Charlotte

Its been a long time since I bought steel on line. Imagine my suprise when went looking for some 5160 3/4x2" and discovered that the shipping cost would be also most as much as the material and the material was twice what I paid years ago. (Smithin magician dies, Hot dies)

Over time I've collected a lot of road kill spring. When looking at coil spring I've notice a number of cold shuts at the points of failure. Just a little FYI. When you pick up a broken spring, discarded, it is always a good idea to ask your self why it failed or was discarded.

Hard to say where great creative ideas come from! That is great fresh Idea for a forge leaf. I'm grabbing a picture to put in my Idea file. One of hardest things I have to to do is breaking out the traditional mold and get into an idiom that will appeal to contemporary tastes with out going the abstract route. You have done it well with this pieces and I can only envy your creativity.

Very Good work Frosty. I grabbed a copy of your pic so I could study it later.

I think he is saying that the black crud you find on sour wells, gas or oil, releases Hydrogen sulfide when it is hot. Yes Not a smart idea to mess with sour gas material because the clean up is more trouble than the goods are worth. Actually there are several componds that form on those well componets that are disgusting, posionours, and contaminate your shop and your work. Better left alone like stuff with hot dip galvanize on it. More trouble than just a little bit.

Very Nice Work! Is that a traditional pattern in Finland? Thank you for sharing you work with us.

What did you order? Most stamps are made of materials selected for a particuliar use. Say D2 for cold stamp and H13 for red work?

Considering your location I would not be suprised if it was chrome Molly steel re rolled from one of the scarped ww II ships. Australia and New Zeland salvage a lot of that material for darn near everything after the war because it was cheaper than Importing form europe and USA.

I have a several scraps of known steel laying around to compare to.

That is what I was thinking. Some of the rebar was re-rolled railroad rail as were the iron frame box springs you still see. I cut one of the old bed frames before I knew this and used the material to make a stand for a portable coal forge. I had a misserable experience cutting and welding the stuff and blamed my self.

My first coal forge was clay mud mixed with vermiculite with 3/8 steel fire grate. I put it the whole mess in a rusted out charcoal grill and it worked just fine. ( no wood any place:D)

Thanks for the Link it is very interesting! One thing that the site tells us is that they are using serious direct drive centrifical blowers. That is, a blacksmith blower on hormones. These radial fan blower produce high static pressures. New, with out the one horse motor, they run around $200 and produce something like 200 cfm at a 7"wc Pressure (wc= water column) ( price and volumn approx based on similarity to WW. Grainger cat. Items. This is some information that I was looking for my self. It will greatly influence my own design thinking for a chip bed blower

Flash back in most systems stems from static pressure behind the burner being less than the resistance of the hot end. As gases get hotter there is increased resistance to mass flow. Essentially the hot gas is tries harder to go in every direction instead of the you want it to. You don't need anything fancy for a blower because you already have some static pressure created by the burner. I would buy one of the 30-50 dollar blowers from WW. Grainger or similar. I just bought one on sale for $35. run some flex duct to burner and arrange it so that it surrounds and seals to burner.

Very Nice work. I'm kind of curious as to why you chose 10 gauge? Was it strictly because the pieces were going to be out side or where there other reasons?

Dan, Unless my memory fails me completely the cargo of those ships was Iron ore. However depending on where they landed the ship itself was probably made up of wrought Iron componets that may or may not be sound. Just because it is in fresh water doen't mean that it doesn't corrode. It will have lower levels of encrusted marine growth.

BTW I think that the straight peen hammer is the most over looked style. The hammer that I got from Centaur forge years ago collected dust for a while until I decided to grind down the peen to a reasonable radius. The orgional would have needed only a little sharpening to be a spliting wedge.

That is a cute little hammer. Like it's size and shape. Over heard at a swap meet: Blacksmith: "Listen Baby, I keep telling you any piece of iron that is roughly hammer shaped or any old file that is longer than your shoe is worth a buck" Wife: "Yeah, you keep telling me that. How about some more money to pickup up your trash." (calls his wife garage sale queen or annie depending)

You could go for Corten type steel but i don't know if it is available in the sizes you need. Part of what makes it is its heat treatment. If the material is available in the size you need then follow the manufacture's recomendations to the letter and hope for the best.

Check out the files here that reference Mr. Hofi.

Now dat purdy! Really exceptional work and great presentation. Thanks for showing it. charlotte

Welcome to best big/little forge house on the web. The folks here are great, the management gracious, and the conversation stimulating but civilized. Glad to have you here.

Living in southern louisiana there is a lot of sucker rod floating around. The only thing I know for sure is that you can not know for sure what it is. Treat it like junk steel and don't invest a lot of time and effort in making something that needs high performance. Above all don't make a tools out of it that, if it fails, could hurt someone. Try the spark tests and the various forging, hardening, and tempering tests on that our teachers recommend.

Suggestion is to buy tongs to fit 3/8 and 1/2" material try to fine the "universal" tongs that hold both round and rectangular . With those in hand then start making your own. I used to take the first pair of tongs I made with me just so other smiths would ask me what in the world they were. I kept them for a long time to remind me that how ever badly I messed up something that at least I was better now than I was then. I favor 3/8 A36 reins with welded on 1/2 or larger jaws. ( Electric weld or forge weld ) depends on how tired I am and how soon I'm going use them. It is possible to forge out several different jaw styles and refine them before tacking on the reins. higher alloy = lighter tongs but more caution around the slack tub.

The mouse hole that I had was actually four pieces.: body, Horn, heel and top. On mine the top was worn down to less than an eight inch thick in one spot. My horn was seperating from the top and produced a crack across the face. Many of the mouse hole anvils in the southern United States were damaged or destroyed by the Union Army during the recent unpleasantness. I repaired mine but it took a lot of time and effort not to mention a BIG three phase industrial welding machine. I still have traces of welders tan because I didn't use a apple protector.

Check out the Mississippi and Alabama Forge councils web sites for articles by "Bob" Robert M. Heath. He published ( and I think still publishes) a pamplet that gives you all the designs for a Blacksmiths's Bellows. Failing that look up his e-mail on the Mississippi forge council website and send him an email asking for his Pamplet titled "How to Make A Blacksmith's Bellows" There may be a resource here that has it or on Anvil Fire that contains the information you need to make one.