Hamon

I'm using also natural hardwood lump charcoal for BBQ. I use charcoal pieces about 2 to 3 cm for forging and 1 to 1.5 cm for heat treating. I got those sizes from reading about a Japanese Swordsmith. See section #2. Swordmaking Process by Miyairi Akihira

Nice stand.

The 3 of You above don't know about Chemisty.

If You heat plain Borax (decahydrate) at 75 °C it decomposes to it's anhydrous form. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borax

Waiting for this heatwave to end before I play in fire again.

A neighbour cut a tree and I snagged a log for my 1st stand.

I need to find a stump/log for this.

Snow is almost gone so I ordered 2 bars of 1045 steel to play with today.

Snow is melting nicely so I'm hoping it all gone same time next month. I don't have a shop like many of You thus I need nice weather to fire up my charcoal forges.

I need to get a stump for my small Anvil as well.

Vinegar with a steel wool helps in removing rust. You'll need a hoist to lift that off the ground.

I'm waiting for some lifting and pouring Crucible tongs to arrive to try this all out.

I've made camping fires on sandy beaches many times and never saw any glass formation. For annealing, I was thinking a lot smaller of a fire.

Hello, Has anyone ever annealed steel buried in a few inches in sand under the tiniest charcoal fire that eventually goes out? So that the steel cools slowly over several hours. Sand will stay warm for a while too after the fire dies.