Mills

most common neutralizer would be Sodium Hydroxide. Can be found in concrete cleaners.

Chemical supply houses would be the first place I would call. If there are any environmental labs in your area they use copious quantities of all kinds of nasty stuff like nitric.

I laugh cause I been there on a couple of occasions.

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Is there a particular explanation for why this works? I only used a mig with Al wire once and promptly screwed up everything. Does that help any with steel wire?

Tim and all esteemed members, your quest for a spring is probably not as far away as it may seem. I would start with a properly heat treated spring close to the rate you wish to achieve. Err on the side of to much and turn down on a lathe in increments till you are satisfied. No lathe? well now you are researching another project. how to do this without some basic tools.

As for the safety of building your own, if a spring fails catastrophically, what is the worst that can happen? All deigns I have seen do not rely on a spring to locate the position of the tires. That would be foolish as springs will fail, in spite of our best precautions. Rather springs can be completely removed and the vehicle will still go down the road, not very well but it will go. And what of the current rage for air springs on the 'rods? and lincolns. They fail constantly! So unless your design asks a spring to also be steering or alignment or other major suspension component don't sweat the small stuff.

I have studied suspensions for a long time, a long time ago. I always thought a ford half ton was a great candidate for front wheel drive. You don't specify what spring rate you are looking nor do I get a feel for how familiar you are with suspensions. Let me point out what you may already have considered.
The further inboard your spring is located the greater the lever arm is which will demand a greater spring rate for a given load. So as you move the spring inboard you will need a stronger spring to hold up the load. I feel that motorcycle springs would be a bit too light depending on how inboard these things will be.

One last thought a monoleaf spring, transverse mounted, such as was on the rear of the Vette for a while may offer some other possibilities for you.

I will remember your family as well.

A couple of sandwiches short of a picnic

Wow, You never cease to amaze me with your ability to explain. That really helps me now, and later when I have to tour my clients shops I'll be a bit more knowledgeable on their operations.

They are in our prayers tonight.

I would think a wire puller but it wouldn't work for pulling through conduit. I'd allow cable maybe. the stock can be passed through the open side then the roller inside will pinch as you pull on the ring. Kinda the same idea as a fence stretcher.

Score one the kid!

Iggy take a look here

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=blacksmith+magazines

Ahem, What is 'wipe coat"?

I imagine you are referring to a hi Zn base coat. is it unprimed metal? I would go to the local paint store where they will sell some form of phosphoric acid metal prep and wash with that then a Zn primer then top coat. Spray would be best I think.

That is an outstanding idea! A great hands on application that is safe and effective.

A friend will pull a piece out of the fire and tell an unsuspecting lad "if you've got a quarter I'll lick it" When the money appears Max will then take the quarter lick it put it in his pocket and then put the iron back in the fire. :)

My little Hay Budden was used as a plow makers anvil I suppose. Most of the corner that is associated with a PM anvil is heavily chipped away. a couple of well meaning friends want to assist me in welding it up. That is a lot of welding and it won't get as hard as what is there already. Kinda like my hip, just cause it ain't perfect doesn't mean that different is better.

With that in mind, I clean some of the chipped areas a bit every now and then to when I am sure that I want them removed. Some have become great mini swages for turning small leaf shapes. When I need a square corner I have a piece of mild steel that slips into the hardy, which can be used for most anything including grinding a profile such as a square corner. For dead flat I would use a longer piece along the anvil for whatever you were doing at the time then remove. No need to spend a bunch of time or money when you'll build a lot of special purpose tooling any way. Might as well make this too!

I have used the method that irnsrgn recommends for retrieving plastic bailers down hole. It works well. I am generally fishing a 1.2 in bailer in a 2 in casing. fashioning a treble hook that will slide to the inside works usually. On the occasion that I have to retrieve that size bailer from a larger diameter well, I cut the end off of a 1 L bottle, push some tie wire through as irsrgn suggests and fish around til it drops over the end. I use some weight to assist in pushing it down. The weight also helps me feel the bailer when I hit it. i guess better string tension. I do recommend that you use non twisting line at that depth. Here it is called masonry line and is a braid not a twist.

I have seen one of these in use with coal. I asked the man about clearing the ports and he simply picked up his poker and cleared them. I have rethought the value of clinker breakers ever since. Next forge probably won't have one.

Demos that are quick. Or small parts that will make up a larger piece. If the demo is informational I don't worry about completing anything but will talk to the crowd wherever I may happen to be at in the project. it is more gratifying for them if you start and finish something though, while they watch.

If it is for students then a rose or leaf or wizard that can be made and completed then given to the teacher for future classroom use is a nice gesture.

Sea salt is a product that is sold for womens complexion. So only use it if you are making a womans knife :)

As Leah said, that is what I do also. However I now find myself cold forming the large parts of a scroll, more often than not. Saves heat and time. You have to over bend a scoush (technical term for a smidge) and if not careful I'll put kinks in what I'm doing. I use either an anvil tool or a u made of suitable rd stock in the vice. Feed a little and bend a little. Of course I hot form the small parts, or make the flare or penny scroll start first.

My first fire in a forge was rather memorable. I had had been lurking for about a year when I decided that I had enough info to actually make the effort worthwhile. So I rigged up a forge out of the bottom of an old drum. I bought a small shop vac that was on sale. It was all I could afford, I hoped it would be enough. I stoked the new forge with 10 lbs of the Kingsford edge and let it coal for a bit. Now when I flipped the switch for the shop vac I learned a lot about forges and forging very quickly:
1) outside is better than inside for experimentation
2) Yes a shop vac, even tho small, is sufficient to power a forge
3) the concept of a choke plate suddenly focused sharply in my mind
4) Flames grow larger as you add air and can get as high as the garage door that is over the forge
5) Briquettes sound like Rice Krispies but feel like biting flies
6) they also make a LOT of ash, kinda like a volcano

Lessee, that is about one second per lesson as I figger it.

Annealing a piece of steel is pretty straightfoward, get an amount of vermiculite and let hot steel lay in there for a while. Since we had a couple of bags at work that were to be disposed of I glommed on to the opportunity. I let a coworker have the bigger bag and I took the smaller one, that the label was illegible on. After carefully forging some coil spring and rather than opening the bag completely, I merely shoved the stock through the paper and went back to forging. Over the next several hours I kept smelling something vaguely familiar. When I saw the smoke rising out of the bag, "I thought vermiculite was inflammable" went through my mind.
I tore open the bag shook it out on concrete and poured dippers of water on to it. That is when the odor hit me that I had been smelling all evening, Chrome Ligno Sulfate, a drilling mud additive. Sure makes things slick and slimy when it gets wet. Clean up took about an hour as I went through all the burning crud and put it out. Threw away the remaining dry stuff in the bag, slopped the wet goo on top of it and felt awfully good about my thouroughness.
0200 hrs and I am answering the phone, my frantic neighbor is telling me that the house is on fire! I blaze out into the nippy fall weather to get my hose and put out the blaze in the large plastic trash can on wheels. The hose was inside the garage so I turned around to get it.
I can safely recommend to you fine gentleman that when you replace the knob on a door it should NOT be one that will remain locked even though it turns easily in your hands.
After arousing the Domestic Goddess by my incessant knocking on the front door I go into the garage again, get the hose, go out side to put out what remained of the fire. Fortunately it is a brick house and nothing caught. While using the water hose my feet got muddy and cold so I went to get more clothing and, you recall the door knob I warned you about? Finally got everything done and back in bed by 0330.

Hi I'm mills (hi mills) and I have poor hammer technique.

I like the band over the elbow, that has done a lot for me. Mostly thinning the handle and watching for gripping too hard solves the problem. I do wrap friction tape on the end of my handle for that very reason QC, so as it won't leave my hand. I usually make my handles from old sledge handles that I find laying around. The grain is usually better than store bought for a smaller hammer.

I find that ibuprofen upsets my stomach, especially in the higher doses. Naproxen goes down easier and seems to work as well or better. Tylenol in large quantities will do a number on you as has been mentioned. It doesn't do much for inflammation in joints anyway so I leave it alone. Sandpile's recipe is pretty good, I'll throw a tylenol in that for the muscles at the end of a hard day.