Charlotte

If you use a metal finishing scrapper like those used on furniture it leaves a very smooth surface but one in which the grain is open and feels warm to the touch. The point that metalmangeler made about the ancestry of the Jim Poor hammers occurred to me also. I have a knock off copy of the Jim Poor hammer head that I fitted with a Lee Green handle. that is similar to the Jim Poor handle. I find that using the Hofi Hammer techniques makes the size and shape of the hammer less important. Hofi Technique is shown in the blue print. With rounding hammers in particular, and hammers in general it is helpful to have small differences is the shape of the handle top and bottom to index the first and second face.

I have a set like those pictured by John McPherson. Mine came from Harbor Freight I believe. I've used them to hold things at odd angles when welding. .

Yes, You will find many people here that like side blast.

I don't worry about the size of the handle but then my hands are smaller than most of the smiths I've met. For me the handle texture is more important than the actual shape although I often work the section down between the head and the grip area down on my cross peen. I like to have a little flex there as it seems a less tiring to my arm. The first thing I do with a new handle is take a scraper to it. I like the tactile feel of clean wood.

If you never revisit this series they will become extremely valuable collectors items! Your work has no serious competition in the US in my opinion for what that is worth. Truly in a class of it's own.

There is a constant battle with the mass marketers who spot a tend created by artists/craftsmen and recreate the "impression" in mass production factories. I remember a few years back seeing a truckload of "bakers racks" being hauled in from Mexico for sale here. How many of the readers have sold a bakers rack in the last 10 years? There are many other items that have been part of the smiths stock in trade that are imitated out fashion. I have nothing against artistic work. In fact I have often attempted and failed at creative items. I look at the work published in ABANA's "The Anvils Ring" with amazement and some times envy of the creative insight that led to their creation. To survive as craftsmen the smith will have to offer the paying public items of quality and beauty that are not widely imitated by mass production. The smiths of my personal acquaintance that have made a living at the forge have all developed a personal style and product area that appeals to group of people with discrimination and sufficient income to make the purchase of their work practical. I know a lot of people that recognize quality but only a very few that can afford it.

Longer lengths are available but don't ship by UPS. Contact them by phone and they will accommodate your needs. How ever long and wide you need they can supply. your only problem will be the quantity they require for an order from their "Industrial side" They have sheets of 1075 and 1095 for sale either cold rolled or hot rolled. Their pricing is per square foot However their 1085 series steels were discontinued a while back. The have other popular alloy steels available, 5160, 4130, 6150 You were evidently looking at their blade catalogue. Check their Alloy and spring steel catalogue.

There is at least one vid on you tube showing the forging of a very nice tong forged from a pair of spikes,

Outstanding!

Balder makes big ones. That is the name I remember from the Machine shops I've visited.

One of the Scientists that studied fire ants and roaches said in a meeting I attended that diatomic earth, like used for swimming pool filters, spread around would run both of the critters away. I've used Andros Fire ant bait myself. It works well when you have a larger yard and need to deal with multiple mounds. Fire ants have separate mounds that are connected with subsidiary brood locations so they all have to be treated.

This is an excellent summary of one of the ways that I solve the problem for my self. My first welding forge used High temp fire brick that I cut/drilled to form an expansion nozzle. It was a tedious chore but for an experimenter not big deal.

Well yes that is why they included a MSDS. As a retired lab supervisor I recommend searching for the Manufacturer's Safety Data Sheet for any product that is new to the user. The particular oxidative product are poisonous oxides of nitrogen. At one point in my checkered career is spent a lot of time figuring out how to analyze them in the pure form without killing my self or my staff. Can it be done yes. Would I use Nitrate salts for heat treat? Not only not but.....NO A nice well insulated sand bath makes so much more since and requires much less investment for heat control and maintenance. K type thermocouples would work I think

There are dual fuel hoses available I changed mine out years ago.

Obviously we have no accurate notion of what your alloy is. Gas cylinders are made of an alloy which is referred to as chrome/molly steel. Its whole purpose is not to work harden and to hold together under the worst sort of abuse. In general it is possible for one to explode by tearing apart like a steel balloon. I have see examples of them being shot with armor piercing bullets without exploding. Picture a 5 ft tall steel cylinder with entrance and exit holes and still in one piece. All this is to tell you that pressure vessels are very different than knife steels. When the start to stiffen up they are cut up and sold for scrap.

Love the ingenuity; The only problem I see is that current issue of us pennies is mostly zinc. wonder what years you used?

Excellent information in the MSDS. Basically it is potassium nitrate and Sodium nitrate with a little other nitrates added in depending. Making sure that your bath never gets contaminated and stays covered all the time would be key to safety. They are a little close to the vest about the ratios of the four different nitrates. One thing about those salts is that they tend to accumulate moisture around them and stray particles will encourage rust carbon steel. Kind of like last years fertilizer left in the shed next to the garden spade.

Plastic bucket I put a hardware cloth basket inside to catch and retrieve small cutoffs. Didn't want old blind poodle blundering into a hot slug. just picked up with tongs and dropped in.

I like your work and this is excellent.!

I've seen a couple of industrial equipment people demonstrate them chopping A36 channel and like that. They were using the made for the job carbide steel saw blades. I've seen people use the abrasive cut off saws at the individual level. In the steel mill I worked like 50 feet from an abrasive cut off that chopped heavy wall tube ends. So yes they work. Would I trade my Chinese band saw for one no but I rarely need as may as 12 pieces in one go. If the saw will save you 8 hours in a year I'd buy it.

I'm not sure what nitrate salt you plan to use. As a child I used to amuse my self with melting potassium nitrate and dropping pieces of saw dust into the melt . I liked the mini explosions, In general nitrates are very dangerous to have in the molten form. I know folks do it industrially but I don't know the safety precautions. The property of nitrates that makes them good for black powder makes them dangerous when heated. I've worked in a couple of places where disaster was two steps away and relied of the operators self interest to prevent it from happening. You could use a sand bath I think. Check with your local industrial suppliers. A couple of bags of sugar sand like that used for sand blasting might do the job. Sugar sand is normally quartz sand so would be stable, not affect the metal, and conduct heat well.

Around 2000 I looked into the ceramic chip set up and found they were English and expensive. I wanted to create one using other materials but eventually gave up. I toyed with the Idea of using petroleum coke instead of the ceramic chips but never got around to building a test unit. The pet coke I had available was very dense and would only burn with extreme air over supply.

So far as I know they have been around in one form or another since natural gas became operative in commercial / industrial heating. The biggest change in my life time has been the reduction in the price of refectory products. Some one could try a patent search on them. I think I saw some in the Tennessee Eastman Plant in Kingsport TN, or at least that is what they looked like to me. That would have been around '69. Gas lights were a whole different thing entirely. They didn't use methane but a nasty mix of a number of hydrocarbons. There was an article in Scientific American around 76 or so that detailed the creation of the gas light product and its composition. I think ribbon burners are a 20th century invention that got kicking after wwII although I can't prove it. By ribbon burners I think we mean fuel gas mixed with compressed air and burned with a number of out small out lets.

Plumbers solder is not really good for that application. StayBrite by Harris is used to good effect in may applications, When applied according to cleaned and fluxed steel it holds like a champ; Silver Solder is the choice for most similar application;http://www.homedepot.com/p/Lincoln-Electric-Solder-Stay-Brite-Kit-with-Flux-SBSKPOP/100672838 I've used hard silver solder on stainless but that is too hot for knife work I fear. StayBrite is exampled in many knife texts. As I read it wrap the blade in heat absorbing materials and solder from the hilt side of the guard.

Look up "Blacksmith Journal" web site. They sell dies and tell you what type of material used. I use mild steel and had face the working surface but I have lots of hardface rods . Not a great solution but one that works for occasional use.