Dave Shepard

Just wanted to introduce myself, I don't think this section was here when I joined. I demonstrate blacksmithing at Hancock Shaker Village, Hancock, MA. I make a lot of hooks and nails for our guests. I also try to make some timber framing tools as well. I am a recovering landscaper that has learned the folly of his ways and is moving back into the traditional crafts. I have been training to be a timber framer. I love history, and host a website dedicated to Colonial America. I have a few pictures of projects that I hope to share as I have time. Dave Shepard

When you get aluminum TIG welding down pat it is, in my opinion, one of the best welding experiences out there. It can be very frustrating when you are just starting out. You need patience and a steady hand. One of the problems with welding aluminum is that aluminum oxides melting point is about three times that of aluminum, so you have to get rid of it, either chemically or mechnically, before you weld. Keep everyting as clean as possible, not only the workpiece, but the work area and the consumables as well. I will wipe down the filler rod and work area with an aluminum cleaner before I try to weld. Get some advice from the people who are going to train you on cleaners, the wrong stuff can create potentially harmful fumes when you weld them. Walking that little silver puddle around wherever you want it is a great feeling! Dave

The anvils I use at the village are about knuckle height. I like the hammer to be about parallel to the floor or a little up at the heel at the end of the stroke.

I picked up two bags of coal today at Aubachon Hardware. It is from the Blaschak Coal Corporation in Mahony PA. I went to their website and they only offer anthracite. I have emailed them for an analysis, we'll have to see if they reply. The coal in the bag doesn't look as shiny or hard as the anthracite that I've seen before, so I don't really know what it is. I am not a coal expert.:confused: I will be using some by the weekend and will let you know how it goes. It is very clean and consistent in size and no giant rocks like the stuff I'm using now, (and no small ones either:cool: ), which seems to skip the coking process and goes straight to record breaking clinkers.:mad: edit: reply from Blaschak Premium Bituminous Smithing Coal As Recieved / Dry % Moisture 3.99 % Ash 9.42 / 9.81 % Sulfur .87 / .91 % Volatility 20/ BTU 13,609 14,175 BTU Moisture/Ash free 15,717 .64 lbs. Sulfur/mil BTU 6.92 lbs. Ash/mil BTU I hope this info is useful, I do not know how widespread Aubachon is, but I am glad to have it so close by. The only other smithing coal I could find was 3.5 hours away. I believe Aubachon may even do internet sales. FWIW Dave For some reason this fool thing has compressed the columns together. The analysis is split into as rec'd and dry, I inserted slashes to seperate them.

Someone mentioned Aubachon Hardware for coal so I thought I'd look in there today. I walked in the door and almost tripped over big pile of bags with "Smithing Coal" on the side. I asked the manager about it and he said he has a ton of blacksmiths who come their to buy their coal, some of whom buy it by the pallet. $7.50 for 50lbs. less for a pallet full. I am going up to the village at the end of the week and I'll report back on it. The coal we have up there now is very dirty, and almost impossible to weld with.

In our shop we have a newspaper article about someone who carried a 140 lb. anvil out of a hardware store with one hand. He had his thumb through the hardy hole. This was in the 40s or 50s and the anvil was valued at $15! I get a lot of people through the village I work at and almost everyone from the UK can remember a blacksmith in their village. We hear some wild stories for sure. We also have a policy of making the distinction of farrier and blacksmith in our shop.;)

I can't tell you how to work brass, but I can agree with you that it is unsafe. My grandfather was a foundryman and used to work with iron, aluminum, brass and just about anything you could cast. He had to stop working brass after getting yellow metal poisoning a couple to times. I would be leary of working brass without some proper instruction, as you wisely are doing. Good luck, and hopefully someone here can give you some pointers.

Thanks for the reply. I will do dome searching, although I'm not very good at it. The machine shop I use will have whatever it takes to surface an anvil. When people ask what they do there, I tell them "whatever anybody else can't!". And that's no joke. They have lathes with 9' swings and 20' between centers! I just sold my MIG as I don't do enough with it anymore, but I do have stick and TIG which is more fun than MIG any day of the week. A friend of mine has put me onto using cupped grinding stones on angle grinders, much like surface grinders, and that may be the route I take. The anvils aren't unusable, but I would like to have some fairly decent spots for some of the finer work I do. I am on the lookout for a smaller anvil for this type of work. My next smaller anvil is 8oz., and then an aluminum 2oz. jewlers anvil (London pattern) which won't do me much good.:rolleyes:

I have two large anvils, 250-300 pounds, that have been abused over the years (before I got them). They have several spots where someone was cutting something on them and cut slots into the side of the face with a torch. I was wondering what I should do to restore them. The faces aren't in great shape either and I was thinking about taking them to a machine shop and having them dressed on a surface grinder. I don't want to make them perfectly square with sharp edges, just take the dings out of the face and get a few flats spots to work with. Can I just weld the gouges and grind them to shape with a disc grinder? I know that anvils are tempered, and I don't want to have to retemper them. Also if feasible, what rod should I use, 7018, or a higher strength like Stulz manganese? Thank you. Also both anvils appear to be solid, no signs of a steel face welded on, and at least one of them is a Peter Wright. Dave

That explains some of the symptoms I have been getting out of our forge at the museum I volunteer for. We always make a little extra coke for the next group so they can start right up in the morning. I have noticed that with the latest batch of coal, which seems to have some anthracite in it, that when I stick a poker in to stir it I get little flare ups after it has been cooking for a bit. We have a blower in our vent stack, so that may be why we haven't had a good explosion yet. I will have to keep this in mind in the future, thanks.

One of the smiths I am training with has a knife that he uses as a letter opener made from titanium. At first he didn't think that he'd be able to get it sharp, but I guess he has that figured out as well. It cools very fast, so you will need to heat it many times. It makes a tough knife, I don't think you could break it easily. Hope that helps. How much can you get? That stuff is pretty pricey isn't it?

Apprentice man, you are absolutely correct that smiths would have used and recycled whatever they had on hand. They also changed their tools and techniques with each new invention. This is why we have arc welders and plasma cutters and smithing is more of a novelty to most people. I am a timber framer by trade and buy mostly antique tools and do as much by hand as possible. Therefore, I don't want tools make from rebar, or tools that have been arc welded. After all many smiths are into "period" blacksmithing, and everything must be done as it was in that period. If authenticity is not the issue, then I feel that using what is at hand is the best way to make things cheaply, especially if all you are after is a practical tool that you plan on using. Would you make a fireplace set to sell out of rebar? Or would you spend the $5 on some sq. rod? Rebar has it's place, however it's unpredictability and poorer working qualities put far down on my list of favorite materials. As a side note, rebar is actually very predictable, if you know what all the markings mean. The ridges have a pattern and there are numbers on it as well. If you research it you can tell exactly what it is you are working with. One of the smiths I work with, Jim, aka "the man who knows too much about rebar" has done just that. I have more exciting things to do than learn about rebar. So, yes, I do believe it has a place in modern smithing, I am just not a fan of it. Edit: to answer the original question, yes you can make tongs out of it, but you can also get a 3' piece of .5"square rod at a hardware store for a couple of bucks that will make a fine set of tongs.

We made a set of tongs today from rebar. It is definately not my favorite material to work with. You must get it almost white hot to work, if you quench it, it will become brittle and shatter. Also, when you are all done, there is no hiding that it is rebar. I prefer to have a more authentic look to my pieces. I made hewing dogs last week and let them cool in the ash bucket and they are not to hard. A couple of pointers on tongs, remember that both halves are identical, not mirror images. Also, always rotate the tong in the same direction when forging. First draw out the jaw flat, then rotate to the left 90* and make the flat for the hinge, then rotate another 90* and make your offset. You can also turn to the right, you just have to keep going the same way for each turn.

The latest batch of coal we got where I am volunteering seems to have hard coal, (and some rocks) mixed in with the soft coal. How can I get this stuff to work well. After a couple of hours of forging and trying to make coke I had quite a mess. I realize the hard coal won't coke, but I had clinkers like I've never seen before. I pulled out several smallish clinkers, but when I broke the fire down I found three that were the size of grapefruit. Any suggestions on how to make a go of this? Also, what do you use for coal, and where do you get it? Thanks. Dave.

Thanks for the ideas. I will probably try the tongs soon. There are a ton of very large tongs in the shop, but no smaller sets. The smiths usually bring their own tools, so I need tongs, I have a ton of hammers at this point. All of the smiths that volunteer at the village are retired, most of them from engineering backgrounds. They are very happy that I am taking an interest in blacksmithing as I am 29 and will be another generation involved in the craft.

I have recently begun volunteering at a local living history museum. I have a loose apprenticeship going on with the village smiths. I was wondering what would be a good beginner project to work on. I was thinking of making a pair of tongs, but I was not sure how difficult they are to make. I have some basic experience at this point. I have plenty of metal working experience, but it has always been with welders and torches. I have been making hooks, practicing drawing out, and twisting. This week we experimented with tempering and forge welding. The forge welding was :cool: ! I would be glad to hear any suggestions. I am trying to get enough experience to someday make froes, broadaxes, and even chisels/slicks to use for work, someday;) . We usually make hooks as a quick demo, but we also have larger projects going on as well. Thanks.

This sounds like a great project, I wish I was nearer. There was a covered bridge behind my grandmothers home, it was the oldest in MA. It was burned by arsonists. Many people will say that the bridges were covered to keep out the snow, not so, they had to shovel snow into the bridges for the sleighs to get through. There was less concern for the bridge decking, it could be replaced easily.

In an old James F. Lincoln welding manual (ca. 1940) it reccomends MOM-milk-of-magnesia, for exposure to fumes from welding galvanized metals. I personally want nothing to do with galvi. If you grind and weld, you really should re-coat the weld with galvinization, or it just rusts out at the weld. HMP is not reversible as far as I know, and is not a fun ride.