Hello everyone, I am very much a noob even though my username indicates I am a blacksmith. When having a first name like Joe it tends to go with everything. Like Joe the Plumber etc. Anyway, I inherited a bunch of blacksmith tools from my dads brother who got them from his great uncle. I have the cast iron fire pot, champion 400 blower, anvil, and I think the original log stand for the anvil, post vise, and some hammer heads, punches, rivot headers, and 3 different tongs. I would guess they are 100 - 120 years old. I have had these items in my basement for about 15 years. My father in-law has heard me talk about this stuff for years and say someday I need to set up a shop. One day he says I'm sick of you telling me about all those tools it's time to start using them. Let's take a class. So that is what we did. We took a 2-day course about the basics. Now I am hooked! I absolutely loved it and is now my passion. I have bought books and have been reading on this forum and learning all kinds of great stuff. In order for me to start I needed to build a table for my cast iron fire pot. I bought some steel and have been fabricating a table in the evenings for the past week or so. Luckily I have a mig welder and can weld and have grinders, chop saw, and saws all so I am putting them to good use (my other passion is jeeps and building and modifying them so I have collected tools over the years). I have the frame built and the top plate welded to the frame with a hole cut out to fit the fire pot. I plan to line the plate with fire brick and the lip of the fire pot will sit on the fire brick. I have some plate to weld to the frame to box in the fire brick and make a lip to hold the coal. I plan to build a side draft flue for it but for know I will be using outdoors so that will be a future mod. I built the table on wheels so I can easily move it since this thing is a heavy beast. I should be up and running in a few weeks. Having a hard time finding some fire brick at the moment. Tractor supply carries it but my local store doesn't have any in stock at the moment. Thanks for listening to my story and I look forward to learning from all of you. Joe
