Latticino

John, Had a similar experience in a FLW house in Rochester years back (Boynton House). Is still privately owned, and I was only there participating in some form of craft sale (likely my blown glass back then, it was a long time ago). I remember the chairs being very uncomfortable, the ceilings low in many spaces, cabinets at uncomfortable height, and doorways even worse. Looked pretty, but certainly form over function.

I used the same, smaller, air tank when I constructed my most recent forge. I cut enough length out of it so the internal length after insulation is on the order of 12" and wish I had removed more length. The only time I use the full length is when heating for long tapers under the power hammer or twists. More often I wish the forge was shorter so I didn't heat all the stock since I can't work effectively on more than around 6" of length at a time (and constant heating to forging temperatures can lead to decarb in the primarily blade work I do). I have a single forced air/Natural Gas burner on mine and it gets up to welding temperatures just fine. Another possibility is to orient the tank vertically and make door openings in the side. Don Fogg was a big fan of this type of forge. I've used on like this and it certainly works well since you can have the burner set in the "lower" section without direct impingement on your stock, but the drawback is that there is no real floor to set the stock down on that you can access easily.

Do this sort of work very rarely. I use an old Unimat SL1000 in lathe mode for this, if needed. Can be set to be fairly precise and with a decent drill bit you can get a good orifice.

In addition to what has already been suggested, there are a bunch of finesse steps in forge welding billets in a coal fire that you may not even realize you are changing. You need to have a pretty large fireball to work with so you can keep the entire billet in the neutral to reducing portion of the fire, and not stray into the oxidizing. The ratio of the size of the billet to fireball can make a great difference. If the lighting in your shop or ambient outdoor light changes, it can be quite difficult to tell if you have overheated the steel. Size of the pieces of coal, how quickly you feed green coal in to coke, and even whether the coal is wet or not can change the way it behaves. The only time I have had high carbon steel "cottage cheese" on me is when I overheated it and soaked it too long. If I recall that was with 52100, but I suspect it could happen to any high carbon steel. Please recall that welding temperatures for high carbon steel are appreciably lower than for mild. No white hot sparklers are needed. I apologize if this seems too basic, but you did say that you were a rookie.

A bit of an oversimplification. Files are made from a variety of steel alloys, including high carbon steel like W-1 and 1095 for the better ones as well as lower carbon alloys for those that are only case hardened. The former are great for knifemaking, but I would grind away teeth if you are just forging rather than forge welding up a billet (San Mai with a file core for example). As far as quenching, while W-1 may be tagged for a water quench, if you forge or grind down your billet to close to final crossection, I have found that cracking rate for a conventional quench in water is pretty high. I would consider either an interrupted quench or switching to a fast oil like Parks 50. In my experience 1095 also quenches more reliably in oil.

Very nice work. Looks like something I'm going to have to knock out soon.

I wouldn't have a problem making the bits from either 3/4" or 1" square stock provided I was planning on welding on the reins (or had a power hammer to draw those out). Even my little baby Anyang 33 can draw out reins in one or two heats. Your bits look pretty good, though a trifle robust depending on what stock you plan on using. Your reins seem disproportionately short on both sets shown (though I understand you plan on drawing them out further).

I used to light my gas forge with a spliff of newsprint and a lighter. Had a canvas bag of old newspaper hung up a good 10' away from the forge and around 15' from my anvil. one day after forging I still smelt something burning and found smoke rising up out of the bag. A small piece of hot scale had rocketed across the room and dropped into the bag. Glad I caught that. Have heard of too many shop fires, and now try to keep even more vigilant.

Looking extremely good. Really loving these proportions. Couple of questions: The outer layer is essentially a mono-steel rasp, right? Why do you expect to see a pattern? Do you mean you will be quenching to get a hamon? Will you be finishing the sword, or just the blade? If the former, what are you thinking for a tsuba? I know they aren't typically as elaborate as on katana, but still think this one might merit something a bit more than just a square of sheet stock. Even a square with upset and beaded edges (and maybe a decorative piercing or two...) would be pretty cool. Please tell me the sword in the last photo isn't just the forged finish and you have done some grinding or filing at least. That is just so darn clean and crisp. WHEN are you going to start teaching classes? Even if your shop isn't setup yet there are plenty of established schools that would love to have you as a demonstrator, all easily within a day's drive.

Going to vary from Frosty on this one. As I see it the radius you have included should be more than adequate for anticipated use of the knives. Also, it is something of a "badge of honor" to keep the drop for the heel as close to the ricasso as possible (or to drop the heel of a kitchen knife "straight" down") in the knife making community. It shows greater skill in forging bevels. A larger radius at that location runs counter to that. This feature is actually one of the things in your knives that I find attractive.

Handles and blade profiles are extremely nice, I can see why you are keeping them. I'm not a big fan of using 4140 as a knife steel, particularly for kitchen slicers where you typically want a slightly harder edge. How are they holding up in use?

It was a great pleasure having you demonstrate for our group. You are extremely knowledgeable and swing a mean hammer. I know everyone in the group learned a lot and will be anxious to get out to the forge to try some of the things you showed us. We could have easily gone weeks and only learned the start of what you had to offer. As for my poor efforts, while I do appreciate your positive feedback, I am just a hobbyist. I have the theory, but not the hand skills. I do strive to improve, and make each piece as good as I am able at the time. I have been lucky to have had a lot of great teachers. You are right that the NYSDB group has a bunch of talented smiths and metal workers. I've learned a lot from them as well. Brady's intellect and dedication are pushing him along quickly. I look forward to seeing where he progresses from here.

Hamon looks fantastic, look forward to discussing your technique for that with you. I don't see anything wrong with the tip geometry, but I'm hardly an expert in Japanese swords. I like what appears in the photos to be a subtle sori in the overall blade profile. I've never been a fan of those "mall warrior" ninja swords that look like rectangular slabs of metal with edges put on them. What are you considering for a tsuba? There is some wrought at Arc and Flame that was donated by a friend of mine who took a class there a couple of years back that we might be able to get a small chunk of... I'm not sure what Maddy is on about regarding classes today. Looking at my schedule for Arc and Flame I don't see any blacksmith classes today at all. There are welding classes till 5:30 or so (and a small welded sculpture class in the evening), but the blacksmith shop is pretty regularly used simultaneously with the adjacent welding area. I'm pretty familiar with the shop (though with the new director things keep getting moved around on me), so if you get there earlier I might be able to get out of work early as well and get you setup. I'll try to remember to bring the spear tomorrow or Sunday. Already at work at this point. Keep me posted if you haven't already left. Triple booked for the weekend, so I will be running from activity to activity, but will try to find time to hang out if you aren't inundated by admirers like you were at ABANA.

Any idea what time on Friday you plan on starting work? Thanks

Hopefully you have deep pockets. There are relatively few smiths with these, so the resale market is virtually non-existent, and none currently in regular production sized and priced appropriately for a hobby blacksmith that I am aware of. There was a guy a few years back in Texas that was making a McDonald Rolling mill clone for around $4.5K plus shipping, but I'm not sure if he is still in business and have never seen one of his in person. Also as a McDonald mill it does have the foot pedal that you don't want. I see that there is a new one being produced in Austria that is closer to a industrial grade machine, but I expect that would be much more costly. I know a few smiths who have repurposed industrial rolling mills, and I suspect they were required fairly cheaply from liquidators, but these have a large footprint, usually need 3 phase power, and are hardly a common item. I think you may have been mislead by looking at jewelers rolling mills. I don't believe that these are an acceptable alternative for hot work. Try using "blacksmith rolling mill" as your search term and beware of any that aren't specifically designed for hot steel. One of the potential issues with a powered jeweler's rolling mill is that the ability for the non-ferrous stock to compress stays the same throughout a single rolling pass (due to proper annealing). While rolling hot steel, the reaction to compression by the rollers can change as the steel cools. If that happens partially through the rolling pass, the billet can get stuck and the equipment catastrophically fail if there isn't some method of quickly relieving the pressure. A typical jeweler's rolling mill where the rollers are cranked down by a screw with a fine lead thread don't have this capability. Note that this is just my opinion from the research I've done on the subject and I would be happy to be corrected by someone who has actually used a jeweler's mill for hot steel work.

Very glad to hear that you are safe at least. As others have mentioned I have also had pretty good support from homeowner's insurance for a claim that is as straight forward as this one appears to be, hope it will be the same for you. Some points to consider: It appears you are talking about an electric domestic water heater. I suppose it is possible for one of these to malfunction and have insufficient water to somehow allow flashing to steam inside the barrel, but I suspect you would know about this by not getting hot water at the tap before it becomes a major issue. As far as I know, boiler explosions are more commonly associated with gas fired hydronic heating systems rather than electric domestic. Still any water heating system should have a pressure safety relief valve downstream of the heater and it should be checked periodically. In my experience two major things contribute to early domestic water tank failure ( I had mine fail the night before Christmas when we first moved into our house some 25 years ago and were expecting guests. That was a fun emergency repair): lack of dielectric nipple connections between the steel tank and copper distribution piping and worn out anodes. When you replace your unit you may want to be careful regarding these. Don't you have a main shutoff valve at the domestic water service entry to your house? I've never seen one without, but I guess I don't do much in very rural areas. If you don't have one now I would certainly install one. You shouldn't have to run up the road to shut off your service. With the newish "sharkbite" style valves these are super easy to put in. I would go for a 1/4 turn ball valve. Make sure your new water heater is installed on a housekeeping pad

Don't want to get in the middle of this as "too many cooks" and all, but I do have a few things to quickly mention: Hopefully you removed the galvanized shield/hood you have in place in the pictures when you rotated the forge. If it gets hot enough to be effective, it will get hot enough to burn off the galvanizing, which is toxic. This NA type of burner can be very sensitive to backpressure issues. You have closed off any chance of inducing secondary air, so only the induction at the inlet ventauri can power the system. There is likely to be a minimum amount of opening that your door can close to You may have started to get the forge up to a higher temperature than before and are starting to get burn offs of other volatiles from it's construction. I'm not familiar with that model, so can't speculate The burner head looks to be a little far into the forge. It may be getting hot from extended firing, or even radiant heat after shut down. What is it made of? Just be very careful fooling around with unknown odors and forges that get up over 2,000 deg. F. If you can't solve it yourself, get someone knowledgeable in too look at it.

I'd watch that in a hot minute!

As a hobby bladesmith I am a fan of the show, though of course I would prefer if they concentrated more on the forging and finishing and less on the histrionics surrounding testing. I know they make a concerted effort to make the relative testing as objective as possible, but there will always be a significant amount of subjectivity in the reviews that can rankle. i certainly don't always agree with the judges, and wish they used more scientific methods of testing, though I expect that would be less interesting to the casual viewer. Still, I know quite a few of the past contestants and they have all said that the producers are trying to be as "real" and balanced as feasible. As a dedicated viewer I have always been impressed by the typical attitude of cooperation the contestants have as opposed to other reality shows (though admittedly the only other reality show I can stomach since they took Junkyard Wars off the air is the Great British Bakeoff). As I see it FIF had a small fraction of the drama that others shows seem to promote, which may be why it is no longer on the air.

Value to some extent depends on location. Being in the NE, you are in a fairly active smithing region and equipment is more readily available than some other locations. In my opinion, none of the items is all that valuable as an "antique", though they might fit the technical definition of being 100+ years old. However, there are still anvil and swage block collectors, who might pay more than the going rate for such tools. As a hobby blacksmith, I'd prefer to see these go to someone who would use them for what they were intended. That being said, as tools (and making assumptions regarding size as there is no scale in you photos), I would expect the following: Swage Block: $400-$800 Cone Mandrel: $200 - $400 Stake Anvil: $$100 - $250 Note that I'm not a professional evaluator, this is just from what I've seen at different gatherings and online. With the apparent cancelation of Forged in Fire, it seems that the bubble may have finally burst, and blacksmith tool prices are starting to go back down. That being said, there is a great blacksmith gathering relatively near you at Ashokan in NY in early October. If you are looking to sell, that would be a good place.

10 dB drop is a huge improvement. Might be another career in this for you if you aren't careful....

Jon, If you can get me a copy of the Test and Balance report and a link to the IOM manual, I should be able to walk you through changing the fan speed. Should be well within your capabilities, but i understand if you don't want to potentially make yourself liable for any unit failures.

John, As previously mentioned, the easiest first method of reducing fan and air noise is to reduce the fan speed to the practical minimum available. There are a number of design choices in unit selection, location and distribution ducting that I wouldn't have made, but that is water under the bridge at this point. Strongly recommend you get the unit IOM and see what you can do about fan speed. There should be some method of adjustment. Just be careful not to reduce it so far that the coil freezes, which can have a number of bad side effects. I can't really evaluate the noise source from your videos unfortunately. I'm giving suggestions based on your evaluation onsite and specifically your indication that the sound is louder at the unit inlet. Sound attenuating hangings can certainly help (a suspended architectural "cloud" under the unit could also be effective). The fact that the duct is not insulated and there is no ducting at the return (unit inlet) doesn't help at all.

Steve, Umm, not exactly. Slowing the fan speed (adjustable sheeve, VFD, ECM speed control, multispeed fan jumpers or switch...), if possible, will definitely deal with the source of the sound. Typically landlords of spaces like this don't bother with proper air balancing and just run the fans full out, even if they don't need to be. Just have to be careful not to run the speed too low since there is the possibility of freezing the Dx evaporator coil (see manufacturer's install guide). Also adding vibration isolation can deal with the source of the sound if the fan vibration is migrating through the hangers to the building structure or from the unit to the supply ductwork. That is why I told him to lay his hand on the unit while running to see if he can feel any vibration. Properly balancing the impeller can also make a difference if it is not running correctly.

Looks to be an American Standard Dx Cooling only split system fan coil air conditioner. These units are essentially the same as Trane, but from their "light commercial" line. This is not really a product designed to be hung, exposed in a finished occupied space. I'm not an acoustic engineer, but the suggestions I've already made should help. I'm not sure how much pull you have for updates if your wife is just the tenant. Only other thing I can suggest is to ensure the fan impeller is running smoothly and is not imbalanced. Should have no other real noise generators other than the fan, so anything you can do to reduce RPM and vibration from that will help. Good luck.