JHCC

Inter-Library Loan. It's a system where if one local library doesn't have a particular book, they can get it for you from another library.

Make sure you note whether you're using seasoned wood or green. The former will weigh less to start, and I suspect you'll get a more efficient burn, as you won't be expending energy to cook off the excess moisture.

Interesting. Have you done anything with weighing the unburned wood and the finished charcoal to get an idea of the efficiency of the process?

Excellent advice, unless it's been discussed at length on IFI, the great self-correcting repository of reliable blacksmithing information.

The consensus around here seems to be "Yes, but it goes rancid." Some folks recommend adding vitamin E oil as an antioxidant; I keep mine in the chest freezer.

By doing your research and not believing everything you see on YouTube. Listening to the people here who've already answered your question three times might help. Dirt. If you want to get fancy, subsoil. If you want to be hyper-technical, soil horizon B.

Nice. +1 on having the on/off switch in front of the speed control; my variac came that way, and it's great.

Maybe the title will help: "Crucifixion/Tree of Life"

Getting back to the original topic, here is a wall sculpture I made a few months back. Mostly wood; the forged bits are the three nails.

According to the Balloon Time website, their standard tank contains 8.9 ft³ and their jumbo tank contains 14.9 ft³. (On a side note, they also say that on account of the current state of the worldwide helium supply, they use a 80/20 mix of helium and air, sufficient to keep a balloon floating for 5-7 hours.) (Also, if you're not going to use one for a forge, they make great slack tubs.)

If you haven't yet seen this particular gem, enjoy: Penn & Teller: King of Animal Traps

You can buy an SUV through Amazon Prime?

Then all he needs to do is get a friend to spot-weld three or four sections end-to-end! True, that.

I have a bucket full of railroad spikes and some pieces of A36 and mild in random lengths and cross sections for small pieces and decorative work; a few axles, torsion bars, and coil springs from my mechanic for tooling; and a length of HC cable that I'm going to make a knife from someday. For a hobbyist like me, it's a good selection.

You don't need tongs to make tongs. Just start with stock that's long enough to hold by hand, forge the bits, bosses, and reins at either end, and cut the unworked material out of the middle.

Welcome aboard! If you put your location in your profile settings, you might find yourself connecting with other IFI members in your area. (We will also be able to better offer location-specific advice.) There's a lot of information here on the forum, so please take your time to read everything over. Lots of questions have been asked and answered and discussed and revisited and argued over, so reading the forums in depth will really help you either find the answer you want or ask more informed questions. If you want a simple-but-effective way to forge a flower, google "Russian rose by Larry Mills" -- this will take you to a great little demo (on a non-IFI webpage whose owner has asked us not to link directly).

Also, remember that, generally speaking, the properties of the finished piece are more important than the working characteristics of the material. Yes, high-carbon steel is tougher to forge than low-carbon, but if you're making knives or punches, low-carbon is definitely not the way to go.

Really? If there are any steel suppliers in your area (which you can find out from the Yellow Pages), they probably sell "drops" (offcuts from larger jobs) of mild steel at a discount. My local place asks 75¢/lb. (P.S. I think you mean "obtain", not "attain". )

Ancient Greek? All caps, known as the "uncial" alphabet. By late antiquity and the early Byzantine period, a cursive script had developed, which later evolved into the "minuscule" script and thence into modern orthography.

Maybe early models were pulled by sheep.

This isn't something I've done myself, but wasn't there a thread a little while back where someone built a filtering enclosure around their grinder motor? Basically a frame filled with furnace filters, if I recall correctly.

And here I was, thinking he was proudly proclaiming his native city to be Brick, NJ.

That's "Ancient Greek", thank you very much.

Bad spelling, punctuation, and grammar are like hammer marks: you can take the time to clean them up or you can decide that a few aren't a big deal, but if there are too many, it just looks careless and sloppy. Furthermore, as Michael Cochran suggests, it's a courtesy to your reader. A pretty fair number of my posts and comments are entered on my smartphone, and I consider that if I want someone to invest time in reading what I have to say, I'd better take the time to make it readable. The Edit button is a wonderful thing. (That said, I am willing to give some leeway to the many IFI members whose native language isn't English, like the Australians.)

Dachshunds, or Great Danes?