Bill in Oregon

Just heard from Jim Wright at APV that the Miller video is due to be released in June.

Wanderer, very helpful stuff. Thanks for posting. Farmer Jim: E-mail sent to APV asking about release date.

Chichi: Thanks, and thanks for your sense of humor.

Chichi: Thanks for that description. You don't have photos or a forge-along Youtube do you? :) Jim: Thanks for the two citations. Looks like I need to spend some more with Amazon/ABE ... Rockstar: I have Foxfires 1-4, wouldn't ya know it ...

Sir: Care to elaborate -- especially on how you formed the lower jaw of the cock?

Thanks fellas. I saw the House video years ago and had forgotten about it.

Most of the parts are fairly self-explanatory, and the most complicated for a heat treating standpoint are the springs, sear and tumbler. I am wondering, however, about how to forge the hammer, or cock. I am thinking of starting with a piece of half-inch square stock and forging and flattening to get the relatively thin, flat curve of the arm and elbow, but leaving full thickness to work out the jaw. Anyone else forged their own locks?

Bigfoot, I agree with you on barbless. But sometimes a feller just wants to duplicate what is in the historical record.

Timothy, must be a very, very tiny chisel indeed, but I think you are right.

Eyeless fish hooks were common in the Colonial period. Flattening the upper end of the shank to "grab" the snelled line is easy enough, but I'm trying to figure out how to make a decent barb on a hooks small enough for trout and panfish. I have been told that old barbed wire fencing makes good hook material, but cannot say. Anyone have thoughts?

Thomas: and I'll bet you have hooked Colton for life. What a fortunate young man to have you for a grandfather.

I like everything about it. Very nicely done, and looks like it will last for centuries.

That's an elegant solution. Filed away!

Francis, I sketched in windows on my current plan, but bottles are certainly cheaper.

Well after thinking about this some more, and doing some Net searches, I am becoming very fond of the idea of building a small (e.g. 10 x 10 interior) smithy of cob, with a metal roof. We have some pretty serious clay soil, so most of the material will be the cost of my sweat, plus some sand, straw and horse manure. I'm thinking a floor of crushed granite, abundant here in southern Oregon. Nice thing about cob is that it tends to keep spaces cool in summer and warm in winter. And if it ends up looking sort of like a shapeless blob, that's cool too, as most of the things I forge tend to be shapeless blobs ... B)

Wolfshield, very nice little shop; yours, too, Harley. Love to peek inside both of them. Puppy: That John Neeman clip was enchanting.

This is mostly pipe dreaming, but I have this vision of a small old-timey looking building, clapboard or board and batten sided with a steep gabled metal roof and a big barn door. I'm mostly a charcoal or propane guy, so it doesn't need to be big or have a hearth and chimney for coal. Anyone else daydream about such things?

Simply ausgezeichnet! Thanks so much for posting the link.

Ward: I wouldn't change a thing. Your cross has a lot of heart.

I can watch this one-heat horse head clip over and over. The simplicity of design and mastery of material demonstrated are enchanting. Anyone know what brand and weight of hammer Brian Brazeal is using in it?

Honey,I think I like it better over there...

Here's my old Trenton on my new Avadon Forge clone:

Blacksmith: I like your fabrication approach better than mine. I was looking at a cannon site and saw that one guy just forges the two tines and welds them to a socket, but I'm not a welder. Heck I'm not even a blacksmith -- I just squish hot metal on an anvil from time to time.

How would a fellow go about forging a worm for an artillery piece? The worm is a socketed, two-pronged corkscrew-like device with the two prongs spiraling around each other for about two full turns, with ends sharpened. The worm fits on the end of a wooden staff or tiller, and the diameter of the spirals is just smaller than the bore of the cannon. The worm is used to scrape out bits of unburned powder bag left after firing a muzzleloading cannon. I know how to make a socket, but the prongs would obviously be split just above the socket, rounded and tapered and then somehow wound around a mandrel?