JHCC

Lacking an unlimited supply of strong-armed and willing apprentices, no.

No worries. The Special Collections Librarian who oversees the presss is fascinated with my blacksmithing, so I doubt he’ll forget. This is the same guy who showed me the antique African bellows set a few years ago.

I am reliably informed that they should have another can-full accumulated in a year or two.

The college where I work has a small letterpress run as a joint venture by the library and the art department, and the fellow who runs it just gave me this coffee can full of typemetal offcuts. It came in just under 20 pounds. (Although it looks like I missed out on the “buckets and buckets” of worn-out type that they got rid of a few years ago. Ah, well.)

I was just reading a fascinating study of Yellin's French contemporary Edgar Brandt (born four years earlier, died twenty years later), in which was pointed out the enthusiasm with which Brandt embraced oxy-acetylene welding as a way to join together great numbers of small details in one large piece. Brandt not only benefited from the economic value of faster production, but took full advantage of the aesthetic possibilities that the new technology created. Perhaps this has some relevance to Yellin being primarily retrospective in his design, looking back to the designs and craftsmanship of the medieval period (and certainly benefiting from the flowering of the Neo-Gothic movement in American architecture), while Brandt was more forward-looking, becoming a significant figure in the Art Deco movement.

Very true, jeremy k. Looking at the pictures of the fireplace tools, it's pretty obvious that they were not stamped hot with a "YELLIN" touchmark, but cold with individual letter stamps. As Antiqueman notes above, observe that the spacing of the letters is inconsistent, and they are nowhere near on the same line. The font is different from the known Yellin touchmark in Nobody Special's photo: the letters all have serifs, while the genuine is in a sans-serif font. Additionally, the first "L" in "Yellin" is stamped OVER an earlier dent: there is no distortion of the letter, as there would be if it had been dented after stamping. In short, someone took a perfectly decent set of fireplace tools and tried (successfully, it seems) to boost the value with a fraudulent attribution.

As in, "side handle is missing" or "the designers didn't include a side handle"? If you like ribbons, take a look at the work of sculptor Elizabeth Brim (easily found through Google Images or the websearch engine of your choice).

If all your dies are exactly the same thickness, yes. However, having a wedge on either side means that you can adjust the dies to one side or the other fairly easily. I saw something somewhere about deliberately offsetting the dies for particular forging effects (was it in Weygers's The Complete Modern Blacksmith? I can't remember), which you would not be able to do with fixed indexing on one side of the dies.

Manganetic, not magnetic?

That’s a nice looking piece of steel.

Jackdawg, when you say "...while the forge does the job", you're not suggesting burning off the zinc, are you?

Also, I have successfully forged material a full 2" thick heated in an anthracite fire fed by a 7/8" tuyere.

Ooh, meaty. Nice job; I especially like the shape of the handle. Why am I not surprised, Mr. Carcass Splitter!

Pandrol clips are pretty tough and not thin, so it takes some oomph to get them straight. I've straightened them over the anvil, which is a pain, but the best method I've found so far is to heat them up, clamp one end in a vise, slip a heavy pipe over the other end, and use the pipe as leverage to bend it straight without hammering. See what works best for you and your gear. If you don't have a vise and have to hammer them straight, make sure you have a good pair of tongs that's properly sized. It takes a fair amount of pounding to get a Pandrol straight, and you do not want it bouncing around or even flying through the air because you couldn't hold it solidly. Annealing beforehand is unnecessary; heating to working temperature in the forge will make previous heat treatment inconsequential.

Definitely do the firebrick back (as in Charles's Mark III JABOD), but leave the bowl as dirt. Clinker will stick to firebrick, and you'll just be making extra work for yourself. Also, your planned tuyere is MUCH too big. As a beginner, you're not going to be working anything close to 4" thick, especially if you don't have a power hammer. Go with the 3/4" schedule 40, get started on wall hooks, punches, chisels, etc, and when you have the skill to work something bigger, make a bigger forge then.

Almost all of my jackhammer bit supply (with the exception of some unusual offerings that IFI member Stitch got at the industrial surplus place) were obtained from the tool rental counter at Home Depot for a buck or two each. In the most recent instance, the guy told me that the bits only fit a model that they hadn't carried in years! Here's a bucketful that IFI member Cavpilot2k picked up at a local tool rental place: Note the collar around the shaft of these tools. This is great for hardy tools, as it's a pre-made shoulder. Here is a hardy that I just made out of a similar bit: (After forging and heat-treatment, before finish grinding.)

I've got that too and use it often, but there's something extremely nice about having something that does just as good a job and is both quieter and safer.

Welcome to IFI, Cade-o! If you haven’t yet, please READ THIS FIRST!!! Then go over to the “Introduce Yourself” section and start a new topic to tell us who you are, how you got interested in blacksmithing, and so on. Good to have you here!

Dry town, birthplace of the Anti-Saloon League. My daughter can point to the corner of 104th and Riverside Drive in Manhattan (NYC, not Kansas) and say, "That's where I was born!"

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

All my gear is borrowed at this point, so I have a choice between two light welding jackets (both slightly too small) and a set of leather sleeves matched with my own leather smithing apron. I usually go with the former, and haven't had any issues with getting burned (other than through some pinholes in the gloves). One good thing about welding with flux core is that I can use my big stand fan to keep cool without blowing away the shielding gas.

After WWII, the college where I work bought a mobile (i.e. plywood) barracks and installed it on North Campus as a men's dormitory. It was known for years as "Federal Hall" and was soundly loathed. When the administration decided ultimately to tear it down, word leaked out to its residents who decided to take matters in their own hands. Fueled by large quantities of 3.2% ABV beer, they held an impromptu overnight demolition party and were distressed in the morning to realize that they now had nowhere to live for the rest of the semester.

Just think of it as an edible canister damacus.

+1 on hearing protection. I have occasional tinnitus from my days as a professional woodworker, so I make doubly sure to ALWAYS use hearing protection whenever I'm doing anything loud.

No; just praying that IFI doesn't crash.