Thief_Of_Navarre

The cleavage dragons are fun to watch being made. Tent pegs are easy, quick but a tad boring unless you have a nice design in mind. Sporks are fun too! As has been said strikers are easy, but mind the chit chat with high carbon in the fire

As TP said traditional smiths work in WI, but it's mighty hard to get hold of in some places. I luckily have about 200lbs of it (minus my anvils) that I managed to salvage from an old barn in Berkshire. not really sure how available it is in the americas, probably depends on the state!

For me, a min of 1.5hr is a reasonable amount of time to warrant the fuel. Usually I just carry on tinkering till I get tired, one missed hit and it's time to call it a day!

Thanks for the info guys. Do they all have that taper visible when looking at them head on that Dylan mentioned?

Any of you out there that have any tips for spotting a Soderfors in a crowd without any obvious marks?

The feet appear to be similar to Peter wright  with the little step on them; correct? Anything else that screams Soderfors that I should be looking for?

... Wow

I second kozzy, you can find work surface if you look for it! About an inch and a half before the Hardie looks okay.

Smiths over here make them in that style and sell them as smiths rounding hammers. I have an old 3lb lump hammer I might try to repurpose in that style, I guessing it might be a whole of a lot of hitting without a striker of a power hammer

Those are great. Almost too pretty to use!

That safe is really cool! How on earth did you move it! 

Mandrel was a steal also

I know plenty of smiths here, just not many locally on IFI! Perhaps I should just point them in this direction

Buying it in tins?

That's cool!

I like how you make such a vast place sound so cosy. I feel isolated in the UK with only 70-80miles between IFI members :s

My brain hurts....

How high is the roof? With two open sides I'd say there is enough ventilation if your talking an eight foot roof, any less and I personally would want some way of extracting. That being said I use coke whereas coal has FAR more risk because the volatile substances are still in there. I'd say use a chimney anyway; coal is nasty stuff!

My (second) French anvil is close to 95% rebound. About as good an anvil you can get and the shape in lovely to work on. The feet are starting to go a bit dodgy now though so I try to keep the work light.

Nice Cat Das!

I'd leave it in the ocean and take periodic dives to check on it!

Mine has no original pritchel (alas a poor attempt to retrofit one) and no cutting step but the basic shape is the same (that speedboat hull under the horn that I like so much).

Nice find, you'll be hard pressed to find any other marks on something that old. I think mine is a C&A from a bit earlier and I found the C and part of the weight stamp, nothing else

Gifting a knife, or a wallet is seen as bad luck over here in sunny england; the token silver coin makes it a transaction and presumably circumvents any erroneous luck

If you can get just as good a weld i'd go with the spacer. Just to keep as much of the original beast as possible!

Looks a bit like a Thomas hill I've seen at a tool auction. Anvil and file maker from sheffield

*rolls eyes and sighs*

It's the T in the centre of the triangle that makes the A. I was think your bang on the money there scrambler!