Frosty

ITC products priced themselves off my radar a few years ago so I've been playing with my own mixes. Happily you're input about needing to stabilize it and phosphate being a good stabilizer means my next experiment will be with a 3,000+f. phosphate bonded castable refractory. I can get those locally and I have good scales. I may take my oxy propane torch to test coupons and see how it reacts to 4,700+f. Frosty The Lucky.

$50 is pretty reasonable and 2 hrs isn't bad at all, SS is harder to work than most steels. You need to get a good touch mark on it, it has BIG bragging rights. Morticians don't have a lot to impress each other with at get togethers. Not counting creepy stories that is, they're a black humored trade you know. So, good custom made mortician tools might be a gold mine. A cool finial could be the must have "Whistle," say a skull. Anyway, I ran into a similar situation with Deb's spinning friends, a friend makes a nice doffer which is used to remove wool from drum carders without damaging it. Deb sent me to take a look and make her one. Mark, "Metalmangler" has the blacksmith booth at the State fair so I walked over, BSed with him a while and eyeballed his doffer. Then I made a few mods and made one for Deb. The next thing I knew I had orders for 4-5 more so I told them $75.00 ea. for plain janes. They asked what fancy would look like so I made Deb one with a Doxy finial and more orders. Sheep, dogs, just so it's not plain, etc. Of course then I got hit by the tree and haven't made another since though the gals ask now and then. I had it, a "must have" product I could make for reasonable. <sigh> Evil TREES! Frosty The Lucky.

You're not going to tell him THE secret!? See you at the secret meeting in the underground bunker. Frosty The Lucky.

Cumulative damage is applied to everything we do whether we realize or deny it or not. It's not just a good idea it's THE LAW! I just don't know where to draw the line. Some things fall into the "use it or lose it" category while others eat us slowly. For example "never jump out of or off the truck!" Okay but impact strengthens our bones and joints avoiding it results in osteoporosis and wimpy bersus and connective tissues. Overdo it on the other hand and you get particularly painful forms of arthritis, really overdo it and you break things. It's a huge simplification but it holds. Some things are don't do it once things MSDS are good to help us recognize those and take precautions. I don't know where to draw the line between strengthening and doing damage. It's there though for every darned thing we do. Be careful out there. Frosty The Lucky.

Sounds like an alloy problem or perhaps it's not clean enough you might need to sand or grind to remove a persistent oxide layer. Chain saw chains are made up of a number of different materials, the links are high tensile steel with good abrasive resistance, the pins have high shear strength and the teeth of course are much harder and wear resistant. The differences is what makes for such nice patterns. Not knowing the brand or what alloys are speced by the manufacturers to meet the use specs it's a tough call saying what's going wrong. Being as you got welds once the difference is in the forge welding effects, heat being the first on that list. All that meandering yak is my way of saying I THINK it's oxidization and you need more aggressive removal processes. Just folding it up swiping a brush over it and fluxing isn't doing it. A more aggressive flux might be the answer though but . . . Frosty The Lucky.

Oh I LOVE this group. What did that take less than an hour? I probably would've been right with the replies but I had to load some stuff in the truck for a hinge workshop tonight. Well, there was some honey do involved too. Any pictures of the "period" openers? Frosty The Lucky.

ITC-100 is 70% kaolin 30% zirconium silicate. I"m not the person who did a hydrometer fraction to determine the ratio but believe the fellow who did was accurate enough to use his numbers as a good close approximation. Frosty The Lucky.

Education can be more expensive for some than others and it doesn't find a fertile field all too often. Frosty The Lucky.

Belt buckles are "normal" bottle openers but John Wayning them is acceptable. On a serious note, Anybody here know when bottle "Caps" were introduced? We might be able to come up with a probably earliest opener if we know who and when caps were invented. I don't imagine the company that started capping bottles didn't want folk to be able to open them and made openers available. Frosty The Lucky.

I think reading just this section will answer all your questions but you'll have to interpret some or most of the material. We've had some outstanding posts from professionals that address your questions. They won't be replies you can use without reading and thinking about them. Frosty The Lucky.

Aneurysm hook? Nope I've never heard that one and I had a buddy in high school who was a mortician from a long line of morticians. . . He had some weird and disturbing stories but those are for somewhere else. At least now I know where they got the idea for the stage hooks in theaters. . . The director shouts, "GET THAT BLEEDER OFF THE STAGE!!." An old English term of course. I think the Egyptian embalmers used something similar to remove brains through the nostrils. Pretty nice piece, well done. I wonder what the market's like? Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Oliver, glad to have you. Saw your anvil in the other post, she's a beauty good for a couple few more generations of work. Don't get fancy looking for tools and such you don't really need that much: Smooth faced hammers, keep them under 2lbs. till you've developed hammer control. A good started is a cross pein or I'm fond of drill hammers. Drill hammers are a good weight and have shorter handles so they're much easier to control. If you have a feed store you might check them out for rounding (turning) hammers they have one flat face and one domed face. Think large shallow ball pein shape, they are very efficient forging hammers. Have you decided what kind of forge you want to use? The forge section on Iforge has a lot of info all round, if you're going to build your own it's a good place to do some reading before making mistakes of your own. I'm lazy myself I prefer to let other folk make the mistakes for me. Frosty The Lucky.

Drill a hole and use a jig saw to cut the tanks no appreciable heat to make BAD gasses. Frosty The Lucky.

Nice. Keeping them from touching is important and being visible is gravy. It'd be a good way to store chisels, punches, etc. as well. Frosty The Lucky.

Another very cool piece. I can see by the way it carries it's tail it believes in cleaning up after itself. Nice birdy. Frosty The Lucky.

Tate: If you put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the IFI gang live within visiting distance and I'll bet some have extra anvils or know where one is. If you beat hot iron / steel on it it's an anvil. Period. The London pattern anvil is a pretty recent pattern and certainly not the only one around. some of the finest work in the world is done on a plain steel block. Frosty The Lucky.

Thomas: I believe about 2/3-3/4 of the party died in the pass. Some returned for help but they didn't make it back to the camp in time. I know California isn't too picky but I think you have to do more than die there to BE a Californian. The fault wasn't just the guides, the party voted to attempt the pass after everybody who knew the trail said it was too late. They got lost and headed up the wrong valley. IIRC they left for the last push without the one guide who was familiar with the trail. Most of that is from memory but I don't recall who's. I could be way off base. How long are you guys going to stew on this? Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Jerry glad to have you. Good looking anvil and a good job on the stand. If you make a rim around the top to contain the anvil foot it'll stay there without special tie downs, the rim also makes handy places to put tools you're using. I'm sure Glenn will get your login status straightened out when he gets to it. Running this site is a LOT of work so it takes them time to get to problems. The platform isn't worth . . . Nevermind. Frosty The Lucky.

A covered box filled with dry sand will do nicely, perlite will go a long way toward annealing. As to your original question for Thomas, yes he was serious you can normalize by laying steel heated to critical on dry ground and letting it cool in still air. Believe me the ground's DRY at Thomas' place. Well it usually is it might not be this weekend. It's a weather thing. Frosty The Lucky.

I'm glad to see your Grandfather's kit staying in the family as working tools. He's smiling on ya. Maybe come up with a proper name to memorialize him? I seem to recall someone asking about a cast steel Vanadium anvil but it's been a long much time ago and I don't remember details other than he seemed to like it a lot. The little tripod looks like a hoof stand. Be easy turning the blower till you get it cleaned out, all kinds of critters like nesting in them and kids love putting stuff in them. You might be lucky and able to wash the crud out of it with a hose or car wash wand. They're really robust machines intended to last centuries and so are easy to rebuild. Frosty The Lucky.

Prayers for your daughter and the family on the way from Alaska. There shouldn't be ANY flame coming out of the air intake ports. Seeing as it's only coming out of one port it looks like the mig tip is out of alignment. That will inhibit induction more than enough to cause it to burn that rich but you could still have too large a tip. What size mig tip is it? I believe this is the 3/4" burner we've been talking about? Frosty The Lucky.

Shafts bearings and meshed for the ice crusher for your margarita. I gotta say though two makes a much cooler front gate that rolls to open and close. A sign that says, "solicitors knock here." Okay, one laying flat on the ground with a shaft, the other on the shaft W/bearings and a drive motor making a rotating patio for the scenic season. A largish diesel engine and they'd make a pretty cool radio control car. You could hire them out to clear land and fix traffic jams. Frosty The Lucky.

IIRC I don't believe the Donner Party were Californians, not even the "guides." I wonder how many folk will thaw out in Cal. this spring? Frosty The Lucky.

Those are pretty questionable in my book, they're probably been used on something really hard long enough to work harden and begin cracking. I doubt you want to spend the money to have them magnafluxed and that's to start. If you grind them past the failures and anneal them they'd make good striking hammers for top tools and such. I wouldn't put them to use for "normal" work. Frosty The Lucky.

I wasn't clear? I wouldn't use a semi brake drum for much of anything except: stopping trucks, elevated fire pits, buried ground anchors and Smoothbore just mentioned bells. I haven't tried a bell so maybe. Get or make a box say 12" wide x 24" long x 8+ deep. Decide if you want a bottom or side blast. Lay a piece of iron pipe in the bottom from one end either 3-4" above the bottom or almost touching the bottom. A sideblast tuyere lays near the bottom of a trench just off the bottom and barely exposed. The air is supplied through the pipe, you replace the pipe as it burns up. A bottom blast is more problematical but you're going to be a blacksmith. The real problem is clearing the ash from the air supply. I like running a supply from one end to a T fitting and another line to the far end and capping it. A close nipple on the T to a perforated cap is your air grate. Hook the blower to the supply end and you're good to go. Clearing the ash is as easy as removing the cap from the cleanout end if it's really bad ram it clean with a piece of rod. I know I didn't say anything about forming the fire pot. It's damp clay make it whatever shape you need. For coal I like a "duck's nest" a shallow depression, say 1" +/- deep and maybe 3-4" around in a nice flat deck so I can stack bricks to shape the fire how I want. A side blast seems to like blowing into a trench but you can use a duck's nest just as well and it's just as versatile. Charles has just recently posted pics of his wood box side blast forge. It's a perfect model. Frosty The Lucky. Clawing clay . . . Uh, isn't that a little catty Thomas? I have to admit clawing a forge does make for good visuals. Frosty The Lucky.