Mills

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.