Alan Evans

I am surprised it did not come up glossy, my shoes always do! How glossy was the surface you tried it on? You might find you can use the shoe polish for colour and seal it with Renaissance wax… that is clear enough that they use it to protect oil paintings. I found that the burnished graphite finishes, whether grate black polish or the burnished graphite paint, could not be over coated with wax or lacquer, immediately you lost the burnished highlights and it just became dull black. The shoe polish pigments did not seem to change as much so you might get them a bit more resilient and glossy with a clear (renaissance) wax coating. Did you try any other colours? Blue and red work really well, green very much depends on the object. You might need to get the steel clean before you start, ping all the scale off with a gas torch, shot blaster or pickle and wire brush to get the full effect of the polish. Alan

Ah, I have an entirely different modus operandi. My strategy simply involves arriving at the 1990-ish Saint Louis ABANA conference a day early having driven over with Gichner. Meeting a guy and spending the day exchanging information about blacksmithing tools and stuff, picking him up from the airport whenever he visits my country, feeding and watering finding beds and transporting his entourage to various BABA events, sharing my rented Villa at Stia with him and his mates……and then being given up to the minute versions of his latest hammers and tongs as visitor gifts…. Works for me! :) Alan

I don't think your wallet should be too anguished you got it at half price. :) I have one just like it, well apart from the date, and it is my go to hammer. My second choice is a 1995 hand forged Hofi hammer. Not boasting, just saying. :) Alan

I make my own renaissance wax up from microcrystalline and polythene wax...I have posted the recipe on here previously. It is 90% white spirit so you pay an awful premium for the retail packaging. I bough a sackful of each wax 20 years ago for the price of three tins of Picreator and I am about a quarter of the way through it even though every journeyman has left here with a kilo! Alan

I don't think they would need to make a ball. At most they may have necked in the shank. Just out of interest I made a bottom vee tool and tapped a bit of 12mm into it. These are the first attempts which show the possibility. Refine the length used and knock down the square shank to the apparent little taper on the original and it is very close. Each end of the bit of 12mm was just one heat. No upset, no ball, no edge shaping. Alan

Cannings used to make a 'self levelling' lacquer. That had a black pigment in it which migrated to the concave bits leaving the convex bits clear. It was used by the Birmingham brass stampers for costume jewellery and picture frame stampings and the like. It made the most of the modelling detail. I did try some on some fire tools, but thought they just looked dirty. My usual finish for fire tools ended up either pickled or shot blasted to get all the scale off, and then power wire brush burnished and finished with Renaissance wax. That Richard Quinnell always referred to it as my "dead fish" finish...somewhat unkindly I thought! I actually ended up doing the Saint Paul's Cathedral gates with it, only I added in a coat of ISO cyanate lacquer between the burnishing and the wax. That had not deteriorated after thirty odd years. Alan

The classic stove black grate and range polish over here is called Zeebrite and is in bright yellow and black tubes, made now by Reckkit and Coleman, or whoever they have corporated to. It is basically graphite in wax. We have another company here called Liberon who do a wide range of gilt repair waxes and they also do a graphite iron paste, which is possibly less transferable to fingers and pockets. I don't know if they are available on your side. Zeebrite is applied by brush or cloth and then burnished up. Which gives you the soft irony look; soot black in the hollows and the highlights reflective. Same as if you rubbed a pencil over a surface. I always thin it with white spirit (to the same consistency as my coffee) so that it flows on with a paint brush, takes for ever if you use it neat on anything larger than a key ring. Having said that I would not use it for something frequently handled or stored in the pocket for just the reasons you mentioned, it is designed for stoves! :) If you want the irony look why not just leave the scale on and wax it? Another finish which might be somewhere in between is shoe polish. The pigments in that do not seem quite so transferable as the graphite. And you would have a wider range of colour opportunities. Alan

I think there is plenty of material/volume in the square shank dimension to spread out to that penny end without any need to upset or weld…if you mentally slice the penny sides off in line with the shank and stack them up you get the picture. I think the process to make it depends whether it was made in house by the cartwrights' smith or by a drop forge supplier of wagon furniture. Any history of the wagon? Even in house, the quantity they made would justify top and bottom dies to give the crisp diamond transition/neck and probably tapered swages for the hook then finished on the anvil. There are a few flats along the round tapered part of the hook so maybe they just swaged the shoulder and then drew out the taper by rotating on a wedge block rather than tapered swages. The only bit I can't fathom is the line under the diamond shoulder which makes it into a triangle. Maybe that was just decoration or maybe they tapped the square shank back to square where the shoulders had dragged, maybe a bruise from the tongs... A useful photo to determine the proportion of die to free work would be of the hook on the other side of the wagon in order to make a direct comparison. Alan

What do you do with something like that? Bump it? Catch it and dump it a long way away? Call out the pest officer? Alan

I also had a 2cwt Massey until last year when I decided that realistically I would not use it and let Benprothero on here have it. I still have hopes for the 5cwt when some money turns up! But having a perfectly serviceable 3cwt Alldays in the old shop does rather diminish the urgency... Do you mean that the Googlemail spam trap will not protect me? :) It is non-use rather than ab-use. If I hadn't bought it, it may have gone to that big fire in the sky…. Alan

His tale certainly stopped me from worrying about it. :) What I have done is light a soft flame leave it on for a few minutes, turn it off leave it off for a few minutes, light a soft flame, leave it on for a few minutes and etc…I tend to do that with my big furnace (which I keep outside under a tin sheet) if that has been idle for a while. Especially in winter when it is damp, I go throughout the same gentle start up. In fact I think most of the damage I have done to the furnaces has been relighting after a prolonged period of non-use, more than the impatience/lack of finesse in the original firing. In the winter I use the steam being driven off as a guide, as soon as it steams turn off the heat when the steam diminishes warm it back up... Have fun with it, Alan

If it puts your mind at rest…the first time I came across castable was when I was given a few bags by the foreman at a drop forge works that I bought a Massey hammer from. When I used it to make a furnace base, I looked up the handling spec. which referred to incrementally raising the temperature 15 degrees every hour for days. I phoned the foreman and asked how to control the temperature increase. The answer was "Ignore it! when we are going to recast a furnace we turn it off after the shift on Friday night, smash it apart, recast it, light a small flame on Saturday morning, leave it burning over the weekend, Sunday night it is turned up flat out and is ready to use by the Monday shift…sure they crack, but they still work fine with the odd crack" My first castable furnace lasted for 15 years and we only replaced it because we were idle while waiting for a project to get under way. It had tonnes of steel through it in that time. It was cracked and worn around the mouth but I did not notice any increase of efficiency when we recast it. Alan

I also have to keep the doors closed for noise when forging. I use positive pressure ventilation in my forge. A cheapish Ø500mm (20") industrial extractor fan blowing fresh air into the shop. This does two things:- it is the fastest way to get rid of fumes and get fresh air into a space, much more efficient than extracting, so it is advantageous for welding fumes, paint fumes as well as fumes from the fire; secondly it pushes the noxious air out through any available gap, your horizontal flue being the gap of least resistance so it will assist the hearth fumes to get out. :) I had a problem with heat and fumes in my previous shop and hinged some flaps off the bottom of my smoke hood to reduce the gap between hood and hearth. It helped, but if you are going to do any metalwork a side draft seems the most versatile system. Alan

Lillico was/is pretty much my starting point too. I have learned a bit from an industrial smith, Richard Lewis, who helped make some of my larger projects. Other than Lillico, probably the most concentrated single source has been that I have sat through the 10 hours of Clifton Ralph's videos a few times now…each time is repaid with new insights. Although there is an awful lot of repeat forging to sit through he is talking much of the time and keeps coming up with useful info…you have to listen hard! I have spent many happy hours with Clifton at the various ABANA conferences I have been too. He sat through my demonstrations at Saint Louis Obispo and afterwards I noticed this guy inspecting my power hammer tooling. I think it passed! Clifton was then introduced to me by Bob Bergman, another knowledgeable source, who actually gave me a dedicated copy of Lillico. Bob had stayed with me for a while on his European trip. Clifton and I talked quite a lot…well mainly he talked and I listened, and some of it was about blacksmithing. :) The hammer in the photographs is the largest I have in the forge, a 3cwt Alldays and Onions. I had used a Blacker (around 25kg/45lbs and a 50kg Reiter for a few years, 99% of the time I used them direct with cheese fullers as you have just made. I did make up a drop on flat bottom plate which enabled me to do offset forging. I have a 5cwt Massey in the yard just hanging around, casual like! One day... A year or two before I installed the 3cwt I picked up a beautiful little 1cwt Alldays and Onions and that introduced me to the joys of flat pallets and spring or other loose tools. I pretty much pushed the start button and with Lillico in one hand and a lump of metal in the other…quite a different mind set to direct forging. Alan

It will be interesting to see if you find you need to modify the fixings, a bit of clearance and it will probably be okay. At one time I used to think being self taught was a draw back, then I came to believe that maybe it was an advantage...that if I was always reinventing the wheel, maybe just maybe, I would come up with a new variation that nobody else had. This reassured me for a while, until I realised that it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive…you could be just as inventive on top of handed down experience and knowledge and get there a lot quicker…drat and double drat! :) "Necessity breeding invention" is all very well but it is much more relaxing and efficient to be knowledgable. :) Anyway I have just done a meals on wheels delivery to my Mum and popped into the forge to take a couple of photos of the rubber flexi-mount, though it seems you both got the idea from the description…maybe you got an even better idea from the description, and this is a poor second! Alan PS strange the second image uploaded contra rotated 90º... you will just have to turn your heads anti-clockwise until a mod. comes along!

That sounds a most reasonable and convincing theory for the chip formation. I would add that the conditions under which the blister steel was made; added to the the anvil and then hardened were not the most controllable and the fact that many of those anvils survive is a testament to the incredible skill and ability their makers developed. There is bound to be a variation in hardness and resilience given the production system. As to the radiusing of the edges pre flap disc and angle grinder….how about heat and a hammer? Alternatively have you ever tried filing hot iron, use a farriers rasp and it is like grating a carrot, I believe the Romans had water powered grindstones and I daresay they did not invent the technology... Alan

Those will move some metal fast. Just in case... My first attempt at a pair of fullers attached in a similar way lasted for one blow! My assistant (and I :( ) forgot to put the clearance in the holes after drilling through for the tapping holes in the pallet. The tiny bit of bedding movement on the first blow sheared some of the bolts. In order to give them a firm and flexible fixing I ended up opening the holes to Ø20mm (Ø3/4") and cutting some short lengths of 12mm (1/2") bore reinforced rubber hose (car heater hose is what I happened to have). With a large washer the fixing bolts then squeezed the tube and it expanded out taking a firm grip on the tool... Alan I used to have a signature based on the Arabic saying about "a wise man learning from his mistakes, but a lucky man learns from the mistakes of others. :)

I had a look at the metal muncher and I think that is the sort of thing I was envisaging. All the early ironworkers over here were mechanical, derived from the constantly cycling shears and punches in the water mills. I have to admit it was the punch end of the metal muncher I thought he was going to use. Even so it is the 0.75" from the fulcrum that I am having difficulty with, how is that transferred to the tooling…what diameter can the pivot pin be if the operating length is only 0.75"? Or is it an actual fulcrum; a 0.75" difference cam lobe operating between the frame and pushing on the top tool? Maybe I am just being dense again. Sketches would help. Alan

Personally I blame that Jack Andrews…. :) The worst anvil I ever tried to work on was a brand new Kohlswa (spelling?) at an Art school. Perfectly flat so that there was nowhere you could overcome spring-back if you wanted to straighten a bar, all the edges cut the bar rather than fullered it if you tried to shoulder/offset, and the hardy hole edge was like a razor so you could not dish in it, awful thing. My favourite anvil is hollow and every edge is rounded with differing radii and there are nicks and bits out all over the place, virtually every one of the blemishes has proved useful for one job or another. You get to know their personality with use, their individual strengths and weaknesses. Think positively of the glitches as hard won patina. I was once told that when you move into a new house and garden that you should live in it for a year before you cut any trees down, experience all the seasons. I think it is a bit like that with old tools, especially anvils use it for a while before you start welding up edges... Alan

Ah right, thank you. I was puzzled by the limited function of the proposal. And I could not square the limited floor space with the lack of versatility. I also am tight for space so the more versatile the machine the better. My little 30 tonne press is only a couple of feet wide and four or five deep and that will do tasks requiring either a 0.75" or a 0.75' stroke with equal aplomb. Having reread the OP though...0.75" from the fulcrum what happens? how do you connect to the top die? Is it a cam acting on a top plate? Just curious. Alan

Hmmm. Sounds like taking the one of the advantage of a hydraulic cylinder over a power hammer which is that it has the same power anywhere on its stroke and throwing that away for what? If you can see that a 55tonne .75" stroke can be useful for your forging then great. I am always looking for extra capacity from the point of view of stroke length and clearance between dies from all me presses and hammers. Changing the stock size parameters with lead screws mid-heat sounds a bit of a non-starter, what about tapers or is everything you forge parallel? Alan

Strike while the iron is hot….why waste heat waiting for the hammer to start up? I think you will save more energy (heating fuel, electricity and kinetic) and have easier forging, fewer heats and arguably have a better product on many levels as a result... You definitely want the hammer up and running by the time you are walking towards it with a bit of hot metal wherever you position the switch. I would think the equivalent convenience of your grandfather's hands-free machine switches is given by the hammer's treadle. Alan

Ha! spot the non sequitur! :) That is exactly what I am talking about….even one's random rustic is controlled! I really do not think this is a bad thing. Once you are aware of surface and form you cannot unlearn it. It always informs your work :) It is just perfect rusticity! :) Wearing my serious hat though, although it is not hard and fast or a "rule" I always tend to like everything left from the hammer, the surface recording the forming process. Every part of the process and every hammer blow being eloquent, informing and supporting / contributing to the spirit of the piece. And that has followed me throughout my making career in silver, wood and steel. Alan

Good point, I can't edit my earlier post to qualify my info. but I assumed Karn3 was referring to the home-mixed burnished graphite paint which gives the irony effect like stove black. Another possibility…we had a company over here set up by a blacksmith, Brian Rourke, and they sold a vinyl based paint which was matt black with a sparkle they called Graphite. They went bust last year but the paint division has been taken over and it is still available through F H Brundle. Alan

I find it a real mixed blessing. On the one hand great surface quality/detail may make ones work distinctive, on the other I have always had the sneaking suspicion that I was not a real blacksmith because I was so prissy about surface. :) And then there are the practical and financial disadvantages concomitant with trying to microscopically control the detail of a lump of 100mm (4") square weighing half a tonne! :) Maybe the OP would be better off finding another route! :) Just kidding Andrew. I really think that any experience is valuable. If it is a leisure or part time course rather than a full time one you are considering, you might find that you can do an informal apprenticeship with a local smith in exchange for helping out Saturdays or something. You don't need to restrict yourself to institutional provision. Alan