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George, You've nailed it on the cozy relationships being a deterrent to throwing blame around. Cities really don't have much excuse for their design contract procedures. If they can write in liquidated damages penalties for construction being late, why can't they write in penalties for the Architects design coming in over budget? I'm not aware of any penalties for designs that don't pass building department review either.

Lou covered a lot. I have a grizzly which sports a 1 Horse, fixed speed, single phase motor. While I'd concede that there are many downsides to this machine, I wouldn't say that it's under powered. I suspect the 2HP recommendation was driven by the use of variable frequency drives and three phase motors. Running the motor slower would reduce it's effective horsepower. Working with an angle grinder, it's not as obvious that finer grits generate a whole lot more friction than coarser grits do. Unless you can slow the belt down, the only way to control stock overheating is by limiting contact time. That's what I have to do with my Grizzly. It's got plenty of torque for rough grinding. High grit belts on thin/small heat-treated metals is where everything has to slow way down. If you see yourself doing a lot of profiling and rough grinding, a fixed speed unit like the Grizzly is a fine choice. However, if you're looking to take stainless filet knives to a mirror polish, it's probably not the best machine for you.

George, I think these mandatory collaborative systems are a response to the shortcomings of the one-sided AIA templates. You're right that most projects happen without resorting to a court case, but that overlooks the scores of potential jobs that stall out because the "norms" of this business are unworkable for the clients. I regularly see projects with progress percentage milestone dates marked on the title block that go back six months to a year. It's incredible how many of these jobs spend more time in design than they do in construction. From the client's perspective, the "live model" is a way to see just how much time the design team is actually spending on their job. The jobs I'm participating on have an eight week deadline to get 100% complete Construction Documents. I could name twenty jobs in the last month of similar size, scope, and regional area that were in design for nine months or more to get to the same point. I don't think we're dealing with a Herculean design team either. This same group did one of the aforementioned 20 jobs that took nine months to achieve the same thing. I think they know they're being watched, so they're not dividing their time with other projects. I suspect for many of these design professionals, seeing one job through to completion would be much less frustrating than jumping around to whatever job is the most behind schedule. I suspect the next focus of these collaborative systems will be to tie cost impacts to everything in real time. This would slay another design phase problem, blowing the budget. It's never made any sense to me at all that Architects don't have their own estimators on staff. The courtesy budget check from local builders has devolved into a sham bid. There are local design firms whose budget check at 50% drawings always passes, yet the 100% construction set consistently blows their clients budget. On the surface, it sounds obvious, half the stuff was missing at the budget check so it's natural that the price would be lower then. OK, sure, but that's assuming that the half that was missing is a complete unknown to everyone. That's not the truth. The design team knew the broad strokes of what was missing, and chose not to share that information at the budget stage. Any contractor who included costs for all that hidden information on the budget round would be ignored because they're now the highest bidder. Any contractor who exposes the design teams malfeasance, risks incurring their wrath on future work. The client doesn't know who to believe, but it's reasonable to assume that if informed decisions were made in the first place, the whole thing would be less expensive.

I have a buddy who made himself a 4" x 4" x 3/4" thick swage block with grooves on one large face of varying sizes. The opposite side is flat and the whole thing has a handle welded on with a hook to he can hang it up. Before welding small wire stuff like those basket twists, he pre-heats the swage block in the forge. Then he sets it on his anvil with the grooved side up. When forge welding the basket twist, he puts the twist in the closest sized groove. That keeps the wires gathered while welding, while also keeping him from flattening the weld. Plus the pre-heat helps to buy some time on the forge weld. He never has to get the block above a black heat to serve the purpose. It works very well.

Kozzy, I really appreciate your comments. The exposure of not having access to your files, heck, even knowing that your files weren't tampered with, is just too much to ask. I suspect you're quite correct that most savvy design professionals are going to find a way to keep bootleg a copy of their work. I also suspect that it's just a matter of time until some horrid client sues their design professional for using a bootleg copy to defend against a liability claim. Frosty, You're right about the games and the nonsense. I think this tech is introducing a new wrinkle. While everyone is focusing on the client and design team relationships, the software company running this stuff gets overlooked. I think it's a data capture game with high stakes for anyone who doesn't see it coming. Before I mentioned digital estimating programs. Well some of the most expensive programs are "free" to use on bid-letting systems. The General Contractor invites subcontractors to bid using a bid-letting system that has all the files for the project. These bid-letting systems strike a deal with industry-leading estimating programs so a sub can "do your estimate for free". I'll say this much, if they're letting you use a $2,500 software package for free, you're not their real customer.

Fair point Frosty. I actually spoke to an architect about this situation and specifically asked about the liability concern when the design team can't curate their own files. The tone of the conversation changed immediately. They hadn't considered it before, but within a few minutes they were sounding out the same sort of security concerns that plague social media. As for that Architect who only dealt in paper plans, I think it's worth pointing out a few things. #1, the Architect has to produce plans and specifications known in the trades as "contract documents" for the purposes of bidding. To the best of my knowledge the copyright protections of their plans don't change regardless of whether the plans are digital or paper. #2, His "beef" with digital plans is likely drawn from an architectural standard that dates to when blue prints were actually blue. In the old days, you couldn't scale the drawing to measure anything for the project. You had to use the dimensions provided by the Architect. This is because it's incredibly labor intensive to draw the plan by hand. If the Architect discovered an error in their drawing, they could correct the written dimensions without being forced to redraw the entire thing. Modern Architects love to leave this requirement in their specifications because it's a "get out of jail free" excuse for their errors. The flip side of this issue is that since virtually everything is BIM or CAD, the drawings can be quickly adjusted to match needed dimensions. It's so consistent that most Architects don't bother to generate scaled drawings with sufficient data points to actually locate everything you'd need to know to bid the project. They know we're using digital systems to measure their drawings so many architects don't bother with putting a dimension on every individual thing. I think the crusty Architect was simply trying to generate a catch-all excuse to avoid responsibility for an incorrect dimension. He could blame it on the scanner on the first go around, then he could claim you should have added up his dimensions to get your measurements. When you point out that he doesn't provide sufficient dimension lines to achieve that, he'll just counter that by saying that it's the bidders responsibility to ask these questions before the deadline. All of which naturally ignores the fact that the deadlines are much too quick to allow sufficient time for the back and forth question game to end in a complete bid. This sort of "gotcha" set-up is very common with design professionals who work for unscrupulous clients. Being clear, concise, and fair would lead to paying the going rate for the project. Laying traps and playing "keep-away" with basic information doesn't happen by accident. I recall winning a project this Architect had drawn by exposing the cost of a sole specification product to the client. The cost difference between equal products was enough to fund the second phase of the project. Corruption is very expensive.

Jeremy, I think most design professionals would have a contract ensuring their payment for their work in whatever form it takes. The "old way" of doing things was for these same professionals to develop, improve, then finally submit the final versions of their work to the client. Communications were via meetings, calls, messages, mail, and email. At the end of a job, those design professionals kept all their notes, calculations, versions, communications, and designs. Non-disclosure agreements kept them from selling that information to the clients competitor, but they kept their work files for later reference. In the past, some Architects claimed copyright protection on their designs to prevent clients from sharing the plans. That reminds me of one particularly curmudgeonly Architect who refuses to allow digital versions of his plans to be circulated. He set up an exclusive contract with one print-shop that only provides paper prints of his projects. If you want to measure plans like it's 2008, you have to buy the plans, then have them scanned into a digital file yourself. Thomas, That's an interesting point but I feel there's a worthy distinction. A forum is purely voluntary, the information posted is how members generate value to offset their free access. The collaborative systems I'm talking about aren't optional at all. The design contract stipulates that all design work, and communications must be done on the collaborative system. Nobody has permission to take files or communications offline. The client's staff do not communicate outside of the collaborative system at all. I also think there's a worrisome consideration with regards to security. The client doesn't own the collaborative system. The software firm running the system is quietly collecting a lot of information. Not just about the project, but about the individuals working within it. Taken in sum, the software firm has a lot of potentially lucrative applications for that information. I suspect an engineer would pay dearly to have access to their old project files in the event of a liability situation. "Collaborative" is a handy way to explain any number of irregularities in the custodians record! There are some really unethical people in this industry. I can name at least three contractors who change the construction plans and specifications in their file share site without showing an edit midway through construction. They even kept the file-name the same. One of them tried to add a drive-up teller facility to a bank project that way! I only caught it because I happened to notice that the file size had gone up. The "time-stamp" on the file share site never changed which suggests they either figured out how to fool it, or the programs are built to allow contractors to fake the time stamp. Either way, this particular file share site is awfully popular among cheating scoundrels.

Just tossing an idea out there, but if you're trying to make "woods" why not make the head out of wood with a metal face? It'd be a whole lot easier than trying to forge a hollow metal form. That being said, there's an artist blacksmith whose name I can't recall who welds sheet metal on all the edges with an inflater nozzle in between. She heats the whole thing up, then attaches an air compressor to inflate the work into a "pillow"! Really, really, really cool stuff. I bet a sufficiently thought-out welded sheet steel preform could be "blown-out" to make a hollow club head.

I recently came across an interesting issue when soliciting a design bid from an engineer. The client is using a cloud-based project management system that includes a "live" model of the project. I'm not an expert in CAD or BIM so I specifically asked the engineer about this process. The system allows everyone in the project to access the exact same 3D model at the same time. As the engineer explained all of this they mentioned something I wouldn't have thought of. The client "owns" the project. This means that the design consultants, Architects, and Engineers all lose access to everything they did on the project when it's complete. In this system, even email is contained within the project so even that will disappear whenever the client chooses. Apparently there are strict rules against removing anything from the collaborative site.

ColoradoCJ, I live in the same city! There's a company called "Metal Distributors" on Mulberry in Fort Collins. They are open till noon on Saturdays and their metal prices have been 25% of what Home Depot charges. They have a rack of off-cuts that are generally less than 24" but longer than 12" that sell for 15-20% less than their per foot rate. They sell to the public and their staff will cut whatever you need. I don't think they've ever kept me waiting more than a couple of minutes.

Pressure, It might have been my post that you're thinking of. I specifically wrote that the rheostat control is less precise and more given to drift. Put another way, the motor won't necessarily speed up or slow down in lockstep with the control. If you put an on/off switch in series with the rheostat you can end up with a situation where the motor won't start and run at the same speed it was going before it was shut down the last time. Starting the motor every heat will save coal but will wear the motor out faster. It's just not a good approach. People running antique electrical equipment are taking a risk, sometimes a big one. The National Electric Code was originally created to assign blame on insurance claims for fires. It took the NEC a long time to get around to life safety regulations which is why really stupid stuff like cardboard insulated lamp plugs were still being sold in hardware stores in the 1990's. In comparison, a gate valve allows the blower motor to run at peak efficiency all the time. The gate adjustment is both infinite and immediate. If you put any sort of witness mark on your adjustment, you can quickly restore a setting. The "leak" at zero blast can be a huge benefit on it's own, as fuels like coke won't stay lit without constant airflow. Beyond that, there's a huge safety reason to having a low blast going constantly. As coal burns it creates a gas that's heavier than air. If your fire is left untended, the gas can collect and push it's way back down the tuyere. If the gas finds a path out the blower and back to the fire, it can detonate. This happened to me with a manual crank blower mounted to a forge. I was at the anvil and heard a weird pop. I turned around just in time to see my forge fire coming in for a landing in the pot! The ash dump didn't do boo to protect my forge. The tuyere was violently pulled away from my pot. The bolt heads were ripped clean off, and the iron pot cracked from stem to stern along the line of the bolts. If you ever look at old photos of blacksmith shops using a great bellows, they make sure to mount them above the forge and they sometimes put in check valves to block the gas from getting into the bellows. I bet more than one unlucky blacksmith blew their roof off before that became standard practice.

I would second Kozzy's advice about the dimmer control. Mechanical control over the airflow is faster acting, and it's more precise. Motors can have a wandering effect with dimmers where they drift faster or slower after any change is made to the dimmer. Restarting the motor at a reduced voltage can spike the current running through the motor which generates excessive wear through heat. Considering the places a forge is likely to be used, I would strongly recommend that you connect the blower to a GFCI protected receptacle. Make sure the cord and plug are sized properly to suit your blower, and whenever in doubt, have an electrician do the work. Insurance claims adjusters have been known to deny unrelated coverage claims (like say, flood damage) when they find unlisted devices connected to the homes electrical system. Be advised that insurance agents have taken to searching their clients social media accounts looking for anything that might allow them to deny a claim. As a Journeyman Electrician, I can tell you that your current cord and plug is not OK at all. The entire thing needs to be electrically grounded because that motor is not double insulated. If you lived closer to me, I'd happily help you out. Anybody know a good sparky in West Virginia that could help?

This reminds me of something related. The mindset around finding mistakes can really influence how well you progress. People are great hunter/gatherers which allows them to find whatever they are looking for. If you want to see failure, you'll find it where others might have overlooked it. Aversion is a potent motive for a lot of unhappy people. Being focused on avoiding a negative outcome forces the perspective to where spotting a mistake is almost a relief because it gives the person something to justify their fears. There's no lesser stress in making a smaller mistake. We often hear the old adage; "Insanity is defined by doing the same thing expecting a different result." Well if the person is emotionally committed to feeling awful about every shortcoming, the repetition necessary to develop skill provides all that is necessary to generate insanity. Now if a person was looking for signs of progress, they could greet their mistakes and their successes as markers on the path of personal improvement.

Goolsby7, I use a side blast burning coal and/or coke. Although a lot of people go to the work of vitrifying clay, it's not actually necessary to make a functional side blast forge. I have an old electrical panel tub that I use as my "sand box". If I want to make it lighter, I shovel the ash/sand into a bucket then I use a two wheeled cart to move the bucket. The whole thing weighs less than a brake drum forge but it gives me more room to support the stock and somewhere close to store extra fuel. I went with a side blast to save money, but now that I've used one for a year, I've come to prefer it over bottom blasts. I find it's much easier to keep at working heats because the clinker forms below the tuyere. I've used it with a few different types of coal and coke, all of them formed a solid mass of clinker below the tuyere. I just let up on the blast for a few minutes to let the clinker harden so it's easy to hook out. About the only downside of a sand bed is that you can't really pry against anything when working the fire, or else you can mess up the sand "pot". My first fire with it, I inadvertently buried some burning coke. I've found that a fire paddle with a bent end works better than a "rake" with a sand bottomed forge. The paddle looks like a fly swatter with the tip end bent 90 degrees. I can slide it sideways into the fire to pick up fuel to move it around without disturbing everything else.

About the only thing that hasn't been mentioned is that solid fuel forges are capable of generating unique heating situations. For example. If your air supply is high speed and low volume, over a shallow fire, you can get superficial heating where the airblast is actually cooling things off. If you have high speed and high volume air blast on a deep fire, you can get a blow-torch effect in the center of your airblast. That one is particularly frustrating because everywhere but the center of the airblast is a weak fire, so you leave the metal in longer. You check on it from time to time and it doesn't seem to get to yellow. Then all of a sudden, you see sparks and the piece is burnt in two, right above the air blast! Another thing that wasn't mentioned is that your stock can be it's own heat-sink. If you have drawn the stock to a smaller size, try heating the larger section before heating the working area. That way, the larger section will buy you more working time.

I don't know if this applies to you, but your post reminds me of a hard learned lesson. I spent years struggling to enjoy blacksmithing because I spent so much time trying to make basic stuff the hard way. I think I'd convinced myself that I would rapidly outgrow "lesser" solutions so I did a fair bit of reinventing the wheel. Making charcoal is a huge undertaking that won't teach a thing about blacksmithing. Coal is $20-$25 a 50lb bag. If your time is worth anything at all, it would be difficult to produce an equal amount of fuel for less. Forging only smaller stuff on summer weekends, that bag would last me about a year. None of which is to suggest that people get into blacksmithing to save money. My point is that time is ultimately the only thing we really have. I've met a fair number of smiths who are younger and more skilled than I am because they didn't waste time chasing stuff tangential to actually forging metal. Many of them got to where they could make stuff faster, easier, and more precisely than my "fabricobbled" solutions.

Building on what's already been said, it's worth pointing out that the less mass your top tool has, the less inertia it will have to resist your hammer blow. Large top tools sap a goodly portion of your energy just to get moving. That's partly why those little swing arm and spring fuller tools get so much use. Another tip in case you're considering making a set of tenon dies. Make sure that you taper the mating surfaces of the dies so that you don't gall the stock trying to forge it into shape. For example a shallow and wide "U" shape on both dies will generate a round tenon. However if you simply have half a round hole in each die, the stock will pinch and gall where the dies meet.

I seem to recall a knifemaker who used a ball tipped cylinder bit in a die grinder to create "knapped" texture. They alternated sides such that the hollow on one face was aligned with a ridge on the other face. The down side of that knapped texture is that your lettering would be difficult to keep straight.

Well said Patrick! Item #3 reminded me of something. There's a song by Bruce Springsteen called "Reason to Believe". The lyrics have a great subtlety to them. It's easy to miss that the alienated and cynical narrator is realizing that people do things that aren't necessarily logical, or profitable in the face of adversity because belief/faith provides enduring meaning to justify the struggle. Business success may depend on cynical thinking, but meaningful personal success is often measured differently.

I wasn't able to make it this year either but I heard everyone had a good time.

Glenn, JHCC, Thanks for the correction, it's good to know post vices aren't extinct! Das, to be fair, there are 6" machinist vices that are significantly less expensive than an industrial grade Wilton. At the hobbyist level and without stupid abuse, the cheaper vices would still outlive a couple of generations. Ultimately you're right about quality being costly. Dillion, you're on the right track but just asking isn't always enough, what you need are knowledgeable friends looking out for you. A good friend was at the hammer-in before I showed up and got to talking with the guy selling the blower. If my friend hadn't stepped in, I would have lost the opportunity because I got there after the seller had left. My friend convinced him to come back the next day, and I was there to meet him with cash in hand. There's no cell reception at the hammer-in and it's only four days a year so getting any two people together at the same time and place is harder than it might seem.

Building on Thomas' comment, there's a huge difference between online asking price, and what things sell for in your area. Luck isn't evenly distributed. Online it'll sound like everyone has a $40 post vice or three yet the prices on ebay or c list are ten times higher. Blowers are the same way. I went to a hammer-in every year for nine years straight with an eye out for a blower and a post vice. I got lucky about five years in when one smith bought a very pretty post vice (for $200) then sold me his old one at $65.00. Both vices were 4". It took nine years to run across someone selling a larger (Buffalo 400 series) manual blower that wasn't a complete basket case. To the best of my knowledge, its the only blower sold in those nine years of hammer-in. I gave $150 for it the same week that a non-turning one with a chunk of housing broken off sold on e-bay for $250. Don't get the wrong impression, I was always looking for a vice and blower, I just happened to find ones I could afford at an annual hammer-in. I would agree that a post vice is a huge benefit, especially to someone starting out. I'm not aware of any current manufacturers of post vices. It's one of those tools that seems like a luxury when you're starting out, but I think it's actually more useful to a rookie than anyone else. Excellent tongs are the same way. As a rookie, I spent more time picking up dropped stock than anything else. I wasted tons of effort trying to hit a moving target. A block of mild steel is relatively easy to come by and it works admirably as an anvil substitute. If you have any intentions of using salvaged steel, a post vice will be one of the most-used tools in your shop. Even really simple projects like punches, chisels, and drifts will be vastly improved using a post vice. Hot rasping doesn't get much commentary but even a rookie can "clean up" a lot of minor errors with a few minutes of effort. Check out farrier competitions on youtube, to see masters at work. The final result looks like it was machine finished.

MC, you mentioned that it was good that these tools are getting saved and I agree. As I read your comment, it dawned on me that in many cases, the sale of this specialty equipment typically involves networking. People who are too old or infirm to continue blacksmithing are meeting younger people with similar interests who are likely to appreciate their insights. I have a few older friends that started out this way. There's a local antique store that is organized by consignment booths. One of which is owned by the widow of gent I purchased a forge from. He spent his retirement going to estate sales looking for tools to resell at the antique store. Sadly I didn't have much time with him before he passed, but he was a wonderful person. I still encourage folks who are starting out to patronize his widows booth. In my experience, the smiths looking to "hang up their spurs" tend to be less concerned with competition, status, or money. Before I met him, I was running into a lot of insufferable curmudgeons who were very discouraging. He just enjoyed connecting people with tools. The prices were always very reasonable, and his garage was full of old equipment that he was restoring. He was the sort of guy who would wire brush a good but rusty old cross pein hammer head, re handle it, then charge a rookie $1.00 for it.

I had the same trouble with store bought coke. It was shocking how fast the fire would go out without air blast.

Steve, I honestly think that should be your signature line! That reminds me of this company's monument sign that has the removable type part. They wrote: "Family owned business You shut up! No you shut up."