JeremyP

got to a crane inspection/repair facility. they often have hundreds of feet of rejected cable that you can probably get for free

i picked up 30' of 3/4" cable the other day. cant wait to try it out

a neihbor brought his pipe handled sledge over to help me pound some fence posts in at my place. his wife was holding the post as he was pounding, 6 swings into the operation the head of the sledge flew off and missed the wifes head by an inch. make sure u weld it good!!

Ric pretty much said it all.
I would also suggest, if you have the time, to look into a sketching class at your local college or just get a book on sketching. theres a bunch of easy tricks you can learn, that will help tremendously with making a drawing that ppl can understand.
When i'm visiting a customer I bring my standard samples and a photo album of past projects.
I also encourage customers to look online to find different elements that they like, that we can incorporate into their design. This helps me better understand what they want, especially if they have specific ideas already.

I'm using a firebrick for my forge atm as well. One thing I would reccomend is adding some additional insulation on the bottom. I used some old ceramic blanket to line the bottom and added an extra floor of firebrick. kept the heat from getting to my workbench and warping the tabletop

My old truck was an 01 cummins 3500 with a welding deck and I wasn't too impressed withthe diesel. My new truck is a 07 Sierra 3500 crew cab long box gas. I much prefer the gas and I get the same power and mileage as my old cummins. The new diesels are better tho I'm told

Does anyone know what grade of steel the springs of a large truck's air brake pods are made of? Its about 1/2 in dia. About 1 foot long when straigtened. I might be able to get a couple hundred pounds of it

I actually enjoy cleaning up the shop before I start my day, I'll get the work an hour early just to clean. its a good way for me to plan out my steps, warm up the forge or the heater and take stock of my stock. I like starting out with a clean work area and I like to stay organized but I usually end the day with a bit of a mess, and sometimes projects aren't done and it helps me remember where I left off if the tools and equipment are where I left them the day before. I had a boss that hated this quirk of mine, but fortunatly now I'm the boss!

My parents really liked the fireplace tool set I had made for a local silent auction fundraiser, they were trying to buy it for themselves but got outbid, so I think i'll make a set for christmas. I would like to make something for the inlaws too but still no ideas on them yet.
I also hope to find time to forge a bunch of business card holders for my business clients

Shortly after taking a few classes with a local artist I decided to get in way over my head and attempt to build 30' of indoor railing. A year or so later of tinkering on my time off it's finally done.

This was definatly my biggest project involving forged elements
and while I have made catwalk railings in the past for places like pulp mills and warehouses, forging the balusters and fitting the forged pieces into the framework definatly added some challenge.

I'm mostly happy with it, but its definatly far far from perfect.

Thanks for the comments guy!!

The leg scrolls were hot collared after I used the welder to tack them in place.

Sorry Im not sure on the brand of stove we have in the house. It puts out though!

Built this fireplace tool set as a silent auction item for a local fundraiser party. Its my first project complete enough that I'm hoping people are willing to spend money on it lol.

Edit: resized pics. Thanks K. Bryan Morgan

Being a welder for the past 10 years I starting looking for something different in the metal working world, was looking for machining apprenticeship or sheetmetal coarses at my local college when I discovered a blacksmith coarse at that same college. Took it out of curiousity and now I cant get enough.

When I started out with tig I used a foot pedal for everything but most of my work is aluminum stair repairs and railing so I got the finger control for my feild work. Now I use the finger for everything. For me I rarely get any work where I get to just sit there and weld, It's usually a larger piece that I gotta walk around. I find the finger control much more versatile and easier when switching positions around the piece and I dont have to drag the foot pedal with me.

I did some reading last night and learned that you should be able to burn out a hollow cavity in the fire in which u can place your material, this is when you produce coke in the fire and it binds together and is able to hold shape. Sounds pretty cool. Fired up the forge again today and I couldnt get the coal to do anything like that. All I could do was make a mound of coal, as soon as any of it burns up underneith the roof just caves in to fill the void. I spray water on it enough to make the dust quite wet but it didnt really want to stick together when it was raw or while it was burning. If I crank vigorously on the blower the coal all burns up and I'm left with clinker and ash in no time. I wasnt able to reproduce the yellow brightness this time, the best I could get was orange after 10minutes of a good amount of cranking. I had to be careful where I placed the material though, simply stuffing it into the fire wasn't good enough I needed to find a spot where flame was escaping and place it directly over it, then bury it. The hot spot in the fire seemed to move around according to how the air was flowing through the mound. I fired up my propane to compare heats and the coal was way outmatched.

Something definatly aint right, either I'm doing something completely wrong or maybe this coal is junk. It definatly shouldnt be this hard to work with.

Finally decided to burn some coal for my forging project today instead of the gasser.
I wanted to build a few fire pokers and wanted to try forge welding the bar back onto itself to make the poker ends.

Try as I might though I could not get the steel past a barely yellow brightness.
I tried welding anyway and I definatly wasn't hot enough.

To build my welding fire I tried making an extra deep fire that I could sink the material into. I spent about 2 hours building it and got good 4" sphere of hot coals and kept piling the coal ontop while I was cranking the blower. A moderate crank was ok for forging heat but to get it up to yellow I really had to crank on the blower. after about a halfhour in the fire I still wasnt getting even close to a weld heat so I tried cranking really hard on the blower. I started buring coal like a bugger, I lost my mound but I had a good intense flame coming up along side my material. Thats when I was able to get a barely yellow colour to the steel but definatly not hot enough to weld together I don't think.

The coal I'm using is fairly fine stuff I got from a friend who uses it in a coal boiler for home heating. the grains are about 1/2" square.
it burns fast and not as hot as I was expecting.

after several attempts I shut the fire down and as I was taking the fire apart I discovered a large 4" disk of clinker from the bottom. This was after only a couple hours of burning, is it normal to be producing this much slag?

Anything obvious from my story that I might be doing wrong?

I doubt he will wake up and sell it for a reasonable price. When i contacted the guy about his 'anvil' and apparaised leg vice (I contacted him the day of the ad) he claimed he already sold it, but a week laterI just found the same ad in our local bargain finder magazine :lol:

How about this one, its such a valuable antique he got it appraised first
A hornless anvil is a rare find too I imagine

http://edmonton.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-tools-equipment-Antique-Smithing-Tools-Table-Vices-Forge-Blower-Engines-Anvil-W0QQAdIdZ217496130

That doesnt look too useful to me and its way to ugly to take a demo imo.
Might be good for a hobbiest but not at that price.

I'm a bib overall fan as well. I bought an apron last year but hated it. as much as I wanted to like it, I just couldn't. I now where bib overalls and if im welding I have a leather half jacket to cover my arms and shoulders. It's surprisingly decent in the heat of the day (we see mid 90's here). Coming from full coveralls, bib w/half jacket is a pleasure.

Monster articulated very closely my own feeling towards union and non union work. I think there is(was) a definate need for unions in the past and for certain jobs that are easily exploitable but there are a lot of unions that aim to protect itself and govern its workers at the expense of the entire industry they are serving.

Was it Pauls Ironworks? He is in canmore and was looking for 3 permanent blacksmith positions, he never got back to me though.

I hear there is a guy in bonniville that takes on guys but thats also on the other end of the province from me lol.

Thanks Gerald, believe it or not I have emailed some local smiths for opportunities to help out. Unfortunatly when I say local I mean within 8 hour drive. Juggle that with the demands of my own business and you can see how a schedualed coarse with a determined time frame would seem appealing.

Freelance, where in AB are you? I am in Edmonton and a member of the Western Canadian Blacksmith Guild. NAIT has courses on blacksmithing and there are plenty around willing to share and help out.

That's the other thing, I've taken both shawns coarses via nait. I would be spending another couple weeks relearning the basics through this coarse. I'd love to find someone to work under for a few stints but I haven't found any nearby takers yet.

Aparantly this institution has been teaching blacksmithing for several years but I only stumbled upon it a few months ago (they didn't list themselves with ABANA)

It's a full time 1 year 'certificate' coarse covering blacksmithing, welding and casting

I'm curious if anyone has any experiance with this place or know of any of the instructors teaching it?

This looks very interesting to me since it's close(ish) to where I live and I'm eager to learn as much as I can.

The price is steep though, and I dont exactly need to spend a bunch of time relearning how to weld/fab.

http://selkirk.ca/programs/ksa/metal/details/courses/

I too get frustrated with myself when I look at some of the amazing work others are able to do (mostly from you guys on this site!) I don't know if I will every get to the point of mastery in anything I do, I strive for it but I think it will take a lifetime of trying.

Its ironic because as a younger man I knew that if I didnt focus my life I would end up a jack of all trades and master of none. Despite my focus on metal and fabrication I never realized how big of a universe metalworking is, you can go much further beyond glueing metal together and machining it down. One could spend lifetimes in the metal trades and still not have learned everything.