Charlotte

Congratulations on your success! That is a very nice picture an a good taper on the scroll! Good Work!

you would do well to contact these people http://www.anhrefractories.com/ try to call your nearest location by phone and ask them for the answer, They have gotten very picky about revealing product performance specs over the internet; If you get and answer from them looks for an equitant on line or just get them to ship to your address. They will work with business licensed folks but individuals not so much. I deal with a location 40 miles from my house by walking in their front door. If I wasn't on their carpet they would not talk to me. (it was different 15 years ago )

It would be interesting to see some of the tools used by native craftsman use for their carpentry and carving. What I've seen in films and photographs has been tantalizing but not really detailed enough for reproduction. Your reproduction is fascinating and resembles some of the photographs I've seen

Very pretty and graceful design!

latticino Thank you for the information It follows along with an experiment that I had planned. That is a very interesting link and will give a great boost to this discussion/

I agree with this perspective. In fact even in the US in present times blacksmiths are often sought out to make or repair parts of existing equipment that are no longer available on the local market. I have seen farmers bring the cutting edge of plows brought to a blacksmith to repair and sharpen rather than pay the cost of a new one from the dealer.

I never did well in school Until I got 7th grade. I was science addict from the earliest days I can remember. I always liked the big toys the expensive toys. The one's I wasn't supposed to touch.! You know the toys that actually did something like saws, real hammers, screw drivers axes. When I started algebra, and geometry and biology and General science things were looking up for me. English now that was another matter until they got over that grammar/spelling kick. Last two years of High school were good enough to get me a scholarship for my first year of college. I was lucky. My dad refused to pay anybody for anything he thought he could do himself. He was a talented carpenter, mechanic, draftsman who couldn't afford engineering school in the 20's so he went to work in railroad freight management and became and Industrial developer. When he looked around for an extra hand or a good pair of eyes there I was. I spent as much time in the garage or the basement with him as I did in books or cooking. ( My mother despaired of ever teaching me to sew with needle and thread. But sewing machine that was a different matter) I was promoted to Laboratory supervisor in my longest job mostly because I was the person that understood how the machinery and the plant worked as well as the lab instruments and could fix and/or diagnose the problem when things went south. For what ever reason I seem to have a talent for understanding how things work and how to fix them when they don't I blacksmith weld etc. because I've loved hot Iron since I saw the steel mills in Pittsburgh PA dumping slag in the distance in the evening. I used to see it every night that I played outside.

Note on bell reducer. I used them extensively in building blast burners for boiling crawfish, shrimp, and steaming crabs. A tradition here in Louisiana. The advantage is that the treads create a turbulence at edge of the flow which allows the use of a shorter pipe under some condition and keeps really high volumes from blowing of the end. One of the reasons my burners were popular was that I could throw a really big flame that wouldn't blacken the bottom of the pot Admittedly the big ones sounded like a jet engine revving up.

Alas, I can't give more details. I was given that advice by the Company vendor rep when I learned to weld with gas. Most of my gas welding was doing small ornamental assembly and repair. On the half dozen times I gas welded anything bigger than 1/16 I slavishly followed that recommendation. Since my divorce, when I lost half my stuff, I've used acetylene for welding and propane for cutting. I was never a big time job weldor. A lot of what I know is from being in the industry and insisting that if I was responsible for some of it I should have hands on knowledge. It is much easier to QC results if you understand on a physical level what the technician had to do and how the product/equipment works. All I remember of the conversation was that___ since you are using a bigger tip than you would for acetylene and generating more total BTU at a slightly lower temperature you need to make use of the heat to get the job done. These days I use mig for the same jobs and now that I have finally gifted my self a tig will retire the acetylene cylinder unless I find some one that insets I repair something where it sits.

Dread Locks?

Forges can be built around thin air. Since that is galvanized I'd forget that except as a slack tub and build a brick pile or inswool /kast-0-lite forge. There are many posts in this section about forges built a number of different ways.

Mikey98118 I said silver braze with deliberate intent. Silver alloy manufactured by STOODY for High pressure stainless steel tubing carrying hydrogen at 4000 PSIA with no failure of joint or leak for years. The Joints were only replaced with orbital welded autotig welded systems because of the requirement for absolute purity. Trust me on the MAPP It was a superior fuel but was shoved off the market by the stupidity of the supplier that retained control of it and tried to establish a monopoly. Blazer was close enough in function compete. A secondary problem is that petroleum chemists raised the pricing after they found other applications for methyacetylene/Propadiene which returned more profit. MAPP's real strength was in forehand horizontal welding. I know that MAPP was discontinued. I know I was there. I worked for the corporate entity that controlled MAPP though its holdings. When It went down I acquired several 25 gallon tanks that I shared with friends that need fuel for several purposes. There were a lot of crawfish boiled over MAPP gas In Louisiana. You should know that the international company that owned MAPP went out the cylinder gas business and sold all of its cylinder gas subsidiaries. Another case of corporations being run by people that have more interest in their own pockets than commitment to the products and the people that produce them. I sat in meetings with some of those Swinging D_____s and heard their thinking.

Totally agree with Frosty's experience. Mapp gas if you can find it was capable of steel welding; I learned to weld in the bad old days. Today I use propane for anything that doesn't require acetylene; The Turbo torch system using propane was good for high temp silver braze of stainless steel. I must say however that oxy/acetylene is still the best training for Tig. Tig is a great system but as others have noted not for the faint hearted or inexperienced. At 70 coming I find that I don't quite have the steadiness to do a really good job with tig these days, Not enough use and too expensive to practice I guess.

Hmmm, Strength? That word has several different applications to objects made of steel. How does he mean strength? Strength in bending? In shock resistance? Hardness? Abrasion Resistance? If you haven't done destructive testing how can you make any statement about the suitability of your product? What steps have you take to ensure that the coil springs you used didn't have any internal flaws? ( One coil spring I came across had a cold shut through the length.) Used springs often have stress cracks that show up after forging the experts here have emphasized? ( I often think used springs came my way for a reason.) Btw how do you know for certain that the alloy you used was what you thought it was? How did decide how to heat treat? Just a cautionary group of questions. The professionals on this site have often remarked that it takes years to build a good reputation but only one bad result to break it.

Mikey98118 Just so you know when people ask me about burner design I recommend your book. I have a copy of it on my book shelf. I don't share my system because although it works for me it is one that I developed as a hybrid system. Your books burner builds should produce predictable results in the hands of competent builder. I don]t think any better praise than that can be had. I began building my system quite a while before your book was published. If I had seen it first I might not have developed mine.

Recuperative builds are effective and efficient when you just recover heat by an exhaust gas incoming air heat exchanger. Does require a little experiment to get right. One problem that needs to be solved by the user is developing a burner system that allows stable ignition on cold start. The Sandia forge had an even greater problem in that they wanted high heat at relatively high altitude for the US.

I find drilling to be a piece of cake with years of practice. And second I don't care if it is laminar or not since I create a critical orifice. Typically operate forge at 25 to thirty psi. With one set up I used 40 psig. I have my idiosyncratic design well in hand. I don't share my design because it relies on understanding how flames work and how read the results of adjustments. My first job was running gas fired annealing furnaces for a major steel mfg. so I got a close up hands on experience with Industrial practice. That was in the days before digital controls

Forging lengths of rebar square is a major effort and not really attractive when finished. Also you really don't know what you are working with; Recently had the occasion to repair a porch built by my father. In the process I had to cut some rebar anchor pins. I cussed the whole time because the rebar used was as hard as the hardware store cold chisel I started using. I finally got one from my kit that I had hardened my self to start cutting. Ended up the concreate the pins were in gave up before the pins did, Point being: The best way to use rebar is to take advantage of its texture and/or strength as a contrast to dimensional stock. From personal experience drilling forged rebar can be a major headache. I'm sure other's have their own unhappy experiences with rebar. There is a reason that it is cheap and disappears in concreate,

Forging lengths of rebar square is a major effort and not really attractive when finished. Also you really don't know what you are working with; Recently had the occasion to repair a porch built by my father. In the process I had to cut some rebar anchor pins. I cussed the whole time because the rebar used was as hard as the hardware store cold chisel I started using. I finally got one from my kit that I had hardened my self to start cutting. Ended up the concreate the pins were in gave up before the pins did, Point being: The best way to use rebar is to take advantage of its texture and/or strength as a contrast to dimensional stock. From personal experience drilling forged rebar can be a major headache. I'm sure other's have their own unhappy experiences with rebar. There is a reason that it is cheap and disappears in concreate,

I LIKE IT!

Maybe my chem is rustier that I thought but I don't see in the cited article any direct reduction of Cr2 O? any numbers and carbon. Carbon is mentioned in reduction with chlorine to prepare the chloride. In times past I've played with the oxide messing about with ceramics. I respect that your formula can works just not the way you suspect it does. I really believe that the carbon + the borax may help solvate the manganese and chromium oxides and eliminate the formation of additional oxides to permit fusion.

ThomasPowers I totally agree that it is possible to produce decent work out of a propane forge. The remark is directed at the learning curve of propane forge operation. The beginner is likely to have problems in getting and keeping a forge tuned for a nice balance between too much reducing and to close neutral/oxidizing. Hydrogen explosions created by superheated steam an Iron are part of the history of the steam era. In short form yes.

I have always thought the level of manganese coupled with a similar amount of chrome was the cause of the problem in forge welding. Evidence ? Not here

I repeat: One of the nasty things that water vapor does <aka Steam> is combine with iron molecules to produce black oxide iron oxide and hydrogen which then combines with atmospheric oxygen. In days to Steam power some terrible explosions were tied to the production of hydrogen from the contact of steam with red hot Iron. The reaction of steam and Iron is one of the reasons it is hard for a gas forge to produce the nice slick looking forge work that is so easy to produce with out thought in a solid fuel forge. ie more water more problems The Net reaction is to be less efficient.

I'm not a knife guy so this suggestion may seem off the wall but: 1) grind the thickness of the blade back to the start of the thumb cut out at the same angle as the guard. 2.) reshape the reground portion to a width which will make a decent handle, 3.) Tig weld or silver solder mild steel or bronze pieces to reinforce the handle, You would lose the finger cut out but save the majority of the blade