Kevin Olson

Right on. If you dont have one then build it. Thats the blacksmith spirit :-)

Hey bayshore. Wish i could take credit for the repair but cant. Bought it that way. Its an old fix too cuz the patina is uniform on the whole vise. I did not even notice the repair untill i took it apart. In all parts of my mechanical life its always been my thought to try to to fix first. And I've managed to fix alot of stuff.

Heres my beatup vise. Broken leg and one jaw was broken and reinforced. See chalk lines. Material outside of lines is aftermarket . Threads are perfect.

I did the same thing for my ball pien for bottle openers but i retempered the struck end to just beyond blue thinking about the hammer hitting hammer rule and chipping. The face files easy now so i know i softened it up.

.yolo. you only live once. Enjoy the cold. Rock on! Our high was -4f. Glad theres heat on my smithy. -15f tonight in minneapolis. Burr. I wonder how cold the cold places on earth are gonna get.

Scap art yes. I dont do that so i didnt think of that. My bad. Waste not want not. Recycle re-use repurpose :-)

Eseemann posted an article about a hammer that chipped and took a kids eye. Search for "lost eye" . Good reading and gets technical. After I read that you should probably just throw them out rather then trust a repair. Ebay has hammers cheap

I wonder how old bernie will be when he gets a brother or sister :-) Anyway , get some shade 3 welding glasses. I got some 10$ clip ons from Amazon and use them from time to time to study my fire. They cut down on the brightness but more importantly they cut down or block infrared radiation and uv radiation so you dont kill your eyes by looking at the fire to long. DO NOT use standard sun glassed in the forge. read about this in more detail in the safety area and stop giving bad advise based on guesses not facts. Retna burn comes from Infra-red light and sun glasses no not filter for that, they cause the iris to open to allow more light in, letting in much more IR causing more IR damage, and that not cool to encourage that. Shade 3 does help. there are special filters that can be added to prescription glasses as a small fee to block out IR also.

OMG thats cool. That anvil is far out. Wow

I built a chain hold down. It rocks! That thing of a hold down in the hardy has been retired.

If you can't hold your hand on it for 1 maybe 2 seconds it around 140degrees. That's not hot. If you drip some water on and it sizzles then your above 300 and that's not good . I doubt it would get to that temp because the heat is going to absorb away and down into anvil. Mine has a 1 1/4 hardy and I was making a cupping tool out of 5 inches of 1 1/4 and once it was upset and prepped enough to not fall through I left the whole thing above red and started banging. After 45 minutes the heat traveled down into the waist and around the hardy water would only boil but not sizzle.

I must have been really bad. All i got was some cheap horse shoes and a 9 dollar hammer from tractor supply. Party in the shop. Woo hoo

Surface mount soldering-- coool. Nice looking anvil in your pic.

Listen to the air inlet to the compressor. The valves could be leaking letting the air out the way it came in. And please turn the compressor off at night. In our shop we had the main line out of the compressor blow out and luckily we were there to turn it off. We now shut the power off to it when we leave. Imagine that blowing out then the compressor runs all night. No good.

On the second day of christmas My true love gave to me Two texturing tools and a hammer......

I love the history of the fitepot. As arkie said your chimney is going to lack flow. It wont be unusable and 90 % of the time it will be ok. Just build your fire up slow. You opened a window and that helped which is good. Gonna just have to run it and see how it goes. I have a 8 inch straight up in my shop. The times when i get smoke inside is when the fire dies down and heat goin up chimney decreases. But i just open the big door and air it out. You dont want to breath that smoke! Its gets hard on you. To increase air goin up and out im going put a fan in the wall to give the area a positive pressure.

Judson. Is that the 250lb rathole forge anvil.

Make the hole in the plate fit the fire pot as tight as possible so it's harder for stuff to get around it and fall on the floor. Then forget about making it look all smooth and pretty with clay. Any small gaps will fill with ash ect. and it will work just fine. When I built mine I was doin the same as you trying to cement the gaps but when you really start using it and you pile on a bunch of coal and run a couple of fires you will see that you wasted time trying clay it. Fire that thing up and get pounding :-)

I get my tong blanks from Ken Zitur in Minnesota. I do nothing but shape the blade and twist. No bind or brakeage yet. So like you said you might just have a theory. And yes, they could be prettier but I'm lazy :-)

Go to the main page and look for Thomas Powers technique for anvil aquisition. It works.

Awesome. Did you heat treat it. If so what was your process.

I like my pizza over easy

That should say Hay Budden above whats there. Good anvil. And whats up with the bottom. Looks like a mold thay has not been filled completely. The bottom of mine is kinda like that but only on one end. Hope some here has an answer.