Wesley Chambers

I can truly relate, when starting new students at the horseshoeing school we make them all sharpen there knives with hand files to start because the wheels can be so dangerous, but there is always someone that wants to be lazy and use the buffer, you know what happened from across the shop when you hear that BAM!@ as the knife bounces from the table and you can only hope they didnt catch it with there body.. glad to hear ya dodge the Ti bullet Monster~

I kinda hope so, it was part of the original sale but we never talked about it, I was trying to avoid scolding them for putting a stake tool in the hardy lol Ill post as soon as I know more!

heheh I remember my first, have fun man! congrats~

Other pics from the old add they ran, not much more help to identify but it looks like the base is part of the anvil

Hah! me too, hope to go pick her up this coming weekend so pics by next Sunday at the latest ;)

So I found this anvil sometime back and was very lucky that the owner was willing to sell and not just that but hold it till I could afford the purchase, it was used in a railroad roundhouse for years, I hope to learn more about it from the owners father who used to work on it at the railroad. If anyone has any idea what it could be please let me know, once I get her paid for and home Ill clean her up and take new pics, we dont even know how much it weighs, just something over 400 lb by owners best guess. My Soderfores is only 27" heel to tip of horn and is 191 lb Any thoughts are much appreciated~

lol ya know I did a forum search for brass and must have only been searching the blacksmithing sub-forum I forget sometimes we have other sections! thanks guys~

So I picked up a 1 inch dia. rod 22 inch in length and wanted to do more than just cut it into slugs for knife fittings. I can find general working heat ranges on google but I would rather get some info from someone here that forge works brass personally. With aluminum I can use the "feel" of the metal against the anvil to know when to forge but I've never worked with brass in the fire.. any tips? Also I know with Al I can heat once and work a long time and even quenching seems to anneal it, guess Im just looking for basic brass forging advice~ Thanks all~

This can also be a side effect of "wet forging" or "water forging" where the face of the anvil and the hammer face are coated with water before each session of forging, commonly used to remove slag from the work. It might be overstating it just a bit but its a hydrothermal explosion of water converting instantly to steam and can give you a large bang or pop I also used a bit of this for theatrical forging at renaissance faire's to bring in a crowd of people heheh

My roommate was doing some demo on an old house in south Indiana and found some old metal I might want to play with, but Im more interested in what it used to be, any ideas?

I would vote brass over copper, its just a bit more stout and still wont ding up your work or tools, why brass hammers are used for not denting up a nice steel surface. I cannot see a reason why copper would not work other than I wouldn't want it leeching all my heat away like a giant anvil radiator :P

Have not noticed any lines on my welded shoes but anyway, if I'm in the gas and need the help this is where I turn~ But would rather just crank the heat in the coke!

Might not be your everyday Valentines heart, but tastes differ this was a prototype "Twisted-Heart" made from 1"x3/8" tapered/split and twisted, another attempt or two and get it more symmetrical

This is our "middle" shop, classes in weeks 9-16, Myself at one of our two instructor stations in that shop

I thought there might be a whiteboard option or maybe images to link too, never seen the session~ Edit: So, I didnt know it would only be text and linked pics guess we dont need video, Thanks :)

I understand there might be bandwidth issues but are there any options of IFI hosting the videos? I have not looked around much for a streaming host other than youtube but I could keep an eye out if people have a problem with downloading the file directly

Sounds good Ill be there next Tuesday! Capture test http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QGIEW1MB Not sure about file hosting yet, I'm recording at 24fps so about 6meg/min so.. 360 meg for a 1 hour session, I can upload them to megaupload like I did this file, and also post a bittorrent if people like, I could drop the FPS to lower size but I want good enough quality to read the txt of the chat session. This look ok?

I didnt even know you guys did this!, but sadly lost was on last night and my fiancee wasnt about to let us miss it lol. Now that I know you guys do this on Tuesdays, I could do a screen cap video of the sessions and post them for those who missed out.. if anyone would be interested.

Caulks are a traction device for horseshoes, there are many different forms that suit different needs: These are copper brazed diamond ( for the shape ) "Jar" caulks used to aid with traction, and speed up the heel strike phase of stride in a horse but not hamper the slide phase. Theses are standard heel caulks on a mule shoe, more bulk to add grip on anything from cobblestone to dirt for a pulling team of mules. Unlike the "jar" caulks these are built into the shoe rather than brazed on after the shoe is built.

Thanks for the tips, Im still getting my feet wet with pinnacle studio so I have a ways to go with my editing and transitions. I like the ground up info from your vid, I hope to do a lot in that area for our students that have no smithing background.

Got caught in mid Captain Morgan pose while I was a student at KHS

I made a short video with the director of KHS (Kentucky Horseshoeing School) as part of what I hope to be a series of forging videos. The vids made for the KHS will focus mostly on horseshoes and the design and modification of, as well as shoeing and trimming. I hope to do other vids with myself and other instructors of the school that might show basic to advanced forging and welding techniques, tool building, tempering and anvil repair. Till the videos section is up and running I used youtube, the video I uploaded is around 400mb and 9min long. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uonkj0U28ZI Straightening a Horseshoe filmed at the new Kentucky Horseshoeing School in Richmond Ky. I didn't go to school to be a filmmaker but I hope the videos improve over time, please let me know what you think, and anything thoughts on what could make these videos better, as well as any requests you might have for future videos, Thanks! Wesley Edit: The video is still being processed by youtube and may need some time to get cleaned up, also sorry for the background noise, its the forge blower, if we can afford some wireless mic's we should have that problem fixed.

Brian- Thanks! I don't have enough clients at the moment to call for keg shoes lol I also find it much easier to build shoe modifications from scratch compared to modding a keg shoe, just keep some bar stock handy and I'm good to go! I have some photos of my shoes from my 24 week board but I'm running into errors with my gallery options~

I made a few for myself and others while in school, sadly I forgot to get pics of them all but these are some that I use, mostly the skull as they dubbed me Pirate at horseshoeing school on account of my bandanna obsession heheh though most people call it a pacman ghost lol anyway mostly made with very small punches and some dremel work on S-7 steel, I mark every handmade shoe I make thats worth using 16 week handmade shoe board modifications brass brushed with touchmark

Ahh but ya see there is the problem, Im a blacksmith first that is also a farrier, the horses put the food on the table and pay for my smithing and while cams can make things very quickly, I was a student at the Kentucky Horseshoeing School and we had to do 24 weeks not being allowed to use a cam or stall jack, just horn and heat heheh that and I just cant seem to part with my old swede, was my first anvil ya know? though Ill be getting a smaller JHM I think for my new rig whenever I find a new truck that is~ thanks for the info though :)