forgemaster

Yeh, was wondering if Patrick would pop his head up and top my effort. We are only hit and giggle blacksmiths/forgers compared to his guys.

Biggest we can fit in the furnace is 370mm round or square, but that can only go to 1000 long, or we have done a piece of 130 dia that had to be swaged out to 6.100 metres long,(it started at 5.800 long). We have a back door in the furnace which will allow about 310mm dia up to about 4.000 metres to be forged. That is in my own personal forge!

Where I started my apprenticeship they had long fires as they did a lot of springs, the job in hand dictates the shape of the fire that you build. That is one of the advantages of a forge fire.

Looks good, radius and fairing are your friends when it comes to neckers. We dont go to too much effort in attaching handles to tools, (ie counter boring, tenoning, etc) as the handles will still normally always fail just at the end of the weld where it meets the handle. Even preheating and post heating have very little bearing on the life of the attachment. Just use the neckers normalised. We have varied sets of neckers that are up to 10 years industrial use that are 4140 only normalised. Still going strong. Phil

Looks more of a cold set than a hot set, and I would have made the spike to go into the log square, it will stop it from turning. Otherwise looks OK.

I normally try to stay in the background keep my trap shut and just watch, however my wife or kids normally let the cat out of the bag with a "oh my dad/husband is a blacksmith too." Thats when said demo smith will normally want to meet me. I prefer just to watch and keep any comments to myself, and only give opinions or advice when asked.

The smaller rod is easier to weld with, especially on thin stuff. I'd say the main thing with your welds there was, you had too many amps and you travelled too quickly, also looks like the rods could be a little damp, but otherwise if it does the job, you've had a win. We all have to start somewhere.

Go for the russian hammer, it will still be going strong long after when a Chinese hammer has been made into razor blades. I would suspect that the russian job will need a polish on the rod, some lube and clean the filters if it has any and see if it will turn over. If it turns over and every thing moves I would say good to go.

Most good judgement comes from experience, and it seems most of that experience just comes from bad judgement.

Its steel. Just had a look in the little book that came with my office (my office was the dogspike office at Cardiff Railway Workshops NSW). It says that dog spikes were mild steel, rail bolts depending on the application were a little better grade of steel, sort of like a 1040. The book says they were "red end" and "red end" has a brinell of 121HB and a tensile of 28 (I'm presuming that is tons per inch). No reason to suggest that Taswegian Rail was any different in material selection. Phil

Moon man is the stone cold to red hot king. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I68Cik7ywg Main thing is to keep the steel moving and hit it hard and straight, I was told "thats a hammer not a toy you have there son, hit with it dont play with it"!

yes it is down, we had a financial disagreement the with web host.

I'm going Dale, not all of us have all day to sit and gander at IFI so soz for not replying earlier. Are you going to grace us with your presence this year Dale? It would be great to see you. If you all argue about dunny paper, what about dunny budgies? We normally have a few of them hanging around Moonies too. Phil

I wont be here for the agm, I'll have pedro here to run the shop but I will be in sydney on that day.

Put your location into your profile Mr Wood, I have some drawings for beche but if you are in outer Woop Woop or Upper Cumbuckta West, the postage may be very pricy. Or you could be just down the road.

I'm not really convinced that this is a repair, different hammer, different continent, identical strapping. The through bolts running from the top cover to the gland face, yeh, they may be a repair, but the strapping, I reckon either it was done to all beche's of this size in the factory or it was retro fitted by the factory. Seen too many photos of beches of this size and configuration with this strapping for it to be an isolated repair. I started myh apprenticeship working under this hammer in 1982, and it had had this strapping on it then. Phil

Having a shop where there is equipment run by lineshafting I can fully appreciate why they went away from it! Lot of work to lubricate maintain and operate.

Andrew you know as well as I do that alcohol and forging hot steel are a definite no no. (is the pope a catholic).

I find that that sort of ring roller works better it you can link the twin rollers with something like a bike chain and sprockets, then put the turning handle on one of the linked rollers. I've found that the single drive roller will tend to slip on the material being rolled, using 2 drive rolls stops this problem.

Ironfest is coming to Lithgow next weekend, (not this weekend coming) the weekend after this weekend coming,(just making that clear, had some confused people ring me), so that makes it next weekend Ok guys. We will be arriving Friday afternoon with the Massey 1cwt, fun for all.

You need 2 things to be a blacksmith, a strong back and a weak mind.

Go up to the search feature and search, greasy stick. It should give you enough info to do what you want to do. You will need to pull the spring pack apart to be able to straighten the leaves though, dont do it all in the pack bolted together. Phil

Its getting closer, a really fun weekend for the blacksmith and the whole family, if you're not interested in the smithing there is a stack of other stuff to keep you amused.

I see that the Brisbane Blacksmiths site is still up in the active columns but yours is not, have you not paid your power bill? (just trying to generate some traffic here) Is there still that forging day out at Goddards or has that place closed. Phil

Our 2 handled sledgy at Lithgow Ironfest, when everyone had gone home.