evfreek

I always tell the story of John Muir, who contributed more to our enjoyment of the natural word than he did to metal working during his career which was cut short by an eye injury. After they listen to that boring story, most give up on complaining about safety glasses. I have had some ladies ask me to take them off so they can see my beautiful eyes. I oblige, but do not do any forging or fire management while on display. I have never had anybody sit around and insist that I get rid of them, since I can wear almost anybody out with incessant droning on and on.

Worth it if you don't have any of that stuff, and you are in a hurry to get started. Even if you don't need the tongs, it's probably worth it. If you have either forge or anvil or both, you might want to just pick up what you need separately. Or if you have enough patience to scrounge, you can wait. There is a similar deal, with coal forge and RR track anvil in my area for $500.

"blacksmiths flux reputed to have almost "magical" properties" So what was this magical flux? Are you sure you got the formula correct? Was it given to you by a blacksmith, or, shudder, the Internet?

Hi Frank. Your suggestions look a lot like one of the old texts I read, and I picked up a few more of the steps while doing it. I found out that it was most effective to use regular tongs to manipulate the shank, but switched to ring tongs to pull it out for the weld. I used Brazeal type pickup tongs for the block, which was angled down and to the right over the fire. Seeing the demo a few days later reinforced the learning from my mistakes. First, not hot enough. This is easy to say for a beginner, and it may be a lame excuse, but the demonstrator had the same thing happen. Not hot enough and no stick. Subsequent heats, the metal came out sparking slightly, and when he slung off, the "soup", it really came off like soup. Coke is much more friendly than charcoal, although he did singe his hands a bit, even through welding gloves. I'm afraid that to move on, I will cheat a little bit. But, I haven't given up. I will try again, this time in a coke forge, at the spring conference.

Hi mudbugone. I thought of you when I watched Stelian Popa on youtube. He fixed his anvil, but did not do any welding. The video is really fun to watch, though, and it might give you some hints. I watched the whole thing all the way through, and the most important thing I learned was from his answer to the question would he do this again. Not many people have tried this out, and I admire his inquisitive spirit.

Hi. Thanks for all the advice. It sounds like many of you have a lot of experience at this one. I think that many of the tips are good. I just attended a demo of someone doing a similar thing. I mentioned my difficulties to an old smith in the audience, and he just had one word out of the corner of his mouth: MIG. The demonstrator might have heard this, because he said that it was very important to immobilize both pieces together. He said, resist the temptation to arc weld it, since even if you grind out the button, someone might see the trace. A couple of things I learned: very deep fire, lots of flux, and pay attention to the heat. The fire was more than a foot deep in coke. So, 8" in charcoal was probably not enough. And, the first attempt did not take, probably due to too low temperature. Also, the fire was big and hot, and it singed right through the gloves. So at least I am doing some of the wrong things right :). The demo was successful, and everybody learned a lot, including remediation.

This is a funny question. Just noticed it. I don't have any secrets. Anybody wants to know something, I will bore them to death. I talk so much that people think I cannot keep their secrets (but I can :) ).It doesn't seem that everybody has a right to your knowledge. But different people have different styles, and diversity is welcome. Someone once told me that not every question that is asked deserves an answer, primarily because the person asking is better off without the answer. For example, if Cornelius Fudge asks you where Lord Voldemort is, it would be better to answer: I thought he who must not be named met his final defeat by the boy who lived. He doesn't need the truth, he doesn't deserve the truth, and he cannot handle the truth. Plus, it's bad for you. There is a huge difference between easily doled out advice and hard earned lessons. For a gifted learner, however, there is less difference.

Recently I saw a nice inverter welder on Craigslist, and I mentioned it to the wife. She said that I've been doing more forge welding these days, and it doesn't use expensive equipment. So, I tried something different today with my precious smithing time. Usually, I do something that there is at least some guarantee of success so that I don't finish empty handed. Well, today I took a risk and ended up empty handed. I tried to weld a block of steel to a 1x1 bar to make a hardy block. The weld never really took. The bar was tapered on one end, and the other end was upset into a scarf. It was then put into a bolster plate and fullered out on the sides for the scarf edges. The block was dimpled with a round punch and then drifted square to fit the fullered tip on the shank. I used a flux made of filings, borax and boric acid. This has worked well in the past. The problem was that it was difficult to get both pieces hot enough at the same time. I burned up about 10 lbs of charcoal in a deep fire. What a waste! I ended up burning the backs of both my hands through my gloves due to the radiated heat. Those smiths who insist that their apprentices don't wear gloves must not have seen the fierce fire. One of the problems was that it was really difficult to handle both pieces at the same time. One would sink in and burn, and the other would tilt up and get heated unevenly. Technically, the old books say that this jump weld should be a two man operation, but I thought that if I rehearsed it, it would be OK. Not even close! Anybody do one of these single-handed and have any suggestions? Note, this is a trivial job, almost not worth mentioning, with a cheap buzz box welder and just about any garage sale rod.

Aditya, take a look again at the photo. This is not a self built press. It looks like one of those cheap auto shop presses like the ones at Harbor Freight. One can do a calculation on the cross-members. This looks like 1/4" tubing and good for no more than about 2 tons. The bolts look like 3/8". Four of these at 1000 lbs shear each will be about 2 tons. I have a buddy with a press like this. He uses it with a 2 ton bottle jack, and it works great.

I've never used two tools under the power hammer. Most of the times I have gotten into trouble is with a poor grip or the workpiece not well seated against the bottom die (it flips up a bit). How would one use two tools; like chopsticks?

For fabricated anvils, my buddies and I have had better luck with high quality angle grinder disks. For example, 45 minutes with a cheap Home D disk did not do much good, but a nice Walter disk did the job in 15 minutes (rounding one edge of a piece of AR armor plate). The fellow at the welding store was very helpful. He said that the Walter disks cost a lot more (like $4), but they were worth it. He got a lot of complaints from customers, though. My time in the shop is pretty precious, so I don't have time to goof around with slow cutting wheels. I just gave the Walter wheel to my buddy and instructed him to only break it out on special occasions. Then it won't hurt so much buying a new one. From reading your posts above, it looks like you are in a similar situation to me. Too much time on the Internet, and too little time in the shop. Here is a suggestion. Carve up the problem into smaller pieces. Don't overthink the whole job, and go backwards. Just get out there and do something when you have the time. My suggestion is to try something simple, like a leaf. I gave this suggestion to another friend, and he told me that his anvil was too bad to make even a leaf. I came over, and he was right! There was not a single good edge on the entire thing. Not even 1/4" of edge. In this case, it is time to do a practice hardfacing run on a block of mild steel. Drop it in the hardy hole, or if you don't have one yet, weld on a temporary one or clamp. Make your leaf. Voila, you've done something, and you now have a tool and a prototype for your process. This last blurb was not original, and it did not come from me. Credit to the guru of anvilfire.com.

Nice press! What kind of tubing is that?

Great job! I look forward to hearing how this works out. I have had pretty good luck, although not great luck, doing these kinds of repairs. I think that the reason is that I find chipping and grinding to be drudgery.

I have had better luck heating the plate with the undersized hole in it rather than the square stock that is being pounded in. But, do make sure to use your drill to best advantage. For the beginner, this is the most effective way to remove metal. When you get better, a cutting torch is more effective. Try both, but the drill somehow works better if you (or your buddy with the torch ;) ) is not so skillful with it.

I wouldn't worry about the lye too much from forging charcoal ashes, especially if your forge has an ash dump that you empty regularly. I once tried to make lye out of forge charcoal ashes. The residence time is too short. Ashes originally contain potassium carbonate. This undergoes a metastasis and converts to potassium hydroxide after reacting with the limed calcium carbonate in the ashes. For normal bottom tyuere forge maintenance, the residence time is too shortfor the second reaction to occur appreciably, and you mostly get potassium carbonate in the liquor. This doesn't burn quite as bad ;) Technically, the liquor is not lye. It is caustic potash.

I think that it depends on the location. Coal or coke is burned at Oktoberfest, Spring Conference, and Hammerfest. I think that Adams Forge burns propane. Ardenwood in Fremont burns coal, as does Wawona in Yosemite. Hidden Villa does not burn coal because of ash disposal issues, but there are no air restrictions. I know of a shop in Sunnyvale that burns coal. There is a shop in Mountain View (commercial pavement breaker sharpening) which burns propane. It is probably OK as long as no one complains, and if any one complains, it is not OK. Just like chickens. In the south bay, there is a 25 foot from every property line restriction. This means that 99% of the houses cannot keep them. But it is OK, even roosters, as long as the neighbors don't complain. One complaint, and they're gone!

I just bought a small spray can, Milwaukee brand, at a garage sale. It is very cute. It has a thumb valve, a spray head, a pipe fitting cap and a schrader valve fill. But, as I was looking it over, it had a label with sad tidings on it. Good to 200 psi, don't use with water based fluids due to corrosion risk. Oh well, it is really cute, and might be useful for something.

How come the bar must be drawn to a point for the shank of a hardy tool? I realize that many hardy tools have shanks that are drawn to a point. But many old ones are nearly straigth sided, and seem to fit just fine in hte hardy hole. A partial taper would take less time to do.

The reason that the site advises vertical layering of the pieces is that they are compressed and not deflected like in a horizontal stack. Energy loss is minimal if the plates are oriented vertically. You have stacked yours horizontally, and those do not look like full pen welds. They look like edge welds. But, the energy loss due to beam deflection goes as the cube of the ratio between span and thickness. Or, quantitatively, a 2" thick plate has 1/64th of the loss of a 1/2" plate. I did a simple calculation and it showed that 1/2" plates deform so much that the calculation really is not valid, and one 2" plate will dissipate approximately 6% of your hammer's energy as a worst case. If there is any contact down the centerline (such as you ground a bevel for the weld), the span is halved, so the dissipation will go down by another factor of 4 (because there are now two beams). This also immediately informs that partial welds at the waist of an anvil have an almost inconsequential impact on the forging efficiency. This anvil looks great. I'm sure you will love it. A horn and hardy hole can come later. And they will if you continue with the craft. Your anvil is way better than my first two, and probably better than my third. My fourth is probably better, and my fifth is way better, but I spend most of my time forging with my third, since it is just fine.

Randy is correct. Check the one for high speed steel too. Just get some old pieces of steel from cheap broken garage sale tools. There are more reliable ones around, such as the ones on youtube, where the person actually shows the item being tested. Otherwise, someone can just draw what they "see", a very liberal interpretation of the word. Even the drawings on a blueprint on this site are open to criticism.

Show us a spark test. It is very unlikely that these are high speed steel. You can also try to draw the temper to a deep blue or gray. If this softens the steel considerably, it is not HSS. Then, go for a quench test, say with water. HSS will crack, but a med-hi carbon will probably not. You know how to heat treat simple carbon steels, right?

For quite a while, I have been having a problem with my propane forge. It seems to have been getting weaker over the years, and I have not been able to figure out what is going on. I do all my welding now in a sold fuel forge, and it just seemed that the propane forge has just been getting weaker and weaker. When I use it to heat steel, the steel just seems harder to work. It still works, but seems to have degraded. So, I decided to "take its temperature". There are a few ways to do this. First, I stuck a copper wire out of a scrap piece of romex in. This should melt immediately (about 1980 F). It did not. It slowly formed a ball, and dripped of the end, but very slowly. OK, it is about 2000 or more. That is why it still works. Then, I stuck a couple of welding rod stubs in the bottom, and tried to fish them out with a thin rod. It didn't work. This forge is too cold to weld (under 2200 F). There must be a spider in the burner or something. The burner was rusted together, so it was impossible to get a wire in to clean out the MIG tip. After banging and wrenching on it a while, I noticed that the MIG tip was pointing out of line. How could it bend like that? It wasn't being hammered all that hard . I sat down and thought about it for a while, and realized that there was no way I could lever against it to bend the strap holding it in, so it must be falling off from corrosion. Sure enough, when I poked it with a stick, it bent over. There was no gas leaking from the connections, and the gas leaking from around the MIG tip was being sucked in by the venturi vacuum. The burner was weak and rich. It had degraded so slowly that I hadn't noticed it. Kind of like the frog in hot water story. This was caused by a faulty bodged together connection in order to make up for the inability to source a schedule 80 pipe nipple. After it was fixed, it was much hotter. So, I decided to try (Stuart's?) trick for fixing cracked impact tool heads. I had a goofed up garage sale chisel that was cracked too deeply to grind out. Or, it would have taken too long to grind out. Bam, instant welding heat and that nice bubbling borax look. It welded up just great and worked fine, even when trying to abuse it. Great trick!!! These things are fiddly. Gotta watch them.

Thanks so much, Hollis. You are the first person I have "met" who has done this successfully, and given me the pointers. I know how to set a reducing flame on a cutting tip. For some reason, the diffuse region shows up better. I need to pick up a rosebud for the oxy propane torch. I have acetylene tips. Those weld just fine, but the welds don't look like forge welds :D

Hi Hollis. Thanks for the tips. I think that what I was doing wrong was using too small of a tip (1. above). Then maybe the flame was too oxidizing. I have a hard time with a simple welding tip looking for a reducing flame, since there is no acetylene "feather" with an oxy propane flame. Looks like I will have to do some experimentation. I have no trouble doing the "pinch trick" to forge weld wires with a propane torch, borax, and a soft firebrick. Do you use a welding or cutting tip to do the forge weld?

I had two really dumb eye related accidents in the past couple of years. First one, I was leaving a garden pot luck and I saw a lady getting out of her car and wanted to get a better look at her, so I tipped my shades down. Heh heh. Must have gotten a bit of road dust in my eye. A couple of miles down the road, my eye started hurting really bad, and I couldn't keep it open. I was going through a major intersection, so I just jammed the brakes and stopped right there. It was a good thing that I had a bottle of water to pour into my eye on the spot, and was able to make it out of the intersection before the light turned red. My clothes were really drenched, and I was afraid I would short out my expensive power seat. All in all, it was just a real ego deflator. Just recently, I was yanking on a stuck dishwasher door. Suddenly it came free. It broke the frames on my favorite safety glasses, shattered one lens, and I got a black eye. Probably would have been injured really bad without them. Yep, I wear safety glasses even for the evening walk, after I took the end of a broken branch right in the eye in a wind storm. It can happen. It happened to a friend of mine, and got him right through the cornea. The eye doctor was able to fix him up with an artificial one, but he never saw that well out of that eye after that. The earlier posters are absolutely correct. Safety glasses are really economical if purchased online. I bought a whole box of the Pyramex ones mentioned earlier. They are a great brand.