Kozzy

I'm wondering how much heat input would be required for a similar pipe set-up with full insulation on the outside. The reason I ask is I noticed one can get electric band heaters at fairly good prices--$ 23 USD for a 600 watt, 120 V x 3.5 ID. 2 would probably be plenty of heat. Wrap one around the lower end of the pipe under the insulation and the second about mid pipe and you might have excellent heat control of the system with little fuss. They have larger wattages and diameters also but larger wattages are usually 240 V. Just a passing thought--no clue how much heat input you'd actually need to keep the heat-time reasonable.

It's been a while since I've been to China but the last time I was there, I spent quite a bit of time in one of their hardware stores (not a discount store). What surprised me was that the stuff being sold into their consumer markets was significantly higher in quality (in general) than the stuff that was being shipped to us. Even something like a light switch was far better quality, fit and finish than what shows up on the shelves of USA stores. It's easy to blame China for quality issues but it seems to me that a lot of blame should fall on the driving end of the supply chain.

I notice that the old DL&W shops are incorporated into the Steamtown national park https://www.nps.gov/stea/index.htm. It might be possible to e-mail the hammer photo to them for verification that it is from the railroad or whether to keep digging. Makes a lot of sense as the source, though. The railroads did like to stamp their initials on everything they could find.

I didn't go into details but there was not a reasonable mechanical option that beat the grinder. Once I got some decent belts the time involved was about 15 seconds each which wasn't unreasonable. Clipping would be impossible without a much fancier set-up because the protrusions that I mentioned as welds were actually forged AND welded where a rod passed through--like a rounded rivet head which had also been perimeter welded (plasma welded, actually, on robotic machines). In any case, the point was that good belts are worth it. I'll have to try those blaze belts mentioned. They weren't listed as an option where I bought these.

One note about the plastic protection on sheets with the better finishes--try not to let them sit in the sun for long periods or they can be a lot harder to remove. You didn't mention sheet size (unless I missed it). Big difference on handling a 12" square than a 5' x 12' sheet. A hint about initial thickness might help also. On a commercial scale, one would run the sheet through a "grainer" which is nothing but a rigid wide-belt sander for metal sheet that puts that nice "all one way" finish on. That'd give you the proper starting place to go further. You might be able to find a way to emulate that if the sheets aren't too big. There might be a way to electro-polish your stuff also. I've seen amazing results on stainless (mirror results) and I assume there might be a similar process for copper alloys.

So I roped myself into a project where I have to grind a bulbous weld off of each of about 400 small parts in T304 stainless. Basically, I'm taking away a 5/16" dia x 1/4" thick cylindrical protrusion and trying to leave a reasonably smooth flat finished surface where the protrusion was. Yes, it's making the old-man arthritis in my hands yell at me. Wilton 1 x 42 belt grinder because it's all I have at the moment. Anyway...bought a bunch of new belts for the job and decided to try ceramic even though they were twice the price. Norton 80 grit. Looks like the job is going to require only 1 of those belts. Even though the part shape means all the wear is focused on about 1/4 of the belt, it's lasting far better than other belts I have used. If you made it this far in the post, what I took the long way to get to is the fact that I now swear by the ceramic belts. DEFINITELY worth the extra expense. If the price has kept you for experimenting, convince yourself to give ceramic a shot because it'll turn out to be cheaper in the long run.

I guess ya never know. Monty Holm (photo) started his scrap metal "empire" by stripping copper wires out of old motors in a shed in his backyard when no one else wanted to deal with it. He turned it into a multi-million dollar scrap business (and one heck of a great museum of the stuff that didn't get scrapped). He would give every child visitor to the museum a dollar coin because that's what he claimed he started with. Yes, the RR engines were part of the "scrap" that never got scrapped.

Welcome aboard. There are several females who hang around the site and their skills put a lot of us hacks to shame. I would sure like to see more women give smithing a try but so many were steered away from industrial arts that I fear they hesitate to believe they can do it. There's a point to this ramble if you bear with me...I worked with Mr. Wizard on several occasions (a TV host that only old people remember these days). The guy taught me just how easy it was to suck the enthusiasm out of female youth. He was a gigantic jerk. Boys would tend to get a "good try!" when they answered some science question wrong. Girls would tend to get a "No, you're wrong". You could actually watch the young girls shrink away and lose enthusiasm for science. It was like seeing a fire in their eyes go out. I believe the same kind of thing often happens to women/girls who start showing interest in "shop" type things--at least until recent years. It doesn't take much to suck the enthusiasm from them and it's hard to get that back once it's been squashed. More power to those who won't let themselves get beat down or give up. Bravo when their education system didn't put the subtle walls up for males or females wishing to try whatever they wanted to give a shot.

If you want to get really fancy, I just noticed that there is a seller of short lengths of thick-walled (their words) Alumina ceramic tube in a variety of diameters on a popular auction site. Not sure if care would have to be taken to allow for expansion or how brittle it is but it'd take the temps easily and you'd be the cool kid on the block. Technically, that would eliminate the need for any water cooling at a cost that appears to run about 60 bucks USD.

If you let us start spending your money, we can build you one heck of a dream shop Seriously, the question is a little too vague to do much more than toss out some general recommendations. It's really easy to run your budget up for you with all the bells and whistles so you'll need to place some limits on the "wish list" I'd put some good money into a concrete slab. If you plan right, it'll work whether you build a small shed, a carport, drop a cargo container or two down or go for a pole building. A well planned slab can almost be a universal starting place. Getting power to the site can be costly so it should be an early thought too. I'd personally plan for a large covered outdoor working area just because I like working outdoors more in the good weather--even if you have a nice pole building or something like that for the indoor stuff. I've got a hankerin to try the "Safe T Home" from Sukup as a smaller smithy building. They're 18 feet in diameter and essentially "portable"--what you do is fill those ballast tanks with soil and flowers to hold them down. Obviously they need a bigger entry and more window openings (doable)..and there are other negatives like one spot inside where sound reflection is focused which would be an ear-splitter. But to plop down as a small smithin' workshop on a rural property the idea seems interesting and fast. These are actually designed as emergency housing for disaster areas or "poor man housing" in places that need such a thing.

It's not just the drill press but the quality of the bits. There is an order of magnitude improvement in quality drill bits over the usual home center stuff. Save some of that budget to get a few good drill bits in the sizes you intend to use. It'll be worth every penny. One other thing to add to the list is a better chuck than comes with most low end drill presses. The run-out from most lesser chucks is so high that even a good drill bit can have problems making a decent hole. Assuming the drill press isn't too far out in the spindle itself, changing over to a better chuck is usually worth the expense. Since your budget is so tight, there is not much variation in offerings. Just stay away from the really cheap ones like harbor freight or discount charlie's crazy china-junk warehouse. You might get more for the money by checking out pawn shops in your area for a better used one than you could get new. Oh...and many of the benchtop units have REALLY short spindle travels. It'd likely be enough for a knife but make sure it'll be enough for anything you think you'll use it on.

People generally have normal mental distortions regarding area when given diameter of orifices. Just to put it in numbers, a .035 orifice has 2.3 times the passage area that the .023 tip does. Actual flow through an orifice is a little more complex than a simple numeric comparison but at least it gives something to think about when in one's head .035 is only *percieved* as being about 1.5 times the size of the .023.

The subject got me poking around regarding any science involved. It appears that a simple scorch is mostly hooey but there are some specific applications where it helps. Assuming that the subject is not drying the wood (which will make it "harder"), in certain cases the resins in the wood along with the addition of some carbon can chemically form a hard surface that was good for spear points. You needed the right wood and the point was thrust into actual hot coals in several rounds, polishing in between. I'm trying to find the whole paper to cite but apparently there were some archaeologists who did tests with digging points and flame hardening back in 1986. The synopsis reads: "This paper presents the methods and results of experimentation with the "fire-hardening" of wood. Thirty digging stick replicas made from deciduous and coniferous wood species were variously heat treated and subjected to both hardness and abrasion tests. Standard hardness testing proved all samples to be adversely effected by exposure to fire, while tests of wear or abrasion produced contrary results. Explanations of the experiment's outcome are provided in terms of physical, chemical, and mechanical wood science." So, with everything perfect, you might get some abrasion resistance but not an improvement in actual hardness. I'd sure like to read the rest to see the actual scientific explanation of the results. One other point came up that might have some applicability--Wood rots and proper heating kills off the fungus and bacterias which promote that. This implies that fire "hardening" might have had a secondary benefit on tools where you started your build with essentially green wood. That "blued" wood might look keen but it's rotten and the rot progress needs to be stopped...with heat/fire as one way to do that. I'll probably get boinked for saying it but I don't think the quick flame issue improves anything and the "look" of scorched wood only reminds me of the crap we used to build in Jr. High shop class, using flame "staining" because the teacher didn't want to worry about proper stains, chemicals, or drying times. It seemed cool in 1976 but just seems cheesy to me when I see it done these days. So many ways to bring out the real beauty of the wood--and fire staining isn't one of them.

My Father worked for U.S.Steel Supply division for almost 40 years. "Supply" sold fabricated products from fence to buckets to ladders and was very profitable. In the mid 70's, Corporate changed all their accounting to "tonnage"--suddenly one of their most profitable divisions looked low-tonnage on the accounting and the bean counters soon shut down the whole division. They tossed good profits in the toilet because it takes a lot of fence to make the kind of tonnage they wanted to see on the books. There were of course other issues such as refusing to invest in modernizing the plants which were last upgraded (or built) during WW2. Not enough quick ROI compared to using the same money to play financial games in the markets. With idiotic thinking like that, it's no surprise they barely exist now. According to WIKI, their production in 2014 was about the same as they produced in 1902.

It's bad....really bad in terms of youth problem-solving and real-world objects. I have a simple math problem which applies to my particular profession that I use when hiring high-school kids to help in my business: (modified to make more sense in text form and using imperial measurements) "If you measure 6 threads in one inch, how many threads would there be on a threaded bar which was a foot long?". You can tell a lot about someone you are interviewing by the nature of the struggle to come up with the answer. I don't fault the math because people rarely do simple math in their heads these days but it's amazing how many yunguns struggle to come up with the PROCESS to get an answer. No, I'm not trick questioning about a single helical thread...this is about resolving a simple real-world calculation. Only about half eventually get there. Some others have to be told there are 12 inches in a foot and then can sort of figure it out with a little leading...some just can't work the nature of the problem out and end up guessing wildly. I don't really use it as a total "weed out" but it does let you know a bit about how a potential employee will be at problem solving. Some youth sort of choke in their job interview [youthful nerves which I completely understand] so I do take that into account. It's a shame that we've treated "trade" work as some sort of leper colony in the USA. I find that the ones who have actually held tools and used a tape measure tend to know a path to an answer more often...but not always. Even something as simple as holding the dumb end of a tape measure for someone in the past seems to help because they've seen that stuff gets measured and that measurement can help define the stuff. You should see the heads explode when I start teaching em how to use a dial caliper....

I understand this fairly well in US manufacturing. Over the last 30 years I have seen huge changes in operations of my customer base caused by a revised corporate culture (mergers) which places emphasis on only the bottom line, ignoring all the steps that are involved to get a product to that point. They'll throw away a dollar to save a penny at times. In one case, Corporate refused to buy a $ 2 gasket that was stocked locally--and the salesman offered to deliver it to their door-- because it wasn't the cheapest and instead paid a buck plus $ 8 in shipping and waited 3 days. Because of the way budgets work in the corporate world, they still considered it saving money on paper. Obviously, quality also suffers when your corporate culture is all about saving the next penny and squeezing the system to make that continue perpetually. My stuff tends to be custom made parts that take a solid week to produce. Downtime costs my customers on the order of $ 20,000 per hour and spare parts average about $ 4000. Back in the stone age it was a no-brainer for my customers to keep spare parts stocked. Neo-corporate culture now says spares are a bad thing to have on the books. So yes, it isn't just that China has hurt the US in manufacturing, we seem to be perfectly happy to shoot a hole in our own feet these days too. And that doesn't even get into long term planning: Long term investment in the USA seems to mean expecting near instant ROI now..while the Japanese and Germans look ahead 20-30 years. Rant mode off.

Insert long-winded rant here even though it accomplishes nothing. I have sold some complex machinery into China that was to be used to service their own markets. Got a call in the middle of the night once--they couldn't figure out how they were supposed to get the oil to go into a zerk fitting. They tried pouring and poking but the oil just wouldn't go in. Ummmm...grease gun maybe? "What's that?" Half a million dollar machine and didn't even understand the basics of maintenance. China is getting better and can produce some amazingly good stuff these days but certain things just seem to go over their heads culturally--like consistent quality unless someone is there to ride production like a bucking bronco.

A quick internet search shows that the process used is chemical and not simple--lots of nasty compounds used at specific pressures and temperatures to actually get platinum rather than a sloppy mix of tainted stuff which has little value added because it has to be re-refined from scratch anyway. Platinum is highly reactive...which is why it's used with palladium in cats in the first place--so getting it back out of the soup aint easy. Nothing wrong with experimenting but don't bet the farm on the results.

Out of curiosity, could you share what "affordable" was or is that asking too much? In this half of WA state, they're never affordable--especially considering that most people who have one tend to use it as door stop 99.99% of the time. Last couple I saw that were in the size range of yours were pushing a grand in asking price.

The glitch is they might believe you are taking them in to do paid work--you'll have to battle a little to convince them that the tools are just along for the ride. Have evidence of that such as class information and be prepared as to what you will do if they don't believe you. Most likely the subject will never come up but that leads to part B. As to taking stuff in, technically you are supposed to declare everything. Your car is obvious but it's the stuff they can't see like laptops and such that are supposed to be declared. It might be a good idea to declare and get it in writing because when you come back into the states, you want to be able to prove you didn't buy the tools in Canada and owe duty on them. It shouldn't be a big deal overall, though--think of the crap people have their RVs filled with when they go on vacation. Your best bet is to be honest from the start because it's the liars they want to nail. Oh...and you need the enhanced driver's license or a passport now to get back in without hassles. Stupid department of homeland paranoia stuff. I used to go through the border about once a week but have only been through once a year or so lately.

I took the link from another post on IFI so I assume it's "passable" even though it points to another site: http://www.bladesmithsforum.com/index.php?showtopic=27056 There is a long write up of suggestions as someone else develops and designs a cast anvil (happens to be the same anvil I obtained) Might contain some issues and suggestions that help in the design of yours.

While there is truth to what you said, there is also another side of the story--stuff goes wrong. If stuff isn't going wrong once in a while, it only means you aren't working. Sometimes a little flexibility on promises made is a good thing as long as reasonable effort is being made to correct the situation. My slogan is "Act upon problems, don't react to problems". One can get all bunged up and throw a tantrum about stuff that goes haywire or one can work on a solution. Only one of those accomplishes anything.

Around here you could flip that rivet forge for a nice profit before you got home from picking it up. I'd personally go for the bigger one because you can do a small fire in the big one but it's harder to do a large fire in the small one--just gives you more options if you have the room and can handle the extra weight. The big one could be flipped and make money in these parts also...but it'd take an hour extra vs the small one. Point is, from my standpoint you can't lose with either so BOTH is the correct answer....YMMV based on location, though.

It's not $ 350, it's about $ 800 --remember, pretty much all of those stones have to be replaced with something more suitable to knife edge honing and some of those options can get a bit spendy. Cheap grinding wheels give cheap results. You might be able to get by for less so that $ 800 was just to make the point. By the time you get to the higher number and the time involved to do the "fixits", could you buy something more suitable and better? For knifemaking, probably. As a good sharpening station for general tooling like it's original use, maybe not. It's a lot more tempting at $ 100 less...but I have use for it as the generalized tool sharpener. The $ 350 is not ridiculous either...just not as tempting. Knife and sword making....meh...for the money I still think you could do something more useful and better suited to the process.