JNewman

Keep an eye out for a used bandsaw. I found a used German built saw that will cut about 12x16 for $500 on Craigslist. Watching for used saws on Kijiji or Craigslist will get you a far better saw than a grizzly saw and probably cheaper. I recently bought a Morse cut devil chop saw which uses a carbide blade to cut. I bought it for cutting pieces that are tricky to hold in the bandsaw and stuff less than 3/4 but it did cut through an 1.75 inch bar the other day fairly quickly.

One more safety call on those big stones. DO NOT EXCEED THE RATED SPEED!!!!!!!!!!! There was a thread on here about a year ago about someone killed at an industrial forge from a large wheel exploding. Sam Safety Sally Salvati had an old sandstone wheel explode on him and it made a mess in his shop and would have hurt him badly had it hit him.

I wonder if this is just an idle threat to see if you will back down. You mentioned you have a lease, you might want to talk to a lawyer regarding the lease. If they are kicking you out before the lease expires they are breaking the lease and you may have a lot of leverage. Maybe you can make them pay for your move if it comes down to it. You may want to talk to the other noisy tenants to let them know they may be next. Once they cannot hear the hammer the grinders or tablesaw will be really loud and may be the next thing complained about. If 4-5 units all express a concern to the landlord that they will be next they may back down.

I could lift that easily... Pull up to it with my forklift and full back on the lever.

Sounds like they may be worth my while to take. I cannot afford to take the onsite courses but the online courses are doable. Most of the work in my shop is industrial work and while I currently subcontract out most of my critical heat treating I do consider it important to know what is going on and may do more heat treatment in house in the future. The course are going to have to wait for a bit as I am looking at learning cnc programing right now as I am considering a cnc machining center for the shop right now.

I watched Brian demo this flux here in Ontario and was impressed. I suspect it has to do with the iron POWDER not fillings. I like anti-borax flux (contains anhydrous borax) for things like drop the tongs welds, but it can leave nasty lumps from the iron filings in things like basket twists. Brian sold the whole box of flux bottles after demoing it, I got the last bottle but have not had a chance to try it yet. I was talking to Leo who worked in the blacksmith shop at one of the local steel mills about flux. Years ago they used to buy the anti-borax by the 45 gallon drum. That was a couple of months supply.

I have a similar sized disk as the base on a stock support stand. It sounds like overkill but when supporting heavy stock in the forge the stand tipping or moving could be dangerous. The stand also works well for supporting long bars or pipes when using my Hossfeld bender. I have a T that fits in the stand that is about 6' long which allows it to support the end which does move as the pipe is seating in the die. A lighter stand will tip and skid around which can be very frustrating.

I make prybars and tuyere cleanout bars (12' long ) for a local steel mill out of 9260. It is a pretty tough steel. I have used some drops for hot and cold chisels and punches and it seems to hold up really well. I don't know the difference between the 9260 and 9264 but I would guess they are reasonably close in properties. The 9260 is fairly close to S6 tool steel.

Rather than trying to make the head larger than the whole body, try necking down behind the head and then forging a long taper to full body size. The head does not have to be larger than the center of the body, but does have to be larger than the neck which is long on a snake.

I haven't been in a few years and was looking forward to going this year. The demonstrator list looks good as well. But I just got about 2 months work in the shop a week ago and have only 3 more weeks to finish it, I also have some product development that I have to finish as well. So looks like QS is out this year :( and the canoe trip I was hoping to do this fall will end up with snow falling if I get out.

I had the opposite problem on a recent job. I have a bit of a hollow in the middle of my dies from wear they could use facing off. I ended up with a bunch of parts forged to a little over 9/16" that were supposed to be 1/2" because the stopper was on the side and I was forging in the middle. Obviously it is a much better problem than undersize. Those of you making parts to drawings how much oversize do you let stay? These were 1 3/4" bars bent and then a section flattened to 1/2".

The kiss blocks/ stoppers I use are all either 4140 or 4340. I harden and temper them all because I found they just were not lasting made out of mild steel. The steel mill shop my hammer used to be in made all their stoppers (their term) from "refined 8" which was basically 1080. They were all hand held or built into other tools such as taper tools some of them were rectangular making 2 sizes as Thomas mentioned. The problem with 2 size stoppers is that if one is fairly thin it is then too narrow a face when stood on edge, it will then break, buckle, upset or mark up the dies.

Looking good Randy. i am curious as to why you didn't swage them on the diamond. That is the way that jumps to my head to do them but I am sure you had a reason and the results speak for themselves. Do you have to do the cutting and welding or your customer doing that?

We had an excellent day up at Ray's shop today with Brian & Lyle demonstrating. Tomorrow and Sunday they are leading a workshop for those that signed up early enough get in on the workshop.

Don't know about oldest. Leo 87 who stops by my shop weekly did get retired out of the steel mill blacksmith shop at 70 after 55years there. But he still demonstrates at a local conservation area and I believe at an annual re-enactment. And often has little projects that he borrows a fire and anvil or the hammer for from me. He still swings a mean sledge hammer.

We discussed that painting in a drawing class my wife and I took years ago. The instructor who was a MFA who was a staffer at a local community art center. He gave us the same argument you gave Tim but with a bunch of BS, he and one of the other students mentioned how the scale of the work was important and how the size contributed to it's impact. A year or two later we were in Ottawa and went through the national gallery. It and one or two other pieces are in a Huge hall. I was not impressed with the work. I was much more impressed with the architecture of the room than the painting. Just off this huge room was a small room that almost had the feeling of a closet in relation to the huge hall. Inside this room were dozens of small paintings and sketches by the Group of seven and Tom Thompson. It blew me away that all this incredible work was stuffed in this little room and The Voice of Fire gets the huge room.

I used to enjoy watching diesel locomotive frames getting poured at the foundry I started my apprenticeship at. They poured them in a pit beside the entrance that was near the pattern shop. You were not allowed to pass while they were pouring so you had to wait while they poured. They would pour about 20,000lb of steel into the mould in 35 seconds, from a bottom pour ladle.

Big hammers are cheap to buy setting them up and running them is another story. I was at an auction about 12 years ago at a large foundry the 3 self contained air hammers 110lb -300lb went for top dollar. The two steam hammers which where both over 1000lb went for $500 each to the scrappers. Everything else in the shop went as one lot.

You don't need taper tools or a flatter to make a smooth taper that flat. The two ways I think I can of using kiss blocks on a long taper like this are to forge or machine a bar to the same taper thickness, and use it as a kiss block that you pull out as you draw out your forged stock. I could see this being rather unwieldy with 5'10" bars. The other way would be to use a number of blocks to create a number of steps and then blend between them. I would probably just use one the size of the smaller end and use a brass rule to check the size as I worked the bar down. I think the matched stepped kiss blocks would work but for a consumable tool like a kiss block I think you would be further ahead to just make them as needed or make a set of various sizes. With the bigger hammer I have found it is necessary to use quenched and tempered alloy steel to make the kiss blocks so they stand up. Mostly I use kiss blocks with the holder shown in this thread http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/8974-anvil-tool-holder/page__hl__%20kiss%20%20blockin post 40 which was inspired by Phil's tool in post 13. I do like the fact I can remove mine quickly so i can forge bars lengthwise on the dies

You don't need taper tools or a flatter to make a smooth taper that flat. The two ways I think I can of using kiss blocks on a long taper like this are to forge or machine a bar to the same taper thickness, and use it as a kiss block that you pull out as you draw out your forged stock. I could see this being rather unwieldy with 5'10" bars. The other way would be to use a number of blocks to create a number of steps and then blend between them. I would probably just use one the size of the smaller end and use a brass rule to check the size as I worked the bar down. I think the matched stepped kiss blocks would work but for a consumable tool like a kiss block I think you would be further ahead to just make them as needed or make a set of various sizes. With the bigger hammer I have found it is necessary to use quenched and tempered alloy steel to make the kiss blocks so they stand up. Mostly I use kiss blocks with the holder shown in this thread in post 40 which was inspired by Phil's tool in post 13. I do like the fact I can remove mine quickly so i can forge bars lengthwise on the dies

One of my customers makes wearing parts for mining equipment. Many of the teeth they make have carbide hardfacing factory applied. While this is done with robots I assume many of their customers replace the carbide hardfacing as it wears. The robots apply a bead that is about an 1 1/4" wide, that is not weaving it is a single bead.

I have never had a dryer on my hammer and have not had a problem. Grant used to mention there was no sense in using a drier on compressed air on steam hammers. That you would lose energy by using a dryer.

I am sure you would have much better results if you relieved the edges. I will take pictures of a couple of 2" ball swages I have when I go in on Monday. You do do have to go slow at first with ball swages. The ones I have were much more relieved than those when I got them and I relieved them even more. When you first mentioned sharp corners I thought you were talking about the cone which didn't look too bad. I went back and looked at your ball swage pictures which look way too sharp.

My shop at 25x 60 sounds like a bigger shop. But with a pattern shop in one end and the blacksmith shop in the other, I am really tight for space. It is particularly bad if I am building a big pattern, or when I am bringing in a bunch of castings and getting them ready to ship them out. Double my current size would be just about right.

Looks good but I would put a guard over the treadle as well. My hammer came with a large guard over the treadle and it has yet to get in the way and is a convenient place to drop all the tools for the job you are working on. I am often using 2 or 3 tools per heat and it is convenient to be able to just drop them and pick up the next all right in front of the anvil. The only problem is I often end up with tools for 3-4 different jobs laying there, but looking at how neat you keep your shop that shouldn't be a problem for you. I would agree that the taper would have to be roughed out before using that cone swage. I just finished forging some cones with a swage and I roughed them out on the flat dies to a tapered hex then tapered them some more on a taper die hex then 12 sides and finally the conical swage. Something to keep in mind about the relief on a lot of old swages is that when those swages were made they may have had to file the relief because they didn't have the grinders we have today. If I had to file the relief on all my swages rather being able to use the assortment of grinders I have, lots of my swages would probably have less than ideal relief. Leo the retired industrial blacksmith who stops by my shop regularly talks about filing relief in swages.