ptree

We had Dave Kunkler, Steve King and myself as the founding members of the BFH's, with Dave's Brother Bill joining in and Jeff the Welder from Cannelton also joining. In fact Bill Kunklers 2 small sons cranked the forge for much of the day. The event manager has asked us to return next year with more and bigger. We might be induced to do this as a demo at Tipton Indiana for the IBA conference or who knows? Steve King observed that we really needed 3 crosses, 3 forges and 3 teams to keep the crowd fully engaged as the heating was not very entertaining. But it was a real hoot for us as well.

Answers: The billet was sawn out by Steve King, the tallest guy in the photo. We spead the arms by first using a hot cut hammered into the splits to start them. Then used long tools that have pockets to slip over the arms, made by Dave Kunkler. Once mostly open, we used a stand made by Dave kunkler to hold one arm of the cross as we adjusted the arms to true. e then leveled the arms on an add-on anvil top that is about 16" diameter and 8" thick by sledging, anvil top made by Jason Hardin.

Saturday Octerber 13th the Brotherhood of Friendly Hammermen, demonstrated for the public, in Cannelton Indiana at their Heritage Festival the making of a split cross made from 3" square stock. The billet weighed about 75#, was heated in a forge made for the job, forged on a sledging anvil made from a forged 4140 rough terrain earthmover axle. Used about 75# of coal, had as many as 6 persons (Yes we slipped Donna Kunkler into the team for one round of striking) and took about 3 hours, As the sledges sturk in rythem, the crowd moved to watch. We noticed that as the billet was heated the crowd would shift away. I did notice that some had the timeing down and would reapear about the time the billet came out of the forge:) The finished cross was donated to the Cannelton Heritage foundation, who sponsered us. They also saved us by providing 2 cases of cold bottled water and that was near gone in 3 hours! We recruited several for the Southern Indiana Meteorite Mashers the parent group of our little Brotherhood. We have yet another big cross to finish at Beck's Mill on Oct 27th at the bean soup dinner and festival there. We only have stock left for a few more of these crosses and so we have begun discussions amongst the brotherhood of what the next project shall be. A bearded dragon from 4" stock has been mentioned:) Ohh and by the way we had a real ball in a truely fine heritage festival on the Ohio River in a quaint town, that really likes blacksmiths. They invited us back next year and asked if we could bring more blacksmiths as they would like us to fill a city block! And note that the BFH's use sledges to touchmark, as the iron is sooo big:)

Matt, the first 2 meeting are just come and enjoy, and learn/share. After that we would like for you to join the IBA, which is about $35 a year for a family. We bring odds and ends for Iron in the Hat, and the host usually has an entree, and folks bring pitch-in stuff for lunch. For a day of learning sharing if is pretty darn reasonable:)

Roger, the Turkey lunch hammer-in is now a tradition with the Meteriorite Mashers, It is a long drive:) There is even a good spot to set a video camera to cover the demo anvil:)

Matt, I am a member of the Indiana Blacksmithing Association. We have a number of satalitte groups across the state. I am in the Southern Indiana Mereorite Mashers and our group meets in Paoli, Salem and Floyds Knobs in rotation. Our meeting this month is in Cannelton Indiana just up river from Tell city tomorrow during their heritage festival. We are going to forge a split cross from 3" square steel right in the street as a demo. If you are free, Cannelton is not too far I think. There are a several of knife makers in our group, and notably Billy Merrit, know as a fine teacher of pattern welding and knife making is our forge master. The Novemeber meeting will be at my shop, the Saturday after thanksgiving, in Floyds Knobs, and the lunch entree will be Hickory smoked turkey. You would be most welcome

Be aware that aside from the materials being propelled from aerosol cans, since the EPA ruled out Freon as a propellent, the common propellant is a mix of Propane, butane and Iso-Butane. You can have an aerosol spray can of water and most likely it is a flammable spray exiting the nozzle.

I am fond of the cheap leather palm gloves, about $1.00 a pair by the dozen from my mill supply house. They are good for cut resistance when moving metal around the shop. I wear a glove only on my tong hand. I do not wear gloves to hand hammer, but will sometimes wear gloves to strike as part of a team on bigger projects to protect from radiant heat, especially when moving a big billet. The leather palm gloves are slingable if they get hot, and thin enough to feel the heat and get them off before they shrink. I also have some sample leather palm, Kevlar back gloves and when new they are pretty good, but the leather twists and you soon have no leather on the finger grip surfaces, just kevlar. I think I really do prefer the leather palm. At the big upset forge shop I I worked as Safety guy, we used hot mill gloves of pure cotton. Only fair in heat resistance, poor at cut resistance and the bulk made for a harder grip on the porter bars when working and increased fatique and risk of ergonomic injury. I trialed Leather palm gloves, the guys loved them and we had no increase in burns in the 2.5 years after we switched.

We welded millions of flanged valves this way at the Henry Vogt Machine Co. We welded on the steam flanges. Our process was called Inertial welding, as the process was controlled by a flywheel. Chuck the flange in the flywheel chuck, place the valve body on a fixed chuck. The flywheel was spun up to a set rpm, and then the drive disengaged. The body was thrust into the spinning flange at a set pressure and when the rpm dropped to a lower set point the thrust was increased to push out a "Curl" that had the surface scale etc. At some point the weld went solid and the flywheel stopped, weld complete. Spin the body around place the second flange and hit the start. A full penetration weld for an ASME code rated weld took much time and a highly skilled welder. Maybe 4 valve bodies completed in an hour. The longest cycle time was 90 seconds finished body to finished body. The first quality check was when th part was dropped in the tub, the flanges either were perfectly welded or fell off! The heat affected zone was very hard to see when etched as there was no filler metal, and every body was stress releieved in a furnace anyway. We did ultra sonic testing of every weld for many years but dropped it as we never found defects. We did do a hydro shell test at 1.5 the cold working pressure. I looked at every returned valve for the 21 years I worked there, and never saw a single defective weld, and never heard of one at either ultrasonic or hydro test. We did stick weld a few odd ball valves and the Nuclear code stamped valves and while this was about 2% of all the flanges welded I did see some defects there. Many automotive parts are friction welded, the spindles are welded onto the dif housing on most large truck rear ends, some large truck axles have the flange friction welded on and many many other parts as well. Exhaust valves that are sodium filled are friction welded to put the large end on the shank.

ANY water-glycol mixtures, made by many companies are subject to the water evaporating. You should obtain and read the MSDS and Tech data sheet for a fluid to understand the requirements for that fluid. There may be Polygycol/water fluids on the market now, and if so I have not used those. The fire insurance indusrtry calls the water Ethylene Gycol fluids Less Flammable:) I don't know if the older MIL-SPEC fluids like Pydroil and Skydroil etc are even still available. Citgo had a water Ethylene Gycol that was widely available and the additive package allowed it to work reasonably well with units that had been operated on Petreoluim oils with a drain only. Once the fluids are past 50% water in the mix then there are yet other problems like Pump Cavatation at the inlet if the suction head is too high. Cavatation will destry a pump quick, and sheds metal into the system! Many of the High Water Content Fluids (HWCF) that I worked with in the late 70's were 95% water but had to have either a flooded suction or a centrifugal pump to feed the hydraulic pump suction. Flooded suction is as easy as the tank above the pump inlet. True HWCF pumps were designed that were much better at operating with a very low vapor pressure like 95% water. These did eat the Urathane seals and wipers out of components as well as tending to rust the tank roofs if the 5% oil was not maintained. OIL is easy on the machines but dangerous in a forge. Water is fire proof, but eats machines, and is almost never used pure. You pretty much need a middle ground, for fire safety and machine life, but the compromise must be maintained.

Non-flammable hydraulic fluid? you mean pure water right? The fluids used that are "less Flammable" ,the actual name are usually Ethylene glycol based and are used in a mix with water. The mix ratio must be maintained since the water will evaporate when the system is operating and the fluid heats up. The Ethylene Glycol does not evaporate and when at the right concentration and below of water the Ethylene Glycol is actually rated as Flammable unlike straight hydraulic oil which is Combustible. There were some aviation hydraulic fluids that were popular in the 50-60's like Pydaul and Skydral. Both expensive, and very hard on seals that are not exactly matched to the fluid. Having worked for much of my career with hydraulics in industrial forges, I will say that the less flammable Ethylene Glycol are pretty good choices if you are willing to maintain the mix ratio, using a hand held refractometer. It has lower viscosity and is totally hard on urathane seals, but fairly easy on nitrile seals. I would offer that designing the system for safety is your best defense. Use hard tube or pipe for your main runs. Sleeve your hoses, and don't run hoses across the floor where hot stuff can fall and rest against the fluid conductor. Place the hydrailics behind a sheet metal barrier if possible, or even on the other side of the shop wall with only the pressure and the return lines inside the hot work area. A pump kill switch at the press as well as one on the way out of the area are cheap insurance as well.

Since my Mother is now VERY allergic after several lossing battles, I take care of her hornet nests. I wait till dark, and walk in a slow smooth pace with a flashlight to identify the hole. As I pass over the hole I upend a long neck bottle and insert with maybe an fluid once or so of something that evaporates well. Can be alcohol, can be gas. I leave the bottle inserted, as it blocks the vapors from escaping. I then continue walking in a slow delibrate pace away from the nest. I averaged killing about 3-4 a year when she had the bigger place, about one a year now. I have never had this fail, and I have never been stung excuting the nest. Been doing this for maybe 25 years. Get a few over here at my place and they get the same treatment. As an aside, WD-40 and the like are pretty good on wasp nests, and if sprayed in a fog the wasps can't fly thru the fog, their wings get too heavy and they go to the ground and die in a couple of minutes. For tree hornets that are in a dangerous spot for attacks I use a 20 gage with about #9 shot from the distance that will have the full choked pattern homonigize the nest and contents. I then again walk away in a slow smooth manner and I have not been stung doing this either on maybe 20 nests over the years. Of course I am in the country, but that little shot is slowed by the nest and is very light coming back down.

Galvanived pipe nd fittings are coated BEFORE they are threaded, and so if corrosion is a problem, the corrosion will start there. I personally don't like/recommend copper tube as it is very soft and thin and easy to damage/cut. If you are doing a good job with condensate removal at the compressor, the pipe will not degrade to any extent. Remember to slope the pipe to a drain, pull the drops off the top of the pipe and you will have decades of good sevrice. Don't forget that drip leg and filter at the using device. I have worked in many factories, and all were piped in plain black iron. We considered schedule 10 stainless with crimped Vitolic fittings at the 6.5 acre shop I was owners rep for when built. The cost was a wash versus black iron as the stainless and fittings were higher but the labor less. But the thought of o-ring seals at every single joint in a piping system I thought I would have to maintain for the next 20 years had me choose black iron. This really is not rocket science. Use a big tank close to the compressor to allow the hot wet air time to cool and the water to precipatate, run the air lines in a size that is big enough to maintain industry rated "Reasonable" flow rate. Slope the piping to allow water to drain back to a drain, take the drops off the top of the runs to prevent condensate draining to the use device, use a drip leg and filter at the device. You will find the same info in the Machineries manual back to the very early editions. That is because it works, and is the most practical and economical. That is how you will find all the old air hammers that used air from a plant compressor piped, and they ran and ran and we still are finding and using them. Really care about those valves and want to get them to last? choose your air line oil carefully, don't use teflon tape and use a decent 5 Micron (Micro-meter) rated filter followed by a coalescensing filter. In reality, with the above suggestions the seals will age fail before they fail from use or condensate.

I personally would never ever run a pnuematic hammer designed for compressed air without some form of water seperator. In my part of the US a air compressor running at about 5Hp will have lots more condensate than you think. Condensate KILLS valves and other pnuematic devices. Now as noted a dryer is often thought to be a Refrigerated dryer in my world, industry. We shoot for a -40f dew point and that eleminates most of the problems we see. In a home shop a reefer dryer is costly. A good sized tank beyond what the compressor has is a good first defense. Then to a regular filter water seperator that will catch the gross droplets and protect your coalescing filter from early clogging and then into you regulator if needed and last to a lubricator. The lubricator needs to be as close to the end use as feasible to allow the oil mist to stay entrained in the air. At the exhaust another cheap filter water seperator with an exhaust muffler will kill most of the noise and catch most of the oil mist. Steam hammers converted to air are very different beasts. The hammers we had at VOGT were designed for 145psi wet steam. Wet steam has entrained droplets of water along with the injected "Heavy Steam Cylinder oil" Big clearances in the steam chest and valve box, and droplets are not nearly as destructive. When I say filter water seperator above I refer to a 5 micron element with a centrifical vane set to spin out the bigger droplets. I am NOT a fan of any auto drain on the market finding them all to be failures waiting to happen with the exception of the motor operated ball valves with timers. I am a fan of Parker's "Micro-Mist lubricators" finding them the best when I tested and then installed several hundred at VOGT. I tend to like to go at least one port size bigger on all F-R-L components as they are usually pretty low Cv and restrict the flow. Remember that you always pull drops off the main from the top, slope the air mains to a drain, and have a drip leg at the drop end where you connect to the device. NEVER use plain PVC pipe for air lines. It gets brittle and explodes. I prefer that old standby black iron pipe. I prefer ball valves for air lines over all other types. I do NOT like the components with O-ring sealed connections for air lines, they soon leak. I prefer pipe dope over pipe tape hands down, the tape is usually mis-applied and then shears off and is in you valves locking them up. I NEVER reccomend any of the patent medicine air tool oils, instead I reccomend plain ATF. It is cheap, easy on seal materials, has a great wear package, a very low pour point and did I mention way cheap? I prefer Poly-gycol coolant in My screw compressors as it is not only very environmentally friendly compared to oil, it makes the compressors last longer and makes the condensate less "Sticky" Ptree who once managedthe powerhouse for a 42 acre factory compound with 3900 Hp of compressors sending air all over to the manufacuting plant as well as the 2 Gas fired 800 Hp (82,000#/hour) boilers for the steam drop hammer that had 28 hammers up to 25,000#. We estimated 300 miles of air mains and who knows how much secondary air piping. In the valve shops before I had the powerhouse I also did all of the pnuematic and hydraulic test machines. So i may have a little experience with air equipment.

Excellent advice from Bigfootnampa. I have several of Nathan's hammers and find them to be excellent value and give me pleasure in using a well made tool.

Now that the anneriversary is over, it is like a little weight has lifted. Took the entire family to dinner tonight, and all seemed in a better spirits. Best day in a while.

We got thru the day yesterday. My fragil ladies made it thru and now we start another year of healing. The outpouring of compassion has really helped. Thanks all.

Today is the year anneriversary of my son's death. It has been a hard year. The prayers and thoughts of friends near and far have been of great help. My famiy continues to heal, but some very slowely. My wife faces empty nest soon as my youngest goes away to complete schooling, and my younger son has graduated and seeks a job that will most likely have him across the country. The oldest heals from her medical issues and is still at home, and that is some help as they help each other. My prime job is yet to be there to catch them when the fall, boast them when they need, and listen if they can bear to talk about it. Mostly not, and I am just here, ready, and wishing there was something to pull this great hurt from their hearts. Nothing can help the heart of a parent that has lost a child. Just not the way life should be. My close to here blacksmith friends treat me like I treat my family, they are quiet, but ready to catch ME when I fall, boast when they can and listen when I can talk. From the bottom of my broken heart, thank you. With good friends sorrow is divided, and joy multiplied.

I live in Southern Indiana. Almost as far south as you be in Indiana and not be in KY :) There is a indiana Blacksmithing group over in South eastern Indiana, You will be welcome there as well as at our group, the Southern Indiana Meteroite Mashers, known for our forge master Billy Merrit. In fact the August meeting is in My shop in Floyds Knobs, just north of Louisville. If interested e-mail me for directions, the meeting is August 25th, and we are planning a 4 man team forgining a split cross from 3" square stock in the afternoon.

I have industrial experience with polymer quenchants. The subject polymer was used in water and a propritary concentration to soften the quench a bit. The steel was a slightly modified 1045H and 1541H. Both had some difficult corners in truck axle forgings and were induction scanned for the heat treat. Plain water caused very high quench crack rates. The polymer was a mess, sticky, stank, and was quite costly. Hard to deal with the seller, had to buy in 55 gallon drums and they were a pain to deal with period. That said it made the process possible. When I forge the same material at home, for hammer heads and the like, I use veggie oil and get a little softer finished HT, bu avoid cracking almost completly. The polymers work, at least in that process. Don't see the advantage for a knife, but then I have no direct experience with polymer quench for blades.

Prayers from Southern Indiana.

For rusty metal, I use Extend a product the uses a little phosphoric acid in the mix to convert the rust to iron phosphate, and also is a good primer. I follow with Rust-Oleum Rusty metal primer, the red oxide type, then top coat. For smaller jobs I am fond of Rust Tough acrylic enamel, although at $6.00 a rattle can it is a little high. Works wonderfully though and the Max Flat Black is a deep soft color that beats satin black hands down. Extend can be purchased in a spray can, or a brush on liquid. Permatex makes a liquid as well, since both th Loctite Extend and Permatex are Henkel companies. I prefer the brush on coating, and the Permatex is somewhat cheaper and can be bought/ordered at ACE hardware. I follow the Extend directions to the letter and have found no better system than I have described for deeply rusted metal. Lightly rusted I do the same just in case:)

Larry, I must say I understand. I hate that we both share this burden, and understand the lost feelings in the shop. I finally tried a big piece again, and I think not ever again. The last one I had done, my Greg helped move and install, and the thoughts and feelings in my head kept me awake for days before I installed with the help of my other son. As it approachs a year for us, we have to hang tight and take care of those that remain, as the annerversary will be very hard for you and them. Having family to take care of has been what has kept/forced me to continue. This is a burden no Father should ever face, but you are not alone. My wife and oldest daughter found a grief share group at a local church, and I think it has helped them some. E-mail me if you want and we can discuss. While I have spent quite a bit of time in the shop, much has been sitting in a chair and thinking. Forging has been a sometimes release, helps to tire enough to sleep. My friends in the blacksmithing world have also been a great help with care and concern. Don't withdraw, try and engage. Easily said difficult to do. early on, My closest friends from the local group basically kidnapped me to go to an auction, I had no choice in the matter, but the engagement helped beyond words. Prayers sent. Jeff

Wondeful work and composition.

I understand that Chambersburg did lead block, and Massey used a speed meter of some sort to gain force values. Frome experience a 10:1 ratio is the min i would try, 15:1 is better and 20:1 gives a real good return on investment. Been there done that on my JYH. In industry, where everything used to be done on value, not cost, the big drop forges were generally 25:1 up to 50:1 on heavy duty hammers. Our 25,000# Erie sat on a sow block as big as a Pickup, that sat on a 17' tall anvil, that sat on a sub anvil that was as big as a 5 ton truck and that sat on subplate about twice that big. Don't know the exact weight, we only pulled the sow block and anvil and left the other items in the ground when it came out, too heavy to lift short of the locomotive crane that originally placed it in the late 20's.