Alan Evans

Interesting to read that respected professionals such as yourselves have made the same mistakes as me (an unrespected amateur) regarding hot air first and steam later coming up a tube. I did learn after these lessons & only made each mistake once.

Blackersmith... I had that slow-motion thought sequence too, but - possibly even more stupidly - it came a couple of minutes after a hot air blast to the wrist. Who would have thought that steam would do the same thing? And I laugh at Homer Simpson's stupidity...

First place I found on line that was not 10 ton minimum, $35 per 50 lb bag.
http://www.ebay.com/...1a#ht_578wt_943

Well, you quoted what I paid for the sand you cheeky monkey, :D how bout you tell us what you pay for chilled steel shot?.... .....I don't have a recovery system and the cost of steel shot would break my......% of profit......Frequently is more what I meant by ''all the time'', I use bicarbonate of soda on occasion and the inferior (imo)and more expensive coal slag stuff as well...To each his own. I'm not here to sell sand I just feel sand is ok if the proper precautions are taken..... B)

I forge all my tubing with sand fill and the ends welded shut. Splitting can be a problem with this method though so soft hits work best. I have found that on occasion I must empty some of the sand if I forge down to a long thin taper. Have made a few "Dr Zues" lamps this way.

Let's not forget the ferocious blast of steam you get from the top end when you make the mistake of quenching the end(s). You'll only do it once........

I had'nt thought of the advantage of a full size cap helping with the heat, thanks. Messing with a wet rag doesn't appeal much to me unless the pcs were longer. A slight diff in the texture won't bother me or the client but if I put the bench up for critque somebody might rip me a new one.... B)

I would advise you not to use the lead bearing brass. As I found to my cost it introduces another problem with getting the heat right. When the lump in the story below broke, you could see tiny beads of lead on the break surface.

I am very happy to be corrected by a metallurgist, but I was told that the lead is used to help the chips break when the metal is being machined. It enables this because it does not alloy with the copper but remains in suspension and forms a series of weak points throughout the brass on a microscopic level. Because it has a lower melting point than the copper, at the bottom end of the temperature range when you could normally work non-lead-bearing brass the problem is at its worst because the lead is almost molten but the copper is still relatively hard and it shears across the lead. The only way you can forge it hot is at the top end of the brass forging temperature range when there is less of a difference in ductility between the two.

My story....Back when I was more adventurous than I am now and nobody had told me I couldn't, I designed and made some church door pulls in brass.

In my happy state of ignorance I ended up buying 100 pounds worth of standard free machining, lead bearing brass for a job I was getting 200 pounds for. I bought enough 100mm x 25mm (4"x 1") to make three of them in case I screwed up, took most of the morning trying to draw out the first one. Despite being so careful to work it not too hot or cold I managed to get a crack and it fell apart, disaster. My friend and colleague Mike Roberts along the road had a TIG and welded it up for me and I spent the whole of the next day teasing out the next one, using the repaired bit as a handle. My nerves could not take another 8 hours of that, so on the third day I threw caution to the wind and forged out the last one by getting it to dull red and hitting it hard in 20 minutes flat!

The coincidence in this and reason for the tale is that I came across the 27 year old broken bit the day before this thread started and had cut the bit off and had started to machine up some tube plugs, see photo.

The door pulls were okay but you can see the difference. The one that took ages has a fold line running up it and the one that went through proper is much better formed.



Brass forging subsequently I have used Delta metals DB4 when I could get it and more recently Coldur A which is Columbia Metals silicon bronze...almost as easy as steel to forge!

Medium quartz silica sand is available at Home Depot for 6-7$ per 100lb bag. I use it all the time for sandblasting.........And I wear a respirator, NBD....... :mellow:

It only grew 2''. Started with 12'' and wound up at 14'' with a 10'' taper. I think I'll lengthen the taper another 2'' from the fat end only. I don't to take a chance of crashing the tongs so I'll attach a porter bar. Grabbing that stuff with tongs on the outside edge is jumpy anyhow.

There is good reason sand is no longer used (apart from the referring to the tool as a sand blaster). It is slow to cut, breaks up fast and the dust is bad for your lungs.

I use chilled steel shot for mild steel, Aluminium Oxide for Stainless and non ferrous, and glass bead for surface peening and cleaning. I tend to use the aluminium oxide and the glass bead in a little suction feed gun rather than bother to clean out every trace of the chilled steel from the cabinet and pressure pot system.

I use the suction gun on an air line in the cabinet so I can utilise the light, dust extraction and the containment it provides. I tend to use the Aluminium Oxide and Glass Bead sacrificially and do not recycle it...you only need a couple of bits of contaminant to really mess up an bead blasted surface.

If you do not have a cabinet or the workpiece is too big for the cabinet, I have had a lot of success using a large polythene bag (find a Farmer friend making Haylage) or making up a polythene envelope using polytunnel or builders clear polythene. Leave a small hole to poke the gun and your hands in. You can see through the bag to the work piece and all the grit and removed material is contained instead of spread around the workshop or yard!

Since I couldn't know what the finished length woul be I deliberatly cut it long. The finished leg wiil not include any of the mill finish. The next piece of stock will get cut shorter cause I know where I'm at with how much it will draw.

I wanted the legs 3'' at the bottom tapering down to 1 1/4'' where they will be trimed back to 1 1/2'' then they will be joined with 1 1/2'' solid and continue tapering up to form arm rests and join with the back......

I found you can speed up the process by plugging the end of the tube with a rag or sometimes its even worth welding a plate over the end. It speeds up the heating and slows down the cooling. If you leave the tube open it acts like a chimney and the air passes through chilling the surface. Huge surface area with little thermal mass if you count both inside and outside surfaces. Plugging it you can halve the heating time and double the forging time per heat.

The weld on plate does not need to be continuous welded just needs to reduce the flow. I have a few plates with square stubs welded on which enable me to use smaller more comfortable tongs concentrically.

On some bigger tubes (around 200mm (8") diameter 10mm (3/8") wall) which we were heating and working on the last 100mm (4") we made up a plug from 40mm (1-1/2") ceramic insulation board mounted on a piece of studding so we could poke it down the tube till it was around the level of the furnace wall, that stopped the heat from travelling up the inside.

I have filled lighter tube with sand when bending hot and had no problem with it melting, you must make sure it is dry and I preferred to use wooden plugs rather than welding caps just to be safe.

I 100% agree that the thicker the wall the easier to work. The time you spend chasing your tail correcting cock ups and kinks seems to quadruple every time you halve the thickness!

@Beth, Well if ever you are coming up to feed the Parrots do pop in you are always welcome! It was also good to visit you, I felt very much at home in your shop...if that makes sense.

Glad the trip wasn't a total washout. We have been ravaged by further drought problems since you left. Our spring collection tank in the field above the cottage has been overflowing for the last couple of weeks and a lot of trees came down over one particularly squally arid 24 hours!

corrections...

The hammer you described sounded like a 'Blacker Hammer'. 'Blackersmith' is the name I use on blacksmiths' sites in memory of my first hammer!

Who is this Allan Edwards bloke then? (Alan Evans perhaps?)

Hi Ian, I see you are posting again, presumably back home?

Did you see anything exciting after you left here?

Any luck in Dublin on your way through?

the hobbit will very shortly be 2 films, and we shall see if orcrist and glamdring will glow in the films..... although they will have billy connoly as dain ironfoot....... who knows how it will go.....

im going to propose, that he will be actually good in it........

I smelt mine back into iron---it's the easiest iron ore to source---if you are a smith!
snip

Like John B says it depends on the circumstance.

The way I would go about solving the OP's dilemma of how big to make the hole for a hot rivet is back to first principles. Heat up the rivet you want to use and measure its diameter. If your work piece is to be cold when riveted do a similar experiment and measure the hot hole to see how much your hole will shrink and then drift the actual hole to size to compensate. I have found that most of the time you can predict the outcome very accurately provided you are consistent in your process. Wierd things happen to visual heat assessment when the sun comes around and shines in the door!

If I am using the rivet as a pivot for tongs etc then I want good bearing surfaces, so I tend to drill and used a slide fit rivet, put a healthy chamfer on the end, rivet cold with the flat hammer, heat the whole joint and quench while working the reins. The quench and wiggle seems to give just the right tolerance without slop.

I found that if you use the ball pein to mushroom the end ,thats all it does, it does not upset the shank to fit the hole. Much stronger to use the flat of the hammer, the chamfer does two things it transfers the energy/movement further down the shank and prevents the splitting mentioned by John B. The other bad thing I found using the ball pein is that invariably I would bruise the surrounding area, which looked amateurish even if I was getting paid for it!

The disadvantage of too big a hole for the rivet is probably the cause of Franks bent rivet tongs, some of my old tongs were so well worn that at some time in their life the rivet had been replaced in a hurry with the wrong size and similar bends occurred. I have to confess to driving over a set with my forklift the other day which made a useful set for working around corners!

I used to use rivet snaps/sets to try and make matching round heads, but after a few years I decided that for aesthetic and philosophic reasons that a hand hammered head was more appropriate for most of my work. I either leave it from the flat hammer or after setting with the flat hammer, use a flat head punch to give a 5 clout facetted head, or when in frilly mode decorate with ball and centre punch to make flowery things.

Elvish smiths, of course, they're also responsible for Mithril as in Bilbo's mail coat. Whitesmiths maybe?

Frosty The Lucky.

My favourite worst film and film blacksmith managed to get just about every thing wrong, with smithing and English History.

Alan Ladd in the Black Knight.

Opening scene is the glowing fire and out comes the orange heat sword straight into the slack tub; lots of steam; out onto the anvil ting ting; hold it up to the light and it is...mirror polished, hilt and all; set up a beaten breast plate (which probably represents a weeks work for a few people) and slice it in two with one blow. Priceless.

The rest of the film got better and better combining Vikings, Saracens, Druids and finally the destruction of Stonehenge by Alan Ladd tying his lasso to the his saddle pommel backing up and pulling over the sarsen stones, better than priceless!

"What do we remember from English History?.... Oh yeah chuck that in!"

As for use of an oliver---why spend expensive materials and time to make one when you have your apprentices and journeymen just standing around eating your food!

The idea of having a single smith in a shop is pretty much totally a "modern" thing based pretty much on the American frontier where the lack of manpower was a given *and* the many shops that gradually withered as smithing be came less of a money producer and many old smiths gradually slid down the slope of their career until death---also in pretty recent times. Back in "the day" having a single smith in a shop would be about as common as going into a hospital surgical suite and having *only* the surgeon working there nowadays.

Even the stave church door carvings from over 1000 years ago show the smith with a helper and the Greek and Egyptian depictions show a *crowd*!

There are some plank treadle and spring pole hammers and their later developments exhibited in the chain shops at the Black Country Museum in Telford and the Avoncroft Museum of Buildings, I don't know what age the examples they have are, be worth an email to find out.

Like Fe-Wood I am a super fan of SIKAFLEX. My partner works in the marine industry and one day when I had a similar problem he suggested it, it's awesome stuff, has enough give in it, yet super strong!!

Hmm, what if...a person used that design with these changes.
Where the head is on the top photo was a roller guide (rusty type arrangement) attached to the post with side plates so the tie-rod could pass through to mount on a leaf spring above. The leaf spring arrangement would be something along the lines of sam's compact rusty. If it had a shackle on the back like gearhartironwerks kinyon, one wouldnt need the rollers in the front like the rusty needs. Say about a 28-30 inch leaf spring with eyes both ends.
It would be the same layout otherwise. Maybe with some adjustability built in for hammer travel and such. Could be able to reposition the shackle on the post.
Now, since I like making multifunction tools, I want a small power hammer too. So, it would have a motor to spin a flywheel, and figure in the jackshafts and pulleys in there between the anvil and the post.
When I want to change over from treadle mode, I'd disconnect the spring and the tie rod at the bottom, the tie rod would bolt to the powered crank, and the treadle would drop down into a lower position and operate the idler pulley.
See what happens when you ask for thoughts? I'll stop now before I get myself in trouble, and have to build another contraption.

Thought provoking thread.

I reckon the stock holding hand contributes more to the form than the hammer hand. A hammer attached to the damaged hand and retrain the muscles and coordination was my initial response. But then I am strangely ambidextrous; left eye dominant, write left handed, hammer and most other tools right handed, the result of having to learn to live in a right handed world.

Using legs and or feet to supplement would appear to be favourite. The Oliver or Tommy hammer or better yet a power hammer or hydraulic press for direct forging.

A motorbike chain anchored on the far side of the anvil with a stirrup which incorporates a stand off so you can get your foot in would be good. The anchor in hook form so you can alter the length of the chain / height of stirrup for the bars size. Some angles could be achieved with blocks. The chain and stirrup could also be adapted to work with a trestle or stand to hold stuff on the Oliver, power hammer or press so one could manage punches or top tools.

A sky hook supporting the back end of the tongs or workpiece could be rigged so that only downward pressure was required to hold the piece in place on the anvil. A hook hanging off a belt or Sam Browne on the hip to hitch the tong reins or stock in could also help.

I look forward to hearing the outcome.

ps @ a62rambler..."your right leg is fine, it is a very nice right leg, I have nothing against your right leg....the problem is neither do you!" Peter Cook and Dudley Moore from a long time ago!