Joki

Thanks to all for the replies, very good points there. I'll settle for the small spring fuller for isolating material, and then I'll make a bottom fuller out of a small piece of the axle. Maybe a small bottom fuller would be useful as well.

I'm putting together hardy tools for my new anvil, and I thought of making two spring fullers. One small, half inch in diameter, and maybe a bigger one, made out of semitruck axle cut vertically to make the two halves of the fuller. Cutting the axle is probably going to take a while, and since I'm afraid of the angle grinder, I'd like to know if this is a good idea at all, since if it is not, it'd save me time, fear and sweat. I've searched around a bit and found nothing about spring fullers this large. Thanks for any replies and good day.

Thanks for the reply, in the end I purchased the Brooks. $233 for a 420lb/191kg anvil is not bad at all. It's a very old Brooks, as it is forged rather than cast, made obvious by the handling holes under the heel and horn. I spent around an hour wire brushing the rust out of it and now I'm slightly concerned with the state of the face and edges. I've read in this forum that it's probably in my best interest to grind and give those chipped edges a new radius, but there's a few deep pits in the face that I'm worried about. I don't know where the steel face ends and where the wrought iron body begins, which is why I don't want to try and grind the face down, unless maybe I check with a flap disc first by checking the sparks on the waist and face?

I've found this 73kg anvil on Facebook's Marketplace. The seller says it's French, and shows a picture of these markings Anyone recognize a name? It seems to say something like ''A DESCOURS'' and below that it says ''BUENOS AYRES'' which is an old spelling of Buenos Aires, the province I live in and Argentina's largest city. I'm probably going to buy the anvil that sits right below it though; that one's much easier to identify; It's a forged, 420lb / 191kg John Brooks anvil. Is there a way to tell which year it was made on? It says ''John Brooks'' above, and below I believe it says ''Stourbridge'' which google says it's a town in England.

I have several hammers. They're all, however, cheap. I've modified all of them with an angle grinder and a cheap belt grinder; it isn't very powerful and steel barely gives off any sparks when grinding on it. Just yesterday I purchased an 1kg hammer, Tramontina brand (made in Brazil, considered to be ''better'' than budget brands) to then grind a ''Rounding hammer'' set of faces on it. While finishing up, I noticed that the Tramontina sparked quite a lot, even with little pressure put on the grinding belt. The other hammers give out little sparks, if any, even while applying lots of pressure, so a question arose: Why? Does that mean the Tramontina is properly tempered, and that the others are not and I should temper them myself, or the opposite, that I should temper the new hammer?

George, Frosty and Irondragon, many thanks for the replies. I've built a JABOD in the past, and will migrate to it if I can't get the charcoal to heat the steel in the bottom-blast forge. Soon as I have time, I'll try again, making sure to crank slowly so that the heat isn't ''blown out'' or the charcoal sparks too much. I do have a question, though, what exactly makes a side-blast better for charcoal? Would a deeper firepot help mine perform better? Today, two things happened regarding the fuels: First, I've noticed I got the charcoal price per kg wrong; the bags actually weigh 6kg or 13.2lb, which takes the price down to 0.27 per kg. This means, the $30 that 10kg worth of petcoke would cost me, would buy roughly 18 charcoal bags, totaling 108kg or 238lb. Needless to say, this is an even better deal. Second. The ''nice petcoke'' in the picture may not actually be coke at all; I paid a (rather reluctant to gettiing paid) local welder to make a flatter for me out of a plate and a hammer head I've prepared. The welder, a former blacksmith, decided to gift me a few of his old tools, including about 3kg worth of ''Rock coal'' as he called it. I don't know whether this is bituminous, anthracite or even coal coke; but some of the smaller chunks look just like the ''nice petcoke''. I asked where he got it from... and turns out it's pretty much stolen from cargo trains, then resold to and by local smiths and farriers, but this was many years ago, and he doesn't know where to buy more. The coal I've been given today, small and large pieces. The small piece is about 5cm or 2 inches long. The larger chunk weighs 660 grams or 1.4 pound Guess I'll use this coal until I run out. He did claim it ''should last me a long time'', we'll see.

Good day. Having recently gotten into this hobby, i've stumbled upon a huge question regarding which fuel to use. To add some context, my forge consists of a semi-truck's brake drum, filled with refractory concrete to make a bottom-blast firepot. For a blower, I have a simple hand-cranked blower. For fuel, there only seems to be Petroleum Coke available for sale nearby, I tried searching for Bituminous Coal but there just doesn't seem to be any for sale, at all, here in Buenos Aires. Now, I have bought and used Petroleum Coke, but i'm not sure if it's really all that good of a choice. Petroleum coke seems to be porous, hard to light, and it seems to ''break down'' into dust, which clogs up the grate and makes maintaining the fire rather messy. It also smells terribly bad (although I do wear a mask while forging). Something I've noticed is that there are two kinds of petcoke, as seen in the picture. The porous, turn-into-dust one is on the left, while at the right there's a small piece of ''nicer petcoke'' as I'll call it for now. It looks much smoother, and doesn't seem to turn into dust. I've bought 40kg in the past (at about $2 per kg) and I'm almost out of fuel now, having contacted the seller, they mentioned that they no longer have porous petcoke for sale, only selling the ''nicer'' one at $3 per kilogram. The seller claims this ''nicer'' petcoke lasts twice as much as the porous one. Charcoal, on the other hand, I have access to at a much cheaper price, about $0.4 per kilogram. This is hardwood lump charcoal, sold in 4kg bags at $1.6 per bag. While I know it has been used for blacksmithing for hundreds of years, I'm not having much success with it thus far; when using charcoal, it just seems unable to get hot enough, my pieces only reaching a red-ish color instead of the bright yellow petcoke takes them to. Is charcoal really that much ''colder'' or am I doing something wrong? Now, what would be best? Do I buy 10kg of this ''nice'' petcoke that should last me the same as 20kg of the ''bad'' one, or learn how to properly use charcoal (even build a new forge that suits it better, if necessary?) for much cheaper? From what I understand, one goes through charcoal much more quickly than other fuels. Note: This is my first post. I've read the ''Read this first'' section, do let me know if I made any mistake in formatting my post. Any feedback is much appreciated. I'll answer any further questions in case there's some information missing. Thanks and have a good one.