Frosty

Welcome aboard Andy, glad to have you. Please out your general location in the header so folk will have an idea where you are. Nice body of work, the wood rack is will look great on any hearth. The wish tree is well made, though not to my taste means nothing about the quality of the work. The second tree is much more to my taste and while my taste has the same significance as before, the piece is a SWEET piece of work. You'll fit right in here. Frosty The Lucky.

Looking good Eddie. Yeah, hoof pics and bottle openers need a horse head, Brian Brazeal did a how to, the one heat horse/animal head I believe. Taking a few back to the feed store is only right, not to mention a good marketing move. Folk who frequent feed stores have an interest in horse related goods. Horse shoes also make excellent shovel, rake, pitchfork, broom etc. hangers with a little bending. They'll need proper screw holes of course, I made the mistake of thinking horseshoe nails would work for mounting but . . . not so good. Frosty The Lucky.

You can get more than welding heat from a sidearm burner as you can with one of my "T" burners. They were both born of a coffee table napkin sketch talk some years ago but that's an irrelevant story. A gauge would be a real help, if you're cranking the regulator to 30psi you're NOT helping things. A 3/4" sidearm running at 9+psi should bring the bulk of a 350 cu/in forge chamber to med yellow and have a sweet spot under the burner that'll melt steel. Are there ceramic studios or suppliers available? If so you should be able to buy kiln was, ITC-100 is a kiln wash but there are others. More than a good IR reflective kiln wash your forge needs some insulation. If you can buy a small quantity of kaolin clay (porcelain when fired) You can mix it with dampened sawdust and when it's tempered, that's allowed to rest in a sealed container till the moisture is equalized through the mix, a day or so, you can ram it into bricks. When dry you bisque fire them slowly and burn the sawdust out leaving voids. Then final vitrifying firing evacuates the voids and seals them into little vacuum chambers for decent insulation. Porcelain is a high cone 12 ceramic and being high alumina is resistant to caustics so flux ill have minimum effect. You can do the same with fire clay and make light fire brick but it will be susceptible to flux damage. Frosty The Lucky.

To get efficiency from that type of retort it needs to be covered to help retain heat or you end up building quite a fire under it just to get it going and even when it's burning pyrolization gasses most of the heat is lost to open air. Except for an oven-like enclosure that's the basic design for an indirect charcoal retort. It's also the basic model for a wood heating system that's gaining popularity for it's efficiency the "wood gas" furnace. The more popular type is the outdoor wood boiler you may be familiar with, more are popping up up here all the time. Frosty The Lucky.

Good save Jim and good price. Well done. Chipped edges are pretty common o Swedish anvils, they're dared hard. I love my 125lb. Soderfors, best anvil I've ever used. Frosty The Lucky.

Did you mean "Ford Prefect" from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Don't forget your towel! Frosty The Lucky.

A diesel burning riding power hammer. You be da man Matto! I like the eagle, nice lines and elegant in it's simplicity, Very clean design and execution. Well done. Frosty The Lucky.

Good score Mike! how come I NEVER run across that kind of thing. <sigh> Frosty The Lucky.

Yeah, it's resistance. Wish I could be more help but that's about it. Well, there are charts listing power loss according to distance over wire gauge. Uh, I think that's all I know outside of an electrician's number. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Ayo, glad to have you. Please put your general location in the header you might be surprised at how many of the IFI gang live within visiting distance. Modern propane bottles have safety fixtures to prevent a cut hose from turning into an out of control flame thrower so if you open the valve too quickly the safety will automatically stop or limit the flow. That's all I can offer not knowing more about what you have. Frosty The Lucky.

Something not mentioned above I find works well. Don't TRY, just go out and do it. Don't sweat getting it right while you're doing it, just do something familiar and let your muscle memory work unhindered. The above advice is all good, pick something simple and basic you were good at and just have fun. It'll all come back surprisingly fast if you don't get too hung up on getting it right. Frosty The Lucky.

I was going to make a smart alec remark about you and bottom drafts Steve but. . . <grin> Another thing welding rod flux does when it burns in the arc is the shielding gasses provide an ionized path (plasma column) for the arc. This is why it's so much easier to maintain an arc AFTER it's struck. Yeah yeah I know that sounds too obvious but before the plasma column made by the burning flux is formed the rod tends to stick. You know how sticky the rod can be when striking an arc and that it's one of the skills that takes time to learn. Heck, try striking let alone maintaining an arc after stripping the flux off the rod. Arc welding flux has an entirely different job than a diffusion (forge) welding flux. Frosty The Lucky.

Nice score Mike. Frosty The Lucky.

SWEET! Frosty The Lucky.

Beautiful all round, I really like a bottle opener finial on the toasting fork. Consider that one incorporated in my bag of tricks. <grin> Frosty The Lucky.

Heck I'd use lost wax, investment casting BEFORE heat treating the blade. Just use high enough carbon content to harden at a lower temp than the melting temp of brass. Frosty The Lucky.

You've done it again Nick, that's the prettiest fire steel I've ever seen. I'm thinking the original design is river boat/barge, a sledge wouldn't have three "posts" in the bed. Two at most if it was a timber sledge but even those wouldn't be so prominent. In a sledge that is, a sledge inspired tool or decoration could be whatever of course. The ribbon also reminds me of cargo in bales, maybe under tarps or maybe folded nets. Those are just impressions I get looking at the piece of course, I'll stop flapping my fingers now. Super well done Nick! It makes my day to see a post from you come up in the new posts. You be the eye candyman. Frosty The Lucky.

I don't usually burn solid fuel but clinkery coal is what's available here. I have a couple thoughts for you. First being you don't really know enough about burning coal. Doors aren't commonly found on coal forges, I can think of a couple exceptions but I just pile fire brick if I need an enclosed furnace using coal or charcoal. Rare but . . . As a new guy it's always pretty tempting to try building the PERFECT equipment, tool, etc. It's common to have dreams of what we want before we know what we actually need. My advice is go with a basic coal forge and forget the fancy stuff till you get some miles on you. Being dirty coal I think I'd build a longish side blast, trench forge from something clinker isn't going to stick to easily. Rammed clay would be my first try. I'd make it long so I could withdraw the air blast as the fire clinkers up. In practice long makes it easier to rake clinker out and that's what you're going to have to do, non-stop fire management. You'll be raking clinker out almost constantly. sucks but that's the real solution to your problem. That being the case make the forge easy to clean, hence a longish "V" trench forge. Me being me I'd see about cleaning the coal. Clinker is mineral inclusions in the coal that gets melted and sticks together in the fire. Some you can just wash out with a hose, if you're lucky it's water soluble, say clay and will wash out as muddy water. A long riffle board similar to a gold sluice might work a treat. If it's a silicate you'll only get the loose particles but you'll need to break the coal up to loosen the dirt and maybe a riffle board will do it but you'll need faster water and the dirt will stay in the sluice while the clean coal will wash out the bottom. A hydrometer like set up would work but that's more technically difficult, think a stream of water raising from below that floats the coal out while the crud sinks. These are a PITA, you don't even see them in small scale gold extraction operations beyond upwelling water through fabric in the bottom of a riffle board. The mineral inclusions will be denser than coal and can be separated because of the different specific gravities. Possible but a lot of hassle. Were it me and I couldn't learn to manage a fire inn a workable fashion I'd use charcoal or gas. I hope that's less confusing than it sounds. Frosty The Lucky.

While I'm not a bladesmith guy I do have a thought or two. My first thought being: Satanite is too valuable as a high end kiln wash and many other refractories are perfectly useful to produce hamon. One of Satanite's strengths as a kiln wash is it's resistance to chemical action at high temperature and it's IR reflectivity. Being IR reflective is a plus for using it to produce hamon. It's chemical resistance on the other hand makes no difference but is a MAJOR plus for washing the inside of a gas forge to protect it from flux damage. I look forward to the blade guys taking my thoughts apart, plus or minus, it's all good info. Frosty The Lucky.

Hay Budden is a top quality anvil and that one is in very good condition. Good score if you didn't pay too much, still. Frosty The Lucky.

Yeah, this was about it till spring isn't it? Do any good? Frosty The Lucky.

Well, outside of some windows once, we didn't damage anything that hadn't been abandoned. (dumped cars in the dry wash) I made a canon that shot marbles and it'd punch right through car doors and then some. We were careful not to damage anything of value. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Valupack, glad to have you. Lose the reducer on the end of the burner tube, it's most probably your problem. 2" is a mighty big burner but you can turn it down. When you reduce the diameter of the tube the fuel air mix accelerates but back pressure increases in the cube. Neither are helpful. Instead either try it with a straight pipe OR add a thread protector to the business end. the thread protector will increase the diameter slightly which will slow the mix and help keep the flame in place. Frosty The Lucky.

You don't let the wife out much do you? When my wife ad the other girls get together they sometimes compare how much junk their husbands collect. Frosty The Lucky.

Mark: next time you do a local show let us know when and where will you? Deb and I spent part of Saturday at the Colony show but it was so extensive we didn't even talk to anyone who'd seen your booth. Frosty The Lucky.