Reid Neilsen

This just makes a man cry right here: YouTube - Anvil Firing Just aint right...just aint right...

My weakness seems to be that I have become a collector of odd junk pieces. I keep thinking that I am going to do some art pieces soon, but I never have time!!! My junk pile just keeps growing - it like the blob, it keeps getting bigger and bigger and my wife keeps getting more and more angry with me!

Thats what i call a poker...

Wow that is really cool. Thanks for all that info!

You will go to "you know where" for doing that...workin it cold that is LOL. Thats what they say ;)

Mine would say: "Don't worry, won't tell anybody about this..." when I make a really bad piece and chuck it into the corner..."we are the only two who know about this..."

A small leaf spring is going to be nice and strong. Use the old spring to get approximately the dimensions and forge you a new one! Ive got a 150 year old vice in my shop. It was UGLY when I got it. I got it for a steal because the dude thought it was junk. I looked at the screw(it was pretty nice) and knew I could do something with it. Took it home. Some moron chiseled/chipped a hunk out of the jaws at some point. I welded in a bit and ground them flush, straightened the handle that was bent 45 degrees and forged a new spring for it. It is as good as it was a hundred years ago when it sat in someone else's shop.

It depends entirely on your market. You could do some market research and see if you can have a go. Decide who your market is as well. I believe that the high end stuff is probably taking a hit, metal fab people trying to do architectural might be feelng it right now, but the small items probably are the same as always. During economic depression people just arent buying as many $5,000 gates for their McMansions as they used to...

Amen - I hate wire wheels, but have to use them all the time to descale before finishing. I can't count the number of times I have had itty bitty wires go shooting into me and stab my flesh. I always use a full face shield when grinding, wire brushing or even polishing. I cant loose and eye!:o

If what you wanna primarily make is knives, gitcha a little gas forge and a cheapy little anvil. Save as much money as you can and use the money you saved to get a grinder (you will want one trust me). Make a few knives for friends and use the money from that to get a bigger anvil or bigger forge. Et cetera, etcetera, et cetera... It never ends.

Do you ever feel like you are on "Gilligan's Island" or "Survivor" when you work under that thing? (just kidding) - Cool beans man - great start.

Ive never worked with cable...hmmm....perhaps I wont...;)

It is definitely German manufacture. They are sometimes referred to as a "butcher" bayonet because of the shape. Lots of Gewehr 98 Mauser rifles went off to WW1 with those on the end. I a just curious, at the place where the guard meets the blade on the back edge, there should be a tiny number and mark. That will tell you the year manufactured and where it was made.

Id suggest a heated water barrel from your local farm and ranch store. We use em for our horses (it regularly gets down to around 30 below zero here in the winter in Colorado) They are really thick and made of heavy duty rubber. I have a heavy rubber/plastic slack tub in my shop and havent burned through it yet. Just be careful.

I live on a ranch the middle of nowhere - literally...in the middle of nowhere. I live in the center of the largest inter-mountian valley in the world. Colorado's San Luis Valley is a geographic oddity. It is a valley that is the size of the state of Conneticut. The nearest city is 150 miles away. It about as remote as you can get outside of Alaska. My nearset neighbor is about a mile away. There are a few of us oddballs who live out in the boonies on here arent there...hmm I wonder what that says about smiths in general? I dont have a problem with noise, but my suggestion is to sound proof the shop as much as you can, set hours of operation and be really nice to your neighbors(make them something from time to time) :)

Clinker is hard, shiny and glassy when cool. When hot it is gummy and almost sticky. When green coal has burned down to pure coke, it is light, almost fluffy in texture. If you can crush it into powder between your fingers its coke. A periodic poke into the bottom of your firepot should remove clinker as needed. I scoop it out and have a tub that it goes into next to the forge. I burn such crap coal that I have lots of it.

I agree totally. Sometimes you can get lucky and if you only have to file out a little bit to remove the cold-shut, you can get away with it. I'd use a double fuller/spring fuller/guillotine tool (if you have it) to make your shoulder, forge down the rest of the tenon and clean the shoulder with a file or a monkey tool. OR forge your shoulder for the tenon a bit lower than where it needs to be and remove material until it is exactly where it needs to be. More labor, but you definitely dont want a crack forming at the shoulder of a tenon on a piece that could potentially bear weight (like a table)

Amen to all the good advice so far on this thread! I'll give you my opinion(which aint worth a mountain of horse apples to more than a select few...): Blacksmiths are awfully particular about their hammers - its you main tool! I was trained to forge primarily with a German-style 2.5lb crosspien. My hammer technique is so ingrained that if I tried to work with another hammer, I'd probably short circuit! As such I am partial to crosspiens. You should pick ONE hammer that is your MAIN hammer for FORGING - and treat it better than your woman!!! I treat mine like it is solid gold - I never use it for striking any other tooling and dont use it to work anything COLD(no matter how small). Its face is ground and polished to perfection because marks in your hammer transfer to the work. I have a 4lb sledge(also with a pristene ground face) next to my anvil stump when I need a more solid blow WHILE FORGING(like when I am doing heavy drawing down or re-sizing stock. I use a cheap 3lb sledge for striking other tooling. It is sacrificial and I just keep grinding the big divits out of it when it gets bad. So it sounds like a pain in the you-know-where, but I have 2 or 3 hammers that I use a lot. ONE of which is my MAIN hammer. The one you showed in the photo liiks like a solid hammer. WAAAY to heavy for me, but if you are a hobbyist smith or just young and strong, you can do that for a while. It is kind of like golf, tennis or even batting in baseball. No matter what hammer you pick, practice your stroke until you have ABSOLUTE hammer control in terms of angle(ie, the point of contact - face / pien), the force and economy of motion/energy. If you find yourself in a position where you might actually want to do this for a living, there will be times where you have to throw a hammer all day every day. You need a technique that allows you to do that for many years. I got tennis elbow a few years back from forging and had to re-think my technique, especially considering that I wanted to do this professionally. Here is one I'd recommend(if you can afford it) Item # S40 at this link:Blacksmithing_Hammers Happy Hammerin'!:)

LOL! I can't stress enough the importance of repetition!!! I remember clearly the firts project my first teacher had me do - he had me make a whole mess of little biddy S-hooks out of 1/4 roundstock. He showed me the techniques needed to do them as he wanted, gave me about 20 feet of 1/4 stock and said "have at it - make em all look EXACTLY like that if possible". Oh-Good-God...you should have seen the box of S-hooks I came back with in a few days. It was ugly. He didn't care, the point of the project was to get me doing something to practice repetition. It was really perfect because it was a good hammer control exercise, taught me about drawing a taper, hammer-bending over the horn, and most imporantly, the importace of repetition. People arent good at this thing ten minutes after picking up a hammer. Like any art worth doing, it takes practice, skill and repetition. Welcome to the club - I think we all have our moments where we are humbled! I feel like I have those about once a week...;)

Grind-zilla(s)....

OK, Pardon my igorance, but I have a 14" El-Cheap-O Harbor Freight wood cutting bandsaw(belt driven) that I got for next to nothing. If I slowed that sucker down as much as I could and put an appropriate blade on it(possibly some stronger guides too?) could I do some stock cutting with it, or is this just a ridicuouls idea??? Would that be an extraordinarily bad idea for reasons that I am not aware? Any advice?:confused:

Dang man - thats everybody's nightmare. Very sorry. I agree that I'd call your own homeowners insurace company and see what should be done. Dont ever trust an "ambulance chaser"...

ROFL!!!!! Seriously though - he's right. I'd start by checking in your local area or join BABA (British Artist Blacksmith Association) they can get you in touch with other smiths probably even in your neck of Middle Earth(sorry, couldn't resist).

Thats purdy!

Does this leave residue in your chimney? Or is it not enough to worry about?