Charlotte

I was told once that any piece of tool metal with a hole through it was worth a buck.

Beautiful design and great execution.  Definite show piece!  Half inch thick at start???!!!!!!  wow!

Have a good friend that worked a civil war movie in Louisiana in July in Yankee uniform.   The Uniform was Wool!  Said the only relief was when they had to charge across the creek about 10 times.   Fell down repeatedly in the water.  .

I've seen all the previous star wars movies more than once.  The Disney version definitely lacks the spiritual ambience that motivated the first three. Disneyfying a theme is always a sad event. 

OH!  Now that is really nice!  You will be THE super cool dad.  (do teenage folks even use that word any more ? almost 60 years on it is hard to know.)

Seriously,  for a prospective wall hanger that is fantastic work.  Would be fine for a regular item for that matter. 

Good friend of mine uses a pipe thread machine to grip and drive his heavy threading .  He takes advantage of his heavy platen table to anchor it and the other end.  He uses a heavy duty oxy/acetylene torch to regulate and control the location of twists. 

I really empathize with you Joel.   I have the same problem.  I've worked with paper and pencil drafting, and have worked with computer drafting programs.  Still run into differences between what is on paper and the actual object. 

One thing that I've found to help is Engineering Isometric drafting pads.  Takes a little getting accustomed to but they help with three dimensional shapes There are even little plastic templates that allow you to draw accurate circles and ellipses.   It looks like a graph paper with x,y,z axis drawn.  No substitute for a good lofting of the design but a great help sitting on the couch in the evening and thinking. 

Keep us posted that looks fine from here!

very nice!  Looks like your choice worked so that was the good one!

If you pause to consider the number of things invented by smiths individually or working in a shop with other smiths you will realize that the tradition of the blacksmith is to use the tools available to create the tools that are need or work better to get the job done.  Famous example is the vise grip.

Alan Evans 

Charming!!!

Look at the forum on Solid fuel forges the first Pinned article covers everything you need to know to build a forge.

http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/44842-just-a-box-of-dirt-or-a-simple-side-blast-forge/

actually I've had good success  making rings out of flat bar by putting an extra long piece and taking a small bend in slightly open vice jaws.   advance a little and bend some more repeat until you have a full circle.    keep and eye with a sector drawn on inside curve. on desired inside curve   The thing is that the each tiny bend is part of the circle.  the extra length permits you to bend near the ends.      So 18 inch diameter is roughly 56.5 inches circumference  I. start with 65.5 inch  flat bar  mark of 4.5 inches from each end and start bending at the first mark.  I'd expect that you would use nothing any heavier than 3/16 for the project and maybe 3 or four inches wide.  which would be really heavy. 

I think  that with the amount of chipping on the edges that there may be cracks all around.   I think they could be salvaged for top tools by annealing and sawing off the first half inch below the deepest chip.    That is what I would do.  I bought a bunch of ball peens a long while back and did that with a couple of big ones which were chipped.  There may be a better solution. 

Memphis is worse than Gulf coast IMHO!  Grandad's last farm was just out side Memphis is the 60"s   Condos where his barn was now. It is not the heat that is the killer it is the sweat that doesn't evaporate.

Salt Lake in July is a vacation compared to what a lot of use experience on the US. Gulf Coast.     You are saying if you can't stand the heat get out of Blacksmith's shop?

There will be many wonderful demonstrations. 

Obviously I can't speak for present time since I left BOC nearly 20 years ago now, but back then the diaphragms in the victor regulators and the Boc Regulators were stainless steel.  Basically the designs of the various types were composed of the same materials with few exceptions.   The differences were about the inlet and out let pressures, designed delivery volume and the number of stages.  

Depending on the age and brand there could be a problem with seats interior to the regulator stage.   

I agree that what ever that set up is in the picture  something is very wrong.   Normally that type of tip would be on the end of a standard heating torch setup.   I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.   The torch body appears to be a single purpose cutting torch.   Wrong torch body !  Misread part numbers???

I have seen beautiful and elaborate sculptures formed with the same mesh in galleries .  

Just two suggestions for you:

One:  buy a piece of S7 steel and compare spark test and forging difficulty to the bits you have.  The results will settle it in your own mind.  S7 is air hardening so normalizing etc is not really an issue in hot cuts in my mind.

Two: Since you seem inclined to follow traditional techniques you should take a look at Mark Aspery's book  "The Skills of A Blacksmith: Vol I"  The chapter on Bottom Tools should interest you.    

Makes me appreciate the Bo study along with Aikido study. 

A few years ago I used a Jet mill owned by my neighbor  to mill the face of an anvil after I hard faced it.  After I was done my neighbor continued to use it for milling parts for black powder gun reproductions. 

My first experience with gas heating of steel was with high pressure natural gas feeding annealing furnaces.  Those furnaces were designed so that there was a separation between the burner and the refectory,   I install my burners so that there is a gap of about 1/16 inch between the brick and the burner.  Even with that gap I often find myself replacing the last section of my burner due to melting at welding heat.  Not saying that this is the way to do it.  Just my experience and what I do as a result..

For me anything I can not hold with one hand and manipulate is too heavy!   But that is just an old girl talking. 

Makes me grin just to look at it!

LOL!   Yes,  you would definitely deserve credit!   Like the shape and the effort you put it.