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I Forge Iron

Desmond Redmon

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Everything posted by Desmond Redmon

  1. Sounds to me like your setting yourself up for both a positive experience with selling a lot of goods, and a realistic appraisal of how much you can earn. The only bit of advice I would give is keep the same records for all of the craft shows because part of your first show will be the "first time I have seen this" factor then if you keep it up you will develop people who buy something each time they see you at a specific show. If you are good you will both get requests for direct orders and people who make a point of stopping at a show to see what you have.
  2. Thank you, I hadn't thought about the art studio. We'll have to see how obliging they are willing to be lol...
  3. So as I set out getting farm insurance on the 20 acres plus buildings and house, I find myself wanting not to haul a 400# forge in and out of the shop every time I want to forge. So does anyone have experience with getting structural insurance for your forge building?
  4. Haha, yah that seems to be where this has been going... I find myself designing tools that would make projects easier and then in the middle of making the tool realise I spent the rest of my free time on the forge LOL.
  5. I got into smithing because it is getting hard to find some woodworking tools that aren't way over priced. And it is good to spend time sweating out problems.
  6. That sucks I was hoping to see how it went, but at least you got some new toys.
  7. I am struggling to finish out woodworking tools using only bench grinders and angle grinders and a handheld belt sander. I have the swage block to form out some of the radii I want but end up finishing the concave surfaces with a dremel then polishing the convex surfaces with strips of sandpaper. I'm not bad with the angle grinder either with grinding or sanding disks but they just are not efficient ways to produce a consistent and quality surface. So I am looking to add a finishing machine to the shop. I can very much see the utility of a belt grinder in knife making nut I am not sure how well they work on complex shapes. Leaving me unsure if it would be better to build one or if there is a better tool out there for finish shaping woodworking tools (and finishing other smithing products). I have a mostly finished out plan for a 3 horse variable speed belt grinder I can afford to build but I wanted to ask if anyone has any better machines to finish out things like gouges, chisels, froes, or draw knives? I am also not sure if a belt grinder can produce small radii for smaller gouges for carving. I'm not as worried about finishing the surfaces on most of the things I forge out but since woodworking tools are where my primary interest lies I am trying to develop the forge in that direction. (Yes by the way my next up project in the works is a multistage heat treating oven...) So I guess my question is if I should focus on a heavy belt grinder, a smaller belt grinder and a second machine, or if anyone has a better alternative for complex shape finishing... Thanks in advance for the advice.
  8. That is exactly why Arkie's post made me reread the safety handbooks... I don't need anymore days like that...
  9. Your comment made me go back to the safety training book my son received in his tech high school. Which did not list the facets of passive welding lenses only auto darkening (Hobart doesn't manufacture their own apprently). Which lead me round about to Millerwelds.com and a specific quote "A passive lens helmet uses UV- and IR-coated dark-tinted glass with a fixed shade value, usually #10. The passive helmet is worn in the up position while the electrode, gun or torch is positioned. Then with a quick nod or snap of the neck, the operator flips the helmet into position immediately before striking an arc." When I was practicing forge welding mild steel, I made 100 2.5" rings (from 3" rings left over from practicing forming on the horn), the first day I did about 20 rings at welding temp before my eyes gave out and I could only see a spot on my point of focus, since I hadn't figured out to glance at the metal and just watched it heat through a hole in the coal... Next morning I woke up with gummy eyes and felt like I had sand in my eyes. After that I tried my auto darkening welding helmet but the forge didn't produce enough to darken the helmet (minimum shade 9) and I tried a shade 5 O/A cutting lens and it was a bit dark but left my eyes intact the next day. All in all for a single weld I'm not bothering, for a bunch of welds I'll wear a set of goggles but I think shade 3 or 4 would be better than 5's. Though I know there are several different types out there and after reading today I see there are green lenses for IR, the black and gold generally available at welding supplies are both UV and IR protected according to OHSA and manufacturers.
  10. Agreed, when not able to find a dark corner most old portable forges I have seen had optional shield that would enable the smith to dim the area around the actual forge itself. Though the way to tell if you are susceptible to UV etc is to visit a welding shop a buy a low number cutting lense for people using oxy-acetylene torches. They usually carry shades down to a #3 which should be a good one to try for just a couple of bucks.
  11. .... banning borax sounds surprisingly like:http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html to me... Edit wrong link...
  12. Six pounds is a bit much for my arm for more than a few one handed strikes at a time, but definitely moved metal... It could well be a rock splitting hammer since our fields have grown boulders for a good 160 years.
  13. I was rummaging for steel a while back and found this in the corner of a machine shed on the family farm with a broken handle and did a quick belt sand on it. Since one of my numerous questions was about large diameter stock I had to find the biggest hammer head I had on hand to try out a suggestion today so I shoved a new handle in it. The handle is an engineering handle from Rural King and had to be trimmed a bit to fit into the existing hole. It came out with a distinct angle and the had mass (Or at least the stamp) is around 6#. Anyone have an idea what it was for originally?
  14. I wonder if a tube steel solution would work? Most people have some steel tubing lying about if you notched out a place in the middle then placed that just off to the side of your burner perhaps you could heat your target area while providing a minimal heat shielding to the rest of the piece? Not having a gas forge I cannot even try it but on my coal forge to focus a special heat to push up a handle stop on a chisel I used two pieces of mild plate to block the heat and oxygen from the surrounding coal to either side and focused the heat a bit. In my case it was a partial success since the heat wasn't as confined once the plates were heated for an extended time. Just not sure how effective it would be on a forge reliant on forced air for heat.
  15. Check, sitting on a 4x4x1/2 to cool it burned the polyurethane off the top of the workbench when I let it cool while I ate... I am making a 3# or so hammer for driving nails into 80 year old oak chicken house framing (somehow a standard claw hammer just doesn't have the oomph.) I cheated and drilled a 1/2" hole to start drifting the hole out to an engineering hammer drift I made up from 1x1 O1 I had on hand (I didn't have any S7 laying about). And Anvil's comment: Both of those sound like fine advice I will give them a try Thursday when my striker goes to preschool :-) I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I missed the volume aspect since I was thinking of the issue as being effectively 1/2 of the actual cross section (guess that is what comes from programing machines in radius rather than diameter). Thank each of you for the insights and advice! As so often happens however I am left with many more questions now that I Last and certainly not least, Cr VI can be produced in any oxygen rich environment at greater than 400C as far as I have been able to find. While in theory I suppose I could take the risk and try to heat the Cr plate off in the oxygen depleted zone in this case I turned the Cr plate off by .03" to expose the 1045 core on an old metal lathe a friend has (two of the ten shafts were case hardened and just got sent back to the scrap yard). Worked pretty well to cut the blanks at 4" and just run a surface cut right under the plating since the plating notched the HSS cutting point. My next shirt from Glenn will be the In Rust We Trust!
  16. How does one know how long to soak a piece of steel at a given temperature to heat the core to temp and allow the metal to move? I was working a stout piece of 1045 (John Deere hydraulic cylinder piston rod I found at scrap yard) that was about 2 inch diameter, and found it far harder than forging 1/2" spring steel. As I sat and pondered how limited the metal movement was I have come to think that I only heated the outside of the cylinder to forging temp, but the core might have been below forge temp. Or am I on the wrong track?
  17. I keep a bag of charcoal sitting at the normally bituminous coal forge, so I can switch them out and use it to put a crusty searing on meats to be served super rare, since the forge generates a whole lot higher temp. Yes some members of my family order their steak as 10 seconds on either side...
  18. I am with Jasent, having purchased a bit of steel from a couple of retailers (nowhere near as experienced as my here) buying known tool steels round is the way to go. I assume the same is true for most cutlery steels. With tool makers it is common sense, since you are paying for the convenience of the supplier pre-forming the steel for you from it's industrial and commercial use to the small market state.
  19. Tempil has a good preheat chart... I used it for a couple of projects and it worked well enough for what I could manage to hold temps at... http://www.tempil.com/assets/1/31/welding_preheat_chart.pdf
  20. By the handle did you mean the parallel shaft that you turn to produce fan movement? Expect somewhere around 32x more force to be applied to the handle end than to the fan end of the assembly. I obtained my nearly exact copy because the person offering it didn't think it would ever work again and after clearing it out and redoing the assembly it works beautifully. Without the main handle I still cannot turn the fan end without a serious attempt.
  21. More than a bit late but can I hire your wife to needle me on my mess? LOL Like most of us I have so many piles of scrap laying about I can never seem to find what I need, though I know it is here... She's a keeper mate!
  22. Over the years many anvils suffer chipped edges, I have seen a few with broken horns. Typically though what I see is surface damage from hitting cold metal on the anvil (including hammers) but other than chips along edges or someone really overdoing it on the top of the horn I don't shattering tools as a serious problem with cast steel or forged anvils. On cast iron anvils (cheap and found in many hardware stores) might be a different story but I have not played with one to know yet. Theoretically if someone had really overheated the hammer head, and quenched it, it could have enough built up stress, cracks, and poor structure that it could be super brittle I think? Potentially anyhow but that would be a one time learning curve I would think. P.S. If you are still hitting your anvil with the hammer, what worked for me was starting with my smallest hammer making nails (I wasn't really looking for any given size just practicing tapers and hammer control) I made them with a 10oz tacking hammer, then moved up to a 1lb ball pein, and so, not changing sizes until I made 100 nails without hitting my practice anvil (a chunk of mild steel 2x4x6 I found in the scrap yard). I had already spent a weekend taking someone else's dings out of my anvil and after adding a couple decided I didn't really want to spend an hour removing the ridges I generated every few days. It was a seriously boring and kind of grueling process but an effective method of giving me at least rudimentary hammer control.
  23. Welcome aboard JW513! Mind putting a general location in your profile when you have time? A wise man once told me the difference between an apprentice carpenter and a master carpenter is the master knows how to fix all of his mistakes and the apprentice has yet to learn that lesson. Besides machines can produce perfection time after time but it takes human hands to produce a piece that is unique and special enough to talk about time after time. And that is not at all half bad to look at, I like the slow fast slow twist.
  24. A couple of broken corners but well enough intact, going to clean it up a bit this morning and have some fun with it this afternoon. Have not seen any makers info on it but by heft it is somewhere around 130-140 lb slightly lighter than my anvil at 142 and adds quite a few new options for shapes.
  25. Just as an observation, GMAW and GTAW welding some metals requires gasses like argon, because at welding temps in an oxy rich environment they ignite. As all the above state in their curmudgeonly way while welding with modern aids seems to take a note from the history of blacksmithing they really are separate beasts. I think the best way I can come up with to explain it is to have you take four blocks of butter in the freezer overnight to simulate the steel. Now heat up a jeweler's' flat head screwdriver. now take two of the frozen blocks of butter out of the freezer and swirl the hot screwdriver along the edge penetrating no more than 1/8" (simulating the maximum depth of weld without chamfering or gouging) and put those blocks back in the freezer before they warm too much. Then take the other two blocks throw them on a hot skillet for a few seconds lift them out and put the two molten faces together, press a bit and put them back in the freezer. After an hour pull them out and break them apart and see which held better. Now the real fun questions of processes comes in. Does that make forge welds the most efficient? No because there are far more certified arc welders than people capable of forge welding and forge welding generally uses heavier stock than modern industries use. Thus the comments above observing the apples and oranges of your original question.
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