evfreek

Not 1%. It looks more like about 50 points of carbon. Try a railroad clip and an old Nicholson file to zero in on the range.

Don't grab tapers. Find a way to work around it. Think about for a minute. What is happening when you try to grab the taper. It is trying to squirt out of the tong jaws. There are a few ways of dealing with this problem when making S-hooks. 1. Make the hook first, then grab the hook with a different type of tongs. The plane of the hook will resist rotation. 2. Use bolt tongs and let the hook poke out of the open part behind the bits like it shows on the gstongs www page. If you must grab a taper, leave a nubbin, and forge or grind it out later. Do not do a "death grip" on the tongs. The resulting overuse injury can be worse than a burn or an abrasion to an ungloved hand.

Hi Gerald. I think that the results of your investigations would be very interesting to many blacksmiths and wannabe chemists. Especially if they could duplicate your experimental results. The problem with sites such as beautifuliron is that they are bombastic and do not inspire confidence. I have not had borax welded tong reins fail, but I have smashed the jaws off pairs of tongs, broken the bosses, goofed the rivets and burned the bits off . I don't know what that black crud is. It is magnetic. Also, it shows borax or iron metaborate from a carbonate bead test. So, it might be a mixture of scale and borax ... or maybe not. Why is that important? I am particularly interested in the results of your comparative testing of the well-known enhanced fluxes being sold now. I am especially interested in any comments about E-Z Weld. Thanks for your interest and work in this narrow, but important, field.

Hi bajajoaquin. That's great that you are learning from Dave. He's a fun guy. I didn't realize this purity issue at first, but I did some searching, and that looks like how it works. At high temperatures, sodium tetraborate disassociates into boric acid and sodium metaborate. The boric acid is the active ingredient in dissolving transition metal oxides (like iron oxide), as it forms the transition metaborate. So, in a sense, you get one molecule of "dissolving power" from two molecules of borax, and two from two molecules of boric acid. In other words, boric acid is "purer" in this sense. It also is more expensive. Hey, I think I'm learning something! That still leaves the question of the other ingredients open. Gerald, are you still there?

Hi Gerald. This is a difficult question. I did a little searching, and scientific inquiry into this field seems to be primarily in the areas of nuclear energy and waste remediation. There is little investigation on blacksmith forge welding. My recommendation is to focus on the area of glass property prediction, especially in the sub-topic of computational thermodynamics. There is a program called Sciglass which predicts the material properties of glasses. This program accepts a list of constituents, and the ones of interest to you are on the list. One may think that ternary mixtures behave just like effective binary mixtures, but this is not accurate. The third component adds complexity and richness to the material behavior. Consider the principle of tertiary EOR (enhanced oil recovery). A hydrocarbon injectant is usually not miscible with the oil in place, but with an intermediate component, the ternary mixture can achieve miscibility with its consequent high recovery due to relaxation of the surface tension between the phases. Such an effect can involve orders of magnitude changes in material properties. The properties you should focus on are the melting point, viscosity, and surface tension, probably in order of importance. I do not recommend you go at this alone, because these computational thermodynamics programs often involve several PhD theses worth of combined experience to develop. This program has a 30 day free trial, and you can also register for a trimmed down free version. Also, you can do some investigation on your own. The way I would do it is with a modification of the borax loop test for minerals. This could be modified to get an idea of the above mentioned mixture properties. Unfortunately, due to the scale of the loop, it may not be possible to decouple viscosity and surface tension, but you could get the idea of mixture efficacy. I could write more, but in the interest of economy, I will await a reply on the receptivity to these ideas.

The guru at anvilfire says that one of the biggest hazards of working in a blacksmith's shop is falling stuff. Either on you or just you. Especially for those of us who like to wear shade glasses to look at the fire. Vice grips may look pretty wimpy, but combined with a few pieces of angle iron or channel, they can corral up some jigs or workpieces so they are a lot less likely to fall. I don't like to wear steel toed boots, so I have to be very careful about falling objects.

I'd weld up a tiny test billet and etch it to see. I got a free 2 foot diameter saw blade without carbide teeth that was all chewed up. It sparked as a nickel alloyed high carbon steel, and matched sparks from a 15N20 coupon. Not L6 but close enough. This stuff welds better with 1080 or some simple carbon steel. Why don't you try that? I have found pattern welding to be difficult and time consuming, and I have become tired of wasting fuel experimenting with junk steel. It sure eats up the fuel. And if you try to save fuel, you get cold shuts and end up wasting even more fuel in the long run.

Hi JNewman. I'm pretty sure you're correct. I saw Brian and Ed demoing at a CBA conference a few years ago, and they had an Easysmith (block with dies) anvil. Ed was helping a kid draw out a tong rein. Brian mentioned that this anvil makes all others obsolete. There were a couple of small dings, but it looked more like mottling than divots. Ed mentioned that the anvil was made out of mild steel. It didn't rebound as it "should", but it still worked just fine. It looked like it was working to me. I made one, and it worked just great. Especially the fuller die. That thing is great!. I made mine from 1080 and it only dings if I intentionally test it. Somehow, I can ease the dings out by peening around the rims if they are not too deep. I only dinged it once, when I was wondering how hard a Harbor Freight hammer was. It's plenty hard. At another meet, I saw a similar block-die anvil, although not made by Brian. It was on sale for $731. I had no doubt that it was a very effective anvil, but for some reason, I didn't think it would sell easily at that price.

I used to get upset about people telling me that I wasn't hard enough or that I really don't understand what's going on. Eventually, I found out that they usually mean no harm. They are just a little bit narrow in their views, and one should not have hard feeling about it. The IT guy in the last company I was in was kind of like this. He would get right in your face and give you his opinion, along with a drenching of saliva. No hard feelings. He was just very insistent. Once he told me that there's no way you can lose money in California real estate. I asked him, how about post Loma Prieta core Silicon Valley. There was a 15% downward blip that caught many speculators with liquidity problems. I knew one who went down. He replied, "Those are idiots, and they don't count." I then asked about San Fernando Valley after the defense crunch and the resulting 50% drop. He replied, "That's not really part of California." Perfectly nice guy; just a little narrow in his viewpoint. Probably did not get out much. All this talk about not trying hard enough sounds the same. When I was younger, it made me feel awfully frustrated. Now I just see it as a narrow viewpoint. And this is not being said to downgrade anybody. It is just an observation, and no one should get upset about it. I see these people as living in an "anvil-rich" (credit to Thomas for the term) area. They see anvils for sale on craigslist or at local garage sales for great prices. If you never travel anywhere else, this looks pretty much like the way things are world 'round. At the end of last year, I saw an ad on Craigslist for a fab shop liquidation about an hour or two's drive away. This was kind of far, but I was able to combine trips and make it out there. Sure enough, when I pulled in, there was a huge anvil. SCORE!!!!!!!!!!! Must have been about 400 pounds. Sorry, the fellow said. The anvil is not for sale. But, this one is for sale. And he pulled out a little brass paperweight anvil. It was about 1 pound. I shrugged my shoulders, and ended up buying that little brass anvil. It's cute. And it reminds me about otherwise well-meaning people telling me that I'm not trying hard enough.

Don't worry. Robb is correct. All the information you need to determine this is in your post. 2110 is an austenitic work hardening alloy. As deposited, it is rather soft. It is just a little harder than mild steel. You can hammer on it to work harden it, or you can weld over it with a martensitic alloy. If you try the former, you will understand why the latter is the usual process. There is an article in an old California Blacksmith Association magazine. If you join, you can get electronic access through their website. I suggest that you take a little advice from the guru of anvilfire.com. Find a small piece of scrap about 2x2x1" thick or so, and lay down a few passes of the 2110. You can tell the difference between rc 20 and rc 50 with a flea market ball peen hammer. Even Harbor Freight hammers will work. Now, hammer until you achieve the higher number. Done. Too much work? Prepare another piece, but this time cap with the 1105. Now you will see why rc 38-42 beats rc 48-53. And, these pieces will not be wasted. They can be used as edge hardies. With them, you will not need to put as much stress on your anvil edges.

Yeah, and so much more pleasant of an experience buying that new anvil. That anvils r us fellow is a pretty miserable guy, either on the phone or in person. I heard a lot of negative things about him from fellow blacksmiths, and one day I met him at a blacksmith conference. He looked kind of sad there, sitting with all his overpriced anvils. That is a miserable job, and it looks like you don't make too many sales or friends. Right next to him, there was a fellow who sold an 80 lb farrier's anvil for $200. I wouldn't have paid that price, but it was a bargain compared to anvils r us prices. It is a pretty sad existence driving all over California looking for underpriced anvils, chiseling down the poor seller, then sitting on them for years on Craigslist trying to make a few bucks. Much more fun to attend some of the demo's or try one's hand at the educational workshops. I never saw him again. Probably figured out that it wasn't really worth the registration/membership fee. There was another smith in the CBA who kept trying to sell me his anvil. I considered it overpriced, since it didn't have a single decent edge to set down the stem of a leaf on. He ended up selling out to a reseller, and the anvil was back on Craigslist in 2 days, significantly marked up. I have met a lot of these fellows at garage sales. They often get the anvil 15 minutes before I get there. One of them showed up at a hammer-in and boasted about his 40 anvils and how hot steel hadn't touched a single one of them. A crowd of hostile smiths quickly gathered. I used to despise these fellows, but now they just seem kind of sad to me. Wouldn't want to be one; wouldn't want to buy an anvil from one. I will absolutely bend over backwards to avoid dealing with one of these losers. Even put up with some dirty and monotonous welding :(

MAPP gas will work. It is pretty darn hot. Make sure you use one of those turbo type torches like a Bernzomatic JTH7. You don't need oxygen. It will help if you use brass instead of copper. Melts more easily. The metal has to be good and hot, like orange, before the braze will flow. If your candle holder has a big huge piece of metal sticking up, it is going to lose too much heat for MAPP gas to work. Are you using MAPP or propylene. I think that the latter is not as hot. You need to isolate and confine the heat, just like for blacksmithing. In fact, you can braze brass with just a propane torch. It does get hot enough, but not if you have any kind of heat sink. Here's how I do it if I am in a pinch. Fill a soup can full of ashes, and place the big end of the part in the ashes, leaving the small end up. Sprinkle a thin layer of sand over the top of the ashes to keep the flame from blowing them all over the place. Make sure the joint is above the ashes. Then, heat and flux as normal. If you cannot get the braze hot enough (fat rod), use a small piece of brass wire from the hardware store and wrap it around the joint. Use another wire (steel) to transfer borax as it is heating up. This will require patience. I have heard of students brazing up entire bike frames this way. They use an awful lot of tricks. Much easier to just use an oxyfuel torch, and, I suspect, cheaper in the long run if you expect to do it a lot.

The load of charcoal was harvested today. The run was very successful. There were a few brown ends at the top of the charge, but most of the wood had been converted to charcoal. It filled two large, one medium, and one small barrel. We estimated that (using some wood on top to extend the fire) that this was sufficient for 6-8 forging sessions. It was an excellent yield. The most positive thing was the quality of the charcoal. It had almost no fleas, and it was a pleasure to manage a fire. It was well sized, and made a hot roaring fire. I worked some large stock as well as some delicate forge welds. The fire was well behaved, and had little of the annoying smell and ash that the store bought lump charcoal did. It was so good that we would really like to have this kind of charcoal to use in the future. But, the process of making it produces too much smoke. This just will not work in its present form. I suspect that some kind of TLUD (top lit up-draft) gasifier design is called for. More later on this idea.

Surfing around on the Internet, I have found a lot of new things. First and foremost, I have noticed that my silly charcoal burn barrel is "illegal in every state in the union." It just produces too much smoke. Apparently, there is a charcoal industry in Minnesota which is grandfathered in. Nobody can make more of these polluting kilns, and they are not welcome in other states. Just the methane that they produce overcomes any negative carbon benefits that they may have. There are a lot of plans for this kind of barrel floating around the Internet. If you look a little harder, there are also reports of people measuring emissions, trying vainly to light the smoke with propane torches, and making excuses in general. There are a few cleaner ways of doing this, and we are looking for a mobile one. From now on, we will not do this on such a large scale, but instead start working on a smaller scale. There are two designs which show promise. The indirect retort with redirected gases, and the TLUD, or top lit updraft. From reports of people trying this, it looks like the TLUD is cleaner and more effective, even though the yield may be lower. I really like the idea of a wood gas stove, but I have not come up with something that needs to be cooked at such a large scale. Rendered pig fat? Pot roasts? Beans? Does anyone have any experience with the wood gasifier approaches? Are these time effective? It appears that the eco-friendly use of waste biomass is a world-class problem. In other words, there is a lot of activity going on investigating it. In the paraphrased words of a great professor I once heard: Do not do tangential research on this kind of topic. Pick up the phone. You're not alone. Or make a social call...

Hi Arftist. I considered the indirect process and discussed it with the other blacksmiths. The problem is not the cost, although we will have to source another drum (they are $50 around here). The problem is the exterior wall. I proposed cinder block, but one of the fellows was worried about it spalling. The other problem is that the area we are using will be required for another use during the non-burn season (summer). Although I am very good at moving cinderblocks, my helpers don't really like it. In addition, it takes quite a bit of time for the heat to move to the center of the retort without direct contact of the hot gases. The odd thing is that 1600 acres is not that much if the neighbors are picky. And they do call the fire dept. I know a smith who has a decent sized property, maybe a hundred or so acres, and he has a picky neighbor who gives him trouble about his power hammer. It is not his next door neighbor. It is someone about 3-4 miles away, but right down a gully. The sound just shoots straight down it. I have even had trouble on the farm with loud neighbors playing music too loud. They must be 2 miles away, but they are loud! And calling the police doesn't work. We have had the police called on us for noise too. Anyway, we did get a warning. So the direct method, at least with the single barrel, won't fly. Hi Glenn. I am going to have to try the small chunks of wood. We can get plenty of those I think I am going to have to rig up a combination heat shield and mini-stack. I started reading some of those bio-char resources.

Hi. I was wondering if anybody had any ideas of using up an excess of wood for forge fuel. The obvious answer is to make charcoal, but I tried it out this week and found out several not so pleasant details. The forum and Internet is full of ways to make charcoal, but there are some limitations. We tried using the instructions from one website which suggested using a 55 gallon drum with some 2" holes in the bottom. The wood was placed in the drum and it was propped up on bricks to allow a fire to ignite the wood inside. The problem with this approach is that it produces a lot of smoke. The farm we were working on is not particularly large, only about 1600 acres, so this amount of smoke definitely puts us at risk for a visit from county fire. This is highly undesirable, and, it appears that the unburned products are potent greenhouse gasses. This is also undesirable. I couldn't find a reference, but burning charcoal this way may actually be worse than using a fossil fuel. There is a lot of effort going on to suppress the old direct methods of making charcoal in developing countries for exactly this reason. Consensus among NGO's suggests that LPG is a more recommended fuel for cooking. Another, cleaner, way of making charcoal is the indirect method. Here, the flames are not allowed to touch the wood, and the volatiles are piped back into the heating fire to add to its caloric value. Methanol and acetic acid are burned to CO2, reducing greenhouse potential. There is a slight disadvantage of increased capital expenditure, but the huge disadvantage is the inefficient contact. The heat source is far from the center of the retort, and heat transfer is very inefficient. This turns out to be a severe limitation for us. There are visitors to the farm, and they are curious. Nobody wants to be on charcoal duty for 4-6 hours, and it is tempting to do a little bit of forging. Such an apparatus needs to be watched. I can envision a bunch of old men sitting around and swapping lies for 4-6 hours, but this isn't us. Thomas has a good idea with his firepit that he fishes coals out of. This keeps the smoke and heat out of one's face. I am looking for Frosty's setup, but the link seems to have disappeared. He had some kind of chimmney or chute into which wood chunks would be fed. We just found out how easy it is to make these wood chunks, using a chainsaw and a splitting maul. Is there a recent link to his setup and procedure? The chimney pipe in our forge is marginal. It will probably require some enhancement. I had a wood removal project at another location. I was able to get rid of all the excess wood by using a hybrid method combined with a meat cooker. Cooked a lot of meat, made a lot of charcoal, got rid of the wood. This time, though, the amount of wood to dispose of is a lot larger. Just have to find a decent way to use it.

Welders like the Miller Thunderbolt AC are known as low voltage welders. The reason is that they have a lower OCV on their high current range, which is the trade off for getting higher current on a 50 Amp circuit. If you run on their low current winding, the OCV is more like an industrial welder like a Miller Dialarc. See if you can bum a few rods off the LWS or a pal. Try the AC and non-AC versions. You will figure out what we are talking about right away. It is much easier to lose the arc with the standard lo-hy electrodes. The AC variety is very forgiving. In fact, at the big box stores, the only ones they sell are the 7018AC, probably to minimize complaints from DIY'ers with low OCV homeowner type welders. I would go as far to say that there is little difference between a Tombstone and an Idealarc when running these AC electrodes. I miss the industrial welders when I am welding big steel (1" or more), but all I got at home is a 50A circuit.

Don't wait until you see something like this: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/tls/1661581858.html Just get a decent name brand welder with enough power so that you can run at least 1/8 rods. Like Thomas says, anvils attract other anvils. Likewise, welders attract other welders, and you can be welding tools while you are waiting for the ultimate deal. I just welded a 2" diameter raising stake for making large candle holder dishes. It was really worth the effort, and all sorts of jigs and one-of's will pop up if you have that welder. :D

Both these sets of tongs look great. Don't worry about the ones with thin jaws. I have a pair just like it . I only use them for leaf work. Your post really adds a lot to this thread. It is just testimony to a great teacher. It shows that Brian's method is sound, and it is possible to communicate it over the Internet through clear explanations and videos. At least I cannot blame the medium or the content if I find myself unable to follow along. In the same vein, we should contrast this result with the contemporaneous thread on hardy tools. Grant showed how to make a hardy tool by forging in 1/2 hour, and pkrankow followed along and displayed his results. Somehow, something did not get transferred as well as in your experience.

Oh yeah, I found it. Here's the video of a striker tapping the anvil with his hammer. I watched this demo, and it was pretty impressive.

Hi Ken. Cast iron rod is pricey. This is not useful for most anvils. Try ramweldingsupply or www.scottgrossstore.com

Look for the original rods that are referenced in the article. Not the stoodite. They are reasonably priced. And there are lots of reasonably priced alternative rods like those from Rankine. Just type the names of the rods into an internet search, and you will find prices like $6 per pound online. This is not cheap, but it is not wild, either.

Really nice demo, Dave. It touched on a lot of the little details and technical points too. I always had a lot of trouble with that little finial scroll and everybody kept telling me to not hit it in the same place twice. That helps keep a nice even radius. As for the "dribble" of the hammer over the anvil, it is much less harmful than one thinks. First, the amount of force exerted by the hammer on the anvil is no larger for tool steel than for mild steel. This is a very common misconception. The force only depends on the height of the drop, weight of the hammer, the speed of sound in the hammer, and geometry of the face. It depends also on the length of the hammer. Now, although tool steel is much "harder" than mild steel, the speed of sound is no higher, since it only depends on the elastic modulus and poisson ratio. Check wikipedia if you are in doubt So, if it is not harmful, why do people do it? Not everybody I have seen does it. Brian Brazeal does not, but a lot of fine demo smiths do. In fact, even strikers tap the anvil intentionally. I asked one person why he did it. He replied, try hitting just like I do, but skip the little synchronizing anvil taps. I did, and I noticed that the accuracy of my blows worsened without the small rest. He said, now can you see how you could make a mistake if you just keep wailing away blindly like that? Ummmm, yes, but couldn't you just slow down, I answered. He said, to each his own. Hmmmm, sounds fine to me. One other smith told me that it acts as a little rest, especially for those smiths who grip their hammer too tightly. The practitioner knows he will be tapping the anvil, so he loosens his grip, which allows the hammer to settle into a more productive position. The fellow told me that when he sees a student doing this, he will try to snatch the hammer away at the top of a blow. If he cannot easily pull the hammer out of the student's grasp, he will tell the student to lighten up a little.

Red is A2. Green is S7. At least that's what it was for some round tool steel that came from MSC. They don't list codes in their catalog, so this may change or have changed. :rolleyes:

This is really awesome! Thanks for the picture progression. I love the tooling!!!