Latticino

In addition to the golf ball trick (which I have also used to good effect) I have found that old wine or champagne corks make great handles for jewelers or needle files. After years of those darn things digging into my palm I can finally use them comfortably. My wife takes all the credit as I saw that she used something similar on her old copper plate engraving tools that were unearthed in a recent cleanup.

My recommendation would be an initial coating of colloidal silica to stiffen the blanket, then a final coating of refractory. There are many options for the final coating: 3,000 deg. F rated furnace cement: cheapest option and readily available at big box hardware stores. Apply in multiple thin coats to build up to at least 1/4" thickness. Down side is that it is rather fragile and prone to cracking away from the surface. Mizzou refractory: rated for the temperatures expected and fairly resistant to flux. Downside is that it is not as easy to source, more expensive than furnace cement, needs to be cast in place in one monolithic section, if possible, and may crack from thermal cycling. Also typically a minimum thickness of 1/2" will add more thermal mass to your forge, but if correctly installed and cured should last for decades. High Alumina castable refractory (Greencast 97 or similar). Same as Mizzou, but even more expensive, harder to source (go to industrial refractory suppliers and ask for a "sample") and flux resistant. "Bubble" Alumina Refractory: Lighter, flux resistant and even more expensive. I have limited experience with this material, but did use it in the bottom of one of my gas forges for flux resistance to good effect. A final inner coating of a IR reflective material (ITC 1000, Plistex, Metricote...) is reported to make the forge more efficient, but needs to be renewed periodically.

Goodness that's a cute little hammer. Would love to have one like that, but neighbors are too close.

Angled or curved handle is traditional on these hammers for a reason.

Just beware that you might have too much gas/air output for your burner outlet, but not for your forge volume/insulation/thermal mass. You might need a larger burner flare to get the most from your burner. It's all about relative velocity. 1/4 should be good for control authority provided you have enough pressure. Control valves are a tradeoff also. I'd try a larger flare first

From the video it appears that you have too much fuel/air flow for your nozzle diameter. The mixture appears to be moving away from the burner faster than the flame front is burning back. Visually it does not look like you are getting complete combustion, but you may be further in the chamber. I believe that you are right that you will get batter combustion as the forge heats up, but you will likely have some trouble turning down the system to low fire. I also agree that some form of metering valve is better for the gas line. Generally I would suggest a globe type valve at least 1 size smaller than your line size (for good valve authority) for the gas and a gate or butterfly valve for the air side.

Looks like you did an extremely professional job. Looks like you even have an SCR on your electrical circuit. Does the chamber maintain good stability at setpoint? I assume that you are planning on using it for melting non-ferrous metals. Most Nichrome wire heating chambers I've seen don't last long at the temperatures needed for steel/cast iron...

Most local codes here in the states are based on a version of the following International Codes: http://codes.iccsafe.org/I-Codes.html Of course your local may be different, but the link above is a good start to looking up info for yourself.

I think his stuff is very high quality and well worth purchase if you want to get right to hammer or axe making. On the other hand, if you are ready to forge large size stock of that nature, and don't mind making tools, forging a drift for yourself isn't all that difficult. Does go much faster if you have a striker or power hammer though.

Just love that term. Got out to the shop today for a bit. Forged up a Cable Damascus billet, third one ever and first forged completely in my residential pressure natural gas forge, all hand hammered with no striker. Worked great, with no chance of burning out wires, but took a bit longer than usual as I was attempting to forge the 1.25" cable to a 1" x 1" billet size. Did the whole forge ends, untwist and flux, heat and twist very tight, then forge weld, twist again, draw out to rectangle, cut in three, forge weld sections and twist one last time process. Does cable decarb...? Wanted to use this billet for an integral chefs knife, so plan on forging pretty thin.

2 second Google inquiry: http://www.brentbaileyforge.com/

It is a very large file, perhaps your carrier didn't allow the transfer.

There is an interesting, relevant, excerpt from the 1914 Machinery's Handbook (page 1132): http://www.woodworkslibrary.com/repository/machinery_handbook_for_machine_shop_and_drafting_room_1914.pdf It substantiates the brine solution/faster than water/faster than oil under typical conditions. This book was published when on site heat treatment was a more common part of a machinist's job and I would tend to believe it. My personal theory is that the elevated boiling point of brine has a lot to do with the difference as in an agitated bath (as recommended by most heat treat manuals I've scanned) the local vaporization of the quench media near the stock would be delayed longer. I can see this allowing better heat transfer.

Personally I like rectangular faces for all hammer faces that are not the ball on a ball peen, rounding face on a rounding hammer, or cross, straight or diagonal peen (though arguably these last are rectangular in crossection). I prefer rectangular because I find it easier to dress this kind of face to the profile I need for more or less aggressive forging.

Yes it is all about size, specifically BTU output per crossection area of burner outlet. If you look at the older furnaces you reference you will see relatively large banks of burners. I expect if you were to line the entire interior of a smaller forge with castable multiport burners you could get away with using residential pressure natural gas and NA burners. Of course that might provide a problem for insulating the chamber... By all means build one and try it out. Would love to hear back on your results.

Haven't been to Portugal in over 25 years (great place, went there on our honeymoon), but if I ever get back I'll have to take you up on that. Good luck with your swamp cooler.

Never got that hot here in upstate NY, but I am somewhat familiar with design for heat control from my glass blowing days. Of course the ideal solution is to build an insulated enclosure around the heat producing equipment that is exhausted to the building exterior. Since you need openings to access your forge area, size your exhaust for 100 '/minute air velocity at those openings (ie. if you have a 3' x 7' door size opening to get close to your forge, you will need 2,100 CFM of exhaust to keep the forge heat out of the rest of your facility). Needless to say this is easier with a gas forge than a coal one that you constantly have to tend. Then the next step is to replace that air in your forge with the coolest air you can source. When I had a glass studio in a large industrial building I was able to "steal" the cooler relief air from the rest of the building (large concrete thermal mass didn't heat up that quickly and gave me plenty of cooler makeup air). Other glass blowers thought my studio was air conditioned. Of course if you can mechanically cool the air that is even better. Assume that you will need around 56 BTUH of sensible cooling for each CFM to bring your 122 deg air down to a more comfortable 70 deg. Unfortunately that works out to quite a lot of energy cost (the 2,100 CFM from the earlier estimate needs around 10 tons of Dx cooling). If you have a local source of cold or cool water you might be able to rig up what they call a swamp cooler, where a water spray on the incoming air evaporates and cools the air, but the effectiveness depends on the ambient humidity. There are other options, but most depend on your resources and what you are willing to spend. Edit: cross post with Thomas, who has lots more experience in dealing with forging in hot climates.

Being from Hungary I wasn't sure that the baseball bat analogy would fly, otherwise I would certainly have used it . That is the term I was searching for... Thanks for reminding me.

If you look carefully at the entire burner assembly for your stove, I think you will find that there is a section at the back of the burner where air is induced into the mixing chamber to join with the gas prior to the burner face ("flame point"). These often have adjustable chokes to allow you to properly balance burner operation for stove configuration and burner size. See "air shutter" in the image below:

Think of the vibration as a sine wave moving along the length of your hammer, from the head down to the handle. Since the hammer is of a fairly stable construction (very stable in your case) with all parts tightly bonded and struck in the same place, during impact the typical vibration of the hammer should be also in a fairly consistent pattern along its length. If you are still picturing the sine wave you can see that there are locations of large amplitude of vibration and ones of relatively minor vibration (for the major resonance of the hammer, not the minor harmonics). The node that Thomas mentions is the location of a minor amount of vibration (where the amplitude of vibration approaches zero). This is a good place to locate your handle, as when the hammer strikes an object your hammer will not "buzz" with the vibration created, potentially hurting your hand. This is also a critical element of good sword and pole arm design.

I saw that as well. Also noticed that even though he was obviously young and fit that he struggled quite a bit with the effort it was taking him to forge the Viking sword. Made me wonder whether he could have done better with a more conventional anvil with some more mass under the hammer. If you looked closely you could see that he had both an "I-Beam" anvil for straightening(with no sound deading, bet they turned down the mike volume for that one) and a rail track anvil placed horizontally. Another time this found me talking to the screen, trying to get him to put the rail track anvil on end and used more efficiently. Don't disagree with the judges decision on this episode, but do think that Clarence could have made very good use of the prize money to upgrade his shop. Thought he said that he came from a family of smiths, or at least one relative was one. Don't know why his shop was so sparse regarding tooling. Seemed like a real nice guy, especially when they reprised his first appearance afterwards, and we saw him helping out one of the other contestants in "unwrapping" a particularly thick piece of spring steel. Still would have loved to see JD Smith's home shop though. Based on his work I bet he has a great setup.

You have gotten a ton of useful response from more accomplished smiths than I, but if I can still be of any help... If you want to practice your welding I would recommend using the spring steel to hardface mild steel hammer bodies. Several reasons for this: Difficulty of welding the presumed 5160 to itself to make a monolithic hammer due to chromium content Difficulty of upsetting the 1" thick 5160 stock to the 2" size needed for the style rounding hammer you describe Ability of a composite hammer to have the desirable hard face with soft eye without differential heat treatment (you will still need to temper the faces, but it will be a lot easier) Trust me this will still provide plenty of challenge getting successful forge welds for this specialized hammer making. Getting the two faces welded on (do it before punching and drifting, obviously) will test your speed, accuracy, forge atmosphere and temperature control skills. You will be welding fairly thick stock and will need to use a number of tricks to do that well also. Your welds will be tested in use with fairly severe shock loads, so they will need to be good. I have made hammers with wrought iron bodies and 1075 faces, 1045 and 4140 monolithic construction, and wrought iron and 56100 faces. The only style I would caution against is the last. I have to assume that a proposed mild steel with 5160 would behave most like the first. I like my wrought hammer with the 1075 face a lot and use it regularly for forging. For whatever reason it has a "thwack" sound in use rather than a "ping" (for want of a better description), while still having a hard face and good rebound. Works for me, but make your own and tell us how it goes...

Guess that dates me as well, since I remember that also...

Here is a view of Brent Bailey's cheek plate (or bolster) and hammer eye drift (on the right). Similar can be made for axes. I think he also sells hammer and axe drifts as well as other amazing quality tools...

Completely agree with Thomas on sizing for commercially available handles. I have several axes I forged still waiting for handles as I am so slow custom fitting them. Cheek plate is set below the item being drifted once the cheeks are drawn down. Keeps them from being crushed. They can be punched with an opening that will fit a drift. Aspery has details on making them in his second book. I think Brazeal uses some cylindrical supports set around the hardy hole and used under his fullered heads to accomplish the same thing.