JHCC

No. Even the dark brown paste waxes won't impart much color if they're rubbed out properly.

If you're looking for a wax finish that will give some color to the steel, think black shoe polish. Remember, the color will be a microscopically thin film over the surface, not a change in the color of the metal itself.

Solid or hollow?

If hollow, a BBQ grill. Or a birthing ball for the pregnant blacksmith in your life.

If solid -- well, start building a cannon.

Sulfur had the unusual property that it expands slightly as it hardens; hence the uses noted above as locking anchors into rock, etc.

I'm not seeing the photos in the original post. Is this an issue at my end, or are they gone for good? 

Yesterday, I was smoking a rack of ribs when it occurred to me that once the aromatic smoke compounds cook out of the wood, the charcoal that's left isn't providing anything beyond heat. If you're cooking low and slow, you don't really need all that heat. So, before each addition of more wood, I started scooping out most of the coals, quenching them with water, then setting them aside to drain and dry in the sun. By the time the meat was done, I had enough for a short forging session.

Efficient? Nope. Sufficient to meet all my charcoal needs? Hell, no. Did it get the job done for now? Yup. Will I need to make myself a retort eventually? Yeah, probably.

(Is Frosty going to give me crap for overthinking? Chances are good.  )

And when the time does come to build a retort, I think I'm going to try to make one with a smoking chamber attached....

The good news is, you have a template for checking future work. The bad news is,  those checks are going to be kind of painful.

Some heavy gauge wire makes a nice tool rack.

What sold me on the idea of the rounding hammer was something I read somewhere along the lines of "Hot metal behaves like modeling clay. Think of the rounding hammer as a giant thumb." Looking forward to seeing how that works out in practice.

Hey, at least they used something with a removable lid! 

And after grinding. I've never used a rounding hammer before; does this look like a decent profile?

The local flea market yielded a couple of hammers for ten bucks. The bigger one is a 3#-ish True Temper engineer's hammer that I plan to turn into my first rounding hammer. 

D'oe!

Well, if we're talking about goats now, I'll need to talk to my nanny.

Flagging is marking the back of a sheep or lamb with a colored grease crayon, to show which ones have received their medicine. 

Hence "drenched".

No, but you're working me here. I'm drenched in sweat.

Make sure you chock the wagon wheels, especially while forging on a hillside.

By the way, there are good and clever uses for an empty paste wax can. This is one is clever, but not good.

Ditto on old school creosote. I learned my lesson on that one putting up sheep fencing when I was a teenager. After a couple of creosote burns, it was long sleeves and gloves all the way.

(I'm also getting the feeling that I need to break my charcoal into smaller lumps before lighting it, but that's a separate issue.)

Okay, Frosty, a serious question.  I was under the impression from our previous discussions (and from my reading elsewhere on IFI) that for forging with charcoal,  you need about a six inch diameter fireball: smaller will not get enough heat, and larger will just burn up fuel. The profile of the clay that I just put in and fired yesterday for the first time was basically intended to be a circular version of a Tim Lively-style oval tub forge, and was sized to hold a fireball about that big. It may not have been a classic duck's nest (and that term may well not have been appropriate for what I was building), but is there a problem with this design and construction for what I'm trying to do?

All history is living for the Irish.

What I have is a lot of sandstone veneer block, about 2" x 4" x various lengths. Most of it is sitting on a pallet outside, but I have a few pieces in the garage, that I actually used in the last (equally Frosty-savaged) version of the firepot.

It's a very porous sandstone, so it dries very quickly. Shouldn't be a problem.

I've got a lot of pieces of sandstone sitting around that would probably work.

First fire in the new duck's nest. Took a lot of time to get up to forging temperature; I think the clay had some residual moisture that was soaking up the heat.

Also, I am still new to charcoal, so that's an adjustment, too.