Frosty

Thank you Gergely, you put a great big smile on my face for today. I love doing demos and kids are the best audience, they ask the best questions. Did you LOVE the looks on their faces when you did the twist? Twists seem to awe most audiences but kids ooh and ah out loud. My only suggestion is to NOT let kids near the anvil wearing sandals (flip flops or thongs here in the US.) there's too good a chance for hot scale to stick to a kid's foot. That's not the best way to teach a kid about burns. <wink> Frosty The Lucky.

I think I've written in my typically over windy form, pretty much all my basic gas forge recommendations. My general advice for getting into the craft is light a fire and start making things. Good projects to start with are nails, hooks leaf or "S" with a twist. I like leaf hooks as they pack a lot of basic processes in a small package. There are all kinds of things a person can forge for the garden, yard, patio, BBQ, etc. steak turners are excellent for practicing loooong even tapers. If you start reading the sections on IFI, pick one that interests you, pack a lunch, a refreshing beverage and pull up a comfy chair, there must be a couple thousand years of experience and rank ameture opinion posted. If it won't "teach" you to smith it will give you a working handle on the vocabulary, terms and some processes. This will help you ask good questions and understand the answers. After a while you'll pick up enough to help winnow the grains from the chaff. Lots of chaff and I've contributed my share, I chafe at chaff, especially my own prolifically chuffed out chafy chaff. (Yeah, like it REALLY bothers me <grin>) It doesn't really matter how long a person practices the craft, every fire, question, answer, mistake MISTAKES!?! are school. I've never watched someone at the anvil without learning something, I learn something with every post I read or make. There's nothing like showing someone else how to do this stuff to teach the teacher. You find yourself having to explains WHY you did a thing THAT way. Welcome to the learning curve, it's a lifelong ride. Enjoy. Frosty The Lucky.

Yeah, lots of imaginitive and some colorful pronunciations for eucalyptus. I grew up in the San Fernando valley with all the eucalyptus trees imported back in the day when they thought it'd make good cabinets and or RR ties. We had mostly blue gums growing in the yard but a couple were something else we didn't know. Okay one of the not so colorful pronunciations: "You can lip dis," "You cally peedus," . . . AAAHHHHHHEEEEE!!! DANG! Now I'm thinking about the folk who, "gots" things, wore, "stocks," called anything THEY didn't understand "stupid" and added the sufix "ate" to random words when they "conversated" so they sounded like they were actually learned. Oh THANK SO YOU VERY MUCH! How about you think of a catchy jingle you just can NOT get out of your head? Hmmmm? Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. That's a rivet forge, not a downdraft. Have you clayed the pan? It's a good idea, especially if it has "clay before use" cast in. Cast iron doesn't like differential heating and cooling, the clay will help disperse the intense heat from the fire. I have a rivet forge that's cracked almost all the way across from not being clayed and probably over use of water. You can deepen and shape the fire with fire brick arranged around the air grate. While it's nice to know, it's birth date has no bearing on it's utility. There's nothing wrong with wanting to know, I'm not saying there is, I'm just a function trumps cosmetics kind of guy. Frosty The Lucky.

Gonna spice it up, make it saucy for us? I can jumble the language on ya, I ga-RON-teee. Genuine andouille can be hard to find here on the Last Frontier so some of us have developed suitable substitutes from spicy smoked sausage. Hot reindeer links are pretty good and easy to get. Home made spicy smoked moose is really good but I like moose better than caribou or reindeer. (same critter, boo are wild, reindeer are domesticated) Decent smoked sausage is commonly available and adjusting the spice load and other ingredients can make a darned tasty great white northern gumbo. Okra grows just fine here as does the holy trinity. Seafood we have, even shrimp/prawns but crab gumbo . . . HooWEE. Frosty The Lucky.

Gravy boats, yes Ian. Would you like me to PM the pun explanations from now on? I can do that, Mother and I had to explain running pun (call them pun threads) to Dad and Sis if they mistakenly thought we were having a serious conversation. Frosty The Lucky.

Sweet anvil and a pretty good price for the size and condition. Frosty The Lucky.

Ayyup, it'll do that but dealing will come to you the more you do. Pretty darned nice looking opener. Is the wrapped section long enough to be comfortable in the hand? A little trick for helping keep the wrap evenly spaced is to make a gauge. For instance say you want 1/8" between wraps, forge a little round/square, etc. stock down to the desired thickness/width and put a little bend in it. The gauge is used when you wrap by laying it next to the section already laid down and you wrap the next one against it. A watering can is then used to cool the wrap laid so it can't move. Frosty The Lucky.

You do your wash in the slack tub with flux. I love the Anvilstream and just happen to have an old trailer . . . hmmmmm. Frosty The Lucky.

Graeson: As said already do NOT do any casting till you've done some REAL research. Whatever you've been reading was written by folk with no experience or even decent book knowledge of the foundry craft. Don't feel bad, Facebook, the net in general is full of people wanting to "teach" folk a thing but have nothing valid to offer. It takes experience to learn to tell the fruit from the nuts. The two "ideas" you've outlined are recipes for disaster. If you were VERY lucky the mug would break while in the melter and you wouldn't get any on you. In all probability it'd break as soon as you tried picking it up, spilling it all over the place. Even a tiny bit of molten bronze on you're hide is a taste of hell on earth. Visualize trying to juggle molten lava. . . Seriously. If luck were running against you, like say a deity had a beef and wanted to do you a cruel permanent mischief and you're set up held together long enough to pour molten bronze in a CONCRETE MOLD !!! You would be standing over a steam bomb when it exploded in your face. You'd be eating not only shrapnel but molten bronze. You'd be lucky to survive and would almost without doubt be scared, probably disfigured for life. Find a caster who teaches, take classes and make your pours under experienced supervision. Once you have a few dozen pours under your belt, have an experienced design for a melter, real equipment and SAFETY GEAR, what the hey. You'll at least know what you're getting into, be able to ameliorate the risks and bear the responsibility of a catastrophic failure with prior knowledge. Frosty The Lucky.

Yes on both counts, the little helper is mounted to the brick table extension helper. And yes, there's one on both sides of the forge, I can heat the center of a darned long bar without worry about it sagging. If you make one do NOT use a scissor jack, use a trailer jack. The scissor jack was free but it's a hassle, the lid doesn't move smoothly so I have to shake or bump it to get it to go up or down. A trailer jack can be used without having to make a guide, they're strong and rigid enough to support the whole lid without help. Frosty The Lucky.

Pretty nice looking hooks Brendan. Horns on anvils are a pretty recent addition, nothing there needs one. A bolster plate is simply a piece of steel plate 1/4" or better with a hole or two drilled through it. When you punch a hole the plate "Bolsters" the stock so the hole punches without much deformation or damage to the punch against the anvil's face. Don't use a center punch they're for marking steel, not punching holes through it. A hole punch has a near flat face and shears through. You can get away with using a "drift" or "pin" punch. Keep your eyes open at yard/garage/rummage/etc. sales for things like punches, chisels, ball pein hammers, heck most any smooth faced hammer will move metal. You can often find blacksmithing tools, even some really juicy scores. Things like punches and chisels are good steel and can be reforged or ground into other struck tools. Allen wrenches make good struck tools too. Just remember not to pay much for them unless you REALLY need one in a hurry. Oh and hit the scrap yards, all kinds of good scores move through scrap yards. Remember to sweeten the guys' attitudes towards you with a box of donuts or similar. Good PR is worth gold. And if you don't take Crazy Ivan up on his offer I'm going to find some really STINKY cybersocks to throw at you. Frosty The Lucky. Frosty The Lucky.

Just have the fire department and EMS standing by, you're going to need them. In a related aside: a wood stove BURNS wood, they're NOT made of wood. Frosty The Lucky.

You don't want to either, snow sucks big time as a quenchant. It melts where it contacts the part and leaves an open space so quench stops. You can't stir or stomp it fast enough to get anything like an even quench. If you really want to give it a try, save your freezer cleanings and have at it. Frosty The Lucky.

ARGHHHHHH, someone took a torch to a Soderfors!! Grab your pitchforks and torches boys, someone must pay for this! Okay, silly drama over. Don't mess with it, Soderfors used a pretty sophisticated technique for heat treating their anvils and it's not something even a large shop is likely to be able to pull off. Double check the rebound on the heal to see how much damage the torch cutting did to the face in that area. It may only be suitable for light work, think fork tines. You don't need a pritchel, bolster plates do the same job with better variety for cleaner punching. Drilling that one back out is going to need a cobalt twist bit and remember to pilot with at least a 1/4" bit and step up by increments off about 2x. For example: 1/4" to start go directly to 1/2", then 1" etc. Too small increments will result in chipping the outer corners off the drill's edges and you can lose the hole if a chip sticks in the parent stock. Just don't mess with rebuilding the pritchel or the heal. Just put her to work, you'll be so happy with what's left you'll take your hammer to anyone who makes a suggestion than may damage her. Chipped edges are pretty much the norm for Soderfors anvils they are very hard and a missed blow on the edge can knock chips out more easily than most anvils. I radiused the edges about 4-5" back from the step so I could make nice shoulders without worrying about cold shuts in the work but left the rest of the edges factory crisp. Just don't try "fixing" it till you've used her for a while, I don't see anything that'll effect her performance so long as you don't do any heavy hammering on the heal. Frosty The Lucky.

Eucalyptus ought to make an excellent anvil stand it's tough tough wood. That your boy? Frosty The Lucky.

Excellent story and a prime example of what happens when you stay on folk's good side. Let us know the results of a bearing test please. Frosty The Lucky.

I missed a pun! Now I feel REALLY slow, thank you soooo much, John. <sigh> In return: At banquets down south they sing roux roux roux your boats. Frosty The Lucky.

Sure you can. You can chase the pattern inverted/mirror image, directly into the rivet set . Or you can chase the pattern into a rivet head and use it for a die to form your set. The set will need to be really hot to take the pattern from a soft iron rivet master pattern so it'll need annealing before hardening and tempering. Of course the easy cheat appears if it just so happens a leather tooling pattern suits you. I don't know how long one would last used against hot steel but have no doubt it'll last long enough to make a master pattern so you can make sets. Lastly you can use chasing tools to hand work rivet heads individually. Not too practical if you want matching rivet heads but it might be de-bomb if different hardware wants different rivet heads. Visualize bronze rivets on a jewelry box one pattern for rings, another for brooches, another for ear rings, necklaces, tongue studs, etc. etc. Frosty The Lucky.

Sure did, I've been using it for years, it was singed and on it's third incarnation before I was attacked by the Great White . . . birch. I posted a pic today to show the telescoping helpers. The current lid is pleated, 8 oz 2,600f Kaowool liberally washed with ITC-100 and more recently washed with our home brew of 30% kaolin clay and 70& zirconium silicate. The kaowool liner in the lid is much more durable than the clamped in soft fire brick. There should be plenty of pics of it in various incarnations and Sketchup drawings in the gas forge section. If you have Sketchup on your machine you can download the pic and it'll be editable. I've changed details of how I build burners since the early incarnation so use the latest drawing to copy the burner from if you need burners. Of course I suppose you could ask me about burners if you need tweakage help. Frosty The Lucky.

I wouldn't even make a knife like wall hanger from it, someone years from now might try using it and injure someone. Frosty The Lucky.

At least seal the join or water getting in will cause galvanic action. A vacuum cleaner and epoxy works pretty well. Duct tape the vac hose to one side of the joint and let it suck the epoxy through the joint. Slow cure epoxy stays workable longer and is much stronger than the fast stuff. If you degrease the joint with xylene first it'll bond better just make sure it's dry first. When all the gaps are filled it'll draw the epoxy much slower. You can trim the excess with a razor blade once it's set. Trimming before it's fully cured is FAR easier than afterward. Frosty The Lucky.

We're more open to different things than folk in the lower 48? Seriously, it's not that much more expensive to ship something from down under than Florida. I don't know what you mean by big rat looking marsupials but I'll give it a try if available and I know what it's called. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Greensmith, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the IFI gang live within visiting distance. Frosty The Lucky.

Do you know what you want to forge? Buying or building the "perfect" forge before we knew what we really needed or really wanted to make is why so many of us have a bunch forges. What works a charm for bladesmithing is going to fail miserably the first time you want to turn a scroll. Unless you can get a scroll right as soon as it comes out of the forge you're going to be stuck with what you have because you'll never get it back into a knife forge. For guys who are just getting into the craft and don't yet know just what they want or are going to end up doing I recommend a farrier's forge. They're typically light weight, reasonably easy to reline and must be able to heat a horse shoe. A horse shoe is a pretty large product in the hobby world. Sure it's not a gate or railing but you are never going to need to heat the whole gate/railing, window grill, etc. You'll need to work finials, scrolls, band, rivet, etc. and a two burner farrier's forge with a through hole will heat more metal than a person wants to beat in one heat. So, my basic advice is to consider what your goals are in the craft and remember learning means mastering the basics first. Easy to reline is really HIGH on my list of goodness things. You are going to burn the liner out of your forge if you use it much and especially if you weld in it. You don't HAVE to use two burners to forge and one of my main tenets, heck life philosophies is, "it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it." Two burner forges are better in my book. Light is a good thing, you WILL end up needing to move it. Its part of learning the craft, you can arrange everything the way it's laid out in books but WILL find an arrangement that suits you and your work better. Easy to move is a good thing. I don't have a brand name to recommend or disrecommend, I've used a number of commercial forges and the ones that didn't get hot enough were easily fixable. Frosty The Lucky.