Ferrous Beuler

Depends on several things but mostly location. If it is close to you then yes (assuming it is in good condition) but if it is 800 miles away then don't bother. As it has been stated before ad nauseam on IFI it would certainly help in many ways for members to list their location. You don't have to pinpoint your precise whereabouts and include pics of your house, your mailbox with the numbers on it and your dog too but at least a nearby major city, state or province. That's how anvil deals suddenly just turn up in your PM inbox...

Success story! Could have been a lot worse, an awful lot worse! I always wince when I see people doing things they shouldn't with no safety glasses. Especially those who should know better such as a few I've seen on YouTube who have their kids blacksmithing with no safety glasses.

Wow! What a Brute!

Hey reddog, get some Sanborn maps for your area and you will see where all the buildings were in the past, even outhouses. Dig an old privy and I guarantee you will find all sorts of stuff. http://collection1.libraries.psu.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/maps1&CISOPTR=3044&REC=2

I had a wild honeybee hive in a black walnut tree in my yard. It stayed in that tree for two years and then moved to the tree next to it, a box elder the next spring but after just a couple months the bees vanished. :( I'm a little worried about them disappearing like that. One day they seemed fine and the next day gone. Einstein warned if we lose the bees humanity would have about four years and then ourselves would become extinct.

Sorry it's 25 years old, only pic of me I have on my 'puter.

Rest in peace, Eric. You will be missed. Will ring the anvil today. Eric I enjoyed riding with you to the group meetings and having you here in my home and shop a few times, always good company. A genuinely nice guy all around. http://www.nysdb.org/eric-maxwell/

You had your guardian angel riding with you that day! Man that could have been an awful lot worse than it was. I've hit a lot of deer over the years but never a "cow on stilts". You are lucky to still be among the living. I live in an area with a lot of deer and seeing them on the side of the road dead from being hit is an everyday thing. I have hit probably around two dozen and have avoided hundreds over the years. Most of my deer hits happened at night or just before sunrise. Most were running from right to left and those were the ones I wound up hitting because you don't see them coming until the last split second and then WHAM! With a lot of deer around you develop a keen sense for spotting them and come to learn which areas to expect seeing them but it can happen anywhere, anytime. Deer can cover a lot of ground very quickly when they are running and the ones I hit coming from the right side got so close without me seeing them due to the blind spot created by the passenger side windshield pillar and side view mirror. I hope you bought some lottery tickets that day! Whew!

You might try contacting the smiths at Colonial Williamsburg. They rebuilt their shop recently which included the construction of several brick forges. http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/25945-anderson-blacksmith-shoparmoury-progress/ Another site has lots of info on forge construction. There are an awful lot of links to click on so take your time and look around. http://www.beautifuliron.com/index.htm

Very nice work ciladog! Your smithing is well rendered but you also deserve kudos for such a good job using a video camera in the shop, your video efforts turned out a high quality result. Very well done. Great job editing too, BTW.

I am not a bladesmith. Knives generally do not interest me. I am more of a hinge, firepoker, fishing pole holder hobbyist. If I make a knife it is generally out of a tire iron or rail spike and will hold and edge and cut things, not much to look at. I am compelled to say that is the most beautiful knife I have ever seen. I could go on and on and on about why but that work stands on its own so I will just shut up now.

Jeepers! You couldn't walk through there without tripping on an anvil, bouncing off an anvil and landing on... another anvil!

That guy seems to have a good working smithy. "Yonas" being the smith putting up the videos on this channel. I assume he is the guy in the hat featured in most of the videos on this channel. The guy in the woods though seems to be another, not Jonas. I do not speak or read Russian. Anybody here on IFI know these smiths personally? Tim where are you located? At least give us a state or province.

Interesting YouTube channel. Several videos, Russian blacksmith. http://www.youtube.com/user/YoNasKaki "How to get started in blacksmithing, bushcraft style" ~from the above channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqH_x6hmxUE

I sense the imminent demise of a mouse...

Buffalo Forge Co. did not go out of business but they were acquired by another company, subsequently sold again but are still in business today. They no longer produce blacksmithing equipment though, just heating and cooling I think. http://buffaloah.com/h/bfloforge/index.html This is the type of cheesy little Buffalo blower that I have, thinking of putting it on a charcoal grill. I use a Champion 400 on my forge. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.americanartifacts.com/smma/advert/ay100.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.americanartifacts.com/smma/advert/ay100.htm&h=279&w=339&sz=27&tbnid=0df6ZC5Z2e7dBM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=111&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dbuffalo%2Bforge%2Bcompany%2Bpictures%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=buffalo+forge+company+pictures&docid=2acJQqkqdSMN7M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6jkvT5WcAYjg0QHBgqnKCg&sqi=2&ved=0CDsQ9QEwAw&dur=966 Where are you located? Chances are good if you get with your local blacksmithing group you may find the parts you need or a better blower altogether.

O.K. Oz, I see what you mean. It does work when you have the nut installed so I would just run it like that. I guess the operative phrase here is IT WORKS. There were a lot of different blowers made by many companies. Some are better quality than others. Buffalo Forge made some very high quality blowers, certainly on par with Champion, Cannedy Otto, etc. They also produced some on the lower end of the price scale. Yours is toward the cheaper end of the spectrum. The fact that you've got it working is probably about as good as it gets. I've got a little Buffalo blower even cheaper than yours, stamped sheet metal body, very small size. It works but not very well. Probably was original equipment on a small portable rivet forge. The loose fit of the parts, the "slop", is normal. If you really wanted to replace that shaft and return to the fan being held in place with a woodruff key then you will likely have to find another blower like it and scavenge the best parts of the two to create one good one. You also could take your shaft to a machine shop and have new one turned. Even with a new shaft it isn't going to have any markedly better performance and the "slop" will still be there but hey, IT WORKS so that's better than nothing. It's not a Corvette, more like a Chevette but it runs so just use it until you can replace it with a higher quality unit.

Question~ When you turn the handle does the unit work fairly well, i.e., does it deliver air without any obvious major problems being present? Also, if it was made by Buffalo Forge it is definitely much older than 20 years, more like 70 at least. Without seeing it firsthand and based solely on your description, a bit of play in the mechanism is normal. It will also leak oil, this is normal as well. Would it be possible for you to post a video of this blower in operation, maybe on Youtube?

I forgot the link, didn't I? http://www.criticalpast.com/

Funny how surfing the web works sometimes. Just now I had an overwhelming sense of deja vu. Oh wait, I got that backwards. Never saw this site before so it was definitely vuja de, not deja vu. Then I came over to IFI and there it is, this thread with a great old image resource. Anyhoo, found a nice website with a gazillion miles of footage from days of old. Some blacksmithing stuff to be found but rather limited, thought it would be more but what they have is good. Site claims to have millions of still images but I couldn't figure out how to access the stills (only spent a few minutes there). All of their content is broadcast quality and royalty free. I put "blacksmithing" in the search box there and got a few videos listed. Most show blacksmithing as only a small portion in the featured videos but really good stuff nonetheless, worth a look. The best IMHO was the first at the top of the list. "A man at a blacksmith shop uses wrought iron for making candle stand in North California" (color, 1945, 2 min 50 sec). I'll have to go back over and ferret out how to access those "millions" of still images.

Like Lee said, if you want to conserve fuel use a hand crank blower or if you are using an electric blower have a gate on it so you can limit the airflow when you are not taking heats. Also have and make use of a sprinkle can to control/limit the size of your fire. If you are using charcoal "dry" then it will burn hollow rather quickly, especially with a constantly running electric blower. "Burning hollow" means that the fuel in the center of your firepot is consumed and the fire advances outward into the surrounding fuel forming a ring of fire with no fire in the middle. Don't assume that wet charcoal will not burn, wet charcoal is what you want once you have a fire started. You can also use corn for fuel.

Contact DiverMike here on IFI. He is with the New York State Designer Blacksmiths Genesee Forge. There was a source right in Syracuse but I don't know if it is still active, Mike will know. Or you could get it where I get it in Erie County at Reboy Supply (Pocahontas #3). You could make the drive and pick it up yourself in bulk in 5 gallon buckets or they will ship it to you by ground freight in 100 lb boxes. http://www.reboysupply.com/ http://www.reboysupply.com/coal.htm

Could have been the demise of your shop gremlin if he suffered the misfortune of being caught in your weld just as the hammer fell. If so then good for you! Now you should enjoy nothing but good clean welds from now on because that little bugger is D-E-A-D. :)

I sure hope it's a demilled empty dud! Reminds me of an old wartime Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs got a factory job as a dud inspector. The shells went by on a conveyor belt and he smacked each one on the nose with a hammer. If it didn't go off he took a piece of chalk and scratched "DUD" on the side and then whacked the next one. Nice to hear from you Sam. Was trying to remember your old screen name. Escapes me. Did like your old avatar though. For some reason it always reminded me of a picture from the inside liner of the Pink Floyd The Wall album. BTW~ The original video showed the shell mounted into a much more substantial stump. There ain't much left of it these days it seems and it appears to wiggle a bit on the heavy hits.