Iron Poet

The blower is from a company that is from what I can tell is a rebranded Buffalo Forge for the canadian market. Aside from the handle and a bit of coagulated grease and grim it's pretty perfect. The gears were clean as a whistle no flaws that I could see, they got a generous helping of molybdenum disulfide grease. The post vise is 3 feet tall and has 3 1/2 inch jaws, missing a spring, a screw plate, and the jaws are a little misalligned. However the screw works, so it's all pretty minor work to get it back to 100% functionality

Guillotine tool with interchangeable dies. Really handy for making leaves.

Just a word of advice, make sure the hardy is only in your anvil when you're using it. If you forget it's there you are liable to lose a finger or two.

Forge welding is pretty fun when you know how. Just remember to heat nice and slow, and try to stay with carbon steels.

I do a few small shows and festivals in my area. Weight isn't an issue, however space is. A swage block is much easier to squeeze in than what you suggested. However I have made a few of those, mostly shallow ones I made to preserve the spine of leaves.

It looks very similar to the Saltfork swage block, it's too bad they don't have a picture of the otherside available.

You shouldn't forge anything structural out of rebar. There is a very good reason why it is so cheap.

New York, near Kingston, Ontario. Do you happen to have any photos, maybe a link?

I've been searching for a good swage block, especially one with triangular grooves. I have found a few places that sell them like Pieh or Saltfork but they aren't quite what I'm looking for. Searching on craigslist is hopeless in my area, and ebay is killing my soul. Would it be advisable just to have the pattern I have in mind custom cast? If I go that route, I'd be able to make it exactly how I want, but it would more than likely cost me dearly. I'd be quite happy if anyone had any good leads to follow up on.

I don't see why people don't resize the pictures to something reasonable. a 30kb-90kb jpg is all you need to get your point across.

The third picture could be a 2 sided hotcut with a built in swage. If the guy did a lot of work with small stock, such as 1/4" or sheet metal it might have come in handy.

I know this is a little old of a topic, but they look as if they'd be pretty good for bending

I've done a lot of stupid stuff, notably tack welding with my eyes closed and accidentally flashing myself. In all my years of stupidity I've never gotten a flashburn. My welding instructor told me that some people are naturally more resistant to it, especially people with darker colored eyes. Although the only time I ever longingly stare into my forge is when I'm forge welding, got to see what I'm poking at afterall.

I'd go to lowes and buy a pressure treated 6x6 and have it cut into the appropriate sized pieces.

I live in northern new york and I normally get a few feet of snow every year and I work in an unheated workshop. My advice? Work faster.

Have you noticed any deformities in the swage block? Any wear?

The server ate my post but I'll just summarize. All the good stuff has already been picked clean in my area, especially since all the amish are flocking in. E-bay is just depressing, I can't even tell you how many 'ANTIQUE RUGGED ANVILS' that are either obviously cast iron or a foot long railroad cutoff both selling for over $100 each. I've also been burned by E-bay a few times. So unless I want to go on a 12 hour roadtrip everytime I want to check out an anvil, I'll just have to buy new. I don't mind buying new because I'll know exactly what I'm getting.

Well, it's going to be a week or two before I finally order so I'll wait and see if someone has a decent alternative.

I've been scraping money together for a few months and I've decided to buy myself something really nice. I'm still searching for a halfway decent swage block with v-shaped grooves that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I'm looking at NIMBA anvils pretty long and hard, I used them for a few months and I was very impressed with them. They are however around $7-8/lbs, it's a little pricy but for 260lb's of love it might be worth it. However before blowing a grand and a quarter, I'd like a second opinion. Is there something better than NIMBA?

You should also check-out a book called Colonial Wrought Iron, it is difficult to get and the pictures are a little grainy. However it has wonderful examples of wrought iron from that time period.

I think I figured out what I was doing wrong. The first is that I was bringing up the heat to quickly, I was a bit edgy that day and a bit impatient. The second is that I didn't do a great job of fitting the steel bit, it was a little uneven. The third is that I might have been thinking that bigger is better when it came to choosing a hammer. Lastly, I don't think my fire was quite deep enough, I can't get any coal in my area so I am quite stingy even it comes to using it. So a long soak in a deep fire, a liberal amount of flux, and a few gentle hammer blows starting from the center outward should do it, right?

​I'll try and do an asymmetrical weld with some leaf spring. I'm feeling pretty confident that I'll manage to do it eventually. Shortening the weld area to only an inch or so should help my problem I think.

​It was the bottom side, My forge is on the smallish side so I was only able to heat one side of the bit at a time, I flipped and heated the other side though. I bit use flux around the bit, the rest of the weld didn't need it though. I made sure to make the sides touch before I exposed them to a welding heat. Maybe a small amount of scale was preventing it from welding? After a few failed attempts I did get a little frustrated and used a larger amount of flux and a bit more force than was probably needed.

I've started to make axes and hatchets the traditional way instead of cheating and just punching a thick bar. The problem I've having is that one side of the wrought iron will weld perfectly to the steel bit (5160) while the other side won't stick unless I give it a concerted effort. It takes me around 4 or 5 heats to get both sides to weld together. I used borox and I flap wheeled everything down smooth. Now, I'm not overly attached to using wrought iron and a slug of steel for a bit. Would leaf spring be easier to weld since both sides would have the same composition? I've mostly welded smaller things together (1/4"x1" flat bar, 1x4" square, etc) So I'm not too experienced. http://imgur.com/qj2N3d2,XRWuUm1#0