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I Forge Iron

Frosty

2021 Donor
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Everything posted by Frosty

  1. My suggestions have been aired in the other thread and remain the unchanged. Frosty The Lucky.
  2. I think I already said welcome aboard replying to your last post. However at the fear of repeating myself, putting your general location IN the header puts it where anybody reading a post by you can see it. Believe me we aren't going to remember where you are once we open another post. If you scroll to the near bottom of the Iforge opening page you will come to the regional organizations section where you can browse till you find one close enough to you to hook up. You will learn more in a day with an experienced smith than you will in weeks or more learning on your own. It'll also hook you up to tools, equipment, materials, classes, work shops, demos, BBQs, etc. Lots of blacksmiths in SC. LOTS. Frosty The Lucky.
  3. Welcome aboard Jane, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the IFI gang live within visiting distance. Of course your 14 yr. old boy wants to make swords, normal kid. Would you recommend a youngster or any newcomer to the craft start out making exotic wood puzzle boxes? Like wood working, blacksmithing is a series of basic processes that need to be learned and any forged item is made with these processes in the correct sequence. Once a person has mastered blacksmithing learning to make blades is just learning a new material and a couple new processes. Oh, swords are NOT just big knives, they're a whole new world of blades. You and your husband should be aware that blacksmithing is very addictive and you two are bound to realize how nice it would be to just make that special plane knife, wood chisel, carving knife, etc. than to spend a bunch for one. Once you experience the joy of making steel dance to your tune you'll be lost. Wood workers who followed that very path are a darned big demographic of modern blacksmiths. No fooling. Frosty The Lucky.
  4. Welcome aboard Hal, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the IFI gang live within visiting distance. Drop a ball bearing from a given height and eyeball estimate how far it rebounds. You can use a ruler if you wish but an eyeball estimate is usually close enough. You're looking for something around 75% or better, much less isn't really anvil material. If it's a combo vise anvil tool it's not good as an anvil more than straightening nails and such. Frosty The Lucky.
  5. Are you grinding the mold board or cutting edge? And how do you know what the carbon content is? I spent more than a decade working with snow plows, graders, loader buckets, etc. If you said Dozer blade you'd be into the high end of low carbon steels but snow plow? Not the plow blade. Frosty The Lucky.
  6. A snow plow blade (mold board) is low carbon steel. The cutting edge bolted to the front bottom edge is abrasion resistant and not so high carbon as it contains tungsten granules. The edge or knife is sacrificial to protect the mold board but still has to be flexible. Estimating carbon content with a spark test is NOT about absolutes, it's about comparing low C to high C by eye. Yes, all steel will give sparks that split but that's like saying all words are made up. It's such a generality as to be misleading. What counts is the spark's color, how much and how far from the stone it sparks. If the sparks are orange and every third one splits it's PROBABLY low C. though it might be a high abrasion resistant alloy like Vascowear or gray cast iron. Neither make bright sparkler cuttings. Generally the color of a spark is determined by it's heat and the higher the carbon the more energy it takes to gouge a piece off so the hotter it is. If it's hot enough the carbon burns making sparklers, Heck if it's REALLY hot the steel itself will burn with a hissing sound. Spark testing isn't something you read about ad know how to do, it's a skill set that takes knowledge and practice. Make up some test coupons from known steels and compare them on the grinder, use different grinders as that effects things too. Also compare different heat treats. Frosty The Lucky.
  7. Cool, I'm ready to rock. I've been filling my character out. I changed his name from Ito to Takeo after spending some time looking at Names and meanings online. Ian, I see by your interest in Takeo's venting you must be wanting to room with him. Sauerkraut is almost always good and he's quite fond of home brewed beer so I'm sure you'll be able to devine the wind. You have STRANGE tastes my friend. . . strange. Unfortunately for you, modern augmentation in the Wolf Cluster pretty much eliminates things like digestive venting. A culture that spends a lot of time in sealed environments tend to put that pretty high on the list of things to do. It also means a person has a better chance of surviving on "alien" foods, toxins, allergens, etc. I have a question Charles: Will we be playing here on the IFI forum or going to a CC list to save bandwidth? Playing on a public forum might get cluttered with random NPCs. Just a thought. Takeo.
  8. Oh LORD I can't stop laughing!! I didn't know Balu was an artist, how'd he hold a brush in his paw? Didn't his claws mess up the clay? Fur get stuck in the paint? Uh . . . Er . . . Was Mimic the monkey? I don't think I ever took an art class I passed. Thank you for the laugh, I might be able to stop is a little while. Frosty The Lucky.
  9. Welcome aboard Dave glad to have you. If you scroll down the Iforge opening page you'll find a section about Forges with a subsection about Gas Forges. There I don't know how many pages about building the things. Your questions about how much burner you need is covered, it's a ratio based on chamber volume. I'll save you that bit of figuring, one well tuned 3/4" propane burner will bring 300-350 cu/in to welding heat. What you're planning for a forge is typical new guy WAY too big. For all practical purposes a person can't forge more than about 6" by hand, if you have a power hammer you can push 10"-12" but it takes some skill to work that much length without it curling into Christmas candy on you. Everybody makes their first gasser with steel pipe, I still have my first and it's 10"dia. 5/16" wall and is major overkill . . . I recommend using 10" stainless steel stove pipe for the shell. Two layers of 1" 8lb. 2,600f Kaowool or equivalent ceramic blanket. Coated with a rigidizer and a final coat of flux resistant, preferably IR reflective coating. Known in the kiln and furnace buildig circles as "Kiln Washes" ITC-100 is well known and high quality kiln wash containing about 70% zirconium silicate. Another good forge to start with is a brick pile forge. It's just a refractory table split 3,000f hard fire brick makes a good deck. then you build the forge chamber the size and shape you need by stacking soft insulating fire brick leaving a gap to poke a burner in. You might ask why the heck do you want to start out with something so little and simple when you have a nice BIG forge planned already? Simply because you don't know what you want yet, let alone what you really need. The one you have planned will burn about 5-6x the fuel you need to do the work you want. Honest, I've built at least 6 gassers and am building a new one right now. If you run into trouble building a T burner give me a shout. Frosty The Lucky.
  10. I don't understand what you mean by not enough room? Room for what, where? You don't need to be a machinist to make a cross head, it's just a little fabrication. Can you weld? And I don't mean run a "bead" I mean actually weld. Frosty The Lucky.
  11. I got an email from a cousin saying their retirement home at Kettle Lake is in the path. They weren't there when the evac orders were issued so all they can do is wait and watch. I've been saying words with Higher since the season started. To our fire fighter mates from down under. Thank you and beware the beast she's on a roll. As Charles said, be very careful judging direction by the sun, it's backwards and instinct can overcome conscious knowledge. Trust your compass and GPS locators, you're operating IFR, trust your instruments. We've already lost too many. Frosty The Lucky.
  12. Shape and how hard you set it can effect mild steel hold fasts. However auto coil spring works a treat and doesn't require heat treat more than normalizing after forging. I've been slowly replacing my mild steel hold fasts with coil spring as they wear out or I decide I need a piece of stock that size and use it as such. Frosty The Lucky.
  13. Wow, this took off didn't it? Cool. I'd forgotten you use borax and charcoal powder flux Tristan, just slipped my mind when I posed the question. I can attest to Tristan's home brew flux, it's as good as any commercial flux I've used. Kal, forge welding a high carbon bit in a spike is the only reliable way I know of to get good edge holding properties out of a RR spike. However, I've never heard of anyone running a bead of high carbon welding rod on one so I just don't know how or if it'd work. If you experiment with the process please keep us in the loop. Packing iron in a sealed container with carbon and often other secret ingredients has been done for millennia. Brought to near melting temps the result is "Blister steel." Bringing it to melting temps results in "crucible steel." One of the reasons items forged from RR spikes is so popular is folk know what a RR spike looks like and they can see the plastic transition from spike to whatever the finished product is. It's proof positive they can confirm by eye and feel that someone formed STEEL like modeling clay. RR spike products are popular at demos and such. Uh, I don't know how many bits that is but it's my latest input. Heck, I just feel pretty good the questions seem to have turned into a hopefully useful thread. Too Cool. Frosty The Lucky.
  14. Uh huh, a project of yours from a few years ago. I had to know how you were measuring old, old iron work could be a couple thousand years or something we did a few years ago. Nice work, not that I expect less from you Matei, Romania is lucky to have you. Frosty The Lucky.
  15. People prefer myths because real knowledge is work and you have to just get used to being wrong most of the time. However, I do have a sort of related question that could maybe even be tested on a RR spike. While adding carbon to steel by soaking in the forge is pretty unlikely what happens if we add a little dusting of graphite between welds? Will this not increase the % C in the join? Increasing the C % will lower the melting temperature perhaps making the join easier to weld. Being at welding temperature will incorporate the carbon in the same manner we know the mythical 200 fold blade is homogenized long before 200 folds. The previous statements and overall question make sense to me but I'm not a bladesmith and have never tested the hypotheses. It's something I've thought about before though. Thoughts anyone? Frosty The Lucky.
  16. Really nice sculpture, very Balu. Pretty sure that's going to be a hit. Frosty The Lucky.
  17. Ah, hardly genius it's years of experience keeping heavy use machinery functioning. Of course I'll graciously take credit for thinking of it for this application. Keep posting your problems with pics, I'm not the only one with experience doing this kind of stuff. Frosty The Lucky.
  18. You DO have forks for that don't you? If you ain't burning diesel fuel you ain't using your head for what you're supposed to. Frosty The Lucky.
  19. Bushings. They make it easier to get oil to the bearing surfaces and excellent sacrificial wear surfaces so you never run into worn ears again. Buy a few extras so there are some on the shelf in case. That isn't a real problem it's a normal adjustment for wear and tear, don't sweat it. Frosty The Lucky.
  20. How about posting fliers at agricultural, steel and? suppliers. Something simple like, Blacksmith looking to rent x sq/ft. of work space, preferably dry. <your contact info here> Hmmmm? Frosty The Lucky.
  21. Oh I LIKE it, we can call it LOG Darts! We'll need to establish some rules but nothing extraordinary. The darts need fins and I don't know if rebar texture hurts or increases the steam pressure. Let's see, driving the steam dart straight into the block would make the trajectory a LITTLE more predictable so a pair of tongs designed to hold it perpendicular are called for. Then the bottom of the block can be cut at an angle so the steam darts aren't aimed straightish up. (sort of, maybe) Objectives and Target are at the player's discretion of course. Ooh, distance, height, target, pumpkins? Oh is this a good idea, thanks Russel! Frosty The Lucky.
  22. Kohlswa are good anvils with one short period where there were heat treat problems. If you can talk in person be sure you tell him you don't pay anything for antique, you're looking for a tool. It's also WAY too recent to qualify, he calls everything antique or vintage, just buzzwords to drive up the price. 70lbs. is a nice portable size and a cast Swedish steel anvil is a sweet anvil. Offer him $150 if he doesn't get huffy you offered too much. Be ready to walk away if he won't come down to a reasonable price, $200 max or walk. Oh, I'm huge fan of Swedish cast steel anvils, my 125lb. Soderfors moves steel WAY better than my 206lb. Trenton. Frosty The Lucky.
  23. This is true but copper sulfate is a really pretty blue. Frosty The Lucky.
  24. Nice forge, it's good to see someone with equipment and skills to use it. Outside the fire pot itself the steel doesn't need to be that heavy, on the other hand it doesn't hurt. Frosty The Lucky.
  25. Welcome aboard, glad to have you. I'm on Vine Rd and can show you the ropes, I do some teaching. PM me if you'd like to meet up. I can't believe I missed your post, I need to check my notifications settings. Give me a shout. Frosty The Lucky.
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