forgemaster

4340 the simple way for tools that have to hold an edge, heat to dull orange oil quench, then burn the oil off with the forge or gas axe. Use. 4340 the technical way, heat to 830 to 870 degrees C, quench vigourously in oil, temper while still warm to desired hardness (avoid tempering in the range of 210 deg C to 450 deg c as this is in 4340's temper brittleness range, this is one of the reasons that you can not use the temper colour method for everything). Phil

Cribbing packing and jacking is the way we normally uninstall hammers. The last one I brought was a 5cwt massey weighed in at about 5 tons plus the anvil at 2.5 tons. 3 of us had to jack the hammer up about 3 feet in the air by walking it up with packing using jacks, then slide/roll it about 9 feet lengthways, the walk it back down to the floory, we went about 3" at a time. One of the blokes helping me was an underground coal mine fitter, you can't get a 100 ton crane 4 or 5 miles underground in a coal mine so you have to use jacks, chain blocks, pull lifts etc. He tells me they used to regularly move and relocate machinery up to about 180 tons using this sort of method, so an anvil should cause no problems. As your cribbing gets higher it pays to pigstye it, pigstyeing makes the whole thing more stable. Just remember to take your time and think before you do something. Cheers Phil

Yes you can work for someone as a blacky, or you can go it alone. I have done both. 17th year of working for myself as a BS coming up. However I served an Australian apprenticeship as an apprentice blacksmith, worked for a few companies, not only blacksmiths (eg built ships, cranes, buildings, bridges) attended TAFE to further my welding skills, attended college to learn marketing, sales, accounting, management, all of which you would need to run a sucessful small business, as mentioned else were, working for your self is not a 40 hour a week kind of job, while you are awake you are working. But yes you can make a living being a blacksmith. Cheers Phil

We have found a power hacksaw to be the most useful for general shop work. We use packer pieces to position material in different positions as the blade wears to make use of the whole blade. We have found that when cutting virgin steel a band saw will usually cut quicker however if you are using the saw to trim ends of jobs which we often do, it only takes one revolution of the band through a hard spot in the steel to blunten a bandsaw blade, where as a hacksaw will only stuff up a few teeth, then you use your packer pieces. Our saws are not considered light duty either, our smallest one has a 400mm capacity our large one has 800mm capacity, blade costs are approx $55.00 and $510.00 aus each respectively. Hacksaws are also more tolarent to tensioning misadjustment and run off, I have found.

Certainly can, but it's pretty hard stuff and you have to work quick, it needs to be kept hot. When you start off forging each heat, start light and get heavier, don't just wallop into it from the first hit as it needs to get, I suppose "hammer conditioned" before really belting it, if you are heating it in a forge fire be careful not to overheat it and burn it as it can be fairly easy to stuff HSS by overheating. After you are done forging it anneal it immediately in lime, ashes or the like. As for heat treating it after, its fairly involved. Have fun Cheers Phil

Hey Dale I think we got all the septics at 6s and 7s with ozlanguage now. (This is just like talking in code eh bloke) no wuckers. Phil

Spring steel I would harden from 850 deg in oil, you can temper to standard spring hardness using the greasy stick method, (approx 480 to 520 deg C), we use spotted gum hammer handles, for you yanks hickory is the best by far. Spring steel is fairly forgiving. Cheers Phil

The chambersberg seem a little pricy for a steam hammer, looks nice all painted up but it is only techincally half a hammer, it lacks the motive force to make it go ie a real big air comp or a boiler. The double arch seems a better buy if you were in the market for a big hammer. Phil

Seems to be a little small what they are forging for a 2 ton hammer, or maybe this is the 1st go after rebuild and they are starting off small. Firm down the road towards Sydney has a massey 2 ton they forge jobs up to about 1 ton in weight under it! It would be interesting to see it after a few years of work and wear as to how the nitrogen gas system holds up. Cheers Phil Hey Andrew I never knew that there was a group photo taken of that weekend in my workshop, we'll have to have another one before we leave here.

Dale yeh gday me china plate me n the cheese n kisses was gonna take the fiddly dids down to steak n kidney for a ganda at some of them rubbity dubs down there. I was going to go pat molone but the trouble n strife said no way you could run into a horses hoof, and get into as much trouble as Brett Bradford, then you'll end up at a rubbity lizards hissed and having an up n under in the thunder box. "Strike" I said I'll just say here with me beanie keepng my terry dears warm and have a nice hot dogs eye. Cheers Phil

Just going to bring this back to the front so as it does'nt get lost. I'm counting down the hours till we head off to Braidwood. Cheers Phil Johnston

I always tell the kids, "theres 250kg of good british steel coming down out of that hammer to hit your job, its harder and stronger than you, you must work with the hammer grasshopper, not against it. It will always win". "You must become one with the hammer my son" Phil Johnston

Hey grant I can't agree enough with wat you are saying, you have to buy the piece of gear when you have the chance, (across the dinner table, "Oh yea honey, guess what I brought another power hammer today". "YOU WHAT, DONT YOU KNOW WE GOT NO MONEY IN THE BANK," "I do now sweetest".) Being a good accountant does not guarantee business success, nor does a uni degree, nor does entreprenurial skill, nor does being a skilled craftsman or any of these qualities. The one thing that has the most bearing on whether some one will succeed in business is application and dedication to your dreams, ie never give up. Phil

Oh PC is alive and well in OZ, just it doesnt cut the mustard with the blacksmithing fraternity (well not here any way). And dont ever think you are coming across arrogant to me, it's good to know what others charge in other countries for the same sort of jobs that we do here. (on a different tack I had one of my apprentices say, "Why do I need to know how to convert Deg C to Deg F", this post has just shown him. He's a bloke that has done the complete tech course at Sydney TAFE, and has now started his apprenticeship, and we are having to unlearn him some things. You just can't beat experience to teach someone something). Cheers Phil

Not to mention the suits, office chicky babes,or school kids walking to catch the bus having to jump out of the path of a blacksmith, apprentice and labourer all sweaty and dirty, with a lump of hot metal between them on a carry bar and tongs. Fun stuff. i seem to recall that one of the prerequeseites for forging Al was it had to be wrought or extruded, not all grades were forgeable. Phil

If you take Al to red it'll be in a puddle, we used to forge it (5" dia) by taking it into the spring shop which was next to our forge shop and stick it into the spring tempering furnace (which was about 480 to 520 degrees C) let it get hot, drag it out, 3 of us, carrying it at the run, out the front door up the footpath, and into our shop and down to the hammer. It tends to want to stick a lot, in swages, dies, etc. Can't remember how we annealed it. Cheers Phil

We have found with tapered keys that, they must bear all the way along the key, so yeh using blue is good, you need to drive it in real tight, till the hammer bounces back off the key, then you know its tight, don't use the hammer with a loose key it will just wear more of the dovetail off apart from being dangerous, (I've sprung our blokes forging away with the key that loose that the top die is clanging up and down loose, "cant you hear that loose die?" "No boss, got my hearing protection in") but I'm going to have to disagree with grant on this one, we make our keys out of something that is softer than the die and the ram, we figure it is easier to replace a key then having to remachine a dovetail, replace a ram or a die. If any thing is to wear 1st you need it to be the key. We have tried hardened keys by the way, and have also had problems with pieces spalling off when driving them in. Cheers Phil

Hi All We started our business off in a similar location in NSW Australia, at the workshops of the old Richmond Main Colliery in the Hunter Valley. The original idea was to have tourist groups able to come into the workshop to see a working industrial engineering forging workshop. We persevered with that notion for a few years, but we found that 1) the local council (our landlord) started to make more and more demands re insurance, safety, etc, (most of these requests were made by their people who had no industrial experience) 2) we could'nt always gaurantee to be doing something the public wanted to see at the time they came through, eg, we would be grinding up jobs, performing maintenance. 3) It got to be unnerving to be forging a large job, then stand up to see 50 school kids standing not 5 feet away watching you as someone had left the safety gate open and the public just wanders into the danger zone. 4) The provisions for having the public able to come into the shop with fences, screens, etc was not good with access to machines on either side of the shop hindered. We could not walk in a straight line from the hammer to the grinder we had to go around fences and screens. 5) It was hard to staff the workshop when we had weekend opendays, we were having to bring staff in on holidays then give them days off during the week in lue. All in all we ended up putting a stop to it, helped by the councils insurer, who felt that it was just too big a risk. We still bring in the odd small group though, but they have to be booked in beforehand, they all get inducted into our workshop, they are all issued with safety gear (glasses etc), they are met at the door by a company rep and are guided on their visit by him. To just allow people open access to a working forge shop is just a minefield of problems in my opinion (even when they are behind fences screens and barriers). Having said that it would have been a great place to see working in its heyday. Phil

We normally make hot sets, cold sets and the like from something like K1070 4340 or 4140, in order of preferance. After forging we will normalise then reheat, quench and then run the colours down to a brown on the blade. Swages flatters fullers are normally made from 1045, which we normally just leave as forged or at the most normalise. Most of our stamping dies used under hammers or presses are 4317 (En36A, 17cnm06) which we quench in water from about 1000 deg no tempering needed. Basically all our swages are made by forging a bar into the heated block, if we want to get real technical we will make a half round "sinker" to preform the swages then use a full round to finish. Make sure when you do your finish heat on your swages that you turn the bar between blows otherwise the bar deforms and you end up with swages that are not round. When the swages have cooled they will need grinding up, take all the sharp edges off, in the best swages the hole is more elipical when viewed from the end. Have fun Phil Thats a hammer boy, not a toy, hit it don't play with it!

Grants' spot on with his method of repair, we have a broken dovetail on our 5cwt massey when we move to our new workshop it is will be going to a machineshop en route to have a double dovetail fitted. At the moment we are using about 8 x 7/8 dia countersunk socket headed high tensile cap screws to effect a repair, they are ususally lasting on average 4 to 5 years in the job, and our 5cwt cops a caning. Phil

Hey Lanchie76 One way that you can do this is look up an organisation called MIGAS in the brisbane phone book. They are one of the training companies that I use, their head office is in brissy. Express your interest to them (that you are seeking an apprenticeship) they also do adult apprenticeships (we have a 2nd year apprentice at the moment who is 33, his pay rate is differnt to a junior appretice though. MIGAS handles all the insurance aspect of workers comp etc, then either go and see these blacksmiths, or get MIGAS to contact them to see if they are interested. MIGAS stands for Metal Industry Group Apprenticeship Scheme. Its worked for me. I get a good apprentice with very little paperwork, who is vetted by them, they handle all his training requirements, if I run out of work they will endeavour to find him another job in his field. Cheers Phil

Australia still has a very good apprenticeship system in place. Apprentices are indentured to a tradesman for 4 years. 3 years of which they are required by law to attend Tech college one day a week for which they are paid. They have to pay fees from their own pocket for tech fees. A first year apprentice is paid at if I recall about 40% of tradesmans rate, this rate increases with every year of trade. At completion of apprenticeship you are issued with a trade certificate by the government body that oversees training and apprinticeships stateing that you have completed an appreticeship and tech course in the calling of your trade to the satifaction of all concerned. I have myself trained about 7 apprentices so far most have finished their time with me, some have'nt deciding that it was not for them. I get a worker that I can train to my way of working, who gets off the job training at tech in practical and theory applicable to our trade such as welding, drawing, metal fab, anvil forging, hammer forging, heat treatment, OH and S, spring making, metalurgy, calculations. Yes they do make stuffups at work, but I've had fully trained tradesmen do that too, I even make the odd stuff up. Less than I did when I was training, but thats called experience. All of our apprentices have been employed by a training company, we have host employed them from them. The reason for this is, we only pay for the appretice when they are at work, if the kid is a dud or is no good we are not compelled to keep them, the training company handles all workers comp payments, sick leave ie we have no paperwork other than paying a weekly invoice. All in all I recomend it as a very good system both the apprenticeship system, and the training company/host employer system. Both the US and the UK used to have formal apprenticeship systems but they dismantled them. Only us Aussies were smart enough to retain what is a great system to train a skilled workforce for your country. An apprenticeship can be in a range of skills from hairdressing, chef, welder, plumber, auto mechanic, blacksmith, refrigeration mechanic, pastry chef, painter and decorator, boilermaker, draftsman, farrier, linesman, aircraft mechanic, carpenter, electritian, landscape gardener, groundsman and green keeper, etc. Most of the leaders of industry in Australia started off as an apprentice. Thank god I live in Australia. cheers Phil

I've been a smith for 28 years now 6 days a week at least (since I was 16 when I started as a 1st year apprentice) and when me and the good lady were married my mum told me that the priest looked more like a blacksmith than me, of course he had a thyroid problem and is dead now, where as I am still kicking. We have a tradesman working for us who we have dubbed "the fridge" cause he's as big as one. We have also had a little bloke working for us who was skinny and short, but he could carry a 3cwt anvil to his car. IMHO a blacksmith is anyone who has the skills be he or she fat skinny short tall muscular or wimpy, there is no stereotiypical blacksmith exept what the movies have conditioned the public to expect. Does that mean all highway cops look like something off CHIPS or all lawyers look like Ally McBeal, or all truckers look like BG McKay and his best friend Bear.

The problem with the water like marks appearing could be that part of your refractory lining is melting due to too high a heat in your furnace. We have on occasion used lower temperature bricks for furnace roofs when we need to repair a furnace in a hurry, after a week or two we find the bricks start to melt and drop drips of glass like material onto our jobs as they are getting hot. Just a thought Phil

Hi dale It looks like we may have mr billy (Will) maguire from up here attending, and mr peter starling from Kymon forge is keen to attend too, so far that makes 4 of us from newy way, but it will grow i feel. Phil "thats a hammer not a toy hit it don't play with it" Oh yeah I was going to bring some beer, think thats a good idea? n maybe a pair of tongs nd an ammer, ifn i can fit it in amoungst the beer somewhere, nah I'll just borrow a hammer off of moony fit in more beer that way.