agsolder

The thing about accidents is they are accidental-- so minimize the possibilities going in. No rings, neck chains, wrist watches, ID bracelets, pony tails in the shop. No cowboy boots if you are cutting or welding. Lace-up hightops with steel toes, metatarsal guards, leathern apron and jacket, safety glasses, no synthetic fabrics. Even then danger lurks.... Most unpredictable/accidental ring accident I've heard about was a guy doing a tin roof with a steep slope, lost his footing on the ladder, caught his ring finger on a nail head and lost it....

Friend and I were forging one day back when my small, two-burner propane forge was inside the shop, man doors open at each end, good cross-draft augmented by open hatch up at the ridge of the roof, but we looked at each other after a couple hours and shut down. Bad headaches, each. Carbon monoxide or whatever, propane exhaust is evil stuff, ad it seems to just linger. I moved the forge outdoors, but even then last year had to put a 5-foot diameter, 10-foot high tipi of corrugated roofing around it to draft the nasties up and away from me. Let us not forget that propane is a heavy gas and if there is a leak or a spill, it just lays there waiting to explode or burn. Didn't that happen to the famous sculptor, albert Paley, when a bottle tipped on him when he was working from inside a cherry picker bucket a few years back? Bad burns. Isn't having a bottle indoors against the building/fire code?

Jedediah North's Tinner's Tool Business, by John H. Demer, published by Early American Industries Association in 1978, has pictures of precisely such tools, identifying them as tinners' swedges, from a catalog published in 1866. Demer says: "Swedges should not be confused with swages, though their purposes are similar. A swage is a two-part tool that fits into the tinner's bench. To use the swage, the tinner placed the tin between the top and bottom of the swage, and struck the top half with a hammer, imprinting the design. A swedge is a shaping hammer attached to a long pivoting arm, that enables a tinner to quickly and uniformly shape tin. The swedge needed no striking implement, other than the force of the falling hammer." (p.20) Demer apparently researched the book when he was a fellow for two years at Winterthur. Here is the illustration I mentioned.

A clean work table is a sign of a diseased mind.

Thanks-- but... Miller sez Spectrum 375 cuts 1/2-inch with gusts up to 5/8!! what gives, I wonder?

Query re: online equipment purchases and IOC in particular. I am helping a friend scout for a deal for a plasma cutter. He likes Miller and their Spectrum 375 looks like the one. Question: anybody here have any dealings good or bad to report with Indiana Oxygen Company, IOC, in Indianapolis? Their price looks terrific, and the shipping is free. I know there is a downside to not buying locally, but the Miller warranty is for 3 years and their equipment and tech support backup, I know-- is great. I have their Dialarc, their big MIG, and a Bobcat and love 'em-- and they'd be whom my friend would be dealing with in case of trouble, not the local welding boutique (our motto: we don't care if you live or die). Many thanks!!

Pascalou-- Many, many thanks! Please keep posting pictures of your work as often as is convenient. It is just absolutely fabulous!

Some random thoughts on wires, but first: howcum the retractible cord reel should be kept unplugged when not in use? Now, wires: Welders come with manuals that specify the proper sizes and lengths for power cords and leads. Exceed the limits at the peril of burning out your machine. Welding texts have such charts, too, if you've lost the manual. Beware these retractible cord reels: they are usually only 16 gauge wire, just lamp cord, really, that has extremely low ampacity and this can burn out the motors on saws and drills in a jiffy. Hardware stores carry a handy-dandy wiring reference, by Richter as I recall, that has all the charts for what size wire can carry how many amps how far. Don't forget the distance has to be measured both ways-- from the plug and back to the plug. The amps the tool draws is or should be on a plate on the motor or tool. Shop wiring ought to be, and by code must be, inside conduit. Do it. Position your outlets up high, 4 or 5 feet above the floor, where you can reach them easily and handily without getting down on your hands and knees to feel around amongst the spider webs to get the plug into the bloody outlet. And put them as the code says, no farther apart than 12 feet from each other. Put a few along the bottoms of rafters, too, out in the middle of the room, if they are low enough to reach. Look out for these xxxxxx Chinese space heaters. They are cutting corners on everything, sizes of wires especially, and on the heater wires and plugs they can and do overheat to the point of melting down. I suspect they are faking the UL tags.

Pascalou-- Please brighten our lives and post some snaps of whatever supernaturally beautiful work you are engaged in crafting now that you have completed the gorgeous ewer!

Great idea for a shop in a crime-free neighborhood unlike mine. Fine workpersonship. Please-- Post some pictures of your fabulous copperwork!

That's what makes horse racing.

You don't want to be heat treating the entire length of the tool the same. Heat it, the entire piece, to a good bright white just below sparking and quench it fast. Swirl it around in the water to be sure the water is not being boiled away from the steel and is getting to the surface of the steel and the heat is dissipating. Take it out and emery paper it enough so you can see the surface a quarter inch or so wide all the way down the tool, then put one end of it, the end you will strike, into the fire, or the gas forge, or the flame of your torch. Now watch the surface rainbow. This may take a while, but you will see an iridescent rainbow, like the colors on the surface of a puddle of gasoline, running away from the heat. When you see the blue band nearing the cutting end, quench it again, fast. This should give you a hard business end and a softer shank. If it still breaks you might be using the wrong steel for a tool. I like the old truck or car coil spring suggestion.

HW-- I had almost the exact same accident happen, but with a brand new stainless wire wheel on a little grinder. Didn't notice a thing until hours later when I felt a little splinter in my forearm. Pulled on it, and out came a full-length wire. Found a few others here and there, too. I have always worn safety glasses, but from that day on it's been a face shield over them and full leathern battle armor: jacket, apron, cuffs and gauntlets. For years I suspected an evil spirit dwelt in my shop. Realized some time back that, alas, it's my stupidity in not anticipating possibilities.

Ch. 5 Albuquerque schedules a rebroadcast of the samurai sword show (NOVA) at 8 MDT tonight.

Bravo! Absolutely fantastic! This is simply the most beautiful work I have ever seen on this or any other blacksmithing or silversmithing website. Just masterful! You have obviously made a compact with supernatural forces!! Keep it up!!

PBS, Ch. 5, Albuquerque, Tuesday night at 8, will have a show, NOVA, re: making a samurai sword. It sez here-- in no less a source than The Santa Fe New Mexican Saturday. So maybe they will and maybe they won't. And maybe it will air in your area, too.

Looked at speedymetals.com. They list only "aluminum bronze." Vas ist das aluminum bronze? I want silicon bronze. Inquiring minds want to know. Why is finding bronze, brass, stainless, so difficult, anyway? The stuff has been around for centuries, but nobody in Abuquerque has it.

Popular Science Publishing Co. did their Amateur Craftsman's Encyclopedia in 1937 for guys with lots of spare time on their hands. In it is a piece with some instructions on how to make a welder out of an Model A engine-- no figures given on output, but article indicates maybe 200 amps. Piece assumes ammeter, voltmeter, field rheostat, current selector switch, terminal posts, resistance coil, resistance unit, and various wires and terminals" can be "ourchased all assembled and wired in its angle iron frame."

I wear Howard Leight earmuffs, got 'em from MSC, when possible (they won't fit under a protective face mask, so then I wear plugs) if I am hammering something that will hurt my ears, like thin sheet on the anvil, and always when grinding, running the bandsaw, chopsaw, etc. Problem with plugs, I have read, is that a lot of injurious sound waves are transmitted via the thin bone of the skull behind the ears, and muffs, but not plugs, will block that. So you think you are protected but you ain't.

Haynes Techbook, aka Haynes Publishing Group, puts out a welding manual that does a superb job of describing the capabilities and limitations of various types of welding equipment. I got a copy at Autozone. Check it out. It's worth a hard look before investing your money in a welder.

There is a closed-cell blue plastic ground sheet about 1/2-inch thick called Ensolite that camping and backpacking boutiques sell. I was happily introduced to this magical stuff on an expedition in January one year, camping atop 5 feet of snow for several nights at about 9,000 feet in the Rockies. I expected to freeze to death but the people who were guiding my wife and me assured us the Ensolite would block the cold. It did, totally, keeping us toasty in our sleeping bags despite all that snow underneath us. I have since cut Ensolite insoles for my boots that I wear in the shop on winter days, along with SmartWool socks, warmest and longest-lasting socks I have ever worn. A woollen-- no synthetics where a spark could hit it-- watch cap helps keep the BTUs from escaping my bald noggin. Thermax undershirt (Cabela's) wicks away sweat and prevents that clammy chill that comes from sweating up a cotton T and without the itch of wool, and I wear one (not the same one) from about Thanksgiving until about Easter day and night here at 7,000 feet. On really cold days Thermax bottoms are needed, but those days are rare.

Crisis resolved, if not exactly solved: CEO here at Entropy Research has spoken, says bag the spiral saw jazz and drill a xxxxed pilot hole above dead center on the flue, go up top, cut a bloody 14-inch hole around pilot hole with reciprocating saw (or that Sawzall in the ABQ Craig's list now for $50!!), insert pipe, slap on a goodly quantity of goop, slap on stainless flashing mit der stainless boot, and say to xxxx with it, life goes on. Many thanks to all for thoughtful advice. I will file it away to use in next crisis.

Thanks all, for the advice-- cutting the material is not the problem (I have an ancient recipro saw that'll do that in a flash), it's cutting the OSB from below without penetrating the tin lying smack dab atop it. There is lots of room to work. I mainly was/am curious as to what users think about how the various brands of spiral saws (which are just little hand-held routers), Ryobi, DeWalt, Rotozip, behave-- and hold up-- in actual use.

Help!! I have a tricky problem-- not blacksmithing, but tool-related. Putting a new roof on house, roofer left me with OSB (fancy particle board) sheathing under HD corrugated steel roof. Gotta cut a 14" OD hole in OSB for 2" setback from combustibles on rated 10" woodstove flue pipe, but then immediately above that a 10" hole in tin. Home Depot has: Ryobi, DeWalt, Rotozip spiral saws available. Any user evals on these tools much appreciated.

I would not trust a piece of welded cast iron any farther than I could throw it. If there is the slightest chance the bell could fall and hurt somebody when the yoke breaks again, which it will, the present break indicating a basic design flaw, then I'd say drill the yoke and join it together with gusset plates on each side. Or forge a brand new yoke out of appropriate plate. Nobody will notice and you will sleep better.