Blacksmith Jim

Howdy all, I am thinking about putting together a 10' long pvc tube to strap to the top of my vehicle. I plan to use this to carry stock in from trips to the scrap yard. What I'm unsure about however, is how to attach the caps to the PVC tube. One will obviously need to be removable. If I'm driving around, the metal would slid around a bit (to a degree I'm sure). This would likely create the occasional force against one of the end caps. I would hate to have a cap come off while driving, resulting in long pieces of metal flying everywhere. Has anyone else done this? What did you use? How did it work? I do have an 8' trailer, but to be honest I don't really like the idea of driving the trailer to the scrap yard. It would be very hard to maneuver and find good parking... Thanks for any insight!

I like side blasts better for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is that in my experience they handle clinker better.

Sam, are you drawing the reins of the tongs out by hand or under a power hammer? Maybe your treadle hammer I guess?

I picked up some nice old ATHA tongs at an antique mall for only 8$ this weekend. They are for about 3/4 inch round bar and have a nice opening for a bent bar, etc.. Decent find around here..

He's four months old and has been trying to kick pneumonia. We just found out it has been getting worse. If the latest increased batch of meds don't work, then it will likely be off to the hospital. Sure goes a long ways to leaving us feeling quite a bit depressed... :(

Around here there is an "Industrial Fastener" store. It sells all sorts of rivets, among other things.. You might try some local searches for that.

Husband, Father, Software Engineer. I wish I had at least 48 hours a day to work with... Father Time and I were never on good terms ;)

Thanks for that Frosty. Nice tip! I'll be sure to use that one in the future. It makes a lot of sense. To the original poster, I use a hot rivet for tongs, and the round end of a small ball pien hammer to upset it. Like AM said, light taps, etc..

I'm very pleased with a 3# rounding hammer I picked up recently. Seems very nice, I'm enjoying using it. After that I have an old 3# cross pein flea market find that I use quite a bit. I have a small, 1# maybe, ball pein that my dad made, and I use that for light work or small work or riveting, etc.. I used a HF 2# cross pein for quite a bit. I've redressed and re-handled it. Needs a new handle again though, this one has a nice crack in it now..

In My Humble Opinion

There once was a great write up that I read online. It had to do with the length and thickness of metal and the note or tone that it would produce when struck. I wish I had book marked it. It told how to lay out the length to get a specific note..... hmm...

Can I buy time so I can work in my shop more?

A local smith in town has a 4b set up that I've used. Didn't really pay attention to the vibrations, I'm not sure how much of a problem he has with it. But I do know, that he poured about 21 cubic yards of concrete underneath it as its foundation. My understanding is you want a good solid foundation that is not attached to the rest of your floor or shop.

I have done a fair amount of forging in a shop that had one chimney, a coal forge and a woodstove. The forge had a very large hood over it, and the woodstove had a short stack that just directed the smoke under the forge hood and into the forge hood stack. The forge had a draw pipe hanging down. We never had many smoke issues in the shop, it seemed to work very well. The forge stack was probably oversized though, and I think there was a fan in the stack somewhere that was sometimes turned on.

Hmm.. it would make sense, seeing as how people here have forged with corn. I bet you might be able to find extra olive pits down in Northern / Central California. They grow a lot of olives there...

There was discussion about chimney stacks on the the Forge mailing list recently. A lot of people seem to be of the opinion that 8" is too small and that you need 10" or 12". I would think (don't know for 100% sure) that reducing from 12" to 8" will only cause you problems. If you want to stick with 8" I would do what Don suggests, and make the stack tall.

See someone that knows what they are talking about! I should just stay outta these threads :P

Not knowing what material it is made out of, and not having hardened and tempered hammers, I would heat it up to non-magnetic, and then oil quench it. Then shine it up so you can see colors run. Then heat up a drift real hot, and hold the hammer head on the drift through the eye. Watch the colors run out from the eye to the ends. When the ends are straw, quench in oil again... Someone who actually has experience making hammers can probably offer better advice or correct mine or what not..

Grizzly sells an anvil with their name raised on it. Maybe JET is doing something similar? Is it cast iron? On an aside, while looking for the Grizzly anvil online, I noticed that grizzly owns the domain anvils.com. :(

A lot of people will tell you that most automotive springs are somewhere around 5160. I don't know anything about that specific make or model though.

Whats the easiest way to get the paint off of the strapping? Sand it? Seems like I don't want to be too aggressive since the strapping is already thin.. Thanks for the advice :)

Do I need to worry about paint on the strapping? I snagged some stuff from work today that was black and looked like it might have been painted. I'm planning to cut everything into 10" pieces and tack weld the ends.

Around here its hard to get coke, but easy to get propane. Propane forges limit you to the size of your piece too. You have to be able to fit it in there. Personally I like a side blast coke forge. It gets things hot, quick, right where I want it to, with much less scale then the propane forges I have used in the past.

Hah, nope. My shop is a popup car port in the back yard, so it ain't me! Wayne Goddard is the resident knife making expert around here. I just do functional or ornamental stuff, when I actually have time to do anything.. There seems to be a decent community of smiths around here though.

I've heard that it is difficult just to find people that are capable of cutting a 4 lead thread...