Latticino

Don't know about you, but the 3" diameter rod would be awesome hammer head stock for me. The 4" stuff would be interesting for striking sledges, but I'd be a bit worried about being able to punch through it with my small equipment. The 5 3/4" sounds like great post anvil or even Sea Robin style anvil (unless you always wanted to make a tire hammer...)

Have concerns about the combustion that appears to be taking place inside your mixing chamber. Doesn't the steel pipe just downstream of the galvanized reducer get pretty hot after running the burner for a while? To me it looks as though the mig tip needs to be moved a good couple of inches towards the mixing chamber and the mixing chamber may be a bit on the short side. It appears you have made it adjustable, have you tried it with the tip closer to the mixing chamber? How about discharging into a forge? NA burners are quite loud, if you are looking for a quieter burner I would recommend a blown style with a ribbon type outlet (for real quiet you can even locate the blower somewhat remotely and put it in a baffled enclosure).

Kaowool is an excellent forge insulation layer, the Kastolite is a higher efficiency refractory layer, which does not substitute well for the forge insulation recommended (if you want an energy efficient forge lining). The Kastolite gives you a more durable and less friable surface than the Kaowool alone (reasonable protection from molten flux if the high alumina version is chosen and virtual elimination of loose fibers that get released from the "cooked" Kaowool). It also gives you a better flame impingement resistance, potentially allowing the use of lower temperature rated Kaowool (say 2300 degree instead of 2600 degree) depending on the thickness of the Kastolite and the proposed interior temperatures you plan on having for your forge. There are several different ways to use the two materials in concert to make a multi layer forge lining. Here are two that I have used successfully: Inside to outside: Cast the refractory interior independently using removable forms. Allow to cure, remove forms, and heat slowly to drive off moisture then run up to full hardening temperatures following the manufacturer's instructions (if instructions not available I would let it cure overnight, then heat in a kiln slowly up to 400 deg. F with the lid ajar to allow moisture to drive off - think hours here-, then ramp up to say 1400 deg. F at a rate of say 200 deg. F per hour). Other methods to preheat and final cure can be used, if a large kiln is not available. Then wrap the inner refractory with 2" of six or eight lb. density high temperature Kaowool blanket. Then wrap the blanket with a metal skin. Be sure to cover any loose Kaowool. You can also just loose pack the kaowool between the metal skin and the inner refractory if you have a good skin selected (this works great for using Kaowool cutoff scraps and loose insulation that are at times available free from industrial insulation suppliers). Outside to inside: Assemble metal skin with all burner ports. Line inner side of skin with 2" of Kaowool blanket (or two 1" layers with staggered seams). Lightly spray wool with water then coat kaowool with several layers of colloidal silica solution and let this set till hard. Mix kastolite refractory using the "loose ball method" (premix dry material by hand, slowly add water portion constantly mixing and testing - be careful it is easy to have too much water for this-, test with loose ball method by taking handful of the mix, lightly compressing it in your hand then tossing a couple of times up into the air around 5 inches above your hand. If it breaks apart you need more water, if it holds together and further compacts, you are there. If it runs through your fingers you have put in too much, start over...) and coat the interior of the forge with at least 3/4" thickness of this material (can lay on side and mortar in place this in two halfs or use removable interior form - if latter allow for shrinkage). In either case allow for your burner ports when casting and consider an IR reflective coating on the refractory as a nice addition for additional efficiency.

I don't think that the impacts on the arrow shaft are typically the same kind as those a bicycle frame in an accident, or a spear shaft parrying another weapon. Certainly there is some side pressure from the bending an arrow makes on release (see slow motion archery for this, pretty interesting), but it should be rare for an arrow shaft to have side impact that stresses the bond between the composite materials, or breaks fibers. Wouldn't the traditional Yari shaft be something like rattan? Why not just use that?

Appears to be an Australian manufactured blower. You can probably source better information over there than I can here. For a similar unit, online, I found the following; http://www.dawntools.com.au/downloads/Dawn_Cast_ Iron_ Pressure_ Blowers_ Imperial.pdf. If you can get a fan curve for your particular model it will certainly help in selecting the appropriate RPM and motor horsepower. Of course a lot depends on the tuyer design, ducting to that tuyer, fuel type, scale of work you plan on producing... (as others have stated). Without that information we would only be guessing. My guess would be to go for around 100-200 CFM at 1-3 inches of water gage static pressure (i.e. for the 2F blower in the link that would be around 1/2 HP and around 1440 RPM).

Looks like wrought to me from the striations where you "broke" the link. I've got what I believe to be an old loggers chain out of wrought and will have to do a similar test to check. Might be interested in purchasing few links from you when and if you decide to sell, depending on the pricing and such. Wrought is different to work than conventional, modern, low or medium carbon steel. In my limited experience it needs to be worked much hotter than mild steel to avoid cracking at the fiber interfaces, but once it is up to that high yellow temperature moves pretty easily. Some wrought iron with a lot of silicacious inclusions has an interesting surface texture after finishing. It can be an attractive design element, but can also look like imperfections in the product (all in your point of view I guess). I haven't done a lot of welding with it, but have heard that it forge welds pretty well without fluxing. So not the easiest for a novice to work with, in general, but certainly not as difficult as temperamental high carbon tool steels like say 52100 or H-13. Why don't you heat it and beat it and see?

Pretty advanced pattern welding for that knife. Hope you have lots of experience forge welding multi layer billets. Without a press or rolling mill I think you will be very hard pressed (no pun intended) to get the impressive level of detail and accuracy of the "W" folds in the original. IMHO using director/striker with sledges is better suited for random and twist pattern welding, but YMMV.

Strongly suggest you go take a class in basic blacksmithing somewhere. This will save you a ton of effort learning the ropes.

Personally I like the "foot up" configuration with the overlap (rightmost drawing) as long as you get a GOOD bond between the two sections. I think you will be doing most of your hard hammering over the doubled section, but in that configuration you don't have a seam to deal with. Of course a lot will depend on how you plan on joining the two sections of tine together. Needless to say a full penetration weld will be a chore, but arguably the best way to join the two. I suppose some kind of bolting might work, but it sounds like a lot of work to me, and will likely loosen up with use. Another consideration is how you plan on mounting the post anvil into a stand. Also, are you considering attempting to harden the face?

Yes, I still have nightmares about that hand mixing. I did it dry, or course, and had heavy leather gloves, but it was still like wrestling with a nettle bush.

As far as fancy products, there are commercial vehicle and welding exhaust systems available that work on swivel or telescopic arms and can be fitted with exhaust fans. Plimovent and Monoxivent, come to mind initially. They have large diameter, high temperature flexible vent ducting, but with use of an exhaust fan you can reduce your chimney diameter considerably. Expect to really open your wallet for one of their systems though, and not just for the equipment, but for the ongoing cost of running an exhaust fan. I think Jim's suggestion of a side draft hood supported on your forge table with a removable horizontal section of duct might be a good alternative for a mobile setup. You can get, or fabricate, duct flanges and make a horizontal spool piece that could be unbolted when you go to relocate your forge (leaving the vertical section located in an out of the way area in place).

Possible, but not that practical. Most likely you would have to preheat the entire anvil to get a clean weld which would ruin the existing heat treatment (surface hardness and rebound). If the horn is cast iron that is another complication. Also, as I'm sure your research has shown, re-heat treating an anvil is not a beginner exercise by any means. A better choice might be to forge a bick that would fit your hardy hole, if you need a pointy cone shape to forge on. You could also, carefully, grind the existing horn to more of a point, but go slow and avoid heating the anvils face.

Craft shows are all about the spiel. Customers want a story to go along with their purchase, and the Damascus cross can have a great one. You can talk about the whole process of making billets as well as the tricks involved in making Fredrick's crosses. If you can, I would recommend having an album at your booth that has photos of you (or someone) doing both so you can show off the process. You can even get "creative" and have some kind of story worked up about the symbology of marrying the hard and soft metals together and how that relates to your take on the religion. Or maybe how the polishing, then acid etching to reveal the hidden beauty, is analogous to the life experiences we all must suffer. Not my kind of gig, but I've seen it be very successful for others at craft and art shows. In any case I think you do have a winner there if you can make them easily enough that the price point isn't too high. A couple of recommendations for you for the fair: Be prepared to answer the same questions again and again without getting exasperated Have someone there to spell you periodically at manning the booth if possible Use a taller, director style, chair, or stand, so you are closer to eye level with the shoppers Paradoxically, congested spaces that encourage clumps of shoppers seem to work better than wide aisles, if you have a choice of booth location (people tend to gravitate towards booths that are already "validated" by being blessed by other shoppers) If you have a functional item (s-hooks, drive hooks...) try to illustrate how they can be used in your setup Don't crowd your items too close together, and don't feel you have to put out many different copies of the same item in your display (unless they are selling hand over fist that is). I am a fan of clearly marked pricing, and only gave discounts for multiple purchases. Pay attention to your booth background. Light colors will help the work stand out as folks walk by. If you are going to show your knives, you might want to have a closed glass covered case and a policy regarding age you will sell to (maybe even a disclaimer noting that they really are sharp and not toys) Showing a couple of higher end items (Damascus Chefs knives, sculptures, coat racks...) can not only lead to commission sales, it can also help with the sale of the $20 items Good luck

Frosty, Just to put in my 2 cents, again, regarding the Kastolite 30. I do agree that it will make an acceptable inner forge liner, but need to note that it is a significantly poorer insulator and greater thermal mass than refractory blanket insulation. Practically this means that you need almost four times the thickness of Kastolite to get the same insulating value as the same thickness of blanket (and the extra mass will lead to slower times to get up to usable heat). If you want to get the equivalent of 2" thickness of 6# high temperature blanket you could go with 1" of blanket (could be lower temperature rated) and an inner liner of 4" of Kastolite, but that doesn't seem too practical to me. I think a better solution would be to look at 2" of 2300 degree blanket (or insulating soft brick) wrapped around 3/4" of Kastolite set inside some kind of steel enclosure to keep the blanket from getting damaged, but that is just me (and I may be misinterpreting the manufacturer's data). By all means try it and see how it works; anxious to hear your results. I do still have a 5" thick furnace door that I cast out of Kastolite many years ago for my glass furnace. It held up just fine to 2,200 deg. F temperatures and provided good insulation. Of course I always took days to heat the furnace up or down, so I have no idea how it would respond to rapid thermal cycling.

The refractory insulation you have used may be the one that "everyone is talking about" on YouTube, but IMHO it is not suitable for a propane forge. It has poor insulating value, isn't very durable and reportedly is prone to spalling. If you read through the archives here on gas forge building you will come across many better options for insulating your forge. Note that the insulation is just to allow you to heat your metal efficiently. Any material to hold that heat can be used, just some are more energy efficient, safe and durable than others. Hard to tell from the photo, but I don't see any burner port in your forge. How were you planning on heating it? I recommend use of high temperature glass fiber insulation blanket (Kaowool) with a thin skin coating of some form of high temperature refractory (satinite or the like) for a first forge. Check out Wayne Coe's site for good information on forge construction.

No problem, glad if I can be of any help, as have learned a ton from this site and want to give back where I can. For smaller quantities I'm sure you can find other sources: http://www.piwine.com/paints.html for example, though these are colored... Or perhaps the manufacturer of the industrial stuff will send you a sample for "prototyping" (works best if you have a business address for your request). Best of luck with your project

I have a nice vintage hedger (corn scythe) that looks a whole lot like this one: Always though of it as the European version of a kama and assumed it was hand forged. The blade is on the order of machete thickness and is stiff, fast and light. Certainly not meant for chopping through oak (though it does limb shrubs easily), but still wouldn't want to get in the way of one swung in anger.

Thomas, Good point, but I would hazard to guess that the enamel materials might not be the same as those used in enameling "craft" today. Would certainly be worth testing out before application for the final product. Careful attention will need to be paid to firing temperatures (to avoid devitrification) and cooling rates, to ensure proper annealing of the glass layer. Of course you also have the issue with keeping it all in place on the vertical sides of the cup as well. Might just be easier to find a paint on polymer that would be food safe. Not completely sure why shellac would be unacceptable for vegetarians (isn't it some kind of bug secretion?), but I don't know that I'd want it in contact with even a minor solvent like alcohol in any case. Surely there are food safe coatings available that would be OK ((how about this one for example?)

Enamel on gold, copper or silver is a standard, and probably OK. I'd be leery of enameling onto steel as the thermal expansion coefficients may not be all that compatible. A blown glass insert, glued in, would be my recommendation. Hand wash only, in any case.

Please consider coating your refractory blanket with some type of sealant (even colloidal silica is better than nothing) to reduce the fibers being blown into the air. Take this advise from someone who didn't for 10 years of regular glass blowing and now has scarred lungs to show for it.

Respectfully you need to learn a bit more about punching holes. As I alluded to earlier, if you are punching (removing plug of metal when you finally make the hole), you should not need to put the stock over the Hardy or Pritchett hole until after the plug has been cut clear. If you are slitting the hole your final cut can be over the hole, but you should be almost through before you go there. I suggest you get some practice punching slots in smaller mild steel stock. Flat stock is the easiest, and can be good to practice the feel of the punch when it bottoms out on the anvil (say 1/4" x 1"). Then I'd graduate to 3/4" square. When you get up to larger dimensions it will certainly help to punch from both sides. In any case you want to limit the amount of effort you need to make to drift the eye open. You can certainly thin the walls of the eye by forging down onto the drift, but driving it open is just asking for tears and cracks, once you get the eye to more reasonable hawk dimensions. From what I can see of the outcome, I think your punch geometry is not optimal for the thickness of stock you are attempting. Check out videos from Mark Aspery on making slot punches or see Brent Bailey's hammer eye slitters if you plan on going that way.

Not to hijack the thread or anything, but one refractory reinforcement that I have used very successfully is stainless steel needles like these: http://www.newhorizonstore.com/Products/129-refractory-stainless-steel-needles.aspx. They work great, but make the refractory a lot more painful to dry mix by hand before you put the water in... As regards mixing blanket and hard refractory, I expect that it will improve the hard refractory" insulating value only a nominal amount. Remember that it isn't the blanket material that is the insulation in a refractory blanket shell, it is the trapped air in the thickness that has the radiant heat reflected away from it by the blanket material. If you fill those hollows with castable you negate that insulation. If you don't fill the hollows, you don't really have a bond, and you might as well go with the conventional layer of refractory inside the blanket. Of course that doesn't mean you can't use the loose refractory blanket material. You just need to cast a refractory cylinder between 1/2" and 3/4" thick (I like rolled vinyl flooring for molds for this - tape it together and you can easily disassemble), place it in your steel shell and pack the annulus with your loose fiber.

Is there any significant deformation when you are punching? You are slitting or punching a hole through the material first right? If not learn how to do that correctly first. 90% of that operation takes place over the anvil face (the plug that gets cut out by the punch protects the anvil face if you are punching, and a cutting plate should be used for the last step if you are using a slitting chisel. Once you have a good hole in your stock: Drift hotter (stop and reheat when stock drift bears on becomes cold), drift from both sides (flip stock), ensure slot punch length is closer in size to desired drift (don't need to drift as much), keep your drift surface smooth to reduce friction.

Wayne, I like your composite furnace liner construction, and it is similar to the one I'm in the process of putting in to my new gas forge (first one was a little large, go figure, but will see how it performs with a ribbon burner instead of a flame retention head). I'm going with 2" of fiber liner with a 3/8" hard refractory skin (as that is what I have on hand just now). But would certainly consider an AP Green product instead of the refractory. I'm curious how hot the exterior walls of your forge with 1" blanket get when the interior is at full forge welding temperatures. Per my calculations every inch of Kast-O-lite has about the same insulating value as 1/4" of blanket, so the 1" of blanket and 1/2" of Kast-o-lite is pretty much the same as having only 1" of blanket inside the forge (though the castable insulating refractory will certainly protect the blanket from getting damaged so easily, and if high alumina will also help against flux). What I recall of Kast o lite, which I've used alone at 4" thickness for furnace doors (works well), is that it isn't quite as hard a surface as Greencast or Mizzou (which after setting are more on the order of 3,000# concrete IMHO). Since the insulating value is pretty nominal at that thickness I'd probably go for a tougher refractory like Greencast 97 (with 2" of blanket) and save the Kast-O lite for the doors.

I haven't used this material for a forge lining, but I have used a similar construction for a glass furnace liner (1.5" high alumina refractory castable, I think it was Greencast 97, inner liner, 3" Kastolite initial castable insulation lining and another 3" of lower temperature castable for the final layer of insulation). The multilayer construction was a bit prone to cracking from differential thermal expansion, so for the future I'd use a thin sacrificial layer of blanket in between each layer. Stood up for over 10 years of almost constant use though, so I'd say it was pretty good stuff. That being said, according to the product data sheet for the Kast-O-lite 97, the thermal conductivity at a mean temperature for forging use is around 6 (BTUH x inch)/(SF x deg. F). This means for every square foot of forge surface area a 1" thickness will allow 6 BTUH to escape per 1 degree temperature differential between the forge interior and exterior. To put this in perspective we can do a rough calculation. Lets assume that you have a 2" thick Kast-O-lite insulated forge that is 10" long and 8" ID. The mean surface area (not counting the ends - we can assume very thick doors on both sides for this effort), will be right around 2 square feet. If the forge interior is operating at 2600 deg. F and the exterior is at 80 deg. F this gives a heat loss of around 15,120 BTUH. As a comparison, 2600 deg rated 6 # density Kaowool blanket has a thermal conductivity in that mean temperature range of around 1.56. The heat flux equation is proportional, so the same thickness of Kaowool will reduce the heat loss by 74% (i.e. 3,931 BTUH loss through the forge walls). Therefore to get the same quality of insulation from the castable you would need to almost quadruple the thickness of the insulation layer. However, while this will give you a decent lining as regards insulation quality, the thermal mass of this quantity of material will take a lot longer to heat up. Might be a good choice for a full out production shop, but I doubt it would be satisfactory for a hobby smith. Note that I have vastly simplified these calculations by not taking into account radiant losses, surface effects and the door losses, not to mention the significant losses included with the flue gasses. Hope this helps.