JHCC

Great work, Jim!!!!

Look what came in the mail! Courtesy of Lou L, kaowool and Kast-O-Lite 30 for my ribbon burner and gasser. Thanks, Lou! (We had originally packaged the refractory for me to take home after one of my visits, but decided to the TSA wouldn’t be too happy about me carrying half a peck of gray powder in my luggage.)

The term you want is "water column". Controlling the blast is always a good idea, and there are a number of ways to do this. With a manual blower or bellows, it's easy: just vary the rate of cranking/pumping/whatever. With a motor-driven blower, you have a number of choices: change the speed of the motor by varying its power supply, changing the air input, blocking the air output, and diverting a portion of the air output. There are a number of electronic options for the first, but you have to get the right kind for your particular motor. For the second, you can put an adjustable plate over the air intake, but be careful: some motors require air flowing through them to keep them from overheating. The third can be accomplished by putting some kind of gate mechanism between the blower and the tuyere. For the fourth, you leave a gap between the blower and the tuyere and adjust the blast by changing how directly the blast goes into the tuyere. Make sense?

Yes, that is correct. If you put a board (say 1/2" thick) on your anvil and hit it with a natural swing, the hammer should leave a circular dent. If the anvil is too low, you'll get a crescent with the curved side away from you. If the anvil is too high, you'll get a crescent with the curved side toward from you.

Slitters and drifters, even more so!

Interesting. Thanks for the info. And since I didn't say so before, Welcome to IFI! If you haven't yet, please READ THIS FIRST!!!

Welcome to IFI! If you haven't yet, please READ THIS FIRST!!! Your basic plan is okay, but needs tweaking. A shopvac is MUCH too much air for charcoal, and you would be better served with something much more gentle. Take a look at various JABOD threads, especially the Mark III JABOD thread. Kitty litter is probably your best choice for getting started, but this is addressed in threads linked above.

Almost any dirt will work.

Prudent.

Leaf spring is a lot easier for a smith to forge a replacement out of whatever is at hand.

Ooh, the college where I work has a copy in the library! Excellent!

Just call it “experimental archaeology”, and you can get yourself a grant!

That’s why I said “finished forging” rather than “finished”!

Made my first pair of Poz tongs. Not happy with every detail, but they hold 1/2” stock very securely. Also finished forging another yarn bowl.

I spent fifteen minutes this morning looking for a piece of pipe that was sitting on top of my anvil, right where I’d left it.

Going to remove the paint?

Have you done a spark test or drill test on the underside to see whether it’s actually steel or cast iron?

You could always bring some down here, and we can try it out in mine!

Also, coal generally likes a large, round fire, so that the outer layer is coking while the inner core burns. With charcoal, that extra material around the outside is just waste, so a good charcoal fire is narrow and deep. This is why most traditional charcoal forges are trench-shaped.

Loosen the stand clamp and rotate 90 degrees!

That would put us in the 1950s and earlier, which would be at or before the Green Revolution, where expanded use of fertilizers and pesticides lead to huge increases in crop production. Before that, I suspect that corn would not have been as widely available or as cheap, and thus would presumably have had no advantages over coal or charcoal.

A fellow I know through work who has made a killing in securities trading likes to talk about "exploiting predictable irrationality."

Here's that discussion, which actually just got restarted:

Making a tool to make a tool to make a tool to make.... Wait, what was I making?

Welcome to IFI! If you haven't yet, please READ THIS FIRST!!!