Hefty

Until I checked which words were capitalised, the title of the second song you listed had a very different meaning!!

I'm a high school teacher and I was blessed to be able to go on a school tour to Japan during our Easter holidays this year. We visited Nijo Jo castle while in Kyoto and I among all the other hundreds of photos I took on the trip, I snapped a few of these rivets on the outer doors: I love the decorative elements, even on such practical, heavy-duty rivets (about 3/4" diameter). I'm not sure what the larger round pieces are but I believe the floral pattern on them is the Imperial Crest which is a Chrysanthemum. There were no photos allowed inside, unfortunately, but they had examples of (I presume cast) metal crests of the Shogun who originally had the castle built in 1603, and the Imperial Crest from when political rule, and the castle, were handed back to the Emperor in 1867. Thanks for looking! Jono.

No worries. Thanks Steve! We love your work!

Steve, thanks for bringing the blueprints back, but I'm finding that I can pretty much only see the Articles and the Hofi series(even just these two are a wealth of knowledge, though!). All the others say "Oops, you don't have permission to view this content". Are these other series somehow restricted, or is this some sort of error? Thanks, Jono.

Buzzkill, you're right, I just went and checked and I was wrong: I'm running 0.9mm or 0.035" tips. Frosty, I picked 12 because I have sometimes had trouble with sputtering at slightly lower pressures. I think most of this was from icing up so I have since put my gas bottle in a water bath which has helped so maybe I'll aim for 10psi until I learn to tune by ear. Mikey, I haven't experienced much scaling in the forge. They behave close to what I would expect a neutral flame would do (based on my limited knowledge) but I agree that they look a little oxidising. I'm very confused by this though, because my MIG tips are still longer than halfway across the air intakes of the T in both burners so I would have expected them to induce less air and be much richer than they are. This is another reason for me posting in this thread. I should reiterate that this photo is not at full heat for this pressure. It had only been heating for about 5ish minutes. It did get to a bright orange that was more like the colour of the hot spot in this photo (though not a full yellow throughout) when the temp stabilised at this pressure.

I just searched for this topic and I'm resurrecting/hijacking this thread because I'm really not sure if my forge is as efficient as it should be or not. I built my forge about two years ago out of an old 9kg (20lb) gas bottle (propane tank). 2 inch ceramic wool walls with castable refractory inner surface and heated by 2 x 3/4" T burners with (from memory) 0.23" mig tips. I'm really happy with it in terms of heat times and I've been able to do 1 or 2 small forge welds with it. I haven't tried many in there yet. Basically I'm really happy with it while I'm using it, but I kept track over the course of one tank of gas recently and, at 12 PSI (kept it at that pressure for general forging to control one variable) I got 6 hours of burner time. Does this sound appropriate? or too short an amount of time? I KNOW: not all forges are created equal, accuracy of burner construction, alignment of orifices, alignment of mixing tubes in refractory shell, elevation about sea level and many other variables can have an effect on this rate of consumption; BUT I'm just after a kind-of ball park "Yes, that's about right." or "No, that's way off. you should look for issues with your construction that might be causing poor efficiency." One anomaly I've noticed is that the front burner appears a little richer, and the back one a little hotter. The photos below show the forge after about 5ish minutes. You can see the front flame but not the rear one, but the area around the rear one is clearly hotter. I wasn't sure if this is purely because the front opening is larger (although I did have a cast refractory door in front of it until I took the photo) or that the burner itself is just not tuned as well as the back one. Also there is almost no visible dragon's breath at this stage (basically invisible in this photo but you can just see it IRL), but I get more and it is more visibly yellow/orange after about 15 minutes (full heat, I guess). So, is 9kg or 20lbs of gas in 6 hours way off in efficiency, or in an appropriate range? Any advice/opinions are greatly appreciated. Cheers, Jono.

Automaton? Plural is automata (and the response is "nuttin, automata with you?" )

That's a great first folder! Great work on the press, the Damascus and the knife! Cheers, Jono.

Our school year starts up this week so I've made a "goody" pack for each member of the teaching team I coordinate. The final addition is a blacksmith's bookmark. I made these ones from mattress spring. They're quick and easy and you can heat them with a torch (although I did most of the work on these on charcoal in my JABOD, just cos I hadn't lit it in a while). Just square one end so you can twist it, twist, bend a hook with a curlicue, then flatten the other end to a thin section and put a sweeping curve in it. I finished them with an oily rag at black heat and then wiped them clean once cooled and added the leather thong and bead. I think they'd make a great, quick demo piece and a value-for-low-price-point sale item (although I haven't done any selling work, yet). Thanks for looking! Cheers, Jono. PS, I love that style of pen scribe, Goods, and yours look great!

Goods, have you considered a carbide tipped hammer for straightening warped blades? I'm not sure if he was the first, but there's a knifemaker and blacksmith supply business owner over here in Aus named Corin Urqhart who makes them. Search for "Niroc Knockometer". If you've got a warp in a quenched and tempered blade, all it takes is gentle peening in the right spot with the harder carbide tip and the warp disappears. Others have made videos about making their own, too. Black Beard Projects, among others. Just a thought. Cheers, Jono.

Hehe, yeah Frosty, I've dallied in many and varied forms of geekdom and I've played some online versions before but we're wanting to do a proper tabletop game. We've actually set up characters for everyone in the family, and my son has helped some of his cousins do the same, but we're about 3 hours deep in that process and all the core rule learning involved, and we still haven't started an adventure yet!! My character is a half-Orc ranger. My son's is a Dwarven Rogue.

Merry Christmas IForgers! Somehow, on a sweltering Christmas day (Australia, remember!), my son and I found the time to do our first (semi) successful metal casting. He has just gotten into DnD (actually Pathfinder, for those in the know). I've always wanted to play but never did as a kid so we're doing it together. We bought some dice for the game but we wanted to try casting some too. So we cast an 8 sided die, in aluminium, in homemade green sand. The pour worked so much better than I expected, for a first pour, that I thought it had failed and frozen in the sprue, but when I tried to pull the frozen blob out with tongs, the whole sprue and die came out of the sand! It's by no means perfect, but a successful proof of our initial setup! Here it is with most of the imperfections filed off. Cheers, Jono.

Thanks Billy, the traction advice is good and I'll check out JHCCs tongs.

I was working on bottle openers for my son's work team's Christmas presents today and decided I really needed some bolt jaw tongs to fit around the opener section so I roughed these out of some rebar. They're only out of 1/2" so they're very light duty tongs but they seem to fit well. I put an offset in them as well, just because I could! I tried something different for the bits, this time. Instead of chiselling a v, I flattened out the ends into a flat rectangle, then I held one side of the rectangle in the vice and hammered the other side over to make an almost 90 degree angle. Repeated for the other bit and then, when I had them riveted, I hammered them around a piece of round bar to align them. Not what I originally planned for the day's session, but I'm quite happy with the outcome. Now I just have to grind the texture off the reins. (And get some other stock apart from rebar!!) Cheers, Jono.

Tested out a recent hook for pulling candy for candy canes Worked quite well for only being tied to a cupboard handle, rather than fastened to a wall. (Sorry the pic is sideways)

That's an impressive workshop!! Really gives you a great leg up in starting off! Cheers, Jono.

Well, second time's a... something. I think it should be viable but there are some voids in it. I haven't picked up any ceramic wool yet. Will it hurt to do a short test fire with the burners in it without the extra insulation? (Apart from it getting hotter on the outside).

Take this with a grain of salt, because I've never had one from new myself, and I'm not trying to be a smart alec, but couldn't you just start using it from new? If you know the teeth are a little sharper you could adjust accordingly. Alternatively, I imagine filing on cooled forge scale will dull it pretty quickly. Or you could get a piece of old leaf or coil spring, grind a rounded edge on it then quench and temper it and then start filing it with the rasp. I'm just spit-balling here, I hope something of this is helpful! Cheers, Jono.

Good point. Probably should have been my first step.

I wonder if it's a location thing? I'm searching the US site, but being in Australia it might limit what I can see. Their other parts and consumables are there and they say "ships to Australia" but no burner. Might have to find someone with a VPN and ask them to search for me.

Lee, the forge kit or the burner?

Welcome, Carl! My family and I travel in our van a fair bit and I've often thought of getting a little travel anvil, an 18v blower, a hammer and tongs and forging from the campfire. Let us know how your workshop goes, and don't forget pictures! We love pictures! Cheers, Jono.

This one slipped past me, but I'm reading with interest now! I'm currently building a small forge with the intention of then overhauling my larger forge to run a NARB and I've also played with my own version of AHB's 3D printed inducer, but I haven't made a burner block yet. Just to clarify, whether running the vortex inducer or a T, the burner block with the best results for avoiding back burning has been a deeper block (3"?) with approx 180 x 1/8" holes? Hopefully this could make an appropriate starting point for me to start planning mine.

After all the to-ing and fro-ing, I ended up opting for stepped nozzles in the end, because I could simply wrap some greaseproof paper around the same tube stock I made the mixing tubes and the nozzle spacer rings out of. The larger tube was intended to pull inside the ID tube and the smaller tube out through the OD tube and extra forms I had protruding. Unfortunately, I relied too much on the plastic to not stick to the castable without extra lubrication/mold release agent. The photos above were taken yesterday and after 24 hours, when I went to de-mold it today, no amount of careful prying and chipping could get it loose I was really happy with how hard it was, except I couldn't successfully de-mold it without breaking it. The burner mounts broke off and the ID tube was stuck fast. Being a small forge, and with the amount of castable I have, I'm not too upset, because I've learned enough to be able to re-make the mold with every section apart from the cast nozzle sections (these came out from the inside ok) being two-piece and I will spray the heck out of everything with spray oil, or similar, to enable it to de-mold more easily. I was about to re-cast everything when I realised it was getting late so I'm going to do it tomorrow.

I've posted about them previously but I can't remember where. Burners 101 or AHB's 3d printed burner thread, I think. With advice from you, Frosty and AHB; and Trevor84's 1/4" micro "pocket rocket" as a template I made my first one and then accidentally created parallelogram intake holes on it when it twisted in the lathe chuck when I threaded it. I also asked questions in the forges 101 section about casting flame retention nozzles into the forge shell for them, but there was some confusion and things were lost in translation. Anyway, I've just finished casting a monolithic interior shell out of castable refractory and I've (hopefully, provided everything's set well) cast two burner ports with nozzles in situ. ...oh okay, here's some pics of the shell casting up (Sorry, haven't got any photos of the burners on hand): The mold, made from too many pieces of PVC and clear Perspex. The top piece of Perspex and the outer PVC pipe are both split into 2 pieces. Everything cast in place. I originally wanted a flange like this on both ends to contain the ceramic wool I will put around it but I couldn't figure out how to cast it in one go. The whole thing sitting in a plastic rubbish bin on a brick over some water for a humid set/cure (lid went on after the pic). I hope de-molding it goes easier than I'm expecting it too, or I might end up snapping off the surrounds of the burner ports. Fingers crossed!