Charlotte

It looks very like the mouse hold that I had. The horn style seems to suggest that it was a little later than the one that I had.

Just an FYI. I was shopping W.W. Grainger yesterday. The have a torch for $76 that is a " Heating" torch. puts out approx 50,000 btu on propane and comes with its own regulator and hose. I've seen these used where having a portable source of heat is necessary. You might want to look into it. Grainger Item # 2CZD7 Price (ea.) $76.95 Brand WESTWARD Mfr. Model # 2CZD7 Ship Qty. 1 Sell Qty. (Will-Call) 1 Ship Weight (lbs.) 5.56 Usually Ships** Today Catalog Page No. 3144 I thought about buying one to keep bending heat in large scroll as it starts to cool. My one thing most gas forges don't do well is handle large two dimensional forms. Sometime you get one shot at the easy was and the remaider is the hard way.

One other thing. I'm assuming that the frame work and the "skin" are carefully designed to minimize any crevices that might collect particulate matter or hold water. So there you are 2-50 years depending... I have some hr 1/4 round that has been laying on some bricks underneath a fig tree, an inch from the soil, for ten years in southern Louisiana that is still in reasonably good condition. My local climate verges on the tropical to subtropical. (When I need new material I can buy it. I can not buy that texture. one pass through the fire, some wire brushing some shaping and its ready for finishing.)

A lot depends on how the piece is mounted. The kind of exposure it gets and the degree to which the site drains after a rain. In turn there are a lot of different "rush finishes" and several variations on "Corten" type steels. I have seen some locations in which Corten has been vary satisfactory for highway over passes while just a few miles down the road it has to be painted because of excessive corrosion. Is it going into a private home or a public space? My personal choice would be a quick rust browning with a ferric chloride + copper sulfate+ smidge of nitric acid. Various combinations of those chemicals were used in the 19th century to produce a rust brown finish on pattern welded shotgun barrels. After several coatings the steel gets a very tight adhearing coating of brown iron oxide. This inturn makes an excellent base for clear coating. By hard wire brushing you can manipulate the finish to produce the color and texture of of the finish to produce a number of effects. It has to be clear coated with something like automotive clear coat in several layers after being neutralized. I would use rivets where ever possible. Electric arc welding creates active sites in the metal that encourage rusting. I would get the manufacturers recommendation if using Corten type materials and follow them exactly. Finally I would use industrial epoxy grout to anchor the statue in an effort to insulate the statue from stray electro chemical corrosion. After all that, and if nobody messes with it 40 or 50 yeas is not out of the question with minimal care. I would have to have any stray biological deposits removed.

Keith if you check the following: gulfcoastblacksmith.com It will take you to an abana affiliate dedicated to more traditional smithing but is also lead in part by a man by the name of Chuck Robinson. His primary interest is in making Knives, forging knives, the technology and history of knives. His is also very egar to share his great knowledge with anyone who will listen. Their most frequent meeting place is Covington LA at a members shop. In your area are also The Mississippi Forge Council which has a thread at the in the bottom section, and LAMA (The Louisiana Metal Smiths Association) Incidentaly, Mississippi Forge Council's Annual Conference is May 24, and May 25. Happy to have you here. Charlotte

The Wikipedia has a good explanation and extensive list of links to other sources. Off the top it doesn't seem like something that you would want in a hand crafted knife. You could pattern weld for a long time for the cost of the equipment.

My last telephone pole of suppliers in Louisiana yielded no HR 1/4. And Cr 1/4 at great expense by special order. I was thinking about ordering CR from online metals but the shipping is as much as the material. Some of the suppliers have also cut down on some other materials. 3/8 square tube has disappeared from the inventories of a number of my suppliers as has 1/2 square tube. One company will order from another location but there is $200 minimum order. And they don't carry HR 1/4. So if you can get I'm happy for you!

Good reminder, if needs to contain dangerous energies buy the best you can afford for the job. Almost any tool is cheaper than hospital.

Mike, it sounds like it would work to make a mess and possibly hurt your self and damage equipment.

You have certainly left me with the impression that you were and absolute beginner with no resources. Many of us here have been forging for a long time. Most would say they are still learning hammer control. Mr Hofi is still teaching smiths with 20 years at the anvil how to hammer.

Yes and no. Music wire is, yes, ready to bend and make springs out of. No it doesn't lose all its properties when heated, only those imparted by cold drawing. It is a 1095 high carbon steel that if heated, forged, normalized, hardened and tempered makes an excellent spring. Since it is widely available in 1/4 inch size for reasonable cost, it is one choice among many. The one thing that makes music wire a little special is that it is free of internal defects. Making the particuliar spring he is talking about can be a frustrating experience. If my best friend were to ask me to make that spring at my forge I would use flat stock purchased from Brownells, shape half a dozen and hope that one made it all the way to the finish line.

I would use HR A36 round for two reasons: 1.) 1/4 square is all most always cold rolled, costs more, and is not availabe from most local suppliers. 2.) The appearence of the hooks will be improved by the simple act forging it square. With size of 1/4 this is a quick and easy task.

Mike, try starting small with charcoal and a piece of heavy scrap for an anvil. There is a lot of learning in the first little while of hammering. Learning how to hammer is the first and most important step toward mastery.

Ian, don't disagree. There are a couple of different ways to accomplish the same thing. I never intend to go clear through. Just had a piece of 3/8 hot and was talking while I was working. Usually I go about 3/4 of the way through, rotate 90 deg finish with a quick shear that starts over the edge a finishes just past it. This produces a small break in one corner that can be dressed off with a shoe rasp in a stoke at the far side of the anvil. Not saying that what I do is right, just that I have a habit of doing it that way. I was responding Mkeicher's remarks. In my home set up I have a five and dime hammer that I use for bashing when what I'm cutting with is more trouble to sharpen or repair than what I'm working on is worth. It is cast out something softer than my hardies are. If I were to replace it I would use one of the sculptor's hammers they use for driving their tools: dead soft and short handled.

If you insist on forging it your self then go to your best local hardware store and ask for music wire. That is a specification for a particular type of spring steel 1095. Really should be called music quality spring wire as Quenchcrack says. Any way it is available in sizes up to 1/4 round. Have you looked in Brownells. They carry a large variety of flat spring stock as well as many premade springs Brownells - World's Largest Supplier of Firearm Accessories, Gun Parts and Gunsmithing Tools If case you are not familiar with the name. They are THE supplier to America's gunsmiths.

Because some of the junk isn't really junk. More like going through a Goodwill store. You know that it is cheap, you know that you can find better else where, but darn that is exactly what you need. I have several tools that I bought from HF. They worked well and did the job I needed at the time. None of the tools are for business but they do the job. For instance, I bought the set of dapping punches and block they sell. they were exactly what i needed to form little hemispheres out of sterling silver for a christmas present. Regular jewelry set runs between $100 and $200. For 50 they were just fine. I'm working of a copper repousse of grapes atm. On the copper they do just great. I might get my 50 out of it eventually. I'm fairly certain that I will not get $200

Quench if someone asked me at a demonstration I'd reply one specification 1018 is a specification for composition. A36 is a specification for performance. The specifed properties can be achieved in an number of different ways. When you buy A36 you are buying a puppy that you have no Idea who the father is. A Saint Bernard or a pekinese.. I remember vividly an afternoon demo of nail making. One of better smiths was making nails and cursing a blue stream. After taking a break he came by my little rivet forge and saw that I was getting along OK. He borrowed some of the 1/4 in rod I was using. No more complaints, no more cussing just nail after nail hitting the slack tub. The specs were the same and, it turned out later, from the same dealer. It just happened the my 1/4 hot rolled was a year newer. I've often suspected that the variable response to "Super Quench" was the result of different lots of material more than anything else.

Reminds me that years ago the folks at Gatlinburg Tenn put their blacksmith demo behind a glass window. I think there was also one of those black metal wire screens. I have half a dozen scars on my left hand from cup wire wheels from when I got in to much of a hurry to put on a glove.

Teflon is good for a great many things but is way soft for most applications that use bakelite. It has serious cold flow problems

Some time back I purchased some no name (chinese) brand crow bars at big lots. The make excellent tools for repousse as they can be forged fairly easily, are relatively tough and if air cooled are hard enough to tke a nice polish and cheap enough not to sweat if you have to remake.

Guess it is all relative to one's experience. Pet coke certainly seems to me to be heavier that the bag coke that is sold today. I've never had occasion to handle blast furnace coke. Pet Coke is produced all over the Southeren Louisiana and the Texas Oil Patch. From my own experience, and the experiece of others, it is so dense that it is not really usable in a coal forge. Burning require so strong air blast that you have too much oxygen in the fire. It goes out immediately when the blast stops. I've heard of methods to circumvent the problem but they don't seem very practial to me. (That is I haven't seen it personally) I suspect, but have no literature to support, that it contains a lot of graphite along with the amorphous carbon.

Good luck on your application! I like your work an am looking forward to seeing more as the summer progress.

Yes, I read your review. I totally agree! I had a mousehole anvil stolen from where I had it stored a ten years ago. I restored that thing with loving care, a lot of sweat, effort, and research, and the help of friends with heavy duty equipment that I didn't have. I picked up the Russian as quick replacement, borrowed an anvil from a guy for a year, and then was out of the action until recently. I also have a large section of 5 1/2" X 5 1/2 " by 12" high alloy steel that can substitute when I need a better mass to pound on. ( I forget what the alloy is but it may be similar to 4140.) I have a couple of railroad anvils that I use for more delicate work. The Russian serves mostly to hold anvil tools and mount my smithin Magician.

Depending on what you want to do you may find some inspiration in this. My first forge was a circle of fireplace bricks stacked up in a circle with a hair dryer for an air supply. I used charoal bricquetts for fuel but later learned that charcoal is a better choice.My anvil was a piece of 3/4 inch picked up on the road side.

Different coals produce different kinds of clinker. Some is more ashy than glassy. For a while I had coal that would produce clinker that was kind of a thick tar like when hot. You could take a small poker and pick the whole mass out and lay it on the ground. After a few moments it harded into a glassy donut. I think that the glassy clinkers indicate a coal that is better for welding than the ashy kind. I was told, and it seemed to match my experience, that the ashy clinker tended to contaminate your weld surfaces . Coke is light silvery black in color when broken and with a magnifying glass has very fine pores in it. The only coke that is heavy is petroleum coke, but when broken and examined with a 10x magnifier will have the same characteristics.