JHCC

Hey, at least I'm not still using a flip phone.

Who irons their smithing shirts? (I know the armourers smith iron shirts.)

This evening, a hot hardie in progress popped out of the vise grips and smacked me in the belly, in contact just long enough to scorch my T-shirt. Might be time to invest in an apron. And better vise grips.

And you know this why...?

Resin is the traditional filling for hollow handles on steel-bladed knives in fine silverware. (I know this from a memorable incident with a dishwasher.)

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.)