evfreek

Hi meancoyote. Yes, these work. But they are difficult to control. The standard voltage regulation scheme in an automobile alternator tends to keep the voltage constant. This is more appropriate for MIG welding. For stick/TIG welding, constant current is more suitable, so you have to replace the voltage regulator with a homebrew current control circuit. The Internet guru of alternator welders, Grant Stockly took his website down, but it had some great proven circuits for accomplishing this. Grant also did extensive experimentation and showed that motor-alternator combinations, since they operate at higher internal frequencies, would transfer more power at less weight. A typical automobile alternator has a lossy fan and undersized wire, so it is only about 50-60% efficient. One horsepower is 746 watts, and you need at least 1000 wats to make a useful welder. In that case, a 2 HP motor is a bare minimum, and Grant recommended 5 HP. Grant also had a table of more efficient alternators (esp. truck types) along with efficiency ratings. If you are serious, a better quality alternator will make life more pleasant. Also, there is another gotcha to point out. Most inexpensive automobile alternators have diodes that avalanche at about 50V (foggy memory, maybe this is approximate). This is marginal for welding, especially stick welding. The higher quality ones, especially truck alternators, have higher voltage ratings, since some trucks run on 24 volt systems. Grant had a cool idea for a multiphase voltage doubler circuit to boost the voltage to meet the requirements for plasma cutting. It worked! Give it a try, if you don't spend too much money. You should be able to get an arc out of it. I once made a homemade welder out of a junk microwave oven. It was a lot of work, and it would not hold a reliable arc. It was useless, even compared to the lowest end buzz box you can find on craigslist for about $100. Alternators are a better platform than microwave ovens.

Hi steveomiller. I have not heard about Jack Ladd. He predates me by quite some time. The farm is in the South Bay. It is called Hidden Villa. We stand for values like environment, education, sustainability and social justice. There is a great group of people there who manage several different areas: community relations, education, farming, grounds, volunteerism, development, etc. There is a CSA (community supported agriculture) program in which people buy shares for a season of regular vegetable shipments. Thanks for the support, Mark and easilyconfused. I feel better about this. One huge benefit for the students and I is that our hammer control improved quite a bit after making so many leaves. In order to try to get back to the original topic of the post, getting the position there came from a pointer from another organization. So, a word leading to another word....this is TPAAAT in action. I guess it worked for me after all :D

Hi Glenn. Thanks for the reply. All of the items go to the farm. The two largest commissions were small gifts for the volunteers one year and the summer camp counselors (big kids). They are such things as key chains and letter openers. Another thing, which was initiated by the students, is hardware. If one of four old time hinges breaks or rusts through and it is replaced by a new one from Home Depot, the students hate it. It is relatively straightforward to forge a replacement that looks waaaaay better . The idea of rent makes me feel a lot better. :cool: This makes a lot of sense. I think that the advising blacksmith pays his "rent" by his demo agreement, since he has a regular schedule. Occasionally, I will give a small free item to an enthusiastic child. I don't consider this selling it for cheap, because the child is showing priceless enthusiasm, which is rare. In fact, I contribute the majority of my donations to various universities and schools because I feel that education is of major importance. The amazing thing about kids is the huge spread in their aptitude. Most are bored or indifferent, but there are those stars...

Hi Jeremy. This is a very interesting thread. What do you mean by "always grind off an edge"? Do you mean run the wheel so that it is pulling away from the metal? Or, do you mean, if there is an edge, make sure to grind it off? I think it is the first one. Thanks. I am very scared of power wire brushes and have removed and discarded any from garage sale grinders that I have picked up. But when I was in metal shop, the teacher did not stress the risk much. He said that abused screwdrivers caused many more injuries.

Hi. I have had very little at applying TPAAAT. Heard a lot of stories, though. My favorite one was about the old farmer with his 400 pound anvil (which some how disappeared and he doesn't know what happened to it). He said that nobody ever used it to forge, they just tried to show off lifting it. Only two of the fellas could lift it, and one was him. When I expressed some doubt, he grabbed me by the front of my jacket and lifted me over his head with one hand. "You're a lot lighter than that anvil, I reckon." Recently, I have sort of acquired an anvil, but in doing so, I may have violated a blacksmithing ethical code. This is difficult for me, since I consider ethics to be the measure of a man. A while back, at a fundraiser, I noticed two beautiful anvils sitting unused at a historical farm. I inquired with the board of directors and found out that they were lacking a resident smith, so I volunteered. They do not pay me, but I get full use of the facilities, and they assigned me a few students . In return, the students and I make some stuff for the farm. All in all, a decent arrangement, or so I thought. A fellow blacksmith from another historical farm heard about this and reminded me that the worst thing that a blacksmith can do is to sell his goods too cheap. And I have cheapened other blacksmiths' production, that they may have depended on for their livelihood, by giving away things to the farm. I really do not see it this way. The staff at the farm has always treated me with the greatest degree of warmth and respect. Because of the budget, they are not able to pay market price for the product. During the recession, they had to cut programs and staff, due to lack of donations, and it was truly sad. The other blacksmith said that it was OK with him, because I did not directly compete with his line, but that did not excuse me from the violation of an ancient ethical code. It is quite a dilemma, since I hold both parties in the highest regard, and do not wish to offend or goad either. I wish the TPAAAT worked for me. Instead I hear about all the ways that other people are scoring anvils, especially Thomas with his $5 anvil stories. The other blacksmith even told me about how people just drop anvils off at his smithy. Then, when I come up with some creative way to sidestep TPAAAT, he does not come up with any anvils, just warnings and criticism .

Hmmm, cutting the head off? That's a good idea. I never thought of that. They are kind of short for a heart charm if the head is cut off. I tried to weld them so that the second head is at the weld, so there is no cold shut, but then the stem is too long. But, in this case the heart is still decent sized, so the cut off idea may work out after all.

Hi Archie. No, I have not used charcoal in the water cooled ones. Seems like it is not too necessary, due to the lower intensity of the fire. I have used the water cooled forges with coal and coke. They seem to work just fine.

Hi. A contractor just dumped a large box of nails in front of my home. Couldn't let them go to waste . So, I had to figure out what to use them for. They are very lightly galvanized, and do not smoke when they are burned off in a gas forge. Alternatively, a dilute muriatic acid wash strips off the coating in a few minutes. The problem is that they have two heads. The normal head is not a problem, but they have a second head about 1/2" down from the first head. Yup, you guessed it. :mad: I cannot drive this ridge back down without creating an annoying cold shut. These nails make great heart charms, and the first head tapers well, and any cold shuts are fixed by the faggot weld. But the second head will create a cold shut. OK, more correctly, the blacksmith with poor hammer control will create the cold shut. These will disappear, but reappear when the heart is finished. And the women hate them. They say it looks like heartbreak Yesterday, I tried an experiment. I forged down a couple nails, and stressed them to failure. First, I noticed that if I did it hot and carefully, the cold shut would appear for just an instant just as the second head was disappearing. Then, the cold shut would disappear. Apparently, it was submerged below the surface of the metal, or it had just closed and become invisible. When the metal was broken, the break would always appear at the location of the cold shut, and it would present a crystalline fracture surface through nearly the entire cross section of the piece. This indicates that the cold shut is fairly shallow, but quite serious. Would a touch with the grinder be appropriate at this point? I know; I should use these nails for their intended purpose, but I don't do much carpentry. I'm also afraid I might hit my thumb with the hammer.

Hi apprenticeman. I have worked extensively with sideblast forges, both with water cooled tuyeres and just pipe. I really want to make one with a soapstone shield stone carved out like a face. The water cooled variety with the fabricated nozzle was very popular at this year's California Blacksmith Association Spring Conference workshop series. The only drawback I noticed was the odd shape of the hot area confusing people. The forges were shared by 3 people, and coming in from different sides, some participants had trouble getting in the sweet spot. Cleaning ash did not seem to be a problem. You yanked out a big fat syrupy clinker once in a while, everybody cheered, and you got back to work. In my forge, things are a bit different. I use lump charcoal of varying quality. The place where I buy it from has huge variation between bags. Parenthetically, the vendor is quite large, and knows that a large part of its customer base is blacksmithing. It appears that there will eventually be a blacksmith grade of charcoal, which will be screened to a useful uniform size, and sold at a higher price. Back to the point. These forges can get choked with ash. In a bottom blast forge, you just give the clinker breaker a twist, hit the ash dump, and ashes gone ! A side blast is more annoying to clean. I have to clean mine every other session, but if I get a bag of bad charcoal, it can ash up in one session. Cleaning is easy when the forge is cold.

Hi Mike. Some pretty good suggestions given above. If the steel you are using is really W1 with 85 points of carbon, a water quench should not crack it, but a piece this small should harden in oil. It is most likely that your problems are related to forging too hot (yellow is too hot) or too cold. I have gotten away with forging simple carbon steel too cold (it just does not move), but I created tiny cracks in S-7. Forging in a narrow range as Rich suggests works great, in my experience. No cracks drawing M-2 (considered difficult) into a graceful taper, but a lot of work. By the way, my highest compliments for using new, known steel rather than starting with unknown junkyard steel. Here's a tip which I read somewhere which could help a little. I have not tried this out, but it sounds good. Forge to shape without the heat treat. In other words, just let the test piece air cool. Then, lightly grind off the scale and apply the "acid test". Unfortunately, I cannot remember where I read this, and when I search for "acid test" it comes up with tests for gold and drug abuse. Dyed vinegar (?) or something swabbed onto the metal will bring out cracks. Good for beginners, the poster said. Sounds good to me; do the experts have anything to add?

I had an odd experience trying to decide whether to buy the US made or Chinese made tool. I was looking for an epoxy grout float. It is important that these floats be solid and stiff, else the grout will slough out of the gaps. Epoxy is thicker and less adhesive than mortar base. The made in US tool was decent, but a little flimsy. The China made tool was beefy, solid, and had a look of quality. It was also twice the price. Guess which one I bought? After applying the grout, which the apparently superior China made tool seemed to do quite well, final inspection showed that the rubber pad had slightly dissolved in the chemical constituents of the epoxy. This would have been OK, but the pad was colored green, resulting in green streaks in my new epoxy grout job. This experience is very typical. A high level of quality and engineering with one or more fatal flaws. Usually a stress riser, or an incorrectly spec'ed material, the weak link spells a short and unhappy life of the product. And I guess I have to admit it: not worth it at twice the price.

The only anvil I saw for sale around here was $250 for a 150 pounder. Somebody had done the cutting torch dance on the hardy hole, so not only would it not hold a tool, I was afraid the face would fall off. There was no bounce of a hammer in that area. They guy told me if I didn't buy it, there were 5 others who wanted it. I have heard that decent anvils go for $4-6 per pound, but I haven't seen any. I did get to a sale which opened at 8AM. Unfortunately, I got there at 8:20, and somebody got the anvil before me. The seller said that he was surprised that the demand was so high.

Hi Mike. That was a quick response! Glad to see that it is being put to good use. It sure looked sad there in the weeds. By the way, thanks for holding the bottom tool workshop at the CBA conference. We really enjoyed it.

On the off chance that someone can take advantage of it: Free Anvil, solid metal, very old This is too far for me.

There is a really good reference book on torch welding near the end of the free blacksmithing books on the web thread. It says cast iron is the easiest thing to weld with a torch. The procedure that is given is full of very practical details (unlike a lot of those old books which are pedantic and sometimes barely relevant). Two of the key points are keeping the metal hot and managing contraction stresses in complicated geometry's. It even tells how to make a blown propane pipe burner to do the preheat. I successfully welded a cast iron vise base by following some instructions from Ernie L on the web (stagesmith). He is a real welding guru. He says preheat softly, peen, cool slowly. If I recall correctly, he says 500F with a tempilstik, not red, and peen hard enough that you think that you will break the casting. That is because, as the weld cools, the contraction will break the cast iron around the weld unless you force the weld to take up some of the expansion. Anyway, try those two resources. They sound reasonable.

Hi jmccarth. When you say $100 per steel type, do you mean $100 in professional steel heat treating fees, or $100 in steel costs. I am suspicious that it is the former and that you acquired these pieces of steel as drops for a low price. In that case, either find a different heat treater who is more minimum order friendly, or bite the bullet and focus on only one type of steel. For example, 4140. If the $100 is for steel, you should have bought drops over the Internet, since $100 is a fair price for new tool steel in this quantity. And you should expect to pay more for the tool steel than for mild steel. Maybe 5-10X, not counting heat treating charges. If you want to get by without heat treating, you can start with 4140 PH (pre-hard, which although softer than full hard, is harder than annealed or mild). I have a buddy who is a paramedic. He once responded to an emergency call at a heat treating company. The guy was unconscious in a pool of his own blood. My buddy said that the exit wound looked like he had been shot with a .38 special. Don't quench the 4140 or O-1 in water unless you know what you are doing (it can be done, and there are facilities who do this routinely).

Hi. I finally got a chance to get some pictures of my ground forge construction. All the work is in the tuyere, so most photos are of that. Start with a junk disposable propane cylinder such as those used for camping. Preferably, use one which is a little rusted out, so it contains only air. Chain drill holes around the neck. This is only a little slower than the blue ax, and it is a lot safer. Use a cold chisel to chop the area between the holes to make an approximate 1" hole in the top. Discard the screw fitting. Jam a 3/4" pipe nipple part way through the hole. Use crumpled aluminum foil if it is loose. Put the most rusted end at the business end. Less zinc fumes this way. This tuyere will generate fumes the first time you fire it up, but the amount is small, since only the first 1/2" will burn, and this is mostly corroded off anyway. The open end of the cylinder is the air receiver. Blow air with a leaf blower or reversed vacuum cleaner into this. If the blast is too large, move the hose out of the receiver allowing air to leak around the sides. Here is a shot of the bricks in the ground. The depth of the coal (charcoal) bed is the width of one red brick. Note that the kind of brick with holes in it was used for the tuyere side, just like the 55 forge blueprint. This forge will work with coke if you use an electric blower. The clinkers will form under and slightly in front of the tuyere end. Hook them out with a curved poker after lowering the air blast.

Hi Mandoro. How bushy is the tail? If it is not bushy, figure less than 20 points of carbon. Not enough to harden. You can see my photos http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/3610/ppuser/716 for some spark test photos in color. Pay particular attention to the mild steel photo. If you have something like that, it is not "bushy". There is an example of 30 and 40 points of carbon. The 4140 prehard photo is not very good, and in both you have chromium to contend with, so the sparks will be slightly different from plain carbon steel. Also, look at BP 0020. Look at the first few pictures. These are reliable, even though the colors are wrong, to gauge the amount of carbon. Even an untrained eye can tell 1018 from 1060 and 1095.

Hi. I'd go with the spark test. My striking partner had one which he swore was high carbon. I gave it a spark test, and agreed. It hardened in oil and skated a file. He made a handled hot cut out of it. It lasted for quite a while until he got it a little too hot, and quenched it in water. SNAP!!! He had another one (big fella) which he did not test. It ended up making a mediocre tool which always required attention. I don't know, but I'd rather have the good steel. But, he is still using the bad one, and he was lucky to escape injury with the first. Big difference. Do a spark test! ;)

Hi hammer. If you want to build a ground forge on demand, you should have the parts ready. Then, you can build it fairly quickly. It took me a few hours to build mine, since I had to modify some parts. You start with a hole in the ground. Dig this with a small hand trowel, then put a brick border around it. Red clay bricks are OK. Use a brick with a hole in it for the tuyere end, as it shows in the blueprints for the 55 side blast forge. Be careful if the ground has a lot of organic material. Fill in the bottom with ashes to keep fire from spreading. A piece of old 3/4" plumbing pipe can be used as a tuyere, but it will burn off after about 20 uses. Be careful about zinc fumes if the pipe is galvanized. You will have to get air into this pipe. I used a disposable camping propane cylinder with the neck and base cut off. The base makes a good parts tray. Do not use the other end unless you are very confident with your silver soldering skills (instead, buy the conversion fitting at a camping store). If the fit is poor, it can be fixed with a few wraps of crumpled aluminum foil. Into the bell end, blow with a small blower. A leaf blower will work. In fact, mine worked great until one brush wore out. Then, when I replaced the brush, the motor was too powerful, and blew too much. You can reduce the air flow by moving the nozzle of the blower away from the open end of the disposable cylinder. Fill the brick bordered depression with checks from defunct bank accounts, and junk credit card applications, light, sprinkle lump charcoal, and start blowing. This forge will handle large ornamental items that can be placed on the flat, and it will get hot enough to weld. It can be disassembled and reassembled in 10 or 15 minutes if the ground is not too hard. Douse fire by splashing water, then sealing the opening of the depression with a brick.

Hi welder19. This piece of steel is just big enough so that I would not want to waste the carbon allotment to test it. I would hacksaw off a small piece to try. If the hacksaw won't bite, no test. It's already hard enough. If you don't want to cut off a tiny piece (it is that valuable), file test. If soft, try flame hardening (heat with oxy-acetylene small spot to critical, then splash water). Something like 4140 (possible with a shaft) will get up to about Rc 45 if you are lucky. If this works, go for it :)

Hi JWB. These are really nice hardy tools. I wouldn't worry about what kind of steel they are as long as they perform well. If you make a hardy out of mild steel, you will find out right away. Tom Clark makes his out of truck leaf spring. Not simple 10xx carbon steel. They work just fine and sell too. They are just beautiful. I have an old hardy, looks like more than 50 years old, and works well even though students abuse it. My striking partner made one out of mystery steel and he needs to sharpen it every two or three cuts. Mark Aspery prefers hot cut chisels, and he gave an excellent rationale during his demo at the last California Blacksmiths Association spring conference. One of the workshops was to make one out of "blacksmith qualified as 4130" sucker rod. The one I made was ruined in an instant when a beginner saw it, borrowed it without asking, and tried to plow it through a barely hot 1" bar. I fixed it, and it has worked really well as long as it is not abused. It works almost well enough so that I do not miss the hardy. I don't know how to spark test S-2. Besides, I don't think it is used much for jack hammer bits. Might be able to find some in oilfield scrap. S-5 has enough molybdenum so that you can see it in the spark (0.45%). You can check my spark photos in the gallery for references. :cool: Probably a better way to figure it out if you are really interested is to do a heat treat test. Most of the S series of steels will still be pretty hard if tempered to 800F to 1000F. S-5 will be 52-55 Rc. S-7 maybe higher and S-2 maybe 40 some odd. Simple carbon steel will not be this hard if tempered to 1000F. Put a piece in a muffle furnace and get it up to a light glow in the dark. A file may scratch but it will not cut well. Remember that the S series have secondary carbides, so you will have to heat to a higher temperature before quenching. S-7 will be very hard if allowed to air cool, and a file will not cut at all.

Hi Wim. Once the scarf is forged down to below the thickness of the parent stock, the game is over, unless you are willing to arc cheat . I wouldn't consider this a really bad cheat. There are other kinds of cheating which are much more objectionable. Many cheaters I have known are immoral or morally relativistic, self-centered, and hedonistic people. Arc cheaters, I have found, can be very decent people. In fact, if you arc cheat this pair of tongs, it will allow you to move on to improve your welding skills later. I have calculated the cost of throwing tongs in the scrap heap which could have been fixed with just a tiny little arc cheat, and the carbon footprint is much lighter if you just cheat a little. Once I was at an estate auction and I saw a pair of tongs with a horrible rein weld on them. The rein and the jaw looked like an X. The two bars were just laid on top of each other, and welded at the overlap. It was so bad that it looked like you could lose a finger in the notch if the power hammer flung them. The tongs looked 100 years old and I quietly gave them a little tug. No harm done, I figured, the smiths weren't going to buy them. The weld turned out to be pretty strong. Certainly stronger than a set of one piece forged tongs that I bought that cracked off a jaw. Mills and BT have very good suggestions. I learned a lot from them. Now I understand better why the scarf should be kept short. Thanks!

Hi. I tried McMaster-Carr, but they only have coil spring brushes, not the side-wire clock spring types. Yes, I know I can modify them, but not for $15 a pair. I should give the hair dryer a try. I am not sure that it has enough air to do the job. I have a small Lively type forge that uses a hair dryer. It is marginal. The biggest problem is that the hair dryer kept cutting out because of the over temperature switch. Made the whole setup feel cheap and flaky . I tried to take out the heating element, but upon careful study of the circuit, the heating element was used as a voltage divider to power the motor. The motor was only getting about 12 volts. So, I ended up getting a transformer out of an old stereo and powering it with lower voltage. That enabled me to get rid of the heating element. Many people have trouble with this and end up burning up their motor. By the way, that motor is really cheap. It is a toy permanent magnet motor, similar to the ones found in cheap cars. It will not take long for the shaft to seize up or funny grinding noises to come out. And, all this for painstakingly tracing out the circuit The reason that I am using a leaf blower is that the tuyere is a simple piece of old 3/4 inch iron plumbing pipe jammed into a chain drilled hole in the top of a 16.4 oz disposable propane cylinder. The hole is sort of sloppy, so I wrapped some aluminum foil around it. The end of the leaf blower blows into the open bottom (after hacksawing a little parts tray off) of the propane cylinder. By moving the leaf blower backwards and forwards, the air can be adjusted. If set on the lowest level, about a 2" gap is good, and enough air will go out the pipe. I suspect that little modified (loud) hairdryer will end up leaking a lot of its flow out the gap between the business end and the open bottom of the propane cylinder. Of course, I can stuff an old sock in there, and that may be preferable to paying $15 for a brush that I will have to hack on , but now that the leaf blower is fixed, I can go back to forging.

Hi. I posted a query that was buried in the T-metal pipe thread. A week or so ago I built a quick side blast forge out of red clay bricks, a hole in a terrace flush with the ground, some homemade fireclay/kitty litter refractory patch, a disposable propane cylinder, and a leaf blower. It worked great, for about two sessions. Although it ate a lot of charcoal, I was able to get a lot of metal heated up. Unfortunately :mad: the blower started running erratically. I found out that there was a short brush. The company who built the blower was acquired, and the acquiring company did not provide new brushes. Furthermore, the local hardware stores (tried about 5-6 of them) did not sell brushes. Even though a lot of people have posted on the Internet that Ace Hardware stocks brushes, the local Ace thought I was crazy :confused: for asking. A motor repair store quoted me $25 for a set, but they said hand fitting might bring it up to $60. Either way, they said it was worth it, since the blower was made in the good 'ol days, and it was not throwaway quality. Too much money :mad:. Best solution: get a heavy duty blower with an induction motor (no brushes). But (if you are a blacksmith), this will take a while since you need to buy it at the "blacksmith price", not new or even used price. So, I saw on a newsgroup some advice to just use any old universal motor brush and file it to size. No surplus houses in the area carried any, but someone left a junk table saw on the side of the road. Some goof dragged it into my back yard and even though I told him to get rid of it, somehow the motor case ended up behind the side gate. Inside was two nearly new universal motor brushes . They had wires coming out of the top instead of the sides, but a reroute + epoxy fixed that. A little hacksawing and filing got it to fit. Saved the messy dust in an envelope to mix with heavy oil for hot punch lube. Should work. Meanwhile, I buttoned up the leaf blower and seated the brush by running for a few hours with a 12 V battery charger. Let's see how long it lasts.