Frosty

Pretty good insights but smithing holds something more important for folks who suffer high stress jobs, PTSD sufferers, etc. This is of course just my opinion, have salt ready. It's been my observation the PTSD sufferers I've known worry most about the loss of control over things. First military training has to suppress a person's individuality for instant obedience to orders, etc. etc. A loss of self control. Combat is a world out of your control and so on. Once it becomes ingrained it effects everything. While most of your points above are not wrong I don't believe they're why blacksmithing is so valuable to folk suffering issues like PTSD. They're about control and blacksmithing is less about strength than it is about hammer control. To control the steel you have to control heat, placement and hammer. To do that you have to zone out on the task lose the distractions around you, plans, regrets, everything. You compartmentalize everything but the things necessary to make a nail, spread cross, etc. Blacksmithing is a form of meditation, without it a person can't be more than okay at it. It's also a meditative state you can return to every time you see your project and better yet you can enter the zone looking at other people's work. Just ask yourself, "How would I do that?" and you're there. We have lots of vets in our club and many are there for the therapy of steel. Once I realized what was going on I changed my training technique to encourage and highlight the control aspect. If you can't control your person it's nearly impossible to control the steel. Of course that's just my thinking I could be wrong. Frosty The Lucky.

As George just said in another thread do NOT email or use the contact button on shop, etc. web pages! Email only gets answered if you represent a big company or perhaps a superior rank. Phone call or in person will get you further in an hour than a week of emails. Be polite and to the point, they're at work and time is money so don't waste it. You'll get the receptionist who knows more about what's going on in the shop than the guys working the floor so s/he's your primary contact. Be really nice to him/er, s/he'll know exactly who to talk to and can set you up in advance for what you're looking for. S/he'll know who to call if they can't help you and will shorten your search drastically. Talking to someone in person is even better unless it's a really big shop, then the phone can be faster as they can connect you to THE person you need. If it's a small shop, like the local steel suppliers the people to talk to are the yard hands on the loading dock. One last thought, finding what you're looking for on the phone is an acquired skill, the more you do it the better you get. Frosty The Lucky.

What were the issues? Less hassle is always good but is the power and speed comparable? Frosty The Lucky.

What do you MEAN you didn't follow my directions exactly ! ? ! ? <GASP> I dropped in to see what you'd said and noticed a typo in my above post, unless I'm prescient and didn't know it. I did NOT mean to compliment your "Blame" making. I intended to say Blade making of course. Of course spell check ignored a good word so I can't even blame this stupid AI driven thinky machine I'm using. <sigh> Frosty The Lucky.

Understood, we'll get you up and going. I'll try and take terminology a little at a time as it comes up but it's important that we try to speak the same jargon so as to not have to spend lots of time explaining what we mean. A "hardy" is ONE tool, not a type or tools. It is a cut off chisel with a square shank that fits the hardy hole. There are variations, hot, cold, etc. but only the ONE tool. The other handy things that fit in the hardy hole are "Bottom tools." Top tools are placed on top of the work and struck with a hammer. I have a couple thoughts for scrounging stock on base. I'm sure there are various maintenance shops, Heavy and light vehicle repair and maint. shops. Truck axles mounted on end make excellent anvils, seriously excellent depth of rebound we can talk about later if you wish. Base fab shops that make and repair say heavy steel things? Machine shop, etc. You have the picture yes? Buy a box of donuts and ask the guys who work there. Hmmmm? I used to have pretty free reign in the state heavy duty shop's scrap dumpster and with permission some new stock from the racks. Most I used for the job and it was all okay the dumpster diving on the other hand was take it and go. It actually saved the state money, they had to pay to have it hauled off because the paperwork involved in selling it for scrap cost 2-3x what it was worth. My job had me traveling all over the state and spending a lot of time is the local maintenance shops, drill rigs require lots of work, they break often. Anyway, got some good scrounge in lots of shops. One shop the guys never used the lathe even though they often had jobs for it. Why? Nobody knew how to sharpen a bit and they kept breaking carbides due to chatter. Sooooo, I showed the foreman how to sharpen the 3 basics, left right and finish, no need for threading bits and why the carbides were chattering and how to use them too. After lunch I held a brief class and coached while the guys sharpened bits and turned some steel. The foreman said they had some old tool nobody knew what to do with and had me take a look. A Lancaster pattern swage block that was being used to hold welding rod and dust. I told him what it was, and used for. Well doggone, no blacksmithing going on here since the road commission days, you want it? It lives happily in my shop. Virtually every state shop had a Fisher anvil and still wants to keep it and an identical Lancaster pattern swage block. Turned out back in the early days the Anchorage and Fairbanks RR shops did all their own iron and steel casting and the swage blocks were part of the journeyman test so all the highways shops got at least one. Many went to the scrappers over the years but I got this one. Anybody interested check out my estate sale, I'll have Deb announce it here. No, I'm not on my way out . . . yet but when I do cross the rainbow bridge I'm sure there will be lots of stuff Deb'll have to sell, auction, etc. No SCRAPPER! I made her promise. Frosty The Lucky.

Billy: I've made carving forks from flat stock before, IIRC 1.4" x 3/4" and they turned out pretty nicely. The one trick I figured out was to taper the tine end before splitting, spreading and forming the crux on the anvil horn. My anvil has a round horn so spreading the tines and reversing it on the horn made a pretty even crux. I also formed the tines one at a time, not having an anvil bridge at the time. Getting the tine's compound curves right and even was tricky. What to do with the handle is pretty wide open, though punching and drifting the far end for a hanger or as I did at the joke suggestion of one of the guys at the hammer in a bottle opener. (My new standard finial for forged BBQ tools) Coming along nicely John though I must say at first glance pic 1 looked like wreckage. My perception resolved right away and it looks just like what it is. Frosty The Lucky.

Good point George, I got absorbed in stake plates and missed a couple serious issues! The retaining ridges on track plate would interfere with use as you describe but. . . How about the same ridges on the bottom side of the stack interfering with mounting it to something solidly? I think you'll be WAY ahead in your quest by finding, buying, scrounging, etc. a piece of mild steel plate 1/2" +/- it's not critical. You can work mild steel with common HS drills, etc. A square, even tapered hole like a stake plate is easy as drilling a round hole the same diameter as the narrow side of the square (or whatever) hole and centered on the location. Then a reciprocating saw with a tilted blade OR a shim epoxied to the base plate to match the desired hole taper will clean the hole nicely. I speak from experience try it on some practice pieces, it's HARD to get broken pieces of blade out of saw cuts WHEN you brake a blade. I foolishly used carbide bi metal blades, use mono-steel blades! If a person wanted a serious project a stake plate can be fabricated from heavy wall angle iron, lots of cutting, grinding and welding. The question of course being, do you do enough sheet metal forming to need a stake plate? Blacksmith usually do nicely with a few swages and a bick or two. And we'll be more than happy to help. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard, glad you delurked. From here it looks like you have the most difficult part of blame making squarely in your comfort zone. You can NOT make a metal knife without stock removal. Even copper age blades were finish ground on a stone. Heck, even late neolithic blades were ground, of course stone tools are definitive examples of stock removal. Frosty The Lucky.

Don't sweat the terminology, we're pretty good at asking for clarification. I don't think stake plate quite describes what you want to make. Stake plates have a variety of square holes intended to hold various stake tools, mostly of the tin knocker's trade. Pic below. Stake plates are thicker and have tapered holes. I think a better description of what you want to make would be a "Bolster plate." The reinforce the stock "bolster it" when punching, drifting, etc. to prevent deformation. I use the Pritchel hole on my anvil as a bolster most often but have made a couple tools to use in it too. The one that gets the most use is a pretty wimpy hold fast to hold stock in a swage block or over the edge of the hardy hole. I often use the hardy hole to sink into say for a spoon. Frosty The Lucky.

I strongly suggest you take a little time off for yourself Steve, you must be buggy cross eyed after all this work. Going back to work to rest up from vacation time is supposed to be in jest. (I just wish it were.) Frosty The Lucky.

Maybe you should make a sketch of what you want to try. The way it looks you want to weld a couple tie plates together as an anvil or maybe a stake plate? Frosty The Lucky.

The evil devil weed was decriminalized during the pipeline here, mid 72-73 IIRC and when the feds tried pressuring the state gvt. about it the state filed suit to make the feds pay the bill for enforcement, arrest, trial, jail, etc. and they decided not to know about it. Even then you'd have to be caught selling or in possession of more than an ounce to get busted. A pound or more might get you jail time. Now there's a pot shop on almost every corner, even service stations out on the highways have quantities. Do NOT give up BMTU! Stick with the basics and one day soon things will start making sense between your imagination, eyes, hands and the steel. From then on you'll be picking up new tricks. Learn the tricks to learn the trade as they say. You'll get there and we'll be honored to help. Frosty The Lucky.

You need to take more breaks Steve, you're making more double posts as the day goes on. I don't know about them making sense, I don't think they ever have, have they? If you do get them organized maybe even (be still my heart) searchable we'll have to take up a collection and throw you a cyber party! Frosty The Lucky.

Good to see you posting Angiolino, you always give me something good to think about. Have you looked at many images of "tower cranes"? The tower vertical section is usually square, for full length members with cross bracing in a triangular pattern similar to the horizontal piece in photo you show. The Boom, "horizontal" component can be different structures depending on the uses. Triangular in structure is pretty typical. The basics would be pretty easy to make, a wide stand would be a must unless you tie it back to a wall. Put a cap on the tower with a lazy susan turn table and mount the boom to it. If you extend the boom behind the tower and weight it to counter balance the boom and light you have the next important component. All tower cranes have a large counter weight that turns with the boom and a control cab either on the boom side next to the tower that turns with or travels with the winch drum back and forth on the boom. I see lots of possibilities depending on how realistic I wanted it and how much I wanted to spend. The tower and boom are pretty straight forward, run the electrical cord on the inside of one of the tower members. Inside would make it way too complicated. A simple box on the back end of the boom for a counter weigh, holding a counter weight of course could also have indirect light sources, say reflecting ff the wall behind and ceiling above. I'd model one with a mobile control cab containing THE spot light or with the light hanging from it on a gimbal so it could be aimed. Maybe put more indirect lights on top of the carriage and cab. This arrangement would allow the cord to be held on a spring loaded spool so you could move it back and forth on the boom without having cord hanging or feeding the cord through a pully in the tower with a weight on it to keep it neat. If I didn't want that much realism I'd mount the boom to the tower like above with a counter weight to keep it stable and mount a suitable light fixture on the end of the boom. Simple and industrial would let me make it very light weight and still serve. Provided I only wanted to light things under the end of the boom with the fixture. Thoughts? Frosty The Lucky.

Good music happens where it grows. I live stream quite a bit of the music I listen to anymore myself but marketing has gotten to having to put up with a long commercial or several every stupid song. I don't listen on my Iphone and listen to audio books on my Kindle. Worse I'm too cheap to pay to subscribe to minimum commercials. It makes me miss the days when most of my friends were musicians and every evening was a jam session. <sigh> Frosty The Lucky.

I've had luck with some of the links by copy / pasting them into my browser or search engine. Frosty The Lucky.

I'm going to not talk about my experience in S. Cal. public school anymore, other than metal shop it isn't metal related so . . . What shocked me a couple years pre-covid ago were the number of young men who wanted to learn smithing but couldn't calculate the area of a square and one couldn't do arithmetic beyond addition and subtraction. High school grads all! And I thought school was only okay when I went. Back to iron and having our way with it. I've saved the 366 hooks link, it had my head spinning looking through it. Thanks again Randy. I've been busier on IFI than usual, Steve's been transferring the blue prints to a new section and I've been skimming along. Talk about spin your head! Frosty The Lucky.

Dad insisted I take Drafting so I did it helped that I enjoyed it. I don't even remember what I drew as my final, other than it was silly complicated. HAH, I remembered trying to describe parts of it! I drew an Allison V 12 aircraft engine. I coasted through high school with a C average, no fails but . . . I was part of California's first year of "no fail" policy. Their funding was and is based on students completing semesters, so you automatically graduate anything you sign up for and they get the $. I gotta stop I have too many gripes about . . . it. I took a few trade school courses and got a job. I've almost never run a certified bead let alone welded on a reactor cooling system! I let my certs lapse decades ago. Did a lot of fabrication as part of a couple jobs and am set up in my shop but . . . Didn't take me too long to discover that if you're competent with the basics your employer will teach you THE job. I ended up operating equipment for the state, great retirement and bennies so I did a full pull, 30 years and out. Generally demanding work with plenty of variety and excellent security. Probably too secure. Frosty The Lucky.

Thank you again Steve I spent a couple hours looking through many of them and seeing old names kind of choked me up. Once you figured it out you were really moving them, I was just looking and skimming and you left me in the ink dust. Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks for the link Randy. My head's kind of spinning now. Frosty The Lucky.

That's the stuff Trey. When you make your liner the walls and roof don't need to be more than 3/8" thick though a number of guys like 1/4", it's really tough stuff. Do NOT forget to rigidize the ceramic blanket! Encapsulating the fibers is more important to control the breathing hazard than making it stiffer. Though stiffer makes things easier. Yeah, I'm THAT Frosty. <sigh> It's my pleasure. Frosty The Lucky.

I've never drawn a plane print, way out of my ballpark. Frosty The Lucky.

My what a brief status report after 3 months! I know you haven't been around in a while but you know how we are about believing wild claims without photographic evidence don't you? Don't be such a stranger will, we miss you here. Frosty The Lucky.

Uh huh, you'd pay me if you heard me sing. . . To stop that is. Not to change the subject but after watching some knapping videos I came back to find my inbox FULL of blueprints! Sorry, I'm just feeling a little giddy right now. Frosty The Lucky.

That's very listenable too. It really sucks that no radio stations around here play anything but the same play list, over and over and over. Talk and news radio seems to be the only ones with a live person in the studio. <sigh> Frosty The Lucky.