Frosty

Don't get discouraged or in a hurry! An hour to not be able to get a screw out sounds like a LONG time but it isn't. It's rusted together close to but not really welded, just very stuck. There are a few tricks but whatever you do you have to take time and be easy on the old girl. Soak it in oil, penetrating oil, there are good commercial rust buster oils, PB Blaster for one is excellent. Diesel or kerosene work as does old school automatic transmission fluid. WD 40 works but it's not the best. Just get something in the joints to break the rust and give it time. An old guy I used to know told me whatever stuck a part will free it up. If it's rusted water will break it free. It doesn't always work but it does more often than not. Surprised heck out of me when he showed me. If you have access heat can really help but it's cast iron so you MUST be careful or it will crack. Warm the outside piece, not the screw and chill the screw, the hole will get large and the pin will get smaller. A few drops of oil when it's hot will penetrate aggressively and help break things loose. Warm and chill repeatedly will work things loose. Like I say nothing always works but something will just be patient and keep after it. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Magnethead, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised at how many of the IFI gang live within visiting distance. Fisher anvils are high quality and quiet, very desirable. $3.00/lb isn't bad and that one is in good shape so I think you did well Good score. Get in contact with your local blacksmithing organization, every hour with an experienced smith will save you days or more learning on your own. If you scroll to the near bottom of the Iforgeiron home page you'll find the regional organizations, pick the closest and make contact. Hooking up with smiths in your neighborhood is all good. Then there's the centuries of experienced offered for anyone willing to read it. Start by pulling up a comfy chair, pack a lunch and bring a beverage. Then pick a subject your interested in or need to know about and start reading. Most anything you want to ask has probably been answered dozens of times. Getting a handle on what you want to know lets you ask good questions and understand the answers. It really helps us all. Frosty The Lucky.

You'll be turning a 3/4" burner down low in a 250cu/in forge to keep from melting things, the steel, the liner, etc. It fits my basic philosophy of useful stuff perfectly, "It's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it." It's not WAY too much burner for that volume, it's just more than necessary so you'll be running it turned down but if you need screaming HOT it'll be on tap. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. Any time the steel is at heat it will oxidize more quickly so brushing at orange heat is exposing fresh steel to oxygen. This is a good temperature to remove scale but it's also where scale forms fast. I like Treewax to finish work, it's carnuba and the same stuff they use to armor bowling alleys. It flows very well at moderate temperature, say in the 200f range cools hard as can be so buff it while still hotter than a cup of coffee/tea. It doesn't yellow with age. I like it but that' me. Johnson's paste wax is good too but not carnuba so it requires more frequent maintenance. To post pictures click on the "More Reply Options" button at the bottom right of the text window. Below the text window that opens click "Choose Files" browse your saved files, select the one you want to post, click "Open" it will appear below the text window click "Add to Post." Done deal . . . I hope, it's changed since last time I uploaded a pic. If one of a fat guy swinging a hammer appears then that's how it's done. <grin> Fingers crossed. Frosty The Lucky.

I agree, the hammer has a delicious 19th. century Victorian style. I wouldn't be surprised to find it in a tool box on Nautilus. Waistcoat, brass goggles, telescopic goggles of course, stovepipe hat, indeed, check. Hmmmm, slacks, dark maroon I think, with gold braid piping and brass button fly, highly polished gold laced brass buckled boots stopping just shy of the knee. But most important of all, gears, a nice planetary gear train breast signet and a gold pocket watch with external gearing, on an ornately forged solid gold chain of course. Oh oh, a PIPE! How can a gentleman BE a gentleman without a proper pipe! Meerschaum of course, self tamping with a dottle ejector and mechanical match striker arm to light it! The tobacco pouch automatically measures the perfect amount and preshapes it so the autotamper can place and tamp it to perfection. Oh yes, I like this direction. Frosty The Lucky.

You guys are making me blush. I'm a lot more used to people poking fun at me. Frosty The Lucky.

I'm glad to put a little cheer in your day Thomas. It makes me feel good to see a little irony wasn't wasted. Just for the record, the tree is DEAD. I love it when a joke comes together. Frosty The Lucky.

Diminished ring is the main reason I like my steel stands. Mild steel has a different resonant frequency than the anvil, being in contact they self cancel. You will get a hearty clang/k if you hit the anvil with a hammer but no piercing ear damaging ring. Owning a Soderfors is a good way to get a person away from the anvil tapping thing, she's so loud it hurts your ears and tends to damage the hammer. Standing on soft earth and grass will cancel resonance post haste as well so I'd surprised if that anvil has much ring as she sits. Frosty The Lucky.

About eye protection. Reenacting does NOT include crippling yourself in the same manner they did it in olden times. Once in a while the period police can get carried away with a little "power". Many years ago I was demoing at a SCA event, not a ren fair but close. A pair of harolds decided my safety glasses were NOT PERIOD and must go! Neither seemed to care about the propane forge but the safety glasses.(OH MY!) They were insistent so I started packing my gear and I sent a lad to fetch Baron Hew. The results of the harolds arguing with Hew were pretty funny. I was asked most humbly by Hew (part of the act, Hew and I were old friends) if the Smith would consider staying. I hemmed and hawed a while (more of the act) and agreed. After which the harolds were demoted to slop bucket boys and put in my service for the remainder of the weekend. I'm not a jerk, I have garb and wore it when I participated though not a member but safety gear is nonnegotiable. I'll work without gloves, even in my moccasins but the eye protection stays or I go. Period. Not that I can see well enough to do more than walk to the truck without my glasses, polycarb trifocals with side shields. I wear them all the time and I don't know of anyone getting an eye poked by a computer screen but I do live a sheltered life. Some folk just have the wrong priorities is all. Frosty The Lucky.

Try an oblique angle on the light when you shoot the pics. Camera flashes are aimed directly at the subject so it's reflected directly back and there are no shadows. Light coming in from one side at a shallow angle will cause shadows behind any surface feature. If you really want detail, leave the camera on a tripod and shoot one exposure from one angle and the double exposure with the light at the opposite angle. This is how the really detailed photos of the moon are shot you just have to shoot the second exposure about two weeks later. Flour or chalk rubbed in and wiped off works well but different techniques will yield different results some better than others. Depends on more variables than I want to ramble about. Frosty The Lucky.

DANG Aaron, that's too pretty to use! My hat is off to you. Frosty The Lucky.

Yes, a regulator is a good thing, it will maintain an even pressure even while the propane in the tank cools an the tank pressure falls. A 0-30psi regulator ought to do unless you're building a big forge in which case you'd need a higher volume reg and need to talk to the propane supplier. A gauge is a really good idea, it'll help you repeat temperatures consistently. To adjust the output of a gun burner (blown) you need to control both halves of the fuel air ratio. Increase the fuel and you must increase the air by the proper ratio. With practice you'll be able to eyeball the burn. Changing gas is easy, it's the adjusting the air input that can be a trick. A rheostat is nice if it won't burn out the motor and a simple valve on the air intake is good if the motor isn't cooled by blower air. A bypass on the output works too. Controlling the air is one of those fiddly bits that can hang you up for a while but once you figure it out you wonder why it took so long. My solution was to make naturally aspirated burners, a PITA to get tuned but once they are they don't change fuel air ratio enough to make a difference the air is induced into the forge by the gas flow. Frosty The Lucky.

I've been messing with fire and hitting things with hammers since I was maybe 10, I don't know about Ron. We met via theforge list and maybe he was subbed to the old Artmetal list too, it was right after the internet went public. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard toadstool glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised at how many IFI members live within visiting distance. As a rule of thumb, figure a 3/4" burner outlet will bring about 350 cu/in volume to welding heat. I expect we'll hear from the guys who read my rambling that ratio is for a naturally aspirated burner but I use it because that's the ratio my Johson Appliance forge uses and it seems to hold for both. A word about gas inlet placement: the gas and air will mix much more thoroughly if you mount the gas inlet before a bend in the pipe. The turbulence of going around a 90* turn will stir it better. Frosty The Lucky.

Sounds more like asking experienced people is the modern alternative to doing research. You're a nuke so regardless of what you claim here you can indeed learn from the written word. I have a couple close and dear friends who were and are nukes, one a bubblehead, the squid was on the last deployment of the Enterprise, he and the black gang spent about a year "rebuilding" the reactor and power plant so it could make it's last deployment cruise then probably go to the breakers. Neither of my guys would've been allowed near the plant if they couldn't learn from reading. I hear your reasoning all the time in one form or another and to an old fart it sounds like excuses. I'd be honored if you'll prove me wrong so here it is. The ratios to make an induction device operate, be it a steam powered bilge pump, room fogger, the vacuum generator in a storm drain vac truck (the Aquatek was the old one at work). or the NA inducer/mixer in a gas range follows. All significant ratios are based on the throat diameter. The throat being the narrowest point in the tube after the induced (whatever) intake(s). Tube length should = 8-9 x throat diameter. Intake area = 2x the throat cross section area. Jet setback should be no less than .5x throat dia. For the purpose of illustration I will use a throat diameter of 1" for the purposes of simplicity. Tube length = 8-9", intake port(s) = 1.57" sq/in. jet setbsack = 0.5" +. That ratio set and the example of the Bunsen and the Fisher burner is what Ron and I used to make our burners. the early days of the internet is how Ron and I got to know each other and early on in our tinkering I found a patent for the improved gas forge. The improvement wasn't about the burner but a recuperative wall design. There was a picture of it with the burner ad the burner was a linear induction device the same in principle and materials as Ron's EZ. I was misled into going with the linear for a while till I discovered there is indeed almost30% better performance using the ejector design. Ron refined his linear till his worked nearly as well as a commercial inducer and I made the T. The "Side arm" is the result of a misunderstanding of how I was going to mount the T but it works very well so. . . Ron and I didn't have anyone but each other to ask questions, we reinvented the wheel on our own power. Frosty The Lucky.

Fun site, thanks for the link. Frosty The Lucky.

Yeah, Ron was a middle school science teacher and I think he just got used to trying to make things fool proof even to the detriment of the project. So, tell me how looking at couple different sets of drawings or pictures will tell you the differences? If you believe how it looks means anything you don't understand naturally aspirated burners at all. If you did you might notice there isn't a venturi in any of them. Do you know what a venturi is for? Forgive me if I seem short but I've described in detail how to make these things many times and helped many guys trouble shoot and tune all kinds of naturally aspirated burners. I'm just running short on enthusiasm for repeating myself for folk who haven't done much if any research. Telling me what Ron has in his plans when you don't know how it works is wasting both our time and my patience. Frosty The Lucky.

You are one multi-talented guy Mike. I'm not really a blade guy but can do the dance. They're very "post apocalyptic" and look like someone who knew what they were doing made them. I really like the micarta, very nice, terrific patterns. I think all round those knives tell a story loud and clear for anyone willing to hear it. The only suggestion I can think of is to break the inside edges of the bolsters, those look like they might rub or even scrape fingers in hard use. Smooth is nice, your fingers will thank you. Oh I almost forgot, your presentation is very professionally done. The narration in writing is so much more effective than someone talking. The visual will stick much longer than spoken words and the music is both dramatic and soothing. Very well done all round. Frosty The Lucky.

I haven't looked at Ron's plans for a long time, years. does he actually put a mig contact tip on the cross tube? How far down the burner tube does he let it extend? Ron and I haven't been on the same page for a long time, we're good friends we just differ significantly in burner design. He spent a LOT of effort and time developing his linear inducer burners and I spent almost a whole day developing an easy to make ejector inducer. For another example, I had a little issue when he actually said screwing a nipple into the intake bell was a viable alternative to using a set screw. The deeper in the induction device the primary supply is the lower the entrainment. Okay, that's the kinda technical way of saying, the farther into the burner you put the jet the less efficient it is. What dia. mig tip are you using? Oh yeah, you can find my earliest concept drawings by searching "Frosty T burner". Be aware though it's an entirely different device than you're trying to get to work. A world easier to make and adjust but it's probably the main reason Ron and I don't talk burners. Mike Porter and I do occasionally but we all have our own style and all work just fine if you build and tune them correctly. Frosty The Lucky.

You're going to FILE the timber to shape?! Brother that is going to be some TIGHT joinery! Frosty The Lucky.

My only suggestion would be to put a rim around the plate it's mounted to so tools like chisels, etc. won't roll off but I doubt vibration or jiggling will be a factor so nevermind. You fit right in here, that level of overkill is just sooooooo blacksmith. Frosty The Lucky.

I can't help you with an ID but it looks to be a perfectly serviceable anvil and not a bad price. Congratulations now heat some steel and put her to work. She'll be much happier with a job and it'll keep her from causing mischief. Frosty The Lucky.

Probably not rat poison, cockroach poison is good, better known as Roachpruf or Boric acid. Boric acid has a lower melting temp than borax so it encapsulates the join sooner. I use 1pt. boric acid to 3-4 pt. borax in my home brew flux. I'm going to have to ask Elmer or Linda about the ferrous oxide, I have trouble believing anyone would put ferrous oxide in a welding flux. The purpose of welding flux is to prevent the stock form oxidizing, not adding it to the joint. You have me thinking about the "sacrificing my wallet" thing, maybe I should contact Peterson about a cut of sales for blacksmiths using it for welding flux. Hmmmmm. Frosty The Lucky.

You really need to do some more reading. While that design burner WILL work it's not a very good design. The nipple extending the intake bell reducer does nothing for performance besides degrading induction. Go to Ron's pages, he actually knows what he's doing. The plans you're using are full of additions to make it work by someone who didn't understand how the things work. And no, don't try asking Ron questions, he got so fed up with people asking questions without bothering to read the material he stopped answering anybody's questions and in fact stopped participating in web fora, lists, etc. Your last question. NO threading the cross pipe and installing a mig tip in your set up isn't going to help. It will in fact make it not work worth spit. Frosty The Lucky.

There you go with the arithmetic again Mark. <sheesh> Uh . . . Wait . . . Seems like? Frosty The Lucky.