Latticino

Some of my hawks. Trying out different profiles for the bearded ones.

Haven't used it myself yet, but I have heard very good things about potassium permanganate solution (get it from the pool supplies shop).

I have used 1045 on a number of smithing hammer builds and been quite happy with the results. I quench in water, large volume and strong agitation. Sometimes I snap temper in a cheap, throw away toaster oven. Other times I have differentially tempered using either a heated eye mandrel or oxy-acetylene torch (work from the eye out to the faces, just like Fraiser mentioned).

I've heard good things about Magna cut from Nick Rossi, but am not sure if he was forging it or using stock removal. For the amount of effort you need to put into making a San Mai billet, I would recommend going with stock that is a little more conventional, at least for the first trial. I have done wrought/1075, wrought/1084, wrought/1095 and mild/1084, and mild/5160. I have experienced the core peel effect only once, but unfortunately don't remember which combination I was using, or whether I quenched more than once (pretty sure it was one of the times I used mild as the casing). I've not been to Andy's shop, but did hang out with him at one of the Ashokan gatherings. He knows his stuff and has a pretty amazing shop from all reports.

I had a similar application and ended up getting a custom stencil made for my touchmark. There are several providers that can make something up for you from your electronic files. The screens are reusable for multiple etchings. Look up Marking Methods, Inc and Blue Lightning. San Mai trick is to have the cladding be less than 1/2 the thickness of the center HC steel when first welding up if using something like LC steel or Wrought with significant differences in thermal expansion during the hardening process. Using that technique you need to be sure to forge in your bevels. You can also bevel back the cladding a little on both the spine and the edge at the boundary of the profile. Joined NYSDB yet?

I purchased a used swage block from another smith with a section that had been broken off. It probably used to be rectangular, though not as long as the Holland block, and is now roughly square. I have no idea how it was broken, but the key thing is that I'm pretty sure it is cast iron, not cast steel or ductile iron. I believe the Holland blocks are ductile iron, so are likely more resilient.

Grain is a little larger than I like to see on mine. Not the worst, but you need to work on your normalization a bit to get it down further IMHO. You have something that looks like 120 grit sandpaper, you should be closer to 250-400, no shiny glinting or irregular sizes.

If you liked those check out the old Mel Brooks film "The Twelve Chairs". A bit more bittersweet than his later slapstick, but it still has a young Frank Langella as a romantic lead and Dom Deluise as a supporting actor (not to mention the amazing Ron Moody and Mel himself). My list of film essentials includes those Thomas mentioned, but is a whole lot longer...

Oliver, As many have already tried to tell you, you are headed down a bit of a dangerous path. You need to be prepared for at least the following: Matching the overall draw of your furnace with the electrical circuit it is connected to. Most likely you will want to use a 220 V (or whatever the equivalent voltage is in UK) and on the order of 30 amps. This kind of power is sufficient to cause you significant damage if used wrong. Controlling the power output so you achieve the temperatures you want without either overshooting or burning out your elements. As previously noted this likely means that you will want to use some form of temperature controller. Most of these will require some form of interposing relay or contactor to allow the low voltage controller switching to cycle the high voltage coil power. Coil design: Wire size, length and method of suspension are critical. Coils will sag when hot. If they touch each other you will screw up your circuit. You must suspend your coils without connecting them to a conductive shell. You need to design a heating coil assembly that is circuited in either parallel or series to match the resistance with your available main power. There is a reason coils are used rather than just straight wire. Do you know why? Service wire: correctly sized so the resistance there is low enough to not heat that up (like your coil) and start a fire. Electrical code is your friend. Circuit selection at main: correctly sized so the draw doesn't pop the breaker or burn out the power wiring to your equipment connection. Door switch: both molten metal and the tongs used to manipulate a hot crucible are conductive. You should have a safe and reliable way to keep the power shut off while the door is open. Shell Design: For efficiency you need decent insulation. For safety it needs to be able to take the anticipated temperatures. For convenience it needs to be able to easily support the coils. Door design: again, frequently overlooked, but you need to plan how to make a door and where the hot side of same will be while you are trying to move a crucible full of molten metal I have found the design information in the following to be a great guide. Some of the systems are a little dated, but I've built gas forges, glass furnaces, annealers, hot pickup ovens and heat treat ovens using similar strategies: https://www.joppaglass.com/homepg/Joppa.web.Product_Cat.2018.pdf (if the TOC don't allow this informative link, just go to Joppa Glassworks and look for the downloadable PDF). Right now what you are proposing is analogous to sticking a fork into the electrical outlet in your house.

You finished it up. Looks great!

Unless there is a basement, you don't. Actually these days most hydronic radiant heating floors are piped in PEX (plastic tubing).

Yes I used to "steam tunnel" with my buddies in undergrad as well. Had no idea how potentially dangerous it was at the time. Strange, it was a lot more fun to be spelunking down in those tunnels back in the day then it is now... Hot water is hot water... Actually radiant floors typically use relatively cooler water than things like radiators and air handler coils, so an instantaneous domestic hot water heater is not a bad choice.

That is unconscionably bad design. The accepted standard is to take into consideration the penalty for the heat from lighting for your cooling design, but not the addition for heating. My guess is that the situation is a bit more complicated and there have been other system changes as well (i.e. building management system sequence problems, long term clogging of pipes in coils, dirty filters, increases in outdoor ventilation air proportion...). Of course the older lights did contribute around 1 watt per square foot, and the LED significantly less, but still something doesn't add up to me.

The Wilton/Jet square wheel grinders are very well built, but a bit of a dated design (IMHO). The industrial grade guards are nice and OSHA approved, but the belt changing and tensioning systems are a bit inefficient. I took a knifemaking class at a facility that had a wide range of grinders including a TW-90, Hardcore, KMG, Bader, Home-built and Square Wheel. Most students used other options by preference. I'd keep looking, there are a lot of new options out there that are more versatile.

John, In a way that is a shame. Campus wide steam distribution systems seem to be going the way of the horse and buggy, but they were a pretty efficient way to distribute heat from a large central plant (no pumps required). Of course the piping for such systems was more difficult to design, and the steel pipes themselves tend to break down a bit faster than relatively low temperature hot water (particularly the condensate return), but the steam cycle phase change is a great way to store and release energy. I think a big reason why the campuses are switching over is that you don't need a licensed boiler plant operator for banks of smaller hot water boilers, and the new condensing ones are pretty darn efficient. I've been personally involved with the design for replacement in kind for steam tunnel pipes at a local VA Hospital complex and am currently working on one for a local SUNY State College. In both cases the steam system was in excess of 40 years old and still functioning well. The latter pipes are showing their age, but in both cases most of the damage was a result of poor tunnel design rather than a fault in the piping. Actually it is kind of common for steam piping to be replaced by medium temperature hot water distribution systems, where pressure is used to allow the fluid to remain liquid far above the normal flashpoint of 212 deg. F. It isn't unknown to have medium temperature hot water distribution up to 350 deg. F (and High temperature distribution systems can exceed 400 deg. F). Horribly dangerous stuff as a small leak can easily flash to steam with explosive levels of expansion. Sorry to ramble on, I'll skip an analysis of why you might still need central hot and cold water distribution if switching in general over to geothermal heat pumps.

Personally I would think this a better candidate for catapult or trebuchet, but each to their own...

Thomas, I think he meant that if restoring the anvil to serviceability would be too much effort he could always just use the wrought iron for another project. After all these days decent chunks of wrought for forging things like steel faced wrought hammers and wrought axes with forge welded bits and polls are not that easy top come by.

Flattened top on horn, step height and product name all say cast Chinese anvil to me. They even look a bit like the ones I remember from Harbor Freight and the like some years back, before all those outlets seem to have shifted to the small double horn style. That doesn't necessarily mean the anvil is bad, just that you need to inspect it very carefully for voids and casting irregularities.

While I have certainly made rivets from "raw" stock, I greatly prefer to take the lazy way out and buy ones with premade heads for tongs. You can get them in lots of 100 pieces from Blacksmith Depot for around $25, which works for me. And if I'm confessing, I have also been known to drill tong rivet holes to final size after punching them to ensure a tight clearance fit with the manufactured rivets as well.

Two of the main methods for axe forging, as anvil has hinted, are often listed by the method for forming the axe eye: punch/slit and drift, or wrap and weld. In both cases I concentrate on forming the basic eye first, prior to any significant spreading for the bit end. The eye can be somewhat roughly formed, but getting the material correctly isolated and relatively close to the final size is a really good idea. In your photos it looks like you have started with spreading the business end first. JLP services has a number of very descriptive videos of forging an axe head using the wrap and weld technique, as does Mark Aspery on the ABANA website. Axes are really not suitable projects for beginners IMHO. Size of billet and complexity of the forging are pretty challenging. I recommend either starting with forging tomahawks, or even better, getting an older 2.5# ball peen hammer and drifting out the existing eye before forging down the business end to an axe shape.

Note, not all bolts are threaded all the way up to the head. Selection of a bolt with a sufficient unthreaded section to completely form the rivet will address the issues with cold shuts (just cut off the threaded section before riveting): That being said, if you are going to heat the head up for hot riveting, make sure the bolts are not galvanized... Personally I don't get the horse thing (probably grew up in the wrong environment to appreciate them), but each to their own.

Mark Aspery sizes the stock used for making tongs based on the maximum size of the stock expected to be held. To a degree this parallels the information on tong size from the canonical Machinery's Handbook. Mark's recommendation is to make tongs suitable for holding 3/4" square or round stock, use 3/4" stock to forge your tongs.

Regarding product warranties: I recently brought a backpack I purchased from EMS into one of their local stores. The zipper wasn't working correctly and I was hoping that they would either fix it or replace the backpack based on the "lifetime warranty" it was sold with. I was told that since I bought it back in 1978 it was no longer under warranty. When I told them I was the original owner, and clearly still alive, I was informed that the lifetime warranty was for the life of the backpack, not my life... Didn't try to argue that the backpack had never been alive, and understood that I've certainly gotten my money's worth out of it. Still I thought they would have been thrilled to replace it and hang the original on the wall to show how well their products stand up over 43 years... Oh well, guess I just will keep using it with the messed up zipper.

I believe that Tom Latane has forged a bench-mounted blacksmith's vise in "modern" times . Even taught a class in making them, if I remember correctly (though the students reportedly didn't finish during the week long session). Not sure what he did for the screw and screw box. Of course since it is Tom, it is chased and filed within an inch of it's life: I think he may have also done up a full sized post vise as well, but I don't know if it was from raw stock or he "just" filed and chased an existing one.

Please recall that it is also possible to have too large a burner for the forge chamber size. Each burner has a characteristic forge volume as well as flame length for a fully developed flame to burn properly. If your chamber size is too small you will have a lot of difficulty keeping any flame burning inside the forge. If the flame path is overly restricted, too short, you will have a flame that directly impinges on the forge wall to the extent that it does not burn as efficiently and you will see a dark circle on the wall opposite the burner in the center of the heated area.