. A possible solution is to have four wheels; one on each side of the bow tip and two strings, tied together in the middle. This way the arrow has space between the strings.

Sorry I do not understand. I believed that a pound is approximately 0.45 kg both being dimensions for mass. Then for practical reasons we calibrate our scales (which we use for weighing) in kgs (or pounds) rather than Newtons since we usually use them to determine mass. We do not buy a Newton of potatos we buy a Kg or a pound. A Newton of potatoes is probably a ton of new potatoes or???

Yes that is usually the case. If you need to carry items on hikes avoid combination stuff get good working light weight stuff.

It seems that one way to use a steel cross bow bow is to use pulleys to multiply the speed. I have seen a number of these but never used one. this is obviousy not possible on a longbow. The oriental Mongol "S-shaped" bows (as opposit to the Japanese) are turned "backwards" when there is no string. I do not know for sure wether this helps or not. As far as I know they were mostly made in composite material but not from metal. The speed of the arrow is determined also by the angle of the string. The more the end of the bow mowes outwards rather than forward the faster the string moves. The peculiar shape of the mongol bow probably gives that effect. the string is shortened and pulled sideways by the curvature of the bow ends. If I had to make a steel bow it would be a mongolian one; not a longbow.

You do not need any special fire brick. Any clay brick (even home made) is OK since the temperature at the edge of the forge is not that high. They must be dry, however. The problem with cement and blocks held together with cement is that cement, that has solidified, contains crystal water. If suddenly heated, the water will boil off and will cause some kind of explosion or at least make it crumble. What happens, depends upon the type of product. A mixture of sand and clay has been used as mortar for stoves made from bricks for a very long time. Probabyly since antiquity. You control the fire by the amount of air you blow in and by the size of your fuel. Small size fuel will keep the fire ball small and concentrate the heat. Excess air will cool down the center of the fire ball and move its limits outwards. My experience is that if the air pressure is high and the enterance holes into the forge are small, they will not be blocked by clinker even in a bottom draft forge. The clinker will form a doughnut that can be fished out every couple of hours. I use a blower that runs continuously.

I have been using the belts you use to strap things (Can't remember the English word.) It CAN be put together using paper staples. I did that first but the result was rather noisy with a lot of vibrations. After that I took it off, cut the ends using a carpenetr's chisel, solidified the ends by heating them and then stiched it together pulling the thread in a figure of eight pattern to get a butt end joint. If it slips I add a coupe of drops of oil - yes it works. It sticks by smearing.