Frosty

Not bad Joel, a little tweaking and it'll do the trick. Jeremy's right, the back stops are going to become friction braes as soon as you apply pressure. If you make the section the bolt passes through thicker than the angle iron it will have better support and not jam. Frosty The Lucky.

Winners never quit, quitters never win. The Blacksmith's 12 step program is having 6 stations around the forge. See, I don't have a problem, I'm fine. Frosty The Lucky.

Uh HUH. MY natural smile IS a grin. Get used to being in trouble it ain't so bad. My sense of humor is my armor against how terrifying the world is for those with wit to understand so I Joke. "Those who matter don't mind, those who mind don't matter." Might be a bit simplistic but it works for me. Frosty The Lucky.

the common shop practice when I was going was to have to pass the classroom use and safety test before using any tool. Part of the test was doing the required project and power tools required a period of probation before being allowed to just use it. For example basic metal shop 1 hand tool project #1 was a set of dice. After the class sessions the student was given a piece of sq. stock 2x the necessary length. The student measured and laid out the cut marks and used a hack saw to cut two cubes. Not hard? Ever try to explain cut allowance to a 13 year old? Kerf, what's kerf? You gotta allow for the thickness of the saw blade AND shaky saw technique inability to follow a line? No WONDER you had to buy 2x as much as the dice needed. Once you had two matched cubeish blanks you got to learn how to operate a draw file and keep everything square while you coaxed them into matched cubes to tolerance of +0.001/-0. Now you get to lay out and EVENLY center punch the pips, careful boys, accuracy counts. finishing consisted of draw filing the rims from the punched pips and progressively hand sanding to a 400 grit finish and oiling. Grade was calculated on accuracy across the board. No I didn't get an A, even though Dad taught me how to do all this stuff long before metal shop class. You bet I had a teen'tude, enthusiastic oh yes but still the know it all kid. Kids who'd never set foot in a metal shop did better than I, I grew up working in a metal spinning and machine shop, I already knew it all. <sigh> Anyway, this stuff is dangerous, one step at a time, no exceptions to the rules. Frosty The Lucky.

Sorry, I didn't see the time chop, my bad. Brazing occurs at mid-high orange and the zinc doesn't burn unless you take it above that. It's not melting temp it's ignition temp when zinc starts oxidizing in a manner to be concerned about. Keeping galvy out of the fire is safest, you don't need to gauge how hot it's getting. Frosty The Lucky.

A quick Google search of the forge model # = https://books.google.com/books?id=Ow5aAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA31&lpg=RA1-PA31&dq=Buffalo+%23+666G+forge'&source=bl&ots=gZTGpEzP7U&sig=luLMnyan4O8zBz9Irkel6RI790s&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HfYmVf7-OpDxoASAjoGYDQ&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Buffalo %23 666G forge'&f=false\ If that doesn't work search Buffalo #666G forge. That's what I did. There's a lot more cool stuff on the site too. Frosty The Lucky.

Your welding area needs to be either separate or able to be screened from the others. UV isn't your eye's friend. Check out the Johnson's liner, if it's the stock hard fire brick you can replace it with either insulating fire brick or an inner liner of split hard fire brick and wrap 1' 8lb. Kaowool around that for insulation. The hard firebrick you remove from the Johnson (if you do) will make a dandy table deck you can do torch work on or erect brick pile forges for those special shape projects. A fire brick table is a good thing in a hot shop. You'll want a properly safe torch cart too so no matter how a ham handed student knocks it over the tank valves can NOT hit anything. Keep the wood shop in another room if possible, saw dust and ignition sources mix alltogether too well. run the direction of air flow FROM the hot work areas towards the woodworking area for the same reason. Contact the local vocational school, college extension service, OSHA (just don't tell THEM why!) and see if you can get some information about setting up a multi use shop safely. You should also be able to get basic classroom instructional information, movies, etc. but most importantly safety and basic first aid info and movies. Heck, maybe you can enlist an old shop teacher. Oh, basic safety. Nobody and I mean N-O-B-O-D-Y enters the shop without WEARING eye protection and not just eye glasses glasses, proper safety glasses with side shields and preferably poly carbonate lenses. Yes you can get them in scrips, mine are trifocals. Frosty The Lucky.

Looks good from here, maybe clean up the radius on the near edge but otherwise it looks fine. Doesn't using a tool you made with your own hands feel good? Frosty The Lucky.

White bi-metal bandsaw and hack saw blades are a lot longer lasting in high carbon and dirty steel. It's always helpful for blade longevity to take a wire brush to salvage stock first, even a little dirt is hard on blade teeth. Porta band has factory stands to use them for cutoff and vertical cutting. You sometimes see them in second hand stores and yard/garage/etc. sales. Frosty The Lucky.

Not only are all your power tools and equipment made from auto and appliance parts, your shop foundation is car frames still on the cinder blocks, the walls and roof are car hoods and trunk lids. Car doors have built in windows so you just have to talk the wife out of the new addition so the shop can have an openable window. Frosty The Lucky..

​So throw for rootbeers. Pretty good throwing, just wait a couple years make him an atlatl and he can keep the freezer full. Frosty The Lucky.

You can and do shave with your soup spoons. Your kids have knife throwing contests for beers in the den. You carve the Thanksgiving turkey with a lawnmower blade machete. Frosty The Lucky.

With a 1/2" line you will have all the propane you could want to run several forges simultaneously. The psi set at a max of 10 means you won't have enough pressure to run naturally aspirated burners so you'll need gun burners. (blown) However if you're good at precision work you can get a naturally aspirated burner to weld at 10psi. only ONE of my four burners is that golden. It's the one that melts the 3,000f split hard fire brick floor. The easy way is to just use more burners per volume. Frosty The Lucky.

A person doesn't have to earn my respect and I'm almost always courteous. It's not too terribly hard to lose my respect though and I can't think of a good reason to waste time on folk I have no use for. If someone can't handle being talked to like an adult they THEY have the problem, not I. Why should I make someone else's problem mine? I'm not going to lead folk who think they want to learn blacksmithing by the hand unless they really need it but for the most part they don't, they just want to know the "secret." Again,not my problem if they don't like the secret. Right now we have a young man, barely past pre-teen who I consider a man. He asks questions to the best of his ability and does his best to apply the answers. He asks honest questions and gets honest answers. He doesn't suck up and doesn't make excuses, talks like a man and takes it like a man. For this young Man I'm proud and honored to help however I can. I have bad days and sometimes snap or am just testy. I've gone off the rails a couple times for no good reason and have apologized when I realized it. I'm not normally a "grumpy old fart". Normally I'm a joker, love a good pun, funny stories, etc. I only turn into the "grumpy old fart" if provoked, provided my blood sugar is within reasonable nodding distance of range. I don't want much special, polite is plenty but I don't care for people who bait me or tell me I HAVE to pass on my hard won knowledge while being nicey nice. I'll tell you what I HAVE to do here, I HAVE to not use language inappropriate for a family site. Every thing else is voluntary I offer it as a gift, no strings. Give me crap, cop tude and you can go pound sand. Heck, I even let a person know they're crossing a line before I write them off. That's more fair than real life. Frosty The Lucky.

Thank you for serving, you guys are the heart and soul of America. A while ago there was a thread here on IFI about blacksmithing as therapy for vets. Does it help? Sounds like you have product lines up and running, that's good news. Lots of guys get into the craft with ideas but no real plans so success is a crap shoot. I'm thinking you're just branching out. You can count on me to do what I can to help, it's the least an American can do. Frosty The Lucky.

Not after the first 6 pack. Frosty The Lucky.

​I know you want to be helpful Eric and don't wish to discourage that but did you not read my reply to that effect? Googling and including specific temperatures isn't much help, who has a thermocouple aimed at the burner? Frosty The Lucky.

Doesn't matter what you learned in a trade school, union apprenticeship, from your Father. this is a living trade as is it's language. The best we can hope to do is establish a current tradition of similar terms, a lexicon if you will. I grew up in my Father's shop and there were no less than 3 punch presses when it was in the garage. The punch presses and the forming presses, it just depended on the tooling. I still have his journeyman's card, dated 1933 and I learned the difference between the top and bottom dies before I was 8.The terms he learned during his apprenticeship. Here's a blacksmithing site. "Upper Die", "Lower Die." Ref. "The Little Giant Powerhammer" by R.R. Kern And no, I'm not going to go look up any more references. Nor am I going to try explaining the difference between a noun and an adverb. Frosty The Lucky.

Just don't use galvy for the burner tube, it gets hot enough to burn zinc and that's not healthy. Our local Home Depot and Lowes both carry black pipe from about 1/2" up but that's here. You might have to go to a plumbing supply or good hardware store. Galvy is fine for the rest of the set up, supply, air intake end, etc. it shouldn't be getting into the high red heat or something is REALLY wrong! Shut it off and leave the room. Frosty The Lucky.

You're right Cnurch: Tsath a tpyo sor fure. Mus'tv bean my lisdexya! Frosty The Lucky.

You said you were going to stir up a hornet's nest and got my hopes up. I mean all you left me was nothing to twigg you about. What fun is that? Best wishes to you for the symposium, safe trip, safe return. Frosty The Lucky.

A couple times a summer the local pawn shops hold auctions of stuff they can't sell. Folk flock to them and the auctioneer makes no bones about their ringers in the crowd. Right on the sign up sheet you have to sign you acknowledge their right to set minimum bids, increase bids or have their ringers make bids that only count for what it'll go for. I sometimes go to auctions to see how the scam is going, maybe it'll get marginally honest. Listening to folk there looking for a deal is almost scary, they're going to get a DEAL no matter how much it costs them. Seriously, an armload of bicycle parts from at least 3 different bikes went for $160.00 because it said Schwinn on one part. The wheels weren't even the same size. A 10 speed!? Oooooooh! 3 years ago a coffee shop friend's wife was auctioning off what she couldn't sell ad there were two pairs of "tongs." REAL ANTIQUE BLACKSMITH'S TONGS!! <GASP> Well, one pair of beat up v bit bolt tongs and a pair of end nippers. They started the bidding at $50.00 ea. and when the ringers and barkers couldn't get folk stirred up dropped the opening bid to an UNBELIEVABLE $35.00 ea. and the bidding took off. A DEAL! The ringers had them up over $60.00 EACH in no time but I'd left before they sold. Frosty The Lucky.

You're welcome. I just noticed I forgot to include the other half of the burner type vs. volume equation, those numbers are for 3/4" dia. tube burners. The effective furnace volume is in direct relation to the area of the burner's outlet tube. Eg. a 1" burner has 2x the area of a 3/4" tube and effectively heats 2x forge volume. Frosty The Lucky.

The 3/16" wall 2.5" sq tubing will do a fine job, you ain't strong enough to damage it beating on your anvil. both my anvil stands are 2" x 3" x 3/16" wall rectangular and you could park a loaded pickup on them without them flexing even. Frosty The Lucky.

If you can open a beer with any tool in your shop. Frosty The Lucky.