Charlotte

Very sweet flower. I like the size.  Sometimes less is more.

Delightful!

Just off the top of my head I'd say leave well enough alone.   Hardening the spring steel will not really make much difference in the application.  You may pop your welds trying to  heat and harden.  You might want to think about using standard hard facing rods designed for abrasion resistance if you find wear is a problem in a few years.

Green is chrome oxide if that helps.  Will remove metal even hardened steel. Will produce a near mirror shine if used with a soft muslin wheel. I find the finish on carbon steel to have just a hint of cloudiness.

2 hours ago, Forging Carver said:

Yeah I have tried flint knapping before. After a lot of frustration and cutting myself every minute, I haven't knapped since. I should really buy some more materials some time soon.

You don't need to buy materials.   Just take a stroll along any stream that flows over gravel or go to a gravel pit or rocky shore line.     Burns are the price of learning to blacksmith and cuts are the price of flint knapping as  paint stains are the price of learning to paint.

The original smiths were the fellows that made the first hand ax that butchered the first animal that some other creature killed.   Flint Knappers are smiths too  only in a different material.  You end up in a semantic void if you strain hard enough.

I particularly like the pattern in the first picture. It reminds me of a flower.    A chrysanthemum perhaps? 

Forget plastic  foam.  the pearlite used for drainage in garden and potting soil is a slightly better bet.  However,  insulate with insulating blanket or brick is the practical alternative. The other materials do not really work.

The clays are available on line or from local suppliers to industry or more commonly  from ceramic suppliers in the local area.  You really need to read the information stickies  in the Gas forge forum.   There is a wealth of practical information free for the effort of reading;

Would help if we knew what he did for work or recreation.    After all it is a lump of tool steel with a hole through it.  Daswulf  would make a critter out of in short order

"By Hammer and Hand All the Arts Do Stand"  famous quote about the essential craft of smith's work.

However,  there is a caution about salvaged material.  Some of the wrought Iron found in the interior of the country can be the pits to work with.  A friend of mine salvaged a fence fabricated from wrought Iron.   It turned out that is was such poor quality that it was not really usable.   He was trying to give it away last time I spoke to him.

1 hour ago, ianinsa said:

Those are more fillet/kobi steak than bacon and beans. nice work.

Think I have to agree!  Stock work that is better than most so called masters produce as custom!

You've made my weekend!   I love it!  You've amazed me again!  Thank you

When I was a child living in Ohio, living 10 miles from town, my Mother and I slaved away the summer freezing and canning corn, green beans tomatoes, strawberries etc.  One of the great treats was the home canned creamed corn which we used during the winter to make corn pudding to go with the roasts from half a cow we bought from our next door neighbor.

Since it has brass bushings I'd guess that the wear on the bushings and the shaft are sufficient to cause the them to develop a harmonic chatter.    I had a similar problem in a blower.  I bought a piece of oilite bronze and had a friend turn it down on a lathe id/od to fit.  I was able to get away with not repairing the shaft.

2 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Hard Vacuum also works...but I haven't checked if they've done a space suit with a welding mask built in...

Hard Vacuum does do it but it also takes a while.   When working with high purity materials I'd pull down to 30 milli-torr  shurt off the pump and come back the next day to see how much increase was left. We Had bake out ovens that pulled both vac and heat to clean cylinder for filling with certain reactive materials. 

Lincoln hand book says" cause 1. too high current, 2. Wrong electrode, 3. Wrong Polarity, 4. Too large electrode.    for excessive e splatter.  Generally I've been told that dirt you can't see on clean surfaces, moisture. intermittent nature of arc.  MIG weld is not a continuous process especially when doing it with an inverter.    My unit is an inverter and I do short circuit not spray so it expect it to spatter.  It is even worse when using flux core and no gas.  

One thing I learned in the Industrial gas industry was that every metal surface has a film of moisture on it that is difficult to remove with out heat. 

I expect that the pro's will add to and correct me.

Never tried to build one my self, However I visited a foundry in Tennessee that was casting iron manhole covers and similar parts that used home heating fuel oil. 

Really depends on what you want to know about your forge temp. and the thrermowell it is in.      Heat in forge is radiant so just behind your coatings of kiln wash.  Some place out of direct flame impingement and exhaust would give the best reading.

You can tell people like that.   But you can't tell the much.  

Actually, according to lectures I attended when they were trying to make me a supervisor you did the right thing.  Let them say their piece,  acknowledge you have heard what they had to say,  and ignore them!  

This is the stuff of legends!  Out standing craftsmanship and surpassing imagination.!

Drilling your current orifice out is a bad idea..  There are a number of alternatives but propane torches generally have larger heat output.    If Propane is not readily available to you check with your local people that do plumbing and see what they have available to for their pipe work.   The set ups for gas/ air burners can be rather critical in the smaller sizes.

your problem is not the quality of the heat but the quantity.   In short you are not burning enough gas fast enough to do what you want to do. 

Titanium

Titanium is a chemical element with symbol Ti and atomic number 22. It is a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density and high strength. It is highly resistant to corrosion in sea water, aqua regia and chlorine.

en.wikipedia.org · Text under CC-BY-SA license

• Discovered: 1791
• Melting point: 1,668 °C
• Symbol: Ti
• Electron configuration: [Ar] 3d2 4s2
• Atomic number: 22
• Boiling point: 3,287 °C

One thought about using the Yellow Pages.   In some places they don't really amount to much these days.   In the last few years I have discovered that there are many businesses that don't advertise in the yellow pages or similar books provided by other carriers than ATT.  However, I would expect that in the Philadelphia area there would be several active retail sources.