JHCC

Or if you have the keg and are looking for a use, they make decent slack tubs and quench tanks.

You certainly could normalize a medium carbon steel hammerhead; you could also just use mild steel. My soft hammer is an old stonecutter's hand sledge with a head made from wrought iron. It mushrooms, but I don't have to worry about it chipping the striking end of my punches and chisels. You say, "...too soft to be useful" -- well, what use? If you suit the tool to the task, it's going to be useful for some things and not for others.

Réaumur.

What are you planning to use this for? If you're thinking a hammer for striking punches & chisels, you should be fine. If you want to use it for straightening twisted sections of stock (or something similarly detailed that you don't want to mess up), a brass hammer (or better yet, a wood mallet on a wood block) is probably your better bet. Suit the tool to the task.

Finally got around to trimming the legs on my anvil stand. Somehow, I hadn’t noticed that it was significantly out of horizontal until I turned it around and started forging horn-to-dominant-side (right, in my case). So, shimmed it level, marked it all around all three feet with a block of wood and a sharpie, and cut off the extra (up to 1-1/2”!) with the Portaband. Nice and level: @Lou L was right: once you get a Portaband, you start looking for more projects for it!

In the video I linked above, Jennifer punches all the way through from the bottom and then hot-rasps off the burr, leaving a single-tapered hole that’s apparently narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. Is that right, @jlpservicesinc?

Then there's the old joke about the two guys in NYC who get a truck, drive to the farms in New Jersey, load up on sweet corn for $6 a dozen, and bring them back to the city to sell for 50 cents an ear. At the end of the day, they're completely sold out, so they count up their money and see they have exactly the same amount as when they started. One of them turns to the other and says, "Wow, we need a bigger truck."

If you want to sell it, put up a post in the Tailgating / buy / sell section, making sure to read THE RULES first.

Maybe a swamp cooler?

Sorry, I prefer my swamp pounders heavily used.

@ThomasPowers is correct: those are from Sloane's A Museum of Early American Tools, originally published by Funk and Wagnalls, reprinted by Dover.

Good gracious!

No, "cochon" is masculine, so "le pig" is correct gender, even if macaronic in its vocabulary. The French for a female pig is "truie", so you could say "La Sow", if you wanted. Sorry to boar you with all this.

Hi, Welcome aboard! Without knowing where you are, it's hard to answer that question -- anvil prices can vary widely, depending on location. Please add yours in your profile settings, and while you're at it, please go over to the "Introduce Yourself" section and let us know who you are (just make sure to READ THIS FIRST).

Totally get it. Between work, travel, and family, I'm lucky if I get the forge fired up a couple of times a month.

Looking forward to seeing the next installment.

@jlpservicesinc has a very good video on how to make a nail header: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THGU6xZL7sA&t=1926s And @TechnicusJoe has a good one about making nails:

Glad to hear you weren't being serious. And don't worry: you weren't being criticized for trying, just for (apparently) claiming an expertise you'd not yet acquired. Nothing gets IFI folks riled up quite like that -- remember to use the irony font next time!

He wanted a squeeze chute for his GIRLFRIEND!?!?!

I'm all for it. In fact, I'm for being for it, which means I'm meta-for it.

And when we mix them with carbonated water, we get coke coal cola.

Well, "half-finished" is generous -- more like 1/64-finished!

I'm really cheap, so I only have the one anvil. Of course, it's a Mousehole, so why would I even need another?

Then there's the scene in "The Usual Suspects" where Gabriel Byne's character declares rather forcefully the absence of cocaine on the ship they're searching. I can't repeat it here, as I'll be banned, but it's memorable.

At the top of the window when you are writing (or editing) a comment, there is a capital letter "B", an italic capital I, and some others. Highlight the text you want to bold or italicize and click the appropriate letter. To remove bolding or italicization, highlight the bolded or italicized text and click the appropriate letter again. You have approximately one hour from the time you first hit "Submit Reply" to edit your post. This is, if you will forgive me, nonsense. What works best is what does the job best, whether new or old. If you want the cachet of having something old, that's fine: your money, your choice. Just don't delude yourself that something is ipso facto better simply because it's old. No, that's Mousehole.