CrazyOatmeal

I have a heap of coal coke mixed with slag, nails and rubble. I want to end up only with coke. I'd like to avoid the suicidal mundanity of picking every single individual piece of coal coke out of the heap. All soluble matter has been dissolved, all bouyant matter has been skimmed, all contaminants less than 1cm or greater than 5cm in diameter have been screened. What should my next step be?

Weld Right - Sifbronze No. 1 Brazing Welding Rods 1.6mm x 20 Rods 

No matter what I try to braze, using mapp gas, my brass rods just refuse to melt. They get to a bright yellow almost white hot and then just crumble and fall apart.

While I appreciate your efforts to help, you're all making a lot of incorrect assumptions and are rather missing the point. I'm not going to argue here so that's all I'll say. I might update this thread with my results when I make the attempt.

Notes taken. I'll probably try it anyway, but I know where I can find some nice big chunks of amphibolite rather than granite, so I'll give those a go. FYI, I've looked around for large drift pins, but I can only find pathetically small ones, and none of my local scrappies have any metal thick enough. There's also the issue of my forge not getting quite hot enough to work enormously thick pieces of metal, so I'm gonna give stone a go, with proper PPE obviously. Thank you all for your input.

I'm cash and steel poor, and I need a big fat drift for making axe eyes and the like. What I am rich in, however, is stone - so what if I just took a nice hard piece of stone, granite or something, and carved it into a nice smooth drift pin? Has anyone done this?

Smart using the hot tongs, I'll have to try that. Pieces in question are about 2mm, or 1/16". Good advice all around, I'll see what I can do.

I'm trying to forge weld two relatively thin pieces of steel, but in the time it takes for me to move them from the forge to the anvil and grab my hammer, they've gone from yellow to dull red. I simply can't move any faster. Is it physically impossible to do this?

That little tip about the river sand is something I'd never thought of. We've got a big local pottery scene, relative to our small town, so I'm sure I can find some old boys who know the composition of the beach sand and other local sand sources. As it is I've just yesterday derived a new method of grinding up my dried clay, by means of a cheap food blender instead of a paint mixer in a reinforced plantpot, so I doubt I shall be quite so limited by my clay supply now. Sounds like I've got more experiments to run. Thanks your advice.

A half inch thick, I intend to add another layer if this works. As it is, it lifts the entire thickness of the clay on the hammer. Just smashing it in with my fists works well, but the dryer the clay the harder it is to compact, and I've already got plenty of microfractures in both hands so I'd rather use a hammer. I think I'll have to try just adding more sand to the mix. Do you happen to know if the salt from beach sand might affect the quality of the mix?

Frosty,

I've seen your instructions before on the right consistency for forge clay. I've had the clay only just barely damp, not enough to leave moisture in my palm after a good hard squeeze, but as soon as I try to pack it into the container, it doesn't stick, whereas it sticks readily to my mallet, making it impossible to pack properly. Tried wooden and rubber mallets, and my forge hammer. doesn't stick to my fists but that doesn't stop it coming off the side of the bowl. For reference I'm lining a large ceramic plantpot. Is there anything I can do to make it adhere better without using more water? My current "mix" is simply a very sandy clay that I dug out of a cliffside locally, dried and ground to a fine floury powder.

I have an anvil that took three strong men to lift - this thing is enormous - and I want to weigh it, but I have no idea how.

I have no fancy scales, and I'd prefer to avoid the time and effort of loading this thing into the van just for the sake of curiosity. I can walk the thing around, but I don't have anything strong enough to use as a lever or rope strong enough to utilise a pulley. Is there some clever trick to doing this that I can't think of, or am I going to have to bite the bullet and invest in some equipment?