Jack Evers

Thank you

Thanks, Charles. and John B and George M, there is a peg through the door to lift the latch from either side. Hard to see in the first pictures.

Thanks, my dilemma there was to make the screws conspicuous or to blend in. You're probably right - a bit of black paint.

I'm a farrier more than a blacksmith, but wondered what you might think of some recent door hardware i made.

I'm a farrier more than a blacksmith. Most off my work is on my truck anvil at 85 pounds.I use a 100 and a 250 in the shop.

I can see the use of tying it together, mine doesn't have that. How did I date mine?  Found some empty Pepsi cans in it marked 50th anniversary 1923-1973. It was used then as an elk hunting camp.

I have an original to be rebuilt. Has not been used since the 70's,  The undercarrige, wheels and tire goway ba ck.  I'll check when I get home, but it just has a hasp and a doorknob. I believe the two wheeled version was called a gypsey wagon and was towed behing freight wagons, was not used for sheep.I have a book, I'll reference .

Some special high strength non API grades do get into the 4340 category, but how would you identify it in a used rod?. The API grades are low to medium carbon (35 points at best) I doubt that they would be much good for tools.

Notthing to do with hammer weight, but some might be wondering about the odd (and not symetrical) shape to those shoes. In an Eagle eye contest, the contestant gets a look -typically 10 seconds - at a foot and makes the shoe to fit that particular foot. The foot wasn't symetrical. Looks like a left hind to me.

As stated_physics and equations won't solve this, but the concentration has been on energy. Momentum  (mass times velocity) is also conserved. Energy comes in several forms with deformational energy being a major one. For example, safety in cars,. In my youth, many decades ago, cars were built like tanks and in a collision the deformation was apt to be in deforming the occupants. Todays cars (race cars being an extreme example) are pretty flimsey, but in a collision the energy goes to deforming the car (parts fly everywhere) not the occupants and folks survive some pretty spectacular crashes. - The car damage can be fixed by throwing money at it - better than people damage. Most of you already know this, but if you want a shallow upset use a light high speed hammer, for a deep upset use a slow heavy hammer, or as Charles says trying to move a wall with a light fast hammer rrsults in deformation of the framing lumber. A sledge moves the wall.

The forgeing contests at farrier meetings use 20 lb tanks in water baths in convention center venues under control of fire marshals, so I would say it's an OK practice.

My line loss calculator gives 2.3 % at 15 amps. Not a problem, but as others have said, the wire between the breaker box and the outlet you'te using could be a bigger problem.

Years ago I asked a stable owner where I kept horses if I could put in  a treadmill - two hp motor. I said I'd pay extra for elecricity if he wanted. He said what will it use? I said about 20 cents an hour - probably use it a couple hours a week. He said don't worry about it. His next electric bill was a hundred or so higher than normal and he was on the warpath. Turned out the meter reader had just misread the meter. I think I've seen estimates that for a commercial shop, the power is one or two percent of a project cost.

Will do

I did not make this knife and I know nothing about it. If it was heat treated or not. Some tenants left it in my rental house. I do however like the work and the shape. It is an HC spike, which I understand has less than 1/2 the carbon we might like. It is quite soft, a couple strokes with a rusty file put a pretty good edge on it, I refined it with a stone, took it to a barbeque where I cut the meat off a small well cooked chicken and it was dull - visible edge. I'm thinking of just an aggressive quench, like brine or even super quench. Would that make it a somewhat reasonable light duty knife ?

Make an insert for the hardy hole - piece of 1-1/4 sq tubing with a top flange to keep it from dropping through. Or a piece of 1-1/4 by 1/4 angle.

I have a half dozen bottles around, Couple forges, BBQ, weed burner, camper, etc. I'm a codger so most of my stuff has the old style brass bottle connection that screws inside the valve housing on the bottle with a left hand thread and requires a wrench for a tight connection. .My camper has the newer plastic connection that goes over the bottle neck with a right hand thread and is designed for hand tight.. I have one bottle (I've marked it so I know which one it is) that will not give me pressure on my camper. It will pass enough gas (that sounds bad doesn't it) to sort of operate the gas range, but not enough to operate the water heater or furnace. It works fine on high draw items like my forges or weed burner that have the old style connection. If you have the newer style, you might want to consider a bottle exchange rather than a refill and see if its a valve problem.

Frosty is on the money. There is so much energy to be obtained from a unit of fuel with a proper air mix. That energy heats the combustion products to a given temp and it makes no difference how the mixing is accomplished..

The explosive limits of propane in air are 2% to !0%. Doesn't take a lot to reach that lower limit and heat will drive off that adsorbed stuff that EI mentioned. I's nit picking, but the correct word in this case is adsorbed, not absorbed.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Absorption_vs_Adsorption

The explosive limits of propane in air are 2% to !0%. Doesn't take a lot to reach that lower limit and heat will drive off that adsorbed stuff that EI mentioned.

The explosive limits of propane in air are 2% to !0%. Doesn't take a lot to reach that lower limit and heat will drive off that adsorbed stuff that EI mentioned.

The explosive limits of propane in air are 2% to !0%. Doesn't take a lot to reach that lower limit and heat will drive off that adsorbed stuff that EI mentioned.

On a more serious type note about the modern sensory deprivation. A few years ago we had a wonderful young lady ( 19 YO) call us (contact by a mutual friend) and ask if she could come spend a month or so on the ranch to learn about the West. Would work for her room and board, didn't expect pay. She came from a quite wealthy family in the East, had traveled the world, etc.The simple things that I take for granted amazed her. A camping trip into the mountains where the milky way was an amazement - London, Paris, Istanbul, etc had light pollution. She'd never seen the Milky Way in spite of all her travel.. Asked what she enjoyed most, it was installing wainscoting in a guest house we were building. She'd never built anything useful before. She wanted to shoot a gun. I took her out, gave her a Model 76, Springfield trap door 45-70. She asked if it really dated back to 1876. I said well, the 1876-1890 period, but it was well over 100 years old. She was thrilled "My brothers will be so jealous!!". Wish more kids would reach out like this to learn.

As a farrier in Wyoming, my truck anvil has often been used in single digit temps, occasionally (very occasionally) as cold as minus 10 W/O chipping. Now horseshoe steel is fairy light and at those temps, I never work cold iron, but I still haven't chipped any edges.

Doing a demo of shoeing for an elementary school including hand made shoes. As I was nailing one on one youngster said "doesn't that hurt them/" before I could answer his friend said "No, see they come back out". If you run something in your hand perhaps you should just push it clear through and it won't hurt !!!. Our elementary schools here do have a traditional crafts day with things like blacksmithing, weaving, dressmakeing, willow basket making, broom making, etc.