JHCC

I've got a bunch of those that I'm thinking of making into a giant set of wind chimes.

Only in terms of volume: a wooden clapper or one made of rubber or other soft material might be softer, but it won't change the pitch or timbre of the bell. Most bell clappers are made of metal, but interestingly, wrought iron is generally preferred to steel, being less likely to work-harden over time. Here's a clapper I fixed up for a local church, making a new WI stem for the cast iron ball.

I'm not familiar with this particular product, but cracking like this is generally a sign that the refractory had too much water in the mix and/or was applied too thick. The more water in the mix, the more it shrinks as it dries, so we generally recommend using only as much water as needed to make the mix workable. The big question is how well the second layer has adhered to the first. If it's sticking well, you're probably okay and can go ahead and add the third layer without too much worry. If it feels like it's flaking off, you're probably better off flaking off as much as you can and applying a new second layer. Make sure to "butter" the existing surfaces before you add new refractory. This means wetting them slightly (with a damp rag or a spray bottle) before adding the new mix, to improve adhesion between layers. Keep us posted on your progress!

Impressive sword, Chad! I did a little project today, adding a hanger and clapper to a little bell someone gave me. I’ll be hanging this on the door at the yarn shop, since we had to leave the old bell behind when we moved.

I’m very lucky that my health insurance through my job includes a physical therapy telehealth benefit. They send me a tablet that can track my movements through a series of exercises that are monitored and updated by a physical therapist somewhere else. It’s on-demand, so I can do the exercises anywhere and any time, even in a hotel room when I’m on the road. I’ll sometimes do some of the exercises as a warm-up to forging. The great Frank Turley used to have his students do tai chi before forging.

In the two years we had that space, we had exactly one special event, bringing in a nationally renowned expert in Tunisian crochet for a day of classes. It was fantastic, but very much an outlier. All three spaces so far have had dedicated classroom spaces (and a full schedule of crochet and knitting classes), so having the second floor space didn’t improve instructional capacity in any practical way.

An additional concern for hollow-handle knives is the strength of the connection between the blade and the handle. The tang on a Randall Model 18 extends through the guard and up into the hollow handle, and all three pieces are silver-soldered together. Cheaper versions will probably have much less robust construction and are thus more likely to fail exactly when needed most.

Second time, actually. Lisa said the other day that she feels like Goldilocks: the first shop was too small, the second was too large, and this one is just right! We were initially very unhappy to have to leave the previous shop, as it was a lovely space (as you can see above) and had hosted a major expansion of both the shop itself and the community of that grew up around it. However, it was MUCH too expensive, and we were paying for a huge amount of space that we couldn't use for generating revenue (specifically, 2/3 of the second floor, which is inaccessible to those with mobility issues and for which we were unable to secure a long-term subtenant). Moving to the new space is dropping our monthly rent expense by a little over 25%, and -- as I keep reminding Lisa -- in retail, for every dollar you spend, you need four dollars in sales. If all goes as we hope, we'll be able to get caught up on our SBA loans and some other debts, freeing us up to invest more sales revenue in expanding our inventory. There's one interesting detail about moving to the new location: the old space faced the square in the middle of town, and we were afraid that losing that central location would reduce our foot traffic. It turns out that the two restaurants we share our new building with draw in a LOT of foot traffic, and there have been a ton of people checking out the store as they come in either for Mexican food or Chinese. Many of these seem to be from the surrounding area rather than the town itself, so between them and all the people who drive past our windows (we're now on the main north-south state route through town), we're getting a lot more regional visibility which should translate to increases in visits and sales.

George's recommendation for a spark test is a good one: touch a piece with a grinding wheel and see what sparks come off. Wrought iron gives relatively few sparks, and those it does throw off are generally dark red and fade out without bursting. A piece of high-carbon steel, on the other hand, will give a shower of bright yellow-white sparks that burst like little fireworks. You can also cut a piece partway through and break it the rest of the way. Steel will have a granular appearance like a broken sugar cube, while wrought iron will splinter like a piece of wood.

The belt on the HF band file is 1/2" wide, but I don't know how thick the business end of the tool might be. I would also vote for squaring it up with hand-filing, especially since you'll have the opportunity to invest in a good file and also be better at filing once you're done. 3/4" square is pretty typical for this size of anvil, and a number of blacksmith tool supply places make or carry hardy tools with 3/4" shanks. Consider yourself lucky: my two main anvils both have 7/8" holes, and nobody makes 7/8"-shanked tools anymore.

I had an ailanthus ("tree of heaven"), but it looks like it got cut down.

If you're not going to be using it as a sledgehammer, all you need to do is get a welder to stick an appropriately sized block of steel (say, 4-1/2" x 4-1/2" x 6") on the end of a length of pipe.

I've spent the last three weeks helping my wife move her yarn shop. Fortunately, the new space is only a long block and a half from the old, so I was able to get a lot of stuff moved on a shopmade cart (welded a handle onto a 24" x 30" industrial dolly and added a deck) and only needed to rent a truck for the big furniture and the yarn itself. Naturally, we had a heat wave, but smithing in hot weather has taught me a lot about proper hydration! Nighttime view through the front window: Panoramic view of the outer room, taken from the pass-through to the inner room: Moving the main yarn display was simplified considerably by giving each grid section a numbered tag, covering it in stretch wrap, moving it entire to the new space, and hanging back on the wall. Not perfect, but much easier than trying to keep track of even more bags and boxes than usual. (Note that the display continues through the pass-through to the inner room, naturally drawing customers into that space.) The seating area at the front of the store: Unintended benefit of being a blacksmith: make an S-hook, hang it on your rearview mirror, and — five or six years later — use it to hold back a branch of the large plant you’re moving between yarn shops. The old space getting cleaned out. Lots of screw holes in the walls to spackle.... Also, a demonstration of why we needed to paint. Before: And after:

An old friend just let me know that my childhood home in Philadelphia is up for sale. From the listing website, here is a photo of the backyard where I first set up shop with a rivet forge, my Mousehole anvil, and an old no-name post vise.

I believe that this is an earlier model of the Fisher chain vise. Here's an image of an 1875 catalog from a Baltimore tool dealer, showing the dramatically curved outer jaw and the different chain:

Blacksmith Jymm Hoffman forges in klompen; he adds a steel horseshoe under the heel so that they don't wear out as quickly.

Elegant!

Nice! This arrived in the mail last week. After almost a decade, the theater department at the college remembered that I have their Lincoln 125 amp MIG welder and decided they wanted it back. Since Eastwood was running a sale on a 160 amp machine that can run off 220V, I decided to take the plunge. While I haven't fired it up yet, I'm delighted that I'll be able to switch between DCEN and DCEP simply by moving a plug on the front panel, rather than fussing around with wingnuts inside the machine. Another nice detail is that it came with a stinger for SMAW, and there's an available torch if I decide I want to try TIG.

Thanks, Larry! I actually have two supplies of hex (three, if you count my Wiccan friends): the mild shafting that I used for this project, and the large supply of worn-out jackhammer bits I’ve picked up from tool rental places. (And yes, I know that traditional Wiccans don’t cast hexes, as it goes against the principle of not causing harm to others.)

After grinding the working surfaces of the double forming stake to shape, I case hardened them and give them a basic finish. Needs a bit more polish, but basically done. (Kasenit isn’t especially toxic, but it sure smells nasty.)

Working on a convex/concave forming stake, with some little brackets for holding firmly in the vise. Still needs grinding to shape and finishing.

The quick answer is no. The face plate and the body of the anvil MUST be joined at every point, and there’s really no way to do that. Furthermore, the body of an American Star is cast iron, which is notoriously difficult to weld. The original face would have been placed in the bottom of the upside-down mold, preheated, and then had molten iron poured on top. If everything was at the right temperature, the cast iron would fuse to the steel. I suspect that yours didn’t fuse completely and later failed in use. There is a method sometimes used to restore broken face plates on wrought iron anvils. This involves building the surface back up by laying down multiple beads with an arc welder, finishing off with a layer of hardfacing rod, and then grinding it smooth. However, I don’t know how well it works on cast iron, and once you’ve finished, you’ve put a lot of time and money into a fairly ordinary (some might say second-class) anvil. You’re probably much better off saving your money and buying an anvil that’s already ready to go. That said, the tail half of your anvil looks perfectly serviceable, as does the horn. So long as you steer clear of the broken section, you should still be able to get a fair amount of work out of this, in the absence of anything better.

Really nice, Chad!

A visit to the town scrap bin yielded some nice chunks of black iron pipe (about 5-7 feet long) as well as these two interesting pieces of acme-threaded rod with round nuts. Not sure what they were for originally, but I’m sure they’ll come in handy.

They’re already thrown off by my magnetic personality. Of course, I’m a polarizing figure. Some are attracted; others are repelled.