JNewman

Paul Fontaine is a professional blacksmith in your area. I believe he does some teaching. http://heritagewroughtiron.com/

I know and have known guys who completed apprenticeships in England around 50-60 years ago (Blacksmith, Ironworker and multiple Patternmakers). They essentially had a contract of sorts where they were locked into employment for their apprenticeship and there was on the job training as well as trade school training. While there was not the "formal hoo-ey" at least 2 of these people told me when they finished their apprenticeship they were told by the employer that they had to go find another job. They were told they would be welcome back in a few years but that they had to leave because they were done their apprenticeships and were now Journeymen.

When I first got some pure iron, experimenting I forged the end of a piece of 3/8" round down to about 1/32" thick allowing it to fan out over an inch wide. I then folded the 1/32 back on itself once and welded it together and then drew it out again to 1/32". There was no sign of the weld. To me this would be a very difficult weld in steel because the material was so thin but it was easy in the pure iron. i have a retired industrial blacksmith in his late 80s who drops by my shop regularly. He started his apprenticeship at 15 and retired at 70 but still demos at a local conservation area. He has mentioned a number of times how much easier wrought iron welds. Back in the day, the shop he worked in had 30-40 smiths and used to go through a 45gallon drum of welding flux every few months. They used to use iron for chain and links to fasten chain to hooks etc. I tend to believe him. especially when it coincides with my experience.

I have not forged a lot of wrought iron but I have found it easier to weld than mild steel. Pure iron is even easier, I have easily done welds with pure iron that I am not sure are possible in mild steel.

Some people are much faster at forge welding others are faster at drawing out. As long as they are done well I think both methods are valid. When welding on reins I have skipped upsetting by just leaving extra material on the bits piece. If you are careful you can avoid thinning on the rein end . I recently did some tongs that after I finished I wondered if I would have been better off welding on the reins. They did not want the reins any heavier than 7/16 apart from the first 8-10" which was rectangular but no lighter than 3/8". They were 68" long. keeping them straight while so light was tricky. I should have used a trick read on here I think form Neil Gustafson of having a pipe rest on the back side. As it was I made the tongs 60" long and when I took the samples to the drop forge they wanted them 8" longer so I had to weld on rein extensions to the tongs I had already made but not yet assembled. That flux I bought from you Brian made those welds easy. Now round or rectangular reins?

I primarily use gas and coke but usually try to keep a couple of bags of coal around. Here are advantages of each with the coal and coke I get around here. Advantages of soft coal Less air needed Less clinker Ability to build a "cave" Advantages of Metallurgical coke MUCH less smoke and emissions Less fire management needed, you just dump more coke on the fire you don't have to coke it first. Around here much cheaper.

I have done it in the past (forge welded) when I needed reins that were 3-4' long. I needed to use 1" to get the mass for the hinge and bits but drawing out 3-4' without a big hammer took too long. Even with a big hammer drawing out 3-4' straight and round can be a pain to do. I do have a pair of tongs from a drop forge shop where the reins are a medium carbon steel for the spring but the bits are mild so they will not harden if cooled in water from a red heat. Nothing to say you cannot taper reins that are welded on.

Often a small amount of extra material is left on machined parts that have to be heat treated to be surface ground off, when parts need to be precise.

If there is bitumen holding it in place, heat would seem to be an answer. However I would want to be really careful to not heat any area up too much hotter than a neighbouring area or you could crack the casting.

You really don't want anything to do with plating gold or silver yourself. The plating chemicals for gold and silver are cyanides. I worked for a plating company for a few months and our gold solution included both gold cyanide and potassium cyanide.

True about the control but a smaller hammer runs faster which is nice for smaller stock. I would love to have a 2cwt or a 2b for swaging smaller bars. As well you have to be so careful with a big hammer not to smash things. I punch tongs under the hammer and it is so easy to mushroom or bend a small punch with a bigger hammer. . The tool I need the most right now is more shop space. I probably wasted about 5hrs last week moving things around and out of the shop so I could get a big pattern out of the shop and moving things around so I could forge 12' long chisels This week was already a couple of hours

I have to agree, I would say the lock is the weak link. A good yank with a screwdriver and a fulcrum and it is amazing how quickly a padlock fails.

I slightly prefer soft coal to met coke but I can get the met coke for less than 1/4 the price of good smithing coal. More importantly I am in the city and running a commercial shop, If I ever get a ministry of environment visit things will be much easier for me burning the met coke which has virtually no smoke and far fewer pollutants. Ironically the steel mills here in town burn more coal in a few minutes than I will in a lifetime but burning coal rather than coke can introduce all sorts of regulatory hoops to jump through. In a residential neighbourhood soft coal smoke can introduce all sorts of hassles from neighbours. I do have professional smith friends who far prefer coke to coal.

I often cheat as well. I clean the firepot out refill it with clean coke and hit it with the rosebud or cutting tip. I then turn off the fuel gas, feeding straight Oxygen into the fire for 30 seconds to a minute gets the fire going fairly quickly.

Schedule holidays. :rolleyes: It never fails as soon as I schedule holidays a bunch of rush work comes into the shop :wub:

As blacksmiths we tend to be people who want to be self reliant and able to do anything in our shop. I am as guilty of this as anyone, my shop is really tight for space largely because of all the machinery. That being said I have always subbed out some work and find myself doing more and sometimes am surprised at how I am saving money on materials as well as my labour. Here are a few examples of where I have saved money lately Laser and flame cutting shops get better prices on plate due to the volume they are buying often some of this saving will get passed on to you. For years when I needed pieces of heavy plate I would go to my local steel supplier and search his yard for a piece of plate roughly the right size, always rusty often pitted. I would then burn my gasses cutting the plate to size and would have to grind the rough burned edge to clean it up. A few years ago I had some things that I had to have flame cut and I was pleasantly surprised how cheap it was. Next time I needed some plate I had them quote the exact size I needed and then went and priced a drop from the steel supplier that was slightly smaller than I wanted in one dimension and slightly larger in the other. It was MORE than the piece cut exactly what I wanted. The burning shops edges are clean enough I have even had them cut bolt holes in 1" plate. I have a job that comes up about once a year where I need 4 10" discs cut out of 1/8" stainless. I used to buy a drop of stainless plate and then cut them out using a beverly shear. Shearing out the 1/8" stainless is a LOT of work. Last time I had them laser cut and paid about $20 less than I had paid for a drop barely large enough to get my discs out of a year before and did not have to spend a couple of hours with the beverly shear. If I can I buy my steel cut to size. I have a big 12"x14" bandsaw a chop saw and a carbide blade chopsaw and use them all. But if I know ahead what sizes I need and my supplier will saw them to size for a reasonable price I let them do it. I would love to have an automatic saw and a bridge crane to feed it but I don't and I don't have enough work for it to justify the cost of those tools. I get a 24' bar of 2 3/4" 4340 cut to 3 1/2" slugs for $75, that is what it would cost me at my shop rate to set it up in my saw before I took 1 cut. There saw cuts the bars cleaner and more accurately than my saw does. They cut 1" bars in "half" for me at 12' for free which is much easier than handling 22' bars and 12' is one of the sizes I need the stock cut to. Even 1/2" mild steel is often worth having cut 4 or 5 lengths cut to 16" pieces on my steel yards ironworker costs around $20, far less than my cost to sawcut them. The pre cut steel is also much easier to transport in my truck or unload from the suppliers truck, easier to move around the shop and store. I don't have a sheet metal brake and have done sheet metal work with clamps, angle iron and mallet. But the small shop around the corner has huge press brakes sheet metal rolls shears and a big ring roller. I have had him do sheet metal jobs and roll pipes for me and he has done a better job and way faster than I could. As a bonus I have done 2 jobs lately that he referred the customer to me because it was work he could not do.

I have had piping occur ( a crack up the center of a bar) when I got sloppy and after rounding up a bar I continued to draw it down round. I do find drawing down hex works well for round tapers.

Pictures of some of the steps in making the hardies.

I just uploaded a video to youtube of forging hardies a couple of weeks ago. The video quality is not that good I just took the video with my 7 or 8 year old camera sitting on my platen table. Some editing would also be good but I thought it would be better to just get it as I don't know when I will have time to edit it.

My vertical press has a mechanical linkage that I built. My horizontal press is a commercially made press with electrically operated valves. It has limit switches and can be set up to cycle like a power hammer (not nearly as fast). The limit switches are very useful having the press stop at a predetermined place is a very nice feature to have, the cycling. is also quite useful although not as important. The nice thing about the mechanical linkage is you can ease things you are pressing, while the solenoid valves are either open or closed. This can be handy for things like straightening bars. To me the ideal setup would be to either have 2 parallel valve systems so you could have the benefits of both or to have mechanical valve with a solenoid operated bypass to allow the use limit switches. Or a more complicated solenoid valve that allowed gradual and partial opening.

I usually only pre heat to 500F+ normally no colour. This way I can HT either before or after welding. Stick or mig but I don't have tig.

Earle M Jorgenson I get them to cut steel to length as well. They typically cut a couple of lengths up to short pieces for $75 per length. They have a $500 minimum if you don't have an account.

Very nice looking axe.

Forge taper on end of bar high or medium carbon steel. Doing that by hand will tend to cup the end to start. Drive a ball punch into to the end, forge out bulge then drive punch again. Anneal punch. File and or grind the taper and a small flat on the end of the punch around the perimeter of the cup depression. Layout the flutes and file them in. Harden and temper the punch.

Nor did their wives have washing machines, as well clothing was way more expensive.