Frank Turley

It appears to be the bottom grate of a wood stove which is shaken to get rid of ash. http://www.turleyforge.com

How about trying a bathroom scale? http://www.turleyforge.com

Point it first on the far edge of the anvil or base of the horn. Shoulder on two adjacent sides a known distance from the point, so all nails will be close to the same length. Use half-face blows for the shoulders over the near anvil edge. Draw a smooth taper. Notch on the hardie a little above the shoulder, heat and wring off in the heading tool. The head will be cattywampus in the heading tool, so use angle blows to center it. I use a Presto brand correction pen to draw a concentric circle around the heading tool hole; it tells you whether your centering the head or not. http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of blacksmith schools

When I started heating and beating in 1963, Heller Brothers was still selling retail. I think that Champion was also. At that time, there was one Illinois farriers' organization and one in Southern California. There was no ABANA nor internet, if you can imagine. I started out with a Hellers rounding hammer, purchased new. In 1963, there were tool collector clubs, but the members were mostly interested in "beautiful tools" such as wood planes with a little ivory on them or oddball wrenches. Blacksmith tools were considered fairly common and not all that pretty. Times change. Nowadays, there are collectors of blacksmith and farrier tools, especially vintage ones. eBay is a nice source for such tools, but the prices are often driven beyond reason for us working smiths. Nowadays, we have collectors who do not intend to use the tools. They are hip to such names as Heller Bros.; Champion; Channellock; Ridgid; Quikwerk; Iron City; Peter Wright (vises); and Stanley/Atha. They would like to have the stamp on the tool to be legible and they like the tool to be in reasonably good condition. http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of blacksmith tools

I have one of those old swage blocks, 12"x12", that came with its cast iron stand. When the block is on edge and the swages are in use, it is about 6" below anvil height. The block is the kind that is full of holes when laying flat. I've used my swage block on occasion for through punching large holes and dishing sheet metal. I don't use the swages too often, as I have a collection of them for the hardie hole. I mentioned once to one of my old mentors, Victor Vera,that we hardly ever used the swage block or floor mandrel. He replied, "When you need it, you need it!" http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of blacksmith schools

dablacksmith, TRUE CONFESSIONS. I am an old timer who has been sending and receiving e-messages for almost 10 years, but I am still a computer rookie. I have a new, small digital camera and I have loaded photos, but I've never sent any. Don't hold your breath, but I will try to get to the shop and capture some eye and barrel weld setups. Then I will try to follow the IFI Administrator's directions on how to post. Frank Turley

The setup for the weld is important. The loop end on flat stock has a "simple scarf" which is a forged bevel, the length of the bevel about 1½ to 2 times stock thickness. When the loop is bent, the scarf will be on top flat against flat, bevel uppermost facing the ceiling. "The loop droops," meaning that when hung over the far radiused edge of the anvil for welding, the stock length and scarf area will be horizontal and the loop will hang below the anvil face level. By setting up this way, you can begin welding with half-face blows, and you'll be hitting vertically. This will get the weld right away in that "teardrop pinch" area. Only then do you work toward and into the scarf. Without doing so and with part of the loop protruding upward, the loop will be in the way of your hammer face, and you'll need to hammer diagonally forward, not a smart way to work. When the weld is finished, the loop will be offset, but it can be made central to the stock, usually using a mandrel. This is the same setup as for a forge welded hinge barrel, and the hinge barrel is purposely left offset after the weld. See the old book, Elementary Forge Practice" by Robert H. Harcourt, ©1917, 1920, 1938. 1938 edition published by Chas. A. Bennett Co. Peoria, Illinois. If working with round stock, the simple scarf has a three-faceted bevel to a point. If you can envision a manufactured wire nail, it has four facets coming to a point. We're talking about three, so that the unbeveled side will have been untouched by the hammer. The loop setup is the same as described above. Again the loop droops, and the hammering is begun with half-face blows. You will need to SOR* once the weld is taking hold. I usually do that on the horn. *SOR: Square; octagonal; round. http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of blacksmith schools

This may not apply to your particular leaf, but when shouldering or necking, while you're hammering, don't let it bend at the transition. Sometimes it flops back and forth by accident, especially as it's cooling. Also, there is something called the "blue brittle range" between about 300 and 700ºF. The metal can crack at that temperature, even though you might be hitting the other end of the piece. World renowned smith Alfred Habermann, recently deceased, would demonstrate one of his leaf making methods. The stem is made first; the leaf form, second. He used round section stock, but square would work. The end is tapered by SOR* so that it has about the same shape and angle as a sharpened pencil. Hang the taper projecting beyond the far radiused edge of the anvil and shoulder with half-face blows on two sides only (quarter turns back & forth). The shouldering will be at the base of the taper where you have full thickness. What happens is, you are driving metal below the far anvil edge, and you are thinning the stem on the anvil face at the same time. The stem will be square-sectioned, but who cares? When you get a reasonably thinned stem, you turn the material ON THE DIAMOND, so that the leaf lump you formed is facing upward. Now, you can heat it, place on the anvil face center and flatten. The shape of the lump will give you some nice width to the leaf form. *SOR: Square; octagonal; round. http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of blacksmith schools

In all respects save one, it looks like what Richard Postman calls a bridge anvil. It is quite small compared to the larger ones used in the railroad shops and oil fields. ref: "Anvils in America" pages 406-407. http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of blacksmith schools

5160, ºF: Normalize 1600/1700 Anneal 1450/1500 Harden 1600/1650 IN OIL http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of blacksmith schools

"Lock, stock, and barrel" from gunsmithing. To go at a job "hammer and tongs." http://www.turleyforge.com

Yes, no, and maybe. The old case hardening method with carbon bearing materials, bone, leather, horn, and charcoal...was done in a ceramic or iron casing pot with a clay luted lid to keep it air tight. You wanted the casing material to not burn up. Holding for 5 to 6 hours at a red heat would give a case of a few thousandths of an inch. This is shown in the film, "The Gunsmith of Williamsburg" which I got from The Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA. In the old days before the mid` 1700's, steel was made from low carbon wrought iron, so called "blister steel," by the casing (cementation) process, and using charcoal. It was done on a larger scale than case hardening, and the red heat was maintained for 7 to 8 days, sometimes 11 days for high carbon heats. The problem was that the carbon content was not homogeneous throughout the mass. The resulting steel had higher carbon near the surface than in the interior. In 1746, a clockmaker named Benjamin Huntsman figured out that if he cut the blister steel into chunks and melted it, then reforged it, that he got higher quality clock springs. At the time, it was not known that carbon content was involved. Huntsman was experimenting and he did the right thing, because when molten, the carbon became uniformly distributed within the melt. The chemistry about carbon was found out at a later time. http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of blacksmithing schools

Click on Jere Kirkpatrick's Valley Forge & Welding site to get a visual: http://saber.net/jere/. Jere shows four layers plus calyx, but a guy can use five. My calyx looks a little like a five pointed star. The layout is also shown in Ernst Schwarzkopf's excellent book, "Plain and Ornamental Forging." http://www.turleyforge.com

I'm using coal that has fairly large lumps, and it comes out of a mine near Durango, Colorado. I don't need to break all of it into pea size, but some of it I do with a tamper over a concrete pad. The small stuff helps when starting the fire. I use four full sheets of newspaper crumpled into a mushroom shape; this is in memory of being 20 miles from Los Alamos, NM, as the crow flies. I light the stem and it goes into the firepot stem down. I tend to smother the live flame with coke and the small green coal...which creates heap big smoke. The smoke mostly goes away when the flame breaks through. I use a whisper of a blast when starting, and it increases poco a poco. I tamp the fire lightly with my shovel and continue to feed as the paper burns away. With this coal, I have found that I can surround the fire with large lumps, and when heated, they will begin to coke up and fractionize. At that point, the coke is easily chipped into the center with the fire rake. Years ago, Bud Beaston of the Oklahoma Farriers' School, was asked how big the pieces of coke should be when feeding the fire. He replied, "Gravy Trains!" http://www.turleyforge.com

If you can sit seiza, hunker, and sit cross legged as the Japanese smiths are able to do, the anvil has a fairly long vertical length of which about 18" will be in the ground and 6" to 10" above ground. The tools are pictured and described in "The Craft of the Japanese Sword." http://www.turleyforge.com

There are two schools of thought about whether to put borax between the interfaces of the pieces to be welded or not. I don't. I fold and make it tight without daylight. I flux the resulting shuts. I think a little flux enters the interstice by capillary attraction when at a bright heat. At a welding heat, hammer from the folded end toward the open end to squeeze any soup and dirt out. http://www.turleyforge.com

There are right ways, wrong ways, Army ways, and my way. I started forging in 1963 using farriers' pattern Hay-Buddens. We had a traveling rig and would place the anvil length at right angles to the hearth front, a quarter turn to the right. We worked with the horn to the left, because we were right handed and used the horn a lot for shaping shoes. The left hand was already nearer the horn than the heel. As mentioned above, the clip horn was attached by the Hay-Budden company for this same method of working. In 1964, I was shoeing horses and I started visiting old blacksmith shops wherever I could find them. I was curious. Lots of the shops had converted to welding shops or auto repair shops, but they still had an anvil, and infrequently, a forge. I found that about 1 out of 10 smiths had the horn to their right. Some worked with the anvil parallel with the hearth front. Some smiths used very long hammer hafts; some used short ones, especially farriers. Some smiths, including me, leave the hardie in when making nails. This is not wrong; this is what you do when forging nails. There is something called a granite tool sharpeners' stake which is a slanted faced "anvil head," so to speak, which goes in the hardie hole and is wedged underneath through a shank slot. When used, a small, shop-made hardie is placed in the pritchel hole at the same time. The hardie stays in, because to remove the stake constantly for hardie cropping would be a time loser. This is not wrong; this is the way of working on granite tools. In any event, as a relative youngster, when I visited the old time smiths, I didn't yell, "Hey, Old Man, your anvil horn is facing the wrong way, and your hammer handle is all wrong!" I simply observed and asked questions. http://www.turleyforge.com

I can't ID the anvil, but I don't believe it's a farriers' pattern. The tech manual drawing and the photo are both a little indistinct. The farriers' style, at least the Hay-Budden, had a clip horn, meaning the small, semi-circular projection at the base of the horn. It DID NOT have a rectangluar cutting table at the base of the horn, because many of them had a "swelled horn," an increase in diameter starting at the join of the horn and anvil body. http://www.turleyforge.com

My friend, Miles Undercut, says that cast iron is an amalgam of molasses, charcoal, and baby caca. http://www.turleyforge.com

Because I have students, I have four Hey Buds. One is old and blocky looking, about 225# according to the coal yard scale; the weight marking is gone. Another is a good looking one @227#. I have one of the long farriers' patterns @211#, and another farriers' pattern weighing 140#. http://www.turleyforge.com

I have two 250# Trentons for students' anvils. The one I purchased 40 years ago, and I paid $200 for it. It was my first BIG shop anvil, and I really had to scrounge to pay for it. The other was found in a junkyard three years ago, and I paid $250. This second anvil had been used as a welder's cutting and chiseling table, and had some hellacious torch cuts and marks on the face. It took two days of careful welding and disc sanding to make it decent again. I think that $250 for a 265# Trenton is a good deal. I like the Trentons especially because most of them have a deep step which can be used as a quick vee block. They also have well shaped, lengthy horns. http://www.turleyforge.com

Whether cast or wrought, with a polished rounded end, a sash weight makes a nice stake. It can be held in the vise. http://www.turleyforge.com

Too bad; timing is everything. In November, I presented a workshop for the MO smiths (BAM)in the suburb of Sunset Hills. I stayed with my cousins in Belleville, IL. http://www.turleyforge.com

In the days of apprenticeship, one of the first things learned was to pick up hot cut pieces off the floor, quench them, and dispose of them, and this was done as soon as they fell to the floor. Pickup tongs were used and were often extra long overall. The various curves in the jaw could accommodate different sizes. Nowadays, we don't often have apprentices, so people are asking, "What are pickup tongs?"