Judson Yaggy

That tong chart is from over 100 years ago when tongs were being made from wrought iron. Largely irrelevant for modern makers who are using A 36 or 1045 or 4140... Even our modern basic grade of steel (A 36) is far stronger than wrought, so functional tongs can be made from much thinner cross sections.

Nice cone. Sometimes they are marked with lettering down the inside of the tong groove. If I recall, some of the Greenfield, MA made ones were that way. If no makings (like yours) best bet is searches of the advertisements from old trade journals to look for matches.

How is the rebound? Very interesting. Base looks like late 19th to mid 20th c American maker anvil. But the big step from face to horn and thick heel indicates aftermarket modification, but that modification is old and worn to the degree that the face shows sway. The seam looks like a forge weld rather than an electric weld. My vote is for an antique factory repair where they forge welded on a new face plate. Period literature says some anvil makers offered repair services. Can you show us more pics of the face and weld seam?

Look into making a tire hammer (google Clay Spencer Tire Hammer) rather than putting similar effort into a less efficient design. There are hundreds if not thousands of tire hammers out there now, and are a proven design that you can purchase complete plans for. Many ABANA affiliates even have group builds that you can buy into. Probably a little more expensive than a thing made from wood, but far more economical in the long run.

It makes no difference, assuming of course that the anvil mass is caped with appropriately hardened alloy dies. So save your money, hot rolled 1018/A36 is fine. Do try and get above the 10:1 tup/anvil ratio though!

Of course and indeed. But to the original question of this thread, Oxy/fuel is not a great heat source for forging because the temperature of the flame can transfer energy into the surface of the steel faster than the steel's thermal transference can convey that heat to the center of the work piece.

Met up with the other members of the Farm/Practical Blacksmithing demo team for the ABANA 2020 conference in Saratoga, NY in June. Google it. We've been meeting up in our shops around New England pretty much every month to work out our demo. This time we were at Lucien Avery's shop in Hardwick, VT. Also present were myself, Joel Tripp, Dereck Glasser, and Med Chandler. Each of us have a specific focus to our blacksmithing, and will lead the others in our group thru projects during the various demo times during the conference. We mostly worked on Lucien's part today namely carving tools, but also covered a little of Dereck's demo of German style scroll and leaf work. IMG_4314.mov IMG_4313.mov

It does matter to some extent. Oxy fuel heat sources can heat a piece so quickly that the outer "skin" can reach forging temps or even burn before the core is at working temperature. This is especially true with bigger pieces. Read up on soak times used in industry.

Ha! -14 deg F here this morning. That's below 0. Slack tub is thawed thou because it's between the woodstock and the forge!

I used to use Fuchs punch lube (an industrial punch and die lube used in the big forge shops). Works far far better than any of the home-brews mentioned above. Only issue is it makes your tools rust! Because of the rust issue, a New England Blacksmiths friend of mine, Eric Johnson of Maine, developed a similar product but included a rust inhibitor in his product. Eric is googleabel and is on Instagram if anyone wants to know more.

If you are right handed, hold the die grinder in your left hand while working. This throws the chips generally away from you rather than into your face!

There's enough there that you could pass a bunch on to beginners, AND sell some of the more specialized items on ebay or CL and make your money back for your shop electrification budget. Best of both worlds. Just the power hammers alone could bring you $5-6 thousand USD unrestored, plug and play almost twice that.

Remember New Englanders and adjacent friends, memberships rollover Jan. 1st. You can renew online here http://www.newenglandblacksmiths.org/neb-membership/ Or save $1 by printing out the paper form and mailing it in. If you are a returning member you should receive a reminder email shortly. On a related note, we usually have 2 meets a year, spring and fall. This year (2020) we are skipping the spring meet as we are basically running the ABANA national conference in Saratoga, NY and that's plenty to take on in the spring. If you are interested in attending and or volunteering at the ABANA conference check out the fall newsletter, or google it.

I believe most Sencos have oil lube. Which is good. But the 1.75 hp claim is a lie worthy of Craftsman. More like half a horse real hp, 3/4 at best. Read the amperage required and you can do the math yourself.

Hard to turn the bar around and run it thru the hammer the other way with a bar welded to the end. Probably works fine for knife makers thou.

No one makes parts for that machine anymore. Take the originals or very good drawings to a machine shop and have some made.

Hook it to your leg. Swinging that by hand will wreck your arm faster than learning to hammer properly.

The corner behind my big drill press had tuned into a black hole of clutter. So I built some new racks, both vertical and horizontal, and tuned it into an organized black hole.

The video doesn't work. Put it on youtube and post a link here.

Neither of those hammers is best in class, but any hammer is better than no hammer. Both have parts still available. Even if the weights were equal, for tooling work the Blu would be superior as it can strike anywhere in the stroke on the fly with no or minimal set up time. The LG is limited by a much smaller stroke and requires a wrench and crowbar or blocks to adjust the pitman (and thus the stroke). Plus the extra weight of the Blu will be advantageous for driving tools into relatively bigger hunks of higher carbon steel. I own 3 hammers, 2 mechanicals and a utility air hammer. I have run every major make of antique mechanical, love the look, sound and feel of a well tuned mechanical, but when I reach for tooling I always go the the utility air hammer because of the flexibility.

Indeed, but I would be remiss if I failed to mention both the correct method (look it up people) AND the fact that having a better tool will help produce better work with less effort.

I would grind and weld that anvil. Using the proper methods. My position clearly goes against the popular opinion here, but as one of the rare professional smiths who still post on IFI I would like to point out that efficient forging on every edge and face is the bread and butter of shaping a work piece. Where on that anvil can you make a crisp half-faced blow? With the majority of the mass under your hammer? Those type of blows are why it's worn out. Half-face and other edge adjacent work chipped and spalled it because the old timers knew that's how you make complicated shapes quickly, and when the anvil gets knackered fix it or buy a new one. A hardy block with various radii sounds good, but on a London pattern there is no mass under the hardy hole and the loose connection between tooling and anvil sucks energy out of your strike. If your anvil moves in any way when you hit it, you have lost energy. It's probably just fine for making a knife. If you are doing 15 minuets of forging on the flat, then 2 hours of grinding, go for it. But it seems like a car with a flat tire to me. It will still work, sort of, but it could easily be a lot better.

The exact shape of the thread does not have to match top to bottom, but the travel per revolution does.

After some individual purchases and experimentation, the New England Blacksmiths purchased 8 of the Acciaio 30kg (66 pound) anvils for our traveling teaching equipment. What we received is a medium quality cast steel anvil. Exactly what we were expecting for the price point, and totally adequate for a teaching /beginner anvil. Hard enough to survive being hit with hammers with some funkiness around the hardy and pritchel holes. YMMV

340# Hay Budden round here would be $1500 easy if it passed the tests. Your milage may vary.