JustAnotherViking

If you go to google and search for 'your question/topic here iforgeiron.com' (e.g. blown vs naturally aspirated forge iforgeiron.com) you'll get plenty of results on the topic... the above a just a few

I had an interesting observation last Saturday when trying out forge welding in a coal forge. When you constantly watch your piece, checking the colour, in, out, check again, rotate, etc... it never, ever, gets up to temperature, not even after several minutes.... However, when you turn your back for less than two seconds to talk to someone or fetch another tool.... boom... instant burning metal. It's almost as if the fire were sentient. I had to resort to starting a conversation, then quickly spin around mid sentence to catch the forge off guard, and had about an 80% success rate of catching it at the exact right temperature to weld flux free.... highly scientific methods... it must be the winter solstice approaching or the lunar position relative to uranus.

Have you tried a farrier supplier? According to your profile location, and a quick google maps search 'Northeast Farrier Supply' is about 25 miles away from you. Might be worth giving them a call.. if they don't have it, it's likely they'll know who does.

Today I was experimenting with a dice twist... naturally it was going to become a bottle opener.... and then the expected happened. Cut too deep, twisted too far, and snap So apparently today I made a keyring, and a keyring bottle opener...

I got them from a pottery supplies store about 30mins drive from work, so pretty fortunate there. Haven't tried welding/fluxing yet at home, although I did get a lump of vermiculite board to set on the floor of the forge for that purpose at the recommendation of another smith down at the local group. I've 1/2 a kg of high alumina kiln wash sitting in the cupboard, but i'm going to save it for v2 of the forge (and try getting a kiln shelf for the floor)... the biggest issue i've had with the bricks to date have been me hitting them accidentally with bigger work that only just fits in the forge.. i've had a few bricks crumble a bit, but still hanging together well enough for continued use. I wouldn't say it's a 'good' forge, just one that works well enough for my purposes to date I'll likely go down the wool/refractory coating route around v3 or v4 once i've a better idea of what sort of size and features I need. Can probably keep it quite small if I get an oxy-propane torch as most stock i'm using is fairly small (as long as it can pass out the back), and only gets difficult to fit in the current forge when trying to bend it into odd shapes, lose the heat, fight with the vice, try and heat again, bit more bending, swear at it, and so on.

I have just read an interesting article, not specifically about 'AI', but somewhat related given the 'automation' side of things. Several companies in the food industry, have been replacing cashiers with self-service kiosks, and online ordering apps, have had to increase their staff by around 8% overall to meet the increase in demand. A similar trend happened with the introduction of ATMs. Just goes to show, that if you automate the right part of an industry, and remove a bottleneck, they end up being more productive, and need more staff than before. It'll be interesting to see if these advances in machine learning will have similar results in other industries where a human is replaced. I'd imagine that the number of hardware and network specialists has gone up dramatically to look after the ever growing data centres, so hopefully we'll see similar trends in occupations dealing with the output from the 'AI'.

Nicely done!

How many spools of wire have you gone through so far? With all this practice, obviously you're going to have to buy one for yourself now... it's clearly a valuable tool that you can't live without (just make sure to sort a few handy things around the house to prove it's worth before handing it back )

You could always attach them to a lump of chain and use it as a hold down if they were heavy enough (just throw it over the top of your piece)? Decorative and functional

That sounds quite pricey. The ones I picked up are rated to 2600f and were less than $5 each according to the current exchange rates. Can buy them in any quantity. Guess I've been lucky with the way I've framed mine. About 10 mins to get up to temperature, drop the pressure by half, and it runs at forging heat quite happily. Cracked, but not disintegrated. Running for an average of two hours a day for a month and a half so far and haven't had to replace any yet. Haven't tried welding in it though.

You know the old saying "the more I practice welding, the better I get... At grinding" I'm not the best at grinding either Should be able to borrow a die tomorrow, or failing that, any excuse to buy new tools!

All this talk of shells, fibre blanket, coatings and so on... What's wrong with a dozen soft fire bricks and a few bits of angle iron to hold the burner? Surely that's an easier, less expensive, more flexible entry to gas forges?

Made a fullering tool today using bits and pieces I had sitting about. Rough and ready, but it worked ok on a test piece. Going to have to hunt for some springs for the sides so it pops back up. All I had was some valve springs but they were too big and a bit too stiff for this purpose. Also bent a bit of round bar to replace the broken u bolt from the leg vice. Now I need to track down a suitably sized die to cut the threads. Not very exciting, but somewhat productive.

You'd probably be best starting local to get a bit of experience with setting up a stall, working on the presentation of your goods, build a bit of a brand, see what sells, what doesn't, then think about some of the bigger ones. Drive around your local area and keep an eye out for church halls and similar community buildings as they'll usually have posters advertising their craft fairs. The benefit is they are usually easy to get a stall at, fairly cheap and not too far to travel. Get a few of those under your belt and get talking to other stall holders. Those will be the ones with the local knowledge of where to try next. Some of the bigger ones can cost hundreds to get a stall vs £10 - £20 at a local event, so if you find someone with a complimentary offering at a smaller event, it could be an opportunity to share the costs for a bigger one?

I'm not rushing to get it mounted as I'm just using my garage as a temporary forge. Hopefully by this time next week this concrete base will have walls and a roof: Once that's sorted, I'll get things better situated.

"it's too cold" - You're literally playing with fire... How does that excuse even work? I have no suitable stock, or the kids are in bed and it's too loud are my usuals, either that or I'm stuck in work hammering a keyboard rather than an anvil.

It's had a hard life, I'm just letting it have a nap. Actually, it was leaning against the bench, I knocked it over and the u bolt snapped (that holds the spring and mounting bracket together) ... So add a new u bolt to my to do list. Luckily I have some round bar the right size... Hopefully I can dig out a die that'll cut the right size threads. The bench is too high for it, but I've got a source for a load of 6" box section, so I'll be sorting out a movable post for it once that arrives. Bit of concrete poured into the bottom and some plate welded on

Couple of small bits today. Leaf keyring, a hook and a dice twist keyring. In hindsight I should have put dots on the cubes before twisting... Oh well, there's always the next one. What I really need to do next is make a better pair of tongs... Might have another go at then tomorrow.

Different sort of pattern recognition. A face in grilled cheese is a perfect example. Human will see a face, a program will see cheese because it can't cross reference in the way we can or spot the abstract patterns. It can however spot an emerging pattern in millions of flat record sets in seconds where as it would take a human years to analyse. An interesting field of study and relatively easy to get started in on a basic level with all the open source libraries. The key right now is the human understanding of the problem and converting that into a set of machine rules. In work I have access to a lot of useful raw data, but as I write the software rather than use it, my contextual knowledge is a bit too limited to start on the 'AI' programming in any useful capacity other than basic R&D/proof of concept modelling.

The current programs are good at pattern analysis when they are given a defined set of parameters to look for, and what to output. The one thing they aren't even close to yet is the 'intelligence' part; being able to cross reference unrelated data sets without explicit instructions on what it actually represents, and what to do with it. e.g., feed it thousands of hours of game data, it becomes a master of the game in minutes (go/chess). ask it to apply those skills to an unrelated game and nothing happens. It's just really fast and efficient statistical analysis, with less and less programming required to do the analysis part. I'd say we're a very long way off a true AI, if such a thing is even possible.

Any thing which has regulations and well defined rules that can always be simplified down to yes or no, coupled with large data sets will be at risk. The ai still needs to be fed with large sample data sets to build predictive models before it can output an accurate enough result to replace a trained person. Architecture would have an artistic and design element which may take longer to model and be harder too adapt to changing trends.

Now I'm going to have to go to out the other the garage and see if I have any spare spanners sitting around...

Hurry up!!! We're all waiting for you to succeed, so we can try it out next Must be good quality chrome and not the typical chineseium grade chrome most things seem to be coated in these days. All you have to do is look at it the wrong way and it starts falling off on its own.

As I said above, search for 'vitcas' a UK based company.... They do all sorts of refractory material including ceramic fibre, castable refractory, fire bricks, mortars, and so on.

A firebrick forge would likely be the cheapest/most flexible option to get up and running quickly. The light white bricks for the sides/roof and a hard split firebrick for the floor. Few bits of angle iron welded together for the top of it to hold the burner and you can change the forge shape/size depending on what you're doing. There's a company called vitcas which sell grade 26 bricks (Resistant to 1430oC (2600oF).) for £2.40 each. Think it's about 15 for mainland delivery, and they have a load of other stuff like castle refractory, kiln wash, etc. Failing that, pottery suppliers usually carry similar products if you have one local