CyDuck

The William Foster date stamp is either 1840 I believe. The other rings well enough, I haven't tried it with the ball bearing test yet. Ideal is 7-10 inch return on a 10 inch drop, right? If it's all cast will the face just continue to mushroom out like that?

Thanks fellas, I appreciate it. I don't have a copy of the funeral card around but I think the plaque will do nicely.

So I picked up a couple anvils at an auction the other day, trying to learn a bit more about them before I decide what I'm doing with them. One is marked 1-1-14 (154#) William Foster(?) with a crown stamp on it, I don't think I've ever heard of that kind before. The other's only mark I can make out is the 140 S on the side, it's going to need some cleaning on the opposite side to see if anything legible remains, I don't know if anyone'd be familiar with the shape of it. The face on the 140 seems to have kinda mushroomed like a punch would after use, I don't think I've seen that before either.

I recently bought a couple anvils and some random scraps and tools from an auction, and I went because a man who attended church with my family passed away. I didn't know until after he had died that he was a blacksmith, and his wife reached out to give me some literature she had. By the time she found out I was smithing, she had already had the realty company out to inventory his shop, so it was too late to be able to look through his stuff. So I went to the auction, picked up his anvils, picked up some other miscellaneous parts, got a nail header so I didn't have to forge one (lol), and today I got around to actually going through some of the boxes. I found his touchmark in one and it made me stop for a little bit. I'm planning on taking it to his wife and asking if she wants it. If she does, that's all well and good, but if she doesn't I still want to do something with it to commemorate his craft. It's his signature, and I don't want to just put it on a shelf. Any ideas, fellas?

Huh. TIL. That really sucks. I was just trying to get the soot out to try and make out if there were any breaks or anything

I took to it with some brake cleaner, haven't tried WD-40. Had a multimeter in it and it's just not consistent across the coil, and I don't get any reading from the positive lead to either of the brush contacts.

Hi all. So it rained this week, and I haven't had flashing on my stack for my coal forge all summer. I wasn't thinking properly and I ran my forge with my electric blower. It ran a little funny but I attributed it to a damp rheostat. Long story short, the blower burnt out. It's a Champion No. 50 blower, which is unfortunate because there's not much information left on them, much less spare parts. It's new to me, but it had been rebuilt before judging by the local electric shop stickey on it. Opening it up, it was apparent that it had been over-oiled frequently in its lifetime. One of the brush caps was solid plastic, most likely replaced the last time it had been in the repair shop, so it probably wasn't making great contact. I should have taken it apart before. The water was probably just a push too far over the edge and it's well and truly dead. So now I have a dead motor, but still a good fan blade and housing. Before I take the motor to a repair shop and pay an exorbitant amount of money to get it looked at professionally, does anyone have any good ideas on a replacement motor? I was thinking about trying a box fan motor but I doubt it could be variably sped. Thanks in advance for ideas and admonishments!

Thanks everybody for the replies, I wholeheartedly welcome the advice. After reading what I could find I was planning on making the widely-famous ribbon burner design from the 2006 Hammer's Blow article with a blower on it; I guess I was just wondering if it was possible to make an NA burner with NG on principle. There seems to be much more control involved with a blown burner, and I appreciate fine tuning control. Yeah, I'm always aware of how easily the whole thing could go up. The fans and accompanying shed are on the other side of the facility from the grain intake, and I'm never in there when the fan is running so as to not suck in an errant forge-flea or coal bit. According to my dad, there's a domestic regulator on the house but no regulator running from the line to the dryer itself. If that sounds wrong, I probably phrased the question to him incorrectly or misunderstood him. I was planning on finding a regulator to install between the forge and the line running to the dryer, I'm just not sure what psi to shoot for with the pressure available to me. There's a glassblower in one of the historical villages nearby and a glass-blowing studio in Toledo that I was planning on talking to, just so I had someone local to speak with.

Hi all, new around here. I've been forging consistently for about two years, though still not as often as I'd like on account of finishing college and a lack of a proper setup. Now that I've settled down I've got my own little shop with everything I realistically need. It's in a small shed that houses a grain-dryer off the side of my family's grain storage facility, and that grain dryer has a12-15 psi natural gas line attached to it. I figured while it's there, I might as well build a gas forge, so I've done a few weeks worth of research; I just want to confirm because there's not a ton of information out there. The problem most people run into with NG is that it's supplied residentially at very low psi; but at comparable psi ratings, the only difference between LP and NG burners is orifice size, right? (Edit: And mixing chamber length) Please correct me if there's something I'm missing.