L0RDR4G3

1 hour ago, the iron dwarf said:

keep looking and you will find one, use what you have got for now, look out for a large chunk of steel, even a big sledge hammer head.

there is a vid of smiths in nepal making blades for kukris using a sledge hammer head between their feet as they sit on the floor

yeah. its not the tool that makes the blade but wielder of the hammer.

even in a pinch the concrete pillar i made to stand the anvil on is solid and steady.

evrethings on the back burner again anyway as i have added more to my workload lol

6 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Swap it out one dark night and tell him it shrunk in the rain?  Offer to trade him a hand forged sundial for it? Or a garden bench?

lol tried everything to get it from him. 

he got it for nothin in a house clearance but hes still not willing to give it up.

theres also a full length or railway track about 5 minutes walk from me between the fence for the railway and the fence for the park. its length they took off and replaced and just left layin there.

tried talkin my buddy into beingin his mobile crane from london and helpin me get it lol

3 minutes ago, the iron dwarf said:

yes it has to be recent

drill a tiny hole in the underside of it, cast iron bbonsswarf will be powder of small flakes, steel will be longer ribbons.

cannon recently got done for wrongly labeling stuff, fined £25,000 for selling things with a ce mark they should not have and I think stock was destroyed too.

hit a corner or the face with the hammer at an angle

our main shop anvil is in good condition but dates from 1730 ish and it gets regular heavy use and abuse, that thing would not last us a week but it is your money to spend as you like ( and I know how the scots like to spend it

welp im screwed either way then lol.

bought it way back when i started gettin stuff together to set up. so we're talkin maybe as far back as november last year. 

its a pain in the ass and just need to be chalked up to experience. 

also kills me that my neighbour 2 doors down has a great big bugger just sitting in his garden as an ornament lol.

3 minutes ago, the iron dwarf said:

if you bought it on a certain auction site and it was described as steel start a dispute for SNAD

item significantly not as described

you will get your money back and the seller will have to pay to get it sent back to them

does it matter how long ago it was purchased?

and how would you go about proving it isnt steel. 

most descriptions i can find for these do state steel or cast steel.

also when hammering on it i havent had any issues with it. no denting or anything. so whats wrong with it? 

On 26/07/2017 at 6:11 PM, JHCC said:

 Good point. 

 Another advantage of a larger bearing is that if it leaves a dent, the face of the anvil is probably too soft.

Some image searching online shows me an identical anvil made by "Neilsen", but I haven't found anything to reliably indicate its material or quality.

I believe it is the Nielsen one, I bought it under the recommendation of Paul MacDonald of the Macdonald Armouries in Edinburgh


been a busy week so haven't been on the computer much (or home for that matter)

been lookin for a good sized ball bearing for a while to make a large monkey knuckle. biggest I have laying around are 20mm

lol yeah didnt think of that. need to check first. lol

anyways signing off for now need to sleep for work

11 minutes ago, JHCC said:

No.

Yes, that's right. The easiest way to do this is to hold the ball bearing at the 10" mark, spot the measurement of its bounce, and multiply by ten. So, a 5" bounce = 50% rebound, a 7" bounce = 70% rebound, an 8½" bounce = 85% rebound, etc.

Okay kool will test this once i find a ball bearing. I think my son may still have some laying around his room somewhere from his old Magtastix  sets .  (the magnetic stick and ball building set things, i think thats what it was called) 

And i believe the stamp on it says Stilsen? can be certain at the moment as its locked in the shed 

17 minutes ago, JHCC said:

The standard test for rebound is to drop a ball bearing from a known height and measure how far back up it bounces. To quote @Frosty, "Use a ruler if you're not good at eyeball guesstimating that sort of thing. The higher the % rebound the better, below 65% is pretty poor. 90% and up is outstanding. In between is decent to good." 

ahh okay. so i need a ball bearing. does the size of the bearing have any effect on the result? and 65% original drop height?

4 minutes ago, JHCC said:

I burn anthracite in a JABOD with a vacuum cleaner blower myself, and a single 3/4" tuyere gives me all the fire I need and more. Good that you have a way to control the blast, although some vacuum cleaner motors require airflow through them to keep cool and you may find it burning out. Some way to alter the airflow between the blower and the forge is a good option; check out the pallet wood gate valve I made a little while back.

I had concidered the possibility of it burning out but ive got a few laying around so wasent too worried but i will check that out. 

4 minutes ago, the iron dwarf said:

with mesh to keep the coals off the tue it wont matter about your shutter, the whole area will be the fire just with less heat as the air can go anywhere under the mesh whilst the mesh keeps the hot coals up, when it collapses it will be more controllable till your pipe melts.

so you need a fire nearly the size of that barrel?

if you turn it up to get enough heat it will use bags of fuel per hour?

no i dont require the full barrel as fire.
when its completed  from top down itll look something like this.

==============================

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

==============================

where B equals Bar, R equals Firebricks , and = is the barrel edge, the firebricks will be stacked just short of level with the top rim, so in this Gulley there will be seporations almost like its broken into sections lengthways.

so that the fire (and air) can be contained to whatever size is required. 

12 minutes ago, Daswulf said:

Ah ok. You need a good stronger and constant air blast for anthracite coal. One issue you may be having is not enough air supply to where you need it. Do you block off the other holes when only using one section? 

yeah it has been modified since that photo, since then has a shutter system to block them off when not in use and the blower is a vacuum cleaner motor that i fabricated a casing for so it sucks in the same end it always has but all the air is directed into a hose attached to the spray bar now. 
the air flow can then bee reduced by covering the intake to diffrent degrees if required

9 minutes ago, JHCC said:

Good. How's the rebound?

when striking it directly it has enough to make adjustments to my grip comfortably. not done alot of forging on it as stated but it should be good. 
 

9 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Welcome; I've made caltrops and arrowheads before, which is interesting as to "use them" you throw them away...medieval disposable culture?

You may want to look up my descriptions of the forge I started with around 1981, I put a ramrod in the tuyere pipe to control the length of fire to match what I needed for the current project.

lol yeah i guess you could say they were disposable then, but it is mainly how when i was younger you had alot more electronic repair stores now if something breaks very few people concider how it can be fixed they just dispose and purchase.
like TV's where only a few capacitors were blown and literally the parts cost £3 quid at most but people would rather dump stuff and spend £300
 

I concidered fitting in some disks on steel rods that could be turned in the pipe as the points between the holes so you could block off the air getting to them from middle out but decided i wanted to be able to use the ends if i wasent using it all rather tha

6 minutes ago, JHCC said:

Okay, now let's talk about that ASO. Cast iron, I assume? Strongly recommend that you get a chunk of decent steel instead. It doesn't have to look like an anvil: Japanese swords were made on a basic steel block, and lots of folks have had good luck with a chunk of railroad rail or a truck axle stood on end. Even a big sledgehammer head set in concrete would be okay.

Nope it is in fact Steel

thanks for the welcome Daswulf, 

no the fuel Is a smokeless coal. i.e anthracitic coal with less than 2% sulphur content.
 

yeah i seen those builds previously. 
but as i said its quite versatile and I don't need to use the whole length all the time. 
but if needed i do have the space to expand the fire.
say for a long blade needing hardened. 

If i run into anymore problems once I've got my Refractory into it you'll be first point of call then.

I'm in Coatbridge BTW  where are you?

nothing.... yet 
but it's there if the need arises. 
I've kept all the fire to one end and above only the single vent so far.

excellent, depending on how far between Glasgow and Edinburgh he is, we may well be practically neighbours.

They aren't drilled yet in those photo's so your eyesight isn't that bad. 
there's 4 either side of the T junction around 12mm wide. evenly spaced. gets plenty of airflow and that was without the blower i built and just a little 1200W hairdryer.
next phase to get heat is to get some fire bricks and build a channel down the side and also put some refractory cement around the pipe.
I've got a grating that sits about and inch and a half above the airflow pipe that keeps the heat off it. 
it barely heats it at all when its going, and thats was with the old grating that actually melted and brought the fire onto it.
I'm using smokeless coal ovoids branded as Superheat (claims to burn up to 1400°C)
but don't qoute me on that.

Also Still need to build a clamp for keeping the anvil in place while working as the vibrations cause it to shift.

Hello fellow Metallurgists, Bladesmiths, Blacksmiths, Farriers, Artisans, Armourers, Hammer wielders and those who are Generally Eccentric.

I being of unsound body and Mind am a Long haired, bearded Scruffy Scotsman who has decided a couple of years ago to set up my own home forge and pound some steel

Yeah so I have been wasting away in a call centre job for the last 2 years and 9 (going on 10) months.

I was getting so annoyed at the way the populace in general has evolved into such a disposable throw away culture.

Plus my job brings me no joy whatsoever, I was always really good with my hands and have always felt this burning urge to create. 

the urge was un-specific in what to create just this need to create and make things (everything anything as long as it was made by my hand)

I thought long and hard about things I could do, and as I had some experience with working steel, I settled on Bladesmithing ( I mean who wouldn't want a hand forged Sword or battleaxe made by a scotsman)

So I set about gathering materials (at as little cost as possible) and learning and trying to get time to put it all together. 

(it has been a long...... slow......... annoying....... road so far having one thing after another happen and money having to be used else where and time to do my own thing being few and far between due to having a full time job that and other health stuff)

Currently I have a forge ( made from a 55 Galon Oil barrel Split length ways) a 50Kg anvil (bought from a mechanics supply store on ebay) A nice set of hand forged tongs (not by my hand :-( ) a few Hammers and  a bunch of scrap steel but have hit another wall that can only be solved with money and a bit more time. 

(2 months ago after managing to get a week of holidays from work and the weather not ruining 2 days of that week i managed to get the forge fired, but alas my forge requires some refractory materials to reach welding temperature)

So yeah that is where I'm at 

I have been reading the forums for a while, mostly directed here via some google searches so I decided to join.

So yeah a big how do ya do to all :-)

A few random photos attached.
 

Yeah i was thinken if nothing else they could be handle pins or even some sort of wrap like a seporater between leather strap in a spiral.

lol i love that Stash
 

Cheers guys some good advice

okay so first post but avid reader.

today i receved delivery of 2 new mattresses for my son's bed and ours. 

concidering how to dispose of the old ones i realised the springs in said mattress may actually be steel.

a quick google and most answers state it is recycled steel of unknown origins

anyone have any experience with the type of steel used 

is it worth turning into billets for makin hardy tools, or even possibly a few blades.