Frosty

Maybe. NatGeo has a good spread. There are some pretty amusing videos, some cute and sweet, some violent, some frighteningly stupid, some adult. A bull in the rut may mistake your yard sculpture or propane tank for a lady. You just do NOT want to get close when they're in the rut. Unless that is you wish to fill your freezer. Frosty The Lucky.

A "Ring" of blacksmiths. An "opinions". Small group = a "clink," a large group = a "clank," a lazy group = "clunk." Good one DSW! How about a "Pyro" or maybe a "conflagration" for a large group. Frosty The Lucky.

Okay, ease up guys. Taking cheap shots at anybody is borderline against IFI rules. Taking notice of cheap shots is just giving them weight. Do we all know the 3 poison subjects to NEVER discuss at work? Religion, politics and money. There's a reason we don't discuss them here. Won't help either side of a discussion about the OP. The smart smith makes what the customer WANTS with what's specified or acceptable. Doesn't have arguments, call names or discuss poison subjects in the shop let alone in public .Back to the topic okay? Frosty The Lucky.

How much piano wire do you have? Neat stuff piano wire. Were I into the dark side and making pattern welded billets I'd be awfully tempted to try wrapping a medium C bar with piano wire in a relatively open wrap and put it in a steel can or between mild flat stock and weld it up. It might make for a nice pattern. I don't play on the dark side though so I'll probably never know. Frosty The Lucky.

Hey gang! The January meeting is THIS Saturday the 23rd. at "Arctic Fires Bronze" in Palmer. A quick web search will provide directions better than my memory can. I'll be bringing my anvil and basic tools for another forge station. We can try making hinges the way Mark showed us last Saturday. Seeing as I don't have the tools Mark used we may get to make a mandrel and maybe a nice size hot cut like he uses. We can have an open forge as well, if you have a project you need some help with bring it along I'm sure someone there will know what to do or be able to figure it out. See you there. I'll be wearing the "Frosty The Lucky." Iforge Iron T shirt. Frosty The Lucky.

That's what the kids are for and if you're standing in the parlor I'm sure the missus will think of a way to get them working on it soonest. Wills can have interesting clauses. Frosty The Lucky.

Move the mirror before you weld or use the cheapo dollar store plastic mirrors? Think of it from another angle. If it weren't for places like this those of us who have ideas running around our minds all the time wouldn't have anywhere to vent our imaginations. A good audience is a treasure. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Elija, glad to have you. I think you're going to fit right in here, born scrounger, likes making things and actually admits to lacking the skills yet. Good questions right from square one. Oh yeah. Any ideas of what you'd like to make or just want to pick up the craft? You're going to need a forge, is smithing coal available in your area? How close are your neighbors? That can effect what kind of forge you run. We'll get to turning your rail into an effective anvil in a bit, 3' is a good length to mount on end and you can grind all sorts of handy tools in the web and flange. HEY, who you calling old timers?! Frosty The Lucky.

Does it have a little tail? A hippo has a little tail that doesn't make sense on a critter that big till you see them taking a dump. Then just stand clear. Frosty The Lucky.

Give one a try on mild sometime. Slitting gives you extra material to work with so you're not drawing what's left just "bending" it out and shaping it. After that you thin as much as you like. Bending is much easier than drawing out. Of course that's just how I like doing it and I'm pretty lazy. Frosty The Lucky.

A lot of guys don't line their rivet forges at all and they have good arguments for the choice. If the pan says "clay before using" the manufacturer is recommending a layer of clay to disperse the heat to the pan. Cast iron doesn't like high temperature differentials, intense heat from burning coal in one relatively spot and the rest of the pan being ambient qualifies. A mix of 2-3 pts. sand to 1 pt. clay dampened till it clumps in a tight fist is fine. Spread it and ram it hard with a mallet, end of a 2"x4", etc. scoop out a depression to expose the air grate and you have what was recommended by the manufacturer. A basic for of "duck's nest". To customize fires on a duck's nest simply arrange bricks around the air grate. If you're burning coal you can lay them flat and let the coal dome above the bricks. with a little practice you can place the sweet spot about even with the brick tops using air control. Charcoal needs a deeper fire so you stand the brick on edge and use less air. To work any fire effectively you need practice and must observe the effect of every change. Only changing one thing at a time lets you keep track of what does what changing more than one and it turns into a crap shoot. Okay if you're lucky, otherwise not so. Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks Mike, I lost track of the 2" hard inner liner. Back in the days when folk were trying to come up with a home made gas burner that was adequate but didn't cost like a commercial one, enough was the goal. Unfortunately a human trait is to invest themselves in "the quest". Most people didn't grow up with parents that pounded their own version of "more is better" into them. In our family it was, "More MIGHT be better but probably isn't." It's okay to push the envelope but expect it NOT to work and test test test. A 2" hard inner liner is probably exactly what you need if you are working billets weighing hundreds of lbs. and it needs to take serious physical abuse at temperature and have a fast recovery time for returned billets. My first successful pipe forge has a 3/4" high phosphate hard refractory inner, "flame contact" liner surrounded by 1" of 8lb. Kaowool. It's a good 25yrs. old and still competent I just don't use it. My shop forge suits my needs better. Do NOT fall into the trap of trying to make the PERFECT forge or heck ANYTHING first off. Us old timers have old forges of all kinds tucked into corners, back sheds or where ever because we tried to make the perfect forge or whatever. Build something that will work for what you want to do to LEARN the craft. Once you develop your skills you'll develop a product line and personal methods and only then will you be getting to a point you can make a forge that'll last you years. No it still won't be perfect but it'll be much better maybe even close. Frosty The Lucky.

Make one on Brian Brazeals pattern, his slot/slit/ etc. punches work a treat. Frosty The Lucky.

Really nice job Das. That looks like you planned on the shadow as part of the piece. Give this a try. Instead of laying pieces out upside down and reversing them to weld just look at them through a mirror. You can lay it out on the bench and weld it right up. It will be reversed left to right but that's easy to adjust for. Frosty The Lucky.

Bucket teeth are typically pretty high manganese steel, hard and tough. I doubt any mere human could do anything to it it'd notice. Sharpen it up and see how it works as Jim describes. If you weld a shank to it keep it as cool as possible. Manganese has weird HAZ properties it just doesn't like being kept hot for long. Preheating it is exactly the wrong thing to do IF it is manganese steel. I'd stand it in a bucket of water with the zone being welded just above the surface and weld it fast single pass and let the water draw the heat. Don't quench it though just let the water draw it down. Of course I could be wrong, do it my way and extraterrestrials might come arrest you for abusing one of their sperm. Frosty The Lucky.

I"m not too fussy about what's done with my cremains I just don't want to go to a taxidermist. Before the accident when we had free money I told Deb if she wanted to do something special to donate a nice picnic table in a local park in my name. something reasonably permanent, granite would be nice but . . . Anyway, I wanted a simple inscription, donated by, blah, blah, blah, born, x died, x. "Have lunch on me." Then some night when nobody was looking dig a hole under it dump my ashes in and cover it up. Frosty The Lucky.

Ethan: You're probably young enough someone couldn't hold you responsible for injury or loss at a class you conduct. Unfortunately they might be able to go after your parents. Insurance might be a cheap precaution, signing wavers only goes a little way for protection. Waivers beaten in court all the time. Then you have to pay a lawyer and court costs just to defend yourself against frivolous suits. Even if a plaintiff doesn't win defending yourself in court can really cost and if you don't defend yourself you lose automatically. Letting an insurance company pay to defend a suit in court is good. An insurance company may refuse to sell you a policy if they decide it's too dangerous or just charge you through the nose. This isn't an easy nor simple question, I wish I had one. I deal with it by never giving a "class". I don't take money or compensation, guys can chip in for propane, bring doughnuts or found scrap but that's just courtesy for a get together. Our liability is already high enough just being on our property conducting business where someone can get injured is something entirely different. We can't afford that kind of insurance, I don't hold enough classes to cover insurance. We have a farm rider on our home owners to cover someone getting hurt cleaning the barn, loading hay, etc. but that doesn't cover teaching a blacksmithing class. No way. I'm happy to see you thinking about this stuff there are people out there with 40-50 years experience on you who don't think that far ahead. Frosty The Lucky.

I like the trampoline on the 6th floor roof but it's hard to beat the guy starting the chainsaw with the bar in his crotch. I think that may be a rare non-fatal Darwin Award Winner! Frosty The Lucky.

Aw it was only a little after 11:00pm here and I'm retired, no school tomorrow either. We all have different bents one of mine is free associating everything I hear or read and that's where the puns come from, I don't have to work at it puns just come to mind. ALL the time. Sometimes I free associate the visuals but they don't connect like words do for me. Once I see something from Aus or Das I see all kinds of possibilities but they're not really mine. It's a little weird but being so different is what makes humans so entertaining and creative. I have a lot of artist friends who see cool things everywhere. Frosty The Lucky.

Naw, don't give up you just need to learn a new tool. Next time you're making a welding run in it try poking a piece of iron wire in. If the end doesn't melt and drop off then you have a forge problem. I'm betting you have a soak time issue, a coal forge heats much faster. Every tool has it's idiosyncrasies, up and down sides. Frosty The Lucky.

Kastolite is a good choice but cast it, don't smear it on with a putty knife. I used sonotube one with an outside diameter that was what I wanted the ID of my forge to be. I placed it in a sonotube with an ID 3/4" larger than the other tube. This gave me an annulus (space) of 3/4" which I rammed up with my hard refractory liner. Once set I pealed the outer sonotube off and dropped a couple burning charcoal briquettes inside to burn the inner sonotube out. Once it'd cured up well I wrapped it in Kaowool and slipped it into the shell. It's easier than it sounds, really. Not that it matters but I was born in Everett and have or had relatives living all over the Pacific NW. Frosty The Lucky.

HIllbilly: take in some pictures of blacksmithing tools and offer a reward if they set any aside for you. Don't forget to forge up something nice for the secretary and maybe bring in a box of doughnuts when you go shopping. Frosty The Lucky.

Gotta start somewhere and giving a shout to the planet ain't a bad way to develop leads. Frosty The Lucky.

Yeah, mine doesn't care and I don't recall seeing anything about a "correct direction" in the "Powerhammers" book. Frosty The Lucky.

That must have been fun. Frosty The Lucky.