Purple Bullet

I'm not sure if it's relevant in this situation, but be aware that needle valves introduce more restriction and are intended for control. I'm not saying a needle valve wouldn't work here, but if you want max flow, ball is better.

I have one of the Mr. Volcano two burner forges and the shut off near the burner is handy as I some times remove one burner and plug the hole with a fire brick carved to fit the hole. Why it would be needed in a single burner is another think.

Thanks Thom - I got to see most of it. I guess we overloaded the bandwidth.

15 kw induction forges going for <$850. US on ebay. Tig coolers (if you don't have one) run another couple of hundred (DON'T get a chiller) or you can build your own with a pump, fan and copper tubing. You will love forging on the induction more than you like cooking with it!

I think it looks worse than it is because it is sitting on something in the photo. If that channel is only an inch deep I don't know if the gain in avoiding the trip hazard would be worth the rebuild. As you get a workflow going you tend to step in the same places and your feet kind of remember where to go. I deal with worse in my shop all the time. I'm not saying Frosty And Candidquality are wrong, but if you are wearing the right shoes, you aren't going to stub your toe, and the rework may not be worth the effort. Good to remember for the NEXT project.

I finally got something done in my shop! After 47 days of "countin' flowers on the wall, that don't bother me at all. Playin' solitaire til dawn with a deck of 51" etcetera, etcetera. I replaced my defunct induction heater (died from my own hand by copper sulfate poisoning) with a new induction unit, this time with a ~5 gallon TIG cooler from US Solid. The induction forge was ~$800US and the cooler ~$400US, both with tax included. It should have taken about an hour to set up, but working from a knee scooter and stopping every time I broke a sweat, it took three days. Now I need to figure out a work flow without putting any weight on my right foot. Or just wait a week when I can put weight (but not walk) on it. First Induction Heat.mov

Words are insufficient. Thomas’ knowledge, wit and character will be missed. I have one of his “Rasplesnakes” that will always remind me of what a curmudgeon should be.

Thanks, Daswulf - I can't afford to sweat too much in the cast so I'm trying to do a little at night when the temp gets down below 80 F. I did manage last night to disconnect my old induction unit, move the cart near the front of the shop and put the new induction unit on it. That would have been maybe 20 minutes of work that took me three hours, slowly and carefully planning each step, but it is progress. Tonight I hope to get the TIG cooler and 220V hooked up. It's progress.

What did I do in the shop today? NOTHING! Just like the past 44 days. I had my hopes up I'd get the cast off today and I did, but they put another one on. Three more weeks. I was all perturbed about it, then I started reading the thread about blacksmithing from a wheel chair. I got nothing to kick about. My problems are temporary. I can maneuver on a knee scooter. I can't get all sweaty dirty, but tonight I'm going to get SOMETHING done. Hopefully set up my new induction forge/TIG cooler. Jeremy, Randy , thanks for the inspiring examples.

George - I think Frosty mentioned that it was good stuff at one time. I used to work next to a coker and we always hated it when the wind blew from that direction. Not only from the smell, but sometimes they blew coke fines (and not-so-fines) all over our unit that we had to clean up. The only thing that gives me a little pause to try it is the fact that the feed for the coker was all the heavy ends that we couldn't crack into lighter product. That, along with burnt oil and other waste. OTOH, our coker was known for producing a very pure product; used for anodes and melting electrodes.

A few years back I bought a couple of barrels full of bulk from Grace Fuel in Asheville. It was good quality and I probably would have made a return trip by now if I hadn't bought some bagged at Quad State and some from a guy who ships in and sells at local hammer-ins. Between gas and induction I don't use as much coal as I used to. I still haven't tried to use petroleum coke. We have a plethora or two of that down here.

Thanks Thom - Any idea what it would take to get portable Internet to him? Do they have 4 or 5 G out there? I bet there are enough of us that miss his posts that would kick in for something of the sort.

Beautiful. If I had a hammer like that I'd have to keep it clean, though.

I once made a blown ribbon burner by welding a 1/2" square bar to a 3/4" black iron pipe and drilling a bunch of 1/8" holes. My blower was a shop blower from Tractor Supply that I put a rheostat (dimmer control) on. The gas went through a solenoid valve and I had a decent regulator. The solenoid valve was tied into the same circuit as the blower so that if I lost power to the blower the gas would shut off. With this set up I was able to control the flame to a Tee. I never had a problem with anything burning out and could get to welding temperature. I only tore it apart when I got worried about breaks in the refractory exposing ceramic fibers. I've learned better ways to deal with that now, but I was moving to induction anyway.

Sometimes a company will produce a product that is 80% of what you want because the last 20% would drive the price too high. If you are willing to add in the other 20% you can sometimes (and I admit that it is a throw of the dice) make something that's just what you want at a greatly reduced price. This just might be one of those times. I mentioned above the possibility of hard-surfacing the face. I found some hard surface rods online that claim 55-60 R as welded for ~$45USD for 5 pounds. Since it is a steel anvil, just normal pre and post heat should produce a sound new layer you can grind to a uniform face that should perform well. In fact, although I don't need another anvil, I'm very tempted to try that once I'm mobile. Of course, the list of projects to do once I'm mobile has grown to a daunting length. *sigh*.

Cool - Not what most people mean by a "steel guitar" but I like it.

All that being said, whereas if welds showed cracked edges or porosity to me is an indication of mixed alloys on the surface of the anvil. If I had one of those and was not able to get a refund or find a replacement that was decent, I might be tempted to get some hard-surface rods and put an entire new layer on the top, Then grind a new face on it. Who knows? You might end up with something really good. Hard surface rods are really expensive nowadays, though.

Avmech - Thanks for the pics. I wonder what it would look like to do a light acid etch. It might really help you make a case to HF, although admittedly, what you have convinces me. Still, if there are other areas with GOOD repairs (not that that would make it acceptable) it would show them up better.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "die". When I was a kid, I'd walk down beside a canal that ran out to the "plarie" (local term for marsh) and nail moccasins in the head with my BB gun. I had to aim two inches high and to the right, but soon the snake would quit rolling in the water and I could fish it out with a stick and pile it in my straw hat. Once back to the house I'd pull out my dissection kit and cut him open to investigate. I found the heart still beating hours after their supposed demise. In the words of the doctor in Princess Bride, he was only "mostly dead".

I’m not well versed in all but basic hydraulics, but it seems to me, in a closed system, what goes up must come down and vice versa. Fighting head pressure on the front end of the load or the back end of the load should be the same difference. In any case I suspect that head pressure will be a very small percentage of the load in either case. I think the only concern would be keeping air out of the intake.

Avmech - Wow! Could you snap and post a pic of that? It would be good info for others contemplating a purchase. Welds on the face are not something I’d want either My Vevor hasn’t shown any such signs. I did use it quite a bit before my surgery and do have some rust on it but the boiled linseed oil does good. One of the nice things about a cheep, decent anvil is that you don’t feel you have to baby it. I would recommend something like the Vevor to anyone starting out.

I'm no metallurgist either, but its my guess is you would lose most of the carbon by getting it up to casting temperature. Far better would be to forge weld them together or use in cannister Damascus. I think chopping them up and putting in a cannister would end up being the easiest with the most interesting result.

Remember yanking tubes out and hauling them down to the drug store to test them to find the one you needed to replace?

Steve - Acoustic coupled? Mine too. It was pure luxury when I got my first Hayes 1200.

Frosty - I apologize for the nit pick. I'm sure most folks think of any kind of online access as "The Internet" from today's perspective. I'm just cranky 'cause I haven't been to the shop in a month and I still have three weeks before I get my cast off my ankle (got it fused). I've actually avoided the forum because seeing all the nice work gets me really frustrated that I can't get out there and try it. I'm so bored I was actually contemplating doing some code smithing to write an app for our church music group. My first computer was a 4K TRS-80 that used a cassette tape for storage, but I tried the C-64, Apple II, Atari 400 (membrane keyboard - I built a waterproof case and used it on deck for entering pipeline inspection data on dive jobs). The CP/M machine was a Sanyo, but then I went with the IBM luggable and the several DOS machines before Windows and then I started building my own. When I developed the TV program for our church I had to get an Apple to edit and have had a couple of others since, but I tend to gravitate to the PC as well. Just reread my post. 4K back then had nothing to do with screen resolution. That was how much RAM it had!