TwistedCustoms

Ditto! You can get a new NC Tool 70lb farriers anvil delivered to your door for 270.00 US. 300.00 isn't laughable for the Sweed but anything more is (including drive time/travel expenses). Flea Markets and Pawn Shops always prove more worthwhile for me than fleebay. Happy Hunting!

The hood doesnt draw because it doesnt go anywhere. I have a big shop fan hanging from the rafters pointed at the forge. I run the fan when I first light it to carry out the wood smoke. Once the lighter burns off there is little to no smoke frome the coke so I can kill the fan in winter. It wont be a waste if it works! If you can nest the two together to get the size firepot you want and the ducting works go for it. It cant hurt to beef it up. One advantage to not welding anything together is that after burning a pot of fuel you can rearange things easily if you decide to modify the design.

Blacksmiths get excited about old rusty metal! Broken jack hammer bits and "useless" hammers with busted handles can be scrounged for a buck at a pawn shop and bring in 20.00 plus in ticket sales at iron in the hat. It wont hurt your wallet and you'll make a blacksmith happy!

Great thread! Ethics of blacksmithing, wow! I really enjoyed reading each and every post and I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing with conflicting points of view! My feelings are no less complex but after reading I do come down more strongly on one side of this issue. If you can make it, better or worse than the original, you own it! Give it away, sell it, trade it, it's yours if it came off your anvil. Faking a mark to decieve is forgery, everything else is fair game. I was very fortunate to spend time with Brian Brazeal, Lyle D Wynn, Ricky Wynn and many other very talanted Blacksmiths when I first became interested in forging. Those guys were always willing to share the most valuable thing any of us own, their time and experience. It takes a special person to be a good teacher and while I am not as skilled or knowledgable as the men who taught and continue to teach me I have tried to emulate the willingness to share of myself and my work that I received from them. If I do have a somewhat novel idea and someone comes along and builds on it, improves it, expands it, that means it's time for me to up my game! My time is better spent at the forge than worrying over wether I'm getting credit for something that just happens to be the latest incarnation of something ancient. As for lawyers, copyright infringement, patents, intellectual property ad nausium all I can say is...... GRRRRRR!!! I'm not going to waste my energy trying to kill someone elses momentum when I can use that energy to propel myself to my next level of thought and craftsmanship!

I leave the hood in place if I'm working on small stuff but I have the option of lifting it off with tongs after the coke is lit and the fire settles down so I can heat the center section of longer stock. The max output on my little squirrel cage fan wont reach that volume with the fuels I've used, coal, coke, charcoal, hardwood. The only real difference I've seen is the consumption rate, hardwood burns up the fastest and coke gives me the longest burn time by volume. I haven't played with different fans because the first one I hooked up was able to produce forging and welding temps with all those fuels. Im guessing it would take a pretty stiff breeeze to blow out a coak fire but I do live in Tornado Ally ;-)

Thanks for the advise guys! After looking at it fresh this morning I am going to forge a strap and save the original mount for bolting to a portable stand.

Hi Forging Carver. The hood is (i think) around 18 guage steel i just cut and bent. The top is a thin peice of diamond plat. It all stacks together and I remove it often once my coke is burning good. I mainly use it to tame the flames when I first light a fire. I use pine knots to start my fires and when you shoot the air to the pine lighter you get big flames jumping up. Two years worth of fires in that spot about 10" from a wood frame and OSB wall. The wall gets warm to the touch but so far so good. As to weld temp, I'm no expert but it's my understanding that the fuel doesnt matter, fire is fire. The air flow is what accelerates combustion. If you feed fuel fast enough you should be able to burn paper or anything and reach weld temp, some fuels just burn up faster than others. I cant articulate the science involved but I can tell you that using charcoal I was able to turn steel into sparklers and even burned some 5/8" stock in half, as in dripping when I pulled it out of the fire! Way too hot! I would guess that if you're not getting hot enough you just need to increse the air flow and be prepared to burn through fuel faster.

Hi Armourer. I'm posting some photos of how my forge is set up. It's made of two brake drums bolted together back to back. The smaller drum on the bottom makes a stable base and provides ductwork. When I set all this up two years ago I didn't own a welder. I had one goal, to start forging, and one obsticle, make it happen with bolt together parts. The big drum on top is 12" across. I cut slots in the sides so I could get longer length work deeper in the fire. I burned wood charcoal in this fire pot for about three months and was able to forge weld just fine. Nothing fancy, but basic welding and forging was no problem. Since then I've switched to burning coal and coke, mostly coke, and I've burned over three thousand lbs of coke in that fire pot. I'm on the bottom half of my second ton of coke in the past two years. You can see the cracks in the bottom but it's still going strong and I'm going to keep forging in it till the bottom falls out. I may purchase a "propper" forge when that day comes and I may go back to the scrapyard and pick up another brake drum. I didn't let not being able to afford the best equipment stop me and noone else should! Lots of people online say you cant forge on a cheep, soft, cast iron anvil. Not true! If the steel is hot and you dont mind standing up to the anvil snobs you can make beutiful things with a brake drum and a cast iron anvil. When I decided I wanted a guilotine fuller I made one out of stuff already laying about ( still sans welder) My first hammer came from harbor freight and after doming one face I forged with it for a year. If I do decide to build my next forge at the scrap yard I will use a smaller brake drum because of burning coke. If charcoal was my only fuel I would say the bigger the fire pot the better. If there is any chance you will switch fuel I would use whichever vesel thats closest to the size of a grapefruit. I hope the pictures give you some ideas and look forward to seeing what you build!

Very cool! Thank You for sharing your experience down there and the wonderful photos. I hope Nestor continues to post as he progresses.

1/2" steel plate slotted to accept the lug on the post set into a 3' deep quickrete footing. The 4"x6" post is also in 3' of quickrete. Tomorrow when the CoOp opens I'll be drilling a hole in the base of the post to accept a bolt that will anchor a chain and binder tie down. I plan to build a portable stand for the vise at some point so everything I'm doing now is with a view to being able to remove it quickly. I have one 3" lag bolt holding the mounting plate on for now but lags in end grain wont hold. I may end up forging a strap I can bolt through the post and not use the original mounting plate until I can bolt it to a steel stand. My footing is strong so I'll keep at it till I know I can hammer on it! Work in progress.

Very nice. Everything I've seen you produce looks like it would be the one tool you would leave everything else behind for if you had to choose!

Great anvil, Classy Lady!

Good find. I love flea markets, swap meets and old pawn shops!

Very reasonable for my area. He had a lot of circa 1900 thru 1950 American manufactured stuff, Keenkutter, Bluegrass, Plumb, Stanley, Keystone, Kelly True Temper etc. The one forge and anvil he had in this load were already sold when I got there but based on the 80.00 he wanted for the vise I bought I think his prices were fair. He had a complete post mount, hand crank drill press for 200.00 The feed screw, ratchet system and gears were all clean and working. I'll regret not buying it later but that was my last stop of the day and my budget was already shot. He also had about 20 early Wilton vises, the biggest was a 4" jaw and he wanted 80.00 for it. I just saw the 29 degree thread pitch on the ACME. Thanks for the heads-up, I've been missusing that term for some time. Any idea if the square threads are indicative of earlier manufacture or were any post vises ever made with ACME threads?

Thanks Thomas! I will. I bought it at a flea market in Ms., was told it was bought at auction in Wisconsin. The seller had a whole trailer load of vises, forges, blowers, hammers and more nipping cutters than Ive ever seen in one place! Gave him my number and hoping to hear from him soon on an anvil. He says the area he buys in up there is lousy with Peter Wright and Mousehole anvils. I hope this turns into a good contact!

OK, I didnt find a C or any other marking, stamp or makers mark. The jaws will grab paper all the way across and the screw looks good to me. Any info you might have would be appreciated.

Dont know about the C yet, I'll check when I go back up to the forge this evening. Does the "C" denote a certain maker? Its a 4" jaw and the acme thread screw is pristine! Ill open it up and take more pics this evening. I dropped it off at the forge and since then Ive been soaking up air conditioning!

Perfect end to a busy morning. $80.00! Works like a champ, never been welded or ground with the dreaded angle grinder! I'm going to pick up a 6x6" post and a few bags of concrete this evening. I'll update when I get it mounted. Also got a nice 12lb Plumb sledge for a few bucks.

If Im turning a ballpeen into a hot set I leave the original hole so I can replace the handle with hardware store handles, for a hawk I drift it out, draw the cheeks down etc.

Smoking hot and rub with vegatable oil blackens quickly. I've never used any of the waxes but now I want to try!

I would drop $200.00 on that in a heartbeat! Drop a one inch ball bearing on the top and check for rebound but it looks to be in great shape.

First of all my apologies to the admin for an earlier post I put up somewhat releted to this topic. I posted a link regarding RR Spikes without reading the TOS. Mea Culpa. The point I was hoping to make in that post was that there are perfectly legal ways to go about aquiring RR Spikes for anyone who happens to have a bit of a spike fetish. As for all the other RR iron, most of it is of marginal quallity for the things folks seem to want to use it for. Salvage yards yield massive amounts of good high carbon automotive steels that are easily researched online and are cheeper than dirt. There is a national program in the US called Rails to Trails where the railroad lines donate long sections of out of use railbed to be reworked into running and biking trails. The work is performed by volunteers from the R2T program. For anyone who lives close enough to one of these projects spending a Saturday volunteering to tear up old track would be a good way to stock up on some scrap do-dads.

For all the railroad spike knife and hawk enthusiasts commercial link removed, Please read and FOLLOW ToS No, they are not great steel but they are fun little projects. The little hawks will throw wood chips as well as most of the import cast hatchets I've seen lately and since I have no plans to shave with a tomahawk I dont need it to have the best edge steel available in the 21st century! If you heat them up to critical, quench in water and draw them back a bit they will be tougher than most of the hawks being made before the electric arc furnace came along.

I like high carbon blades for food prep. If you dont mind the staining I say go for it. I have a drawer full of Ontario "Old Hickory" knives in my kitchen. I think they use 1095. I've never hammered any 5160 down to less than about .190" thick but if you get it thinner I'm sure it would flex. Post some pics when you get it done!

I made this handle out of 1"X1/8" mild steel with peened steel pins. It may not be pretty but I can usually spot something on the shop floor to do in a pinch.