cmoreland

Still upgrading!
 

The forge my son and I built recently, this is the same area of the yard we took over a couple years back.

Another shot, still have no idea how to mount our post vise. 

First touchmark. My son chiseled it out of an old punch head. Works pretty well!

Dagger forged from spring steel:

A little bit of flair for the pickup:

Ugh, sorry to hear that sir but I do hope it all ends well!

Good grief, he's even got a German WWII anvil with a hakenkreuz on it lol, didn't know such a thing existed these days.

Speaking of the association, Thomas is ABANA doing ok these days in your neck of the woods? How's COVID affecting that? I live over in Lubbock and the very few of us here have probably had more time over the forge the past couple of months so that's nice!

Sorry to 'necro' a thread here but the May issue of Enchantment (rural NM coop power mag) has a special on Mr. Moore's collection with a great eye candy photo. I thought about giving him a buzz today to see how business is what with all the rookie smiths out there now thanks to Forged in Fire. http://www.enchantment.coop/

His collection numbers around 2800 pieces according to the article.

Good evening ladies (if there are any here) and gentlemen,

Thought you might like an update on our forge! In a little over a year we've upgraded the anvil with a farm rescue and acquired a post vise from a very friendly neighbor and experienced blacksmith artist here - R.G. Box at Pecanderosa Forge. I wonder if any of you folks know him?

My son has had a lot more time on the anvil than I have but I'm proud of him and it keeps him busy doing something other than video games haha. He really can't get enough of it and so I think we're in this for the long run.

The same forge as of a month or so ago -

A&H Anvil we rescued from a farmer that I think you guys helped me identify last March, been sitting in my shop until I found a suitable base which is a nice chunk of pecan here. Price was $0 because he is a family friend and even loaded me up with as much high carbon plow blades as I could handle -

This is a smaller post vise I bought from Mr. Box but I'm really excited to get it mounted! I recently moved the smaller bench vise into the garage on the work bench next to the belt sander -

Some projects my son has been working on, this is probably his 5th or 6th knife. Each one is better than the last -

(the Twisted Tea is for me of course heh heh)

Thank you all so much for your advice and willingness to share your valued experience. I'd like to keep updating this thread as time goes by. Hope all of you are in good health since last April and looking forward to your feedback.

Evening! Just an update of the project my son and I are working on right now. Would love feedback!

And a handle design I was thinking about...

Also my son has officially named both our hammers:

3lb Cross Peen - "John Smith"

1.5lb Ball Peen - "Will Smith"

You have to say them with a deep tone of voice.

We have one yard here that lets you peruse around, it's a smaller one but if they ever close up shop due to insurance reasons my backup plan is to go visit all the rural farmers and offer crisp dollar bills for their bent plows, misc steel and such out there rusting in some overgrown grass etc.

If it's anything like some of the farmers I know of, they'll happily let you clean it off their property so they don't have to haul it to scrap.

Tillage, I'll get some pics today.

Also I had a question on my tongs there, I see all these videos of people using bar stock, to me it makes more sense using round stock and just hammering the shape you want. Once you flatten the mouth a bit you can simply hammer the rivet section. No twisting involved.

Now, I know my tongs are silly looking and in fact I recently broke em trying to re-rivet them. I about as far from an expert on the subject as it gets but I can't seem to puzzle out the why on bar stock vs rounded stock.

The riskiest business I've found in my all of 2 trips to the scrap yard is all those nails I see in the dirt driving in there. I need to convince my wife to let me buy an old pickup truck to tool around in..

More on topic though - what if I were to build a small crucible to stick in the forge between some firebricks and melt some of the smaller bits? Might not ever get hot enough while you work other projects. I guess you'd need a proper oven you could close up with mud and brick. I'm just now reading up on the bloomery and blast furnaces. Very interesting! I just think it goes hand in hand with smithing. Kinda like working leather or wood for handles, sheathes etc.

Word of mouth is precisely it. By nature I like to talk to folks about life and livin and the latest this or that over my 35 years of existence and being Texan and growing up in rural West Texas you kinda just come by that sort of thing naturally. So I was sure to mention blacksmithing and that I was on the lookout for a good anvil to my coworkers, friends and acquaintances. Lots of farmers around these parts all intertwined with work here at the firm etc and just so happens that's where I got this one. Was the son of a cotton farmer I did computer work for for years who had passed a few years back that gave this to me. Said I had earned the anvil for all the help I gave his dad and he was never going to use it himself and hated to see it collecting dust in an old shop. I think he had farm hands using it for this or that but never did any forging, reckons it was picked up at a farm auction some years ago. Farm hands probably used it for cold tool working which would account for those nasty chips and gouges.

Anyway, I'll wager a lot of folks have these anvils just laying around in old shops and barns and depending on where you live they may not think they are worth much and will part with them easily. These folks aren't going to go through their shops posting stuff on Craigslist either, they'd just as soon take it to scrap to get more room. No, usually the Craigslist and eBayers are the younger family members trying to make a buck off something they inherited from grandad and have no desire to pick up a hammer ever.

So the TPAAAT works, specifically just talking to folks. It's a win/win situation because at the very least, they'll keep you in mind if they ever come across anything.

And by the way - Thomas Powers - I used the ole TPAAAT to get that beaut. It's 2019 and your method still works very well.

Thanks that makes sense. I hadn't even thought of all the fuel it'd take to melt that little dinky stuff. Forgive my spontaneous posting habits hahah!

To continue the good conversation here - the looks I got going to the local scrapyard in my work clothes the other day were priceless but with the hours this tax firm has me working and the scrap yard hours...leaves me with no time to change before heading over there on a Saturday afternoon. It amazed me how cheap I could get stuff too, put a long plow, a few random 3/4 bars of something or the other, some rebar and an old ball peen hammer head on the scale and all that was only $4 and some change. Incredible!

Tell ya what, hammering thick, high-carbon farm equipment steel even annealed is no joke next to hooks, bottle openers and do-dads with mild steel rods and bars from the big box racks.

Those broken shards from a shattered project, the bent, broken tongs you had to throw out because they were drawn out too thinly, the burnt, melted steel from leaving it in the fire too long...

Is there a good way to reclaim this stuff? A makeshift backyard foundry perhaps? Further, does anyone even bother?

That's a good bit of info I wasn't aware of. So if this was an A&H anvil then they might've stamped it who knows what for a larger retailer?

Can't wait to clean this up. I'll post another pic later if I can clear out any more markings.

All great points, thank you! And I'm just about 100% convinced this is an A&H after your comments. I can't see the actual arm and hammer imprint and the 'AC or G' toward the top and 'GE' don't make much sense to me but everything else matches your descriptions.

Hehe you know Frosty I guess I'd almost rather not know. Not much I can do about it. I also didn't spend a dime on it being a gift so I'll find a good use for her.

Now then, the real question I know Irondragon is going to reach through the screen and smack me upside the head but are you guys sure I shouldn't try to fix the edges on this? That's a pretty huge and sharp gouge in the side there. Where's my magic metal filler that doesn't require heat to apply? It's 2019 don't we have hover boards and flying cars? :p

or better yet, is there an application I can use whilst forging that would take actual advantage of a big sharp gouge in the edge there?

blows of the steam hammer? I'm confused! haha

I'll try and find some more markings.

EDIT: ok I think I know what you mean, it looks rough-worked for sure under the heel. Reckon it's a 100#? I don't have a scale to tell.

Also, some markings I found on the foot under the horn, looks like a 1916 followed by a zero or something similar but it's slightly off.

It's got a pretty decent ring to it but I'm not an expert. Here's a quick video I did...
 

Ok, pics...

you can see an A and an E in there and also a bit of what looks like plate de-lamination...hmmm. That's not good.

I've had an anvil follow me home as a gift from an older farmer, can anyone ID it? Looks like it could, just might, just maybe, be a Hay Budden...

Thanks for the reply Thomas. I believe I was just overthinking it haha. If I'm heating a section of say, a longer plow blade to forge on it then that is accomplishing the same thing. I guess if I wanted to grind on it I would have to heat and anneal/normalize the length of the steel so I'm not grinding on hardened, tempered steel. If that makes any sense. Hope I'm not getting my terminology wrong.

Is it acceptable to normalize hardened steel section by section? Say if you have a longer plow blade you are trying to forge?

I have a strong desire to make a trough with multiple air inlets somehow but logic is telling me that's needless in most cases.

The rhythmic pumping of a power hammer even while not hammering is cathartic to me. I could probably sleep to it.

Thank you for the compliments, I'll see that he gets word.

Regarding the JABOD and bladesmithing, I'm very happy to hear you say that. Can you give me your opinion on the following?

- Is an open-air lump charcoal forge like that going to be hot enough without a constant flow of air from the tuyere? Seems like the coals cool rapidly and never heat to forging temp without air going on any of my configurations thus far.

- The stock I'm using now seems to cool from white-hot to dark cherry red within about a minute. Is that just the molybdenum 40xx steel I'm using from TSC welding rack or is that an issue with forging outdoors?

- I bought a plow from the scrap yard. The steel took forever to heat up and even then it didn't move much under the hammer. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks!!

Question for the JABAD pros - is there a way to forge knives and swords in a box of dirt forge or should I make a longer trough style forge? Just curious, I'm a long ways away from that but would like to start planning for the future.