Frosty

I have a spot about 2" dai. under the burner in the part of my forge I use most that melts after half an hour or so. It's 3,000f split hard fire brick and after a while even without flux the brick will form a vitrified spot that seems to have a lower melting temp. Add a little flux and it's sort of like a refractory fondu that sticks to anything you dip into it. Replace the fire brick, I didn't mortar mine in for exactly that reason. A good kiln wash will help it live longer, ITC-100 is getting too expensive for me but it works a treat for keeping flux from ruining high silica refractories. A wash I used before I realized what I was doing is Kaolin clay, porcelain when fired, it's a high alumina cone 12 clay and is pretty darned resistant to caustics like hot flux. Kiln shelf is good, SS pans work really well, bedding in kitty litter works pretty well. Whatever you use you have to think of it as sacrificial, heat, abrasion and fluxes will kill most anything normal folk can afford. Frosty The Lucky.

Ben: Hammers don't explode no matter how badly they're cracked. Take a close look for more or deeper damage. You want to eliminate sharp edges and corners as they form stress risers which can lead to another chip. Chips can be dangerous as the piece flying off is moving at high speed and can put holes in your hide or EYE. If it looks like there are more cracks or defects leading deeper into the hammer you might want to make it a wall hanger. You ARE wearing appropriate PPE yes? Eye protection being #1 and only MUST have ON. Hearing protection is really good. You don't want to be holding a great big megaphone cone thingy to your ear and saying, "EH? Speak up SONNY, stop mumbling!" all the time when you get older do you? Natural fabrics only, synthetics melt on contact with anything more than 300f, then they stick to your hide and deep fry you, even NOMEX melts on ya. VERY painful. Cotton, wool, hemp, leather, etc. natural good, synthetic BAD. Same for footwear, NO synthetics and open top boots aren't such a great idea either. You just haven't lived till a hot cutoff falls into the top of your boot/shoe/whatever and you get to do the screaming HOT FOOT dance till you rip your foot gear off. It's seriously NO FUN AT ALL! A nice deep slack tub or bucket is where you put your foot if that happens. Keep some aloe vera gell in the 1st. aid kit with the other stuff, burns go with the territory. Another thing that goes with the territory are the silly things you have to learn to filter out of the posts here and everywhere. Exploding hammer heads is a typical bit of nonsense based on exaggerated urban myth with zero basis in fact. You'll get to know who to ignore. Same story goes for Youtube videos, some are kids who just have to have their 15 seconds of fame but have nothing useful to offer. Frosty The Lucky.

YES I AM. That's why I use the handle I do. If you want the story I think it's still up in the Prayers section. I'm living proof prayer works, that and having a mother bear like my beloved bride Deb backing me up of course. Don't mess with the Momma! Lets see, crushed foot, broken ankle, broke most or all the ribs on my left side, punctured left lung, broken neck, two skull fractures, lots of blood. Flat lined a couple times on the Lifeflight to Anchorage, those hospitals were closer than the one just down the road in Wasilla. Really lucked out, they'd just opened a new head trauma unit at the hospital, I was their second customer. 10-14 days drug induced coma, 3 months in the hospital, year of therapy. I'll have TBI issues to keep my life interesting till I check out. I'm just too shy and retiring to talk much you know. :rolleyes: Yes, I'm LUCKY. Frosty The Lucky.

Yeah, sifting the nonsense from the good info is just part of the learning curve Matt. No matter where you go you'll find folk posting who's only knowledge is what they learn playing RPGs or imagining whatever. WE get plenty of that here. I'm afraid there aren't any real shortcuts, especially if you're teaching yourself. I've been there, I'm largely self taught at least till the internet went public and I started hooking up with folk who walked the walk. I'm afraid it's going to be harder to filter videos but there are some real master teachers who post videos here, a couple names have been mentioned. If you can hook up with the local organization you can find them on Iforge's opening page, scroll to the bottom and do some shopping. Every hour with an experienced blacksmith is worth days, weeks and longer trying to teach yourself. It'll also put you in touch with tools, equipment, materials and the occasional BBQ for helping someone raise a shed, barn or install something heavy. Belonging to a club puts you in touch with help when YOU need it too. It's a good thing. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Lynn, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised to find out how many of the IFI gang live within visiting distance. That's a screaming good deal on a piece of equipment I'd personally LOVE to have in my shop. I'll let the guys who KNOW tell you about it, other than to say She's a beauty. Frosty The Lucky.

The edges are mushroomed over, says abuse like Thomas describes. The add also says it has a "mouse hole", the seller hasn't a clue what "good" is as far as an anvil goes. Mousehole was a maker, not an anvil feature. This seller doesn't know a hardy hole from a brand name. Think you can use THAT to your advantage? I'd use it all as bargaining chips and put my wallet back in my pocket if s/he wanted to stand on more than $200. Seeing $200 in cash walking out speaks darned loud, especially if you've pointed out all the damage and silly "features" the seller thinks are valuable. It's just OLD, not an antique. Damaged old is NOT a valuable feature. Get your head around OLD, not valuable antique and it's just an old damaged tool, not a must have. NEVER let the seller know you really want a thing unless you have more money to spend than necessary. Geeze I LOVE to dicker, I just won't waste my time over a couple bucks. Dad would bargain for days over a couple dollars on a thousand dollar deal, drove me nuts. He thought I was some kind of magician, I walked out on a 62 Vette when the guy wouldn't budge off his $2,500 asking price, put my 15, $100 bills in my pocket and drove away. My sister took the message with the $1,100 counter so Mother and I drove back and bought my 62 Vette for $1,000, cost him another C note for wasting my time. Dad was still dickering over $50.00 on his 58 vette and ended up spending $2,850 when it was over. You have to be ready to walk away and not be coy about it. Some sellers will let you so you may have to make the hard decision on their terms. NOTHING always works. Frosty The Lucky.

Level smooth concrete floor under it. Flat belts like it was designed to use are laced together, the only reason to pull the shaft is if something is wrong with it, say bent. The bearings are probably similar to engine main and rod bearings, if you pull the guards you'll see the bearing caps. You can probably adapt engine bearings if it needs bearings, they're soft enough to reform, they'll just need oil ports and a groove. Easy greasy. You'll probably need to make up a jack shaft to run a motor under or behind the lathe, no sweat it was done all the time. Modern belts can be had that are like rubber link belts so you can make any length you need. I'd be tempted to try a rubber wheel drive like you see on tire hammers, I can't think of a reason it wouldn't work a treat. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Viking, glad to have you. Put your general location in the header, you might be surprised at how many of the IFI gang live within visiting distance. Getting hooked up with the local organization or just a local smith is a really good idea, you'll learn more in an hour with an experienced smith than in days or weeks trying to teach yourself. She looks to be a nice anvil but test it first. When the guys say test the face they're referring to a bearing or hammer test to check rebound and in this case ring counts. Trentons are wrought iron bodies with forge welded high carbon faces and occasionally the face will delaminate, the weld will fail, sometimes in places but look intact. A bearing dropped on a hard steel surface will have a high incidence of rebound, meaning it'll bounce most of the way to it's starting point, same with a small hammer. You don't want to hit it hard, just light taps to see how far the hammer rebounds. Tap or bounce the entire face and watch for dead places, if the rebound is low the face may be delaminated there. Trentons will ring too so if you hear a dead spot it may be delaminated. If she passes she's going to make you a FINE shop mate, you don't even need to radius the edges and making a bottom tool if you need crisp edges is easy, enough. (square block with a shank to fit the hardy hole) 140lbs. is a handy size, you can do most anything with it and it's not to heavy to move. Frosty The Lucky.

NICE score, TPAAT strikes again! You might want to radius the chipped edges, radiused edges are handy and it'll help protect the edges from missed blows. The drill looks pretty much there and I think I see something on the far side of the feed wheel on top that might be the feed lever and mech. It might be the feed handle though, we NEED more pics! <grin> It feels a little like Christmas morning in a vicarious way when someone in the IFI Clan scores a juicy find. It makes me want to rip the wrapping off and examine all the bits, fiddle with the levels, turn the knobs and screws. That drill wants some oil, she's parched and thirsty give her a drink. Frosty The Lucky.

That's 6,696 cu/in volume, YIKES! I thinkyou're probably going to need a commercial high volume reg and serious burners. That's one BIG forge, especially for most of us home shop folk. Do you know what it was used for originally? It just sounds like a commercial furnace to me, smallish for a spring shop but still something like that. May we see pictures please? Frosty The Lucky.

NICE hammer Paul, especially for a first and solo. You appear to have a steep learning curve, I LIKE that in a fellow smith. It makes life so much more interesting. Frosty The Lucky.

A 3/4" would be a bit much but you can turn it down. I'm a firm believer in the "it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it" school of thought. A 1/2" T burner is good for about 150-175 cu/in volume so you'd need two of them. I'm a fan of a stainless shell, it reflects IR better than steel so you keep more heat in the forge where I paid it to be. A 5" dia. ID is a perfectly workable forge, a 9.5"-11.5" length is going to make for less than even heat though putting the burner at the back and positioning it to make a strong vortex might be a different story. A 3/4" T burner is in the 50% more gun than the numbers say it needs too. I'm thinking this is going to be one H-O-T forge with one little drawback, the forge exhaust is going to be coming pretty straight out of the opening, even if it's spinning in a strong vortex. It might drive heat right up any long stock or at the smith. I'm really looking forward to how this works. Don't be afraid to experiment you don't need to worry about washing the interior for short test firings and you can pull the Kaowool and rearrange it frequently. If I had a few sq/ft I think I'd be playing with that size cylinder to see how it fires. I can get ss stove pipe really close to that size 2 miles from here. The Kaowool is about 57 miles though. ABOUT 57 miles. <wink> That'd be the Anchorage office of EJ Bartells, my go to guys for refractories. This project will be on my to watch list for sure. Frosty The Lucky.

Thank you for that link, I'm about half way and it's just full of tasty tool and equipment I'd love to find. Just the forges and blowers are a eye opener. I haven't seen a side draw hood yet though. The Roots blower is familiar, positive pressure is for sure, stick a valve with a Roots pushing air and it'll blow the head manifold or something important. Very cool link, thanks again. Frosty The Lucky.

Nice line shop lathe Gergely, you lucky dog. I know it was shipped like that but never NEVER leave the key in the chuck, any key and chuck, it's very dangerous. Frosty The Lucky.

I don't know the West Rib but I don't go to Anchorage if I don't HAVE TO. The fire brick is just a way to spread the heat so the sheet doesn't warp, laid loose, ash fills the gaps. It's a duck's nest forge so the fire "pot" is whatever shape I make it with stacked fire brick. The air grate is one I made before I knew what a good air grate is, it's a piece of 3/8" plate about 5" dia. with a bunch of 5/16" holes in a pattern I came up with a couple decades ago. The majority of air holes are blocked with dish head rivets, they drop in, don't hinder the rake and are easily rearranged. Not long after building and installing it in the old, "pioneering" tarp tent smithy I discovered good coal wasn't much of an option. What I was able to dig myself gets hot enough but is weathered and darned clinkery, it smokes a lot too, it cokes but smokes like a dragon that ate BAD chilli. So the overhead hood isn't near enough, I made THAT to someone else's specs and took it back . . . Because. These old memories sure bring on the windyness in me. Frosty The Lucky.

I love it, give your daughter a big warm Frosty hug next time you see her please. Frosty The Lucky.

A technique I've had good luck using to do fine(ish) temper coloring is just a largish piece of heated steel. It takes a little practice to get right, some things want to be laid or touched by an edge, some a point, some on a flat. I've also done progressive tempers on blades that way but not being a blade guy it's probably not such a good blade technique, despite what Bealer said. It makes pretty though. Frosty The Lucky.

Mounting plates are probably the most commonly replaced and changed parts of post vises. It's seriously much easier to just make a new mount on the vise to screw into or bolt to a vertical post than say dig and bury a post so it can be screwed into the top. Heck, that may be just the option for you. Blacksmiths were pretty renowned for modifying tools to sit their needs, not their shops to fit the tool. Looking through old Uncle Dudd's garage after he passes a person would have to already know what blacksmithing tools are in detail to spot a post vise mounting plate where ever it is if it's not on a post vise. There may be a post vise mounted to a post with a home made bracket Uncle Dudd made 50 years ago but if you don't know what it is, it's just junk and goes in the "everything for $1.00 box." So, if you want it original equipment be prepared to wait till fortune shines on you. Even if that was my goal I'd make a bracket and use it till fortune felt like smiling. Just food for thought. Frosty The Lucky.

Ah, there it is! Basic things do NOT include knives. Blades are involved, advanced blacksmithery, something to aspire to not learn on. Not saying it can't be done but it's a setup for failure on a regular basis. Try learning the basics of blacksmithing till you've become competent, then move onto basic tool steel projects, say cold chisels, hacks and such till you're competent with them then maybe wood chisels, and such. Once you have it down so you can make virtually any chisel, steel or wood as needed without screwing them up it's time to start learning to made knives. Like I say some folk do just jump in with reasonable success, it's just really uncommon. Learning to blacksmith is about failure analysis,mistakes is what teaches you the most valuable lessons and doing it with expensive and hard to work steel not only makes mistakes more likely but more expensive. Good luck on that. Frosty The Lucky.

Geoff: If what you're using works don't look for something else. It ain't broke don't fix it. Frosty The Lucky.

Look on the side away from the cast proud, Soderfors Sweden side. The model names are usually stamped in with the date and weight. You might need to rub it with chalk and photo under oblique light if it's been roughed up. Frosty The Lucky.

That looks to be as proper as an anvil gets and you get the satisfaction of working on a tool you made with your own hand. Win win I calls it. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. I really like the roots on the trees on the frying pans, nice flow to the roots, almost look like they're growing. Have you tried that particular tree on a rock? I've always been fond of tree roots on interesting shapes. KICK that habit's BUTT! I'll be pulling for you. Frosty The Lucky.

So you say, I was attacked by a Great White . . . Birch. I have the scars and dents to prove it too. Frosty The Lucky.

Nice job, the adze looks pretty good and the video shows it all pretty well. I'm thinking it's a twofer good post. Frosty The Lucky.