Kozzy

Yes, even with a nail hammer you can clearly see if it's got good rebound--just let the hammer "fall" against the surface you can really feel it bounce like a rubber ball when the surface is good. It's subjective so harder to tell how good but it'll weed out the worst quickly. "Ring" is not really anything to put much weight in: even a crappy old steel pipe will make a nice ring sound if you hang it right. It's more an issue that lack of any ring can (not does) imply problems rather than whether the ring sounds nice enough to please you. I'd scramble and find a ball bearing, though. It'd be a much better test to reassure you that it's decent. At the very worst end of that you can buy sling shot balls at the local wal mart and get a reasonable approximation of a "ball bearing". Remember, there is always another anvil out there waiting for you---don't get so itchy that you pay sterling prices because the owner saw a tv show about smithing and knows it's a hot subject now. The only thing lost by passing on bad pricing is time.

The problem was he started with an unknown alloy from old far equipment. One can guess but you never know...In this case, he got lucky. I just did some basic poking about regarding those handheld x-ray fluorescence spectrometers (XRF) and they run in the $ 20K USD range. People selling the "service" of using their to ID your metal seem to charge about $ 100-$ 150 USD. Maybe we should get everyone one who signed up to IFI to chip in a buck and buy one to share I get first dibs.

Useful for smithing, not really--but there are lots of things you need to dink on which can use a good hunk of iron so I wouldn't hesitate to use it lightly when needed. Price? Well...more of a whim at that price. The Grizzly 11 lb dinker runs $ 23 plus shipping. I call them a "dinker" because those fully cast anvils will rarely stand up to any serious blows. Straighten a nail, set a brass rivet, crack walnuts...all good uses for this.

I've got kind of an off-topic question that's only tenuously related to smithing but since people have used antler as handles and such on forged items, I thought I'td toss it out for ideas. I'm building a new outer door for the root cellar--which will include forged pieces. I would like to use part of an antler for the door handle...I have moose, elk and deer sitting around and itching to be used for something anyway. However, this door sits in the blazing sun 90% of the time and I am a little worried about the antler portion degrading quickly. It will be hit with weather too as the door is basically flush with little overhang. Anyone have suggestions on a treatment or coating for antler to help keep it from sun/weather degradation over time? Losing battle? The back up plan is a forged handle but it'd be nice to include antler if it's not a ridiculous path toward inevitable failure. For those who noticed the door in the sun is a bad thing for a root cellar....this is an outer door into a small vestibule where there is a second insulated door. The root cellar is concrete extending into the hillside about 16 feet...built in 1926.

Looking up some specs on commercial air amplifiers, it seems possible for both CFM and static pressure....but will tend to suck a lot of compressed air to get the job done at the usual forge parameters generally needed. Online literature seems to show about a 20 to 1 increase in air volume when running full blast but is not clear regarding operations at lower volumes or pressures from the compressor. In a forge situation, I don't see how they will come anywhere near the efficiency or simplicity of a standard blower A home-made air amplifier is pretty simple. I have several from an auction "box lot" that were designed to get higher volumes from standard blow guns--they are just a thick walled aluminum tube with some angled holes in the direction of air flow that screw on as the tip of standard "off the shelf" blow guns. I find they work a lot better for blowing off dust when doing a shop clean-up as you don't need the high pressure jet for most "blowing" operations. Lots of info on the web to research regarding the subject. Might be interesting to see it tried.

One possible clue--the claw end is very similar to old-school large clinker grabbers. Back in the stone age, there were a LOT of big boilers in buildings, factories, and ships burning big coal...= big clinkers. The railroad version has the same 3-finger grabber layout but is designed to reach through a very small feed door and the claw works sideways. Might be way off the mark but at least it's a path to follow.

Chevron has an oil specifically for quenching that's listed on many blade-working sites although I can't speak directly to it's use (I'm too cheap). http://www.chevronlubricants.com/en_US/products/products/chevron-quenching-oil-70.html Retail seems to be about $ 50 a gallon or $ 150 for 5 gallons. The reason I bring it up is that there are chevron distributors all over so you might be able to have a local supplier bring it in for you with their regular greasy-stuff shipments--obviously after doing more research on whether it's worth it for your application.

The grinder is not the place to cut corners to save what amounts to a little space. Focus on other ways to save that real estate--good storage, clever ways to park other tools, etc. Grinder is one of your PRIMARY tools...save the space on the secondaries. Doing so will reduce the number of swear words uttered in frustration later.

Ayup, good find. Die filer--which do take saw blades. But you blew it: With a cool tool like that around, now you opened a can of worms and have to make some really cool custom die blocks and punches to match

1200! There were 4 assemblies. Sometimes I want to smack engineers and their designs with the peen end of the hammer.

For generic screws/bolts look for "black oxide coated". They're pretty common and can give a decent look when you don't want to go whole hog. Great when something you are doing takes a ton of screws/bolts and you need to come in at a price. I know there are sticklers for authenticity but I'd sure as heck rather have hex socket headed screws used if there was even a .01% chance that I'd ever need to take something apart. Sometimes it pays to join the 21st century. Having just finished a small fabrication that took 300 #10 screws/nuts/washers x 4 pcs I guess I'm a little punchy on the subject. Thought that job would never end.

The questions and comments you don't hear are a big deal in these reality TV shows--attempts at manufacturing drama. On the worst of them, the crew will actually do things like "I heard XXX says you are a hack" to try and get that dramatic anger response. Often, they make contestants repeat comments so they can get better "video" and add the fake drama: "Say that again but a little angrier this time". FIF doesn't seem to have gone that far but it's definitely something to keep in mind when "judging" contestents. What you see is not necessarily what actually "is".

Throwing a monkey-wrench in this whole thing: Recently we've been hosed by mega-corporations who have instituted a computerized "reverse auction" bidding process. You get to see what everyone else has bid which might be a good thing but the process does not take into account anything but the bottom line. Specs are usually spartan as a way to encourage even lower bids. There is no value adjustment on the corporate end for material, responsibility or workmanship quality involved, just who decides to be cheapest. 2 results: Some jackass ALWAYS underbids and then chases ways to cheapen his job after the fact as soon as that "oh-crap. We underbid" moment rolls around. The company conducting the reverse auction has shot themselves in the foot by looking at nothing but bean-counter issues. This is not truly competitive in any way. It's nothing but a race to the bottom and eventual disaster for both parties. As a company, we decided that we don't want to work with companies who's value system is so skewed toward only the bottom line so we made a decision to pass on these. Just tossing that out because it's ta new way to put your company out of business quick. Welcome to the new corporate world, though. Expect more of it when the look-ahead of corporations is about 1 fiscal quarter rather than several years.

One reference mentions that the DIOSGYOR region was an iron producing area so I'm guessing that the name does relate to the production location. The 1943 date puts it in a theoretical bad time for quality--that was when war production meant whipping stuff out as fast as possible. How does the quality seem to you? "Also in Új(diós)győr (Diósgyőr-Vasgyár) stands the steel factory that made Miskolc the most important heavy industrial city of Hungary (and earned it the nickname "Steel City")."

Definitely a lapping plate. Very similar to the cast iron plates still used on flat laps for stones. The plate is "charged" with grit in different ways depending on the application. I'm not convinced that it's designed for sheep shears as those tend to be on a fixed spring and you'd have to hone them by flipping left/right, one blade at a time- this machine doesn't seem to accommodate the needed grind angles well. Image is a modern cast iron lapping plate for glass and metallurgical sample lapping.

Check out Caswell plating http://www.caswellplating.com/electroplating-anodizing.html?gclid=CJ2goOHvjssCFQmqaQodNSYPGQ They sell "do it yourself" kits for all sorts of plating and anodizing but also have a lot of general information about what's involved if you sort through the sales information. About 400 years ago I had a little gold plating kit--results came out pretty well but I was just a kid making gold colored pennies.

Due to some ear surgery when I was a wee tyke, my left ear canal is not conducive to holding a plug well. I can fight and fiddle and shove to embed it deeply but that's a bit of a pain...both literally and figuratively. I could probably have custom plugs molded but wanted to check other options first. The real issue is the need to hear outside sounds while maintaining ear protection. Plugs won't do that for me. I might as well give the noise canceling muffs a shot..worst that can happen is ending up with something I can loan visitors to wear if needed.

A search of the subject didn't come up with much. Since they price of these has come way down, I was wondering if anyone had used them in actual smithing operations. Most are designed for shooters so that would imply they'd be adequate for smithy noise but there are other considerations--like whether they stay in place or drive you crazy in a more active environment than a shooter normally sees. For me, it'd be much better to be able to hear the outside world between the noisy stuff--and not have to take the protection on and off to do that. And yes, they actually have them in ear plugs now but I think that'd be a big fail: I can hardly keep regular plugs from popping out at annoying times. So what's your opinion if you've used them while doing active work like smithing? If you have used them, any brand recommendations or style issues to watch for?

I saw similar in use via video the other day. The shop shoed heavy horses (big horseshoes) and was using a fixed anvil of about 300 lbs. Instead of a machinist vice, it was a shoeing vice attached to the anvil stand but it looked to be really handy for projects that bounced back and forth between smithing and tweaking the shape by hot rasping. Thanks for the example you did---I think I'll incorporate similar on my new stand as I have a "spare" vice and it is one of those "why not?" kind of projects: Not much work and even if you rarely use it, those times you will make the effort worth it.

It does get horribly complicated to find the right english words for such things. In advertising I would probably add a few details to the description and say "Wrought iron parlor bench with polished oak (or whatever wood) seat" and "matching wrought iron shelf". The one with fabric would be similar except instead of "polished oak seat", it would be "upholstered fabric seat". Some of those words are there because it helps with sales to give details in certain words which are more attractive to people. There are probably even better sales words and phrases for the benches but it might just confuse your translations more to try using them. English often sucks as a language. I do business all over the world and quite often have to use the engineering term "Pitch" to refer to the pitch-length of a roller chain: Except in english, pitch can be the tone of a sound, a sales pitch, the sap of a tree, the toss of a baseball, setting up a tent, the angle of a slope, the rocking of a boat, and about 8 other things...all with exactly the same word. Sometimes it gets really hard to explain to someone not fluent in english what you are actually speaking of and translators are ALWAYS wrong on that one. I feel for your translation frustrations, brother.

I like the design---pondering how it would feel in use. Seems like you could easily add a feature on the small blade extension at the end of the handle. All that comes to mind is something dumb like a can opener but maybe with a little thought you can come up with a useful feature that actually enhances it as a knife/chopper. Seems like a good tool for breaking down poultry so maybe a smaller point designed to get into the tight joints at the leg/thigh/wing. On an ulu you have a forward facing point for that kind of thing but it's lacking on this design. just random thoughts...because I like what you did.

Don't forget that each stage of grit requires a much longer time to remove the scratches from the last---it's basically exponential and not linear. It's easy to get rushed or lose track of how much time you have spent removing scratches so you end up shorting the step. The same thing is also common when people are learning lapidary work: It seems that you've spent twice as long grinding this finer grit than the last but it's STILL not enough to remove all those previous scratches. Finer grit takes a long time to remove coarser scratches and if you miss even one scratch, you've got to back up to that grit level and re-start from there. Cleaning like a zealot between grits is also necessary. You'd be surprised how much stray (and basically invisible to the eye) grit can ride on the part you are making. Obviously the grit also gets into everything nearby and can be re-introduced easily. When you can't wipe things down with a slightly oily clean cloth, you usually can with a cloth soaked with rubbing alcohol--it flashes off so doesn't rust things. There are some tricks to help--like doing a final pass per grit in a single direction, changing that angle each time you move up a grit. You can more easily see any previous scratches because they will be at an angle that differs from the current grit.

Gear shift knob assuming he has a manual

Those are all about velocity and not pressure. You might find that the CFM drops to nothing with even a little back pressure. At that price it's probably worth the experiment though. If all else fails, you still have a handy little leaf blower.

I have about a dozen heavy trucker's ratchet straps--the kind you could hold down a house with. Then I've got about another dozen smaller ones (but still rated about a ton) and a few lightweight straps mostly for tarping. I also have chains and load binders but needing those is quite rare. Straps are cheap compared to problems...and are usually a one-time buy that lasts many years if not decades. But no strap is useful if you don't have a solid anchor to attach it to. Fortunately, my flatbed takes care of that for me but if I had a pick-up bed again, I'd install some solid anchor points through the bed to the frame. All the chains and straps in the world won't help if you don't use your brain, though.