George N. M.

Very nice. What do the letters on the blade say and what language/font? It appears to be a Scottish dirk or maybe a bollock dagger. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Alexandr, if hou are going through 100 liters of honey per year you must be eating it at about every meal. Thate works out to about a 250 ml per day.. GNM

Nat, I seriously doubt that your hammer will pick up enough heat to draw any temper. I have never been aware of my hammer getting that hot, a bit warm perhaps but never too hot to touch. The hammer is in contact with the hot steel for a brief fraction of a second and in the cooling air for much longer as you raise it an take your next swing. Drifting is a different story. The drift is in contact with hot metal for a much longer time and any temper will be drawn from the drift. That is why, ideally, drifts are untempered and made of a tough variety of steel. BTW, I see I was in this previous thread 10 years ago. I was here then and took a hiatus in the latter part of Martha's illness and when I came back I had to change my handle from "George M." to "George N. M." "By hammer and hand all arts do stand." PS I rarely tap between blows, as in almost never. I usually find it to be wasted time and energy. If I pause, it is at the top of my swing.

Welcome aboard, Bluetick. Glad to have you. Greetings from 7500' (2286 meters) in SE Wyoming. Your word for "discovered" in Africaans translated as "debunked" which means revealing falsity in English. I don't think that was your intended meaning. There hasn't been anyone posting on the forum from South Africa for awhile but that doesn't mean they are not reading it or lurking. If you put your general location in your profile it will help us answer your questions. Many answers are dependent on geography. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Rojo, you might try quenching it in super quench (no tempering). It will not make it as hard as a quenched piece of high carbon steel but it is surprisingly hard. In my experience a file will just barely bite. You can find the recipie by googling "super quench." When I make RR spike knives I will use it because that makes them the hardest that steel can be. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Looks like a fun project but how much can you do yourself and how much has to be done by someone who is FAA certified? And how much will you have to do such as having components inspected to get an FAA airworthiness certificate? Is that crash damage on one wing or did something hit the plane while it was on the ground? If you use it to go to blacksmithing events you will probably have to take your light weight, freeze dried anvil. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Looks like a cool event. Reminds me of "Old Threshers Days" in NE Colorado where they have steam traction engines running old machines via belt drives and plowing and baling and threshing. One of the more interesting uses of a steam traction engine was in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario where they were having "Sweet Corn Days." The had a flexible steam line running off the boiler of a traction engine into a 55 gallon drum full of sweet corn to cook it. It was not a steam traction engine, it was the world's most complex and expensive corn steamer. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Dear MIchael, Welcome aboard from 7500' (2286 meters) in SE Wyoming, USA. Glad to have you. I assume that you are somewhere in Eastern Europe because of the cyrillic lettering (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia). If you put your general location in your profile we can better answer your questions. Many answers are geography dependent. I assume tht you are asking about the maker or manufacturer of the anvil in question since we would have no idea who owns it today. This is probably a translation issue. No photos accompanied your posting. Besides photos information about any markings and weight would be helpful. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Anything round can be used as a mandrel, anything from a piece of round stock, various diameters of pipes, and larger round items like bearing races. I have even used the edge of my river forge as a mandrel for about 22" diameter. Or do you want a cone mandrel? "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

MJ, glad to have you back. Hope you had a good summer. GNM

When driving twisted stakes into grassy areas I have to start them about 180 degrees or so away from where I want the top to be when it is driven all the way in. They will screw in as they are driven. In dry, looser soil they just go straight in. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

I think the holding power of a stake with a twist would be most pronounced in turf of some sort. I dry ground I doubt there would be much difference. With large, hand forged stake you have to be a bit careful in rocky ground or someplace with big roots. You can pound them into a crack in the rock like a piton and have a very hard time extracting them. You can also drive them into roots and it is like trying to pry a spike out of a log. I have abandoned tent stakes that were too difficult to extract. It's easy to make a replacement. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

I agree with everything said above. The only time you really need a BIG anvil is when you are doing BIG work, often with a crew of strikers. You can do small work on a large anvil very easily. You just have a lot of area that you are not using. I also disagree with the dead flat anvil face and sharp edges. Sharp edges often do more inadvertent damage than they help. We've had discussions of the physics of rebound force from the anvil and IIRC the consensus is that any rebound force from the anvil is minimal to the point that you probably cannot notice it. This is if you have a reasonable amount of steel under the hammer. You can feel the differece using a piece of rail road rail if you strike it on end with lots of steel under the blow than if you have it set up with the top of the rail uppermost. However I cannot tell the difference between a medium or large anvil as far as rebound or ease of working is concerned. IMO the best anvil for a 1 person shop which will allow you to do almost all work and can still be moved around without powered equipment is probably 150-250 pounds. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Dave, welcome aboard from 7500' in SE Wyoming. Glad to have you. If you put your general location in your profile we can better answer any questions. Many answers are geography dependent. I'm assuming that you are in West Virginia, USA because of the license plates on the wall. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

The same exhibit was at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. I made iron work for sale at the exhibit's gift shop, mainly penannulars and Thor's hammers and a few other things. They did not want to be selling any weapons. The exhibit book has some fine illustrations of iron artifacts. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Welcome aboard from 7500' in SE Wyoming. Glad to have you. If you put your general location in your profile we will be able to help better. Many answers are geography dependent. We don't know if you are in Lapland or Tasmania. Also, there may be smiths within visiting distance. There is nothing like one on one instruction or collaboration. As others have said, research the Mastermyr find, 2 single action bellows, small, square or rectangular anvil (wrought iron), charcoal fire, and almost all your material is wrought iron. Thralls/apprentices are a bonus and were common. Even a travelling smith would recruit local labor for bellows work, etc.. Look at the collection web sites for the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish National Museums for iron artifacts to get an idea fo what to make. Weapon and armor making was very specialized and was often imported for other places in Europe. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Gawoon, many (most?) of us are bi measuring systems literate and can function in either metric or imperial. I actually switch back and forth in the shop. I am comfortable in metric for length/distance and weight, less so in area since hectares does not come up ofren. One thing I have difficulty with is the celsius temperature scale, if the forecast is for 35 degrees celsius I don't know, without calculating, if folk will be wearing tee shirts or sweaters. I have run across mining papers which give measurements in very obscure units, e.g. poods per arpent. It is always fun dealing with old surveys which are in chains, rods/perches, and links or refer to landmarks like Jones' Field or "the old blasted oak" which have been gone for decades, if not centuries. Fortunately, that is not as much a problem in the western US as it is in longer settled areas. GNM "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Shaina: The way I approach disassembling something with which I am unfamilar is to try to figure out the order in which it was assembled at the factory and work backwards. I suspect with yours that to get into the gear box you will have to remove the outer fan cover, then take the fan off the shaft, take the inner fan cover off the gear box and then you may have a way into the gear box. They had to have some way of getting the gears into the gear box when it was assembled. Good luck and if you have problems post some photos and we may be able to help. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

If you lay out a foot or so of black powder and a foot or so of smokeless powder and light the ends the black powder will burn much quicker from end to end. So, the movie trope of laying a train of black powder to blow something up while giving a person time to escape is pretty bogus, unless it is a real LONG train. This, of course, is unconfined in the open air. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

According to the magic google the coarsest blasting black powder is 4-8 mm in diameter. I have no idea if it is still manufactured or used today. Some mining users preferrred black powder for certain applications because it was a slower explosive than dynamite a "pushed" rather than shattered the rock. Various grades of ammonia based explosives (ANFO) may fill that role today. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Here is how I start my fire using commercial coke as fuel. It is probably over elaborate but I hardly ever have a fire fail to light. 1. I crumple up 1 double page sheet of newspaper on top of my bottom blast tuyere. 2. I build a "log cabin" of about 1/4-38"x6" kindling on top of the newspaper. I fill the center of the kindling with about 1 handful of coal. 3 I give the kindling coal and newspaper a spritz of charcaol lighter fluid.n 4. I loosely crumple up another sheet of newspaper and put it on top of the kindling, etc. 4. I then lay a layer of coke on top of the 2d sheet of newspaper. 5. I leave a tunnel or trench into the kindling to light the fire near the bottom. 6. As the fire gets going and the kindling starts to collapse hot spots will develop in the roof of coke. I will toss individual hunks of coke onto these hot spots. My theory is the paper starts the wood, the wood starts the coal, and the coal starts the coke. Like I said, this may be overly complicated but commercial coke can be hard to light and I hardly ever have to start over a 2d time. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

I've been told that one of the problems with a black powder log splitter was finding the "cannon" again after it went flying into the air. Also, I beleive they used blasting black powder which had about pea sized granules. Around here they were used AFAIK to split 4-5+' diameter logs. I don't know how effective theyl were but, like Thomas says, great fun. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Nice little rivet forge. It should serve you well. It appears that the pan is pressed steel rather than cast iron. So, it is not as important to apply clay as an insulator before using. I would replace the missing wooden handle on the blower. Your left hand will thank you. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Cool project, John. My only suggestion is to put some file marks on the cone at various diameters, e.g. 3", 3 1/2", 4", etc..And label them with metal stamps or magic marker or something. I'll be curious as to how much you use the cone mandref in preference to the horn on your anvil(s). GNM "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Bonnskij, I always like to put a twist in tent pegs. I don't know if it increases holding power very much but it makes it look like it will. It probably depends on soil conditions. Also, I have heard arguments about whether the end of a tent peg should be 90 degrees like yours or 180 degrees. Again, it may not make much real world difference. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."