Frosty

Fabric paint eh? Think I'm going to be checking it out. Where's a guy find it? I was going to suggest powder coating steel or forging from copper/brass and enameling it. Frosty The Lucky.

Without knowing what the soils are this is all speculation. However, I do enjoy speculation so my first thought is get rid of all the cork rubber and such, replace it with concrete. Of course enlarging the hole would really help, as said the more mass in the foundation the less the hammer can move it. How far away is the house, if it isn't within a few feet you have some serious soils issues. For shocks to travel very far through soils they either have to be very densely compacted dry soils or stone. I those cases you'll hear it and maybe see a little bit of vibration in the house. If it's actually shaking the house my bet is a high water table in clayey or silty soils. Basically the hammer is liquifying the soils under and around it so waves can propagate. This is a BAD thing and not just because of the hammer. Well compacted angular gravel of a good gradation is pretty much ideal for a light weight power hammer like a KA. A concrete foundation of course but a good gravel base is really good. My 50lb. Little Giant is on a wood base resting on a 6" concrete slab over well compacted gravel over dry glacial till. I can run my hammer even to the point of letting it strike too cool steel and Deb can't hear it in the house about 120' away. Please let us know what the soils are under your place, I have a decent lay understanding of soils and foundation design. I drilled test holes for the headquarters materials, bridges and foundations section of the AK DOT geology dept for a good 20 years and picked up a bit. If I don't know what's what I know who to ask. Frosty The Lucky.

Very cool opener Ivan, you're rolling now! Thanks for starting this thread. I think there are a lot of folk baring their souls a bit or more. I get all misty eyed reading these posts, manly blacksmith misty eyes of course. <wink drip> These episodes define a community, some communities see a fallen member and folk step around, cross the street or just turn their backs, they don't want to get involved. In others folk drop what they're doing and go help their friend, family member fellow citizen, whatever up, dust them off and maybe give them a kick in the right direction. It does in reality mist my eyes to be part of this family, clan, gang, mob, whatever. Yes I'm lucky! Frosty The Lucky.

Sorry Bill no, I wasn't referring to your post at all. I believe substances had come up and I've been there and got away. I'll cop to being VERY lucky on the substance addiction susceptibility. The only drug that really got it's hooks into me was tobacco, took me almost 5 years to quit after I seriously tried to kick it. The tree is what really kicked me loose from tobacco. Frosty The Lucky.

That smile says it all. Congratulations! Am I just not seeing it, is there a platten? Frosty The Lucky.

I wasn't suggesting more scrolls in the quarterfoil. My suggestion is to even the scrolls up so they're the same size AND fill the space fitting evenly for a complete quarterfoil. It isn't a true quarterfoil unless it comes together on the outside scroll. Hop vines, perfect. You can forge the leaves with a longish stem then form the vine from three or more pieces of round, twisted together entrapping the leaf stems and forged for the final texture. If you're feeling cocky forge weld the vines. Be sure to get some hop vine and leaves to model for you. Twisted vine stem has a fairly natural texture but I don't know if it's right for hops. Hop flowers will be trickier, they're colas not individual flowers but I'll bet something similar to forging pine cones will work on tubing. They need the right texture but now we're getting into details that will solve themselves with a little experimentation. Of course there's the benefit of all the cool texture dies you can put on the shelf while you're perfecting the hop flower die. I like the idea of repousse and chased elements. Your next taproom sign can be a tap with beer pouring into a mug. The wall mount is the barrel end of course and the beer is composed of brass or bronze scrolls with nice scrolled nickle wire foam on the mug. I'm getting carried away again but your sign bracket has my imagination going now. Frosty The Lucky.

Folk have been forging with charcoal about 10 times as long as coal, it has a few issues but it does an excellent job. Were I you I'd check out the coke. Even using green coal techniques you're still forging with coke. forge coke is less dense, making it easier to light and keep burning and is also known as breeze. If I could get it for less than stupid expensive shipping costs, I'd love to give commercial coke a try. Our club doesn't have enough members to make a quantity buy practical. For the most part we're burning propane and using oxy fuel torches for localized heat. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Forborg, glad to have you. Please put your general location in the header, you might be surprised at how many of the Iforge gang live within visiting distance. The size and shape you punch and drift top tools or hammers depends almost entirely on what YOU like. Hammer handles need to be more robust of course, I buy a piece of cabinet grade straight grain hickory 1"x 4" or 6" board and make slab handles for my hammers. I make them taper wider from the head to the end with a small circular nob on the very end. I prefer slab handled hammers for a couple reasons. First, I can buy a 6' 1"x6" hickory board for about as much as two factory hammer handles. Secondly I always know exactly what the orientation of the hammer face or pein is as the flat slab sides index in my hand. Thirdly, the long taper makes hammers very easy to hold, there is zero chance of it slipping at all without your hand reflexively gripping tighter, the little knob is just insurance. The first time I saw Uri Hofi's hammer handle I fell for it and improved it a bit for my use. <wink> Top tool handles are I feel better being thinner for a couple reasons: And longer but not outrageously longer, this gets your hand away from the heat, improves your view and is just easier to hold. Then and perhaps more importantly, a little spring in the handle keeps your hand from taking as much shock from a missed blow or some kinds of work in general. If you pattern your tools after Brian's you can't go wrong, his are golden. Frosty The Lucky.

Got it. I'm actually relieved you're so young. I know some "artists" who never get over some pretty unrealistic thinking. Being so young this kind of thinking is normal. NO NO, don't throw things at me! I use "normal" as a purely human psychological development term. I'm no more normal than you are, I've NEVER been part of the regular/normal kids. I grew up in my Father's metal spinning shop I've worked for my spending money since I was 8yrs. old. While the "normal" kids were spending all the money their folks gave them on clothes, dating, cars, whatever, I was paying rent, my for my car, insurance, maintenance, etc. I also had to help pay for the horses and I did get into dirt bikes around your age. What I did for fun was nothing like the "normal" kids, my little group of friends launched balloons with instrument packages, timed release devices and tracked the capsules with home made radio direction devices on horseback. We launched rockets too but that was too expensive with the permits, and how far out in the desert we had to go to launch one. We made movies, comic books more like the modern graphic novels, etc. We were DIFFERENT than the other kids. What we had though was a pretty solid grounding in having to pay our own way thanks to our parents. We lived in a world of our own where we could do whatever we wanted, all we needed to do was earn the money to do them. AND pay any damages we did. some guys here may wonder why I'm so up to speed on air fuel explosions, our big one ended up costing us quite a bit in broken windows. There we were working 40+ hour weeks, making decent money because we were fairly well skilled kids for right out of school. I could've passed the basic pipe and structural welding certification tests but NOBODY would test a kid right out of high school so I had to take a couple trade school classes. Anyway, the four of us were working and doing our odd things on our own time. Other kids we grew up with were convinced my friends and I were just LUCKY we had jobs and had marketable skills. LUCKY! It can be a rough road at times but never NEVER be sorry for being different than the average folks, nothing good comes from setting your sights lower, aim high, be whatever kid of different makes you who and what you are. If other folk have a problem with you, THEY have the problem. What you need to do is learn to not let their aims be your problem. Society and how it's set up is for the average folk, just be who you are and don't let THEM bother you more than you absolutely must. I don't know what the percentage is but there have always been the outsiders, the loaners who went their own way, some are way above average but thinking and doing with a little creative originality looks like genius to the average folk. A number of years ago we had a thread on the old Artmetal list we titled "legion of loaners" devoted to how all of us felt being outside the normal folks normal interests. There were hundreds of posts from hundreds of folk about how it felt and how we felt when we finally realized being "our" kind of different was a good thing. I hereby welcome you officially to the Legion Of Loaners', honorable rolls. You are now authorized to roll your own. Roll on little brother. Frosty The Lucky.

Very nice, I like them all. A bouquet of pokers eh. shouldn't that be a "Pouquet"? Frosty The Lucky.

The gimme folk have been around all my life. They want the EASY answer, the one secret so they can do IT without having to study or work at it. Guys I worked with who spent all their after work time sucking down beer while I read and thought I was just lucky I knew so much. Guys who didn't understand something I said so I was stupid. Anyone here remember when Ron Reil was a regular poster on theforge list? He wrote a website to help folk build his linear burners the EZ being the most popular probably because it was "easy" it isn't, it's just more simple. Anyway Ron stopped replying to E-mails unless you're a friend because of all the folk who'd start asking questions without reading the FAQ. What really did it for him were how many got mad when he told them to read the directions. Heck, one guy got so ticked he drove Ron off theforge list altogether. In spite of all the chowderheads who waste everybody's time asking previously answered questions, sometimes several times in a row, or just say dumb things thinking they sound smart. The guys still trying to get the knowledge out deserve more thanks that I can articulate. I sometimes wish I had an E-rubber chicken I could reach through the screen and slap the snot out of the . . . Special ones. Steve, Rich, you have my deepest regards for what you put up with and how much you do. Don't give up please, I'd miss you and I'm not a bladesmith. I just value the real deal where ever I find it. Frosty The Lucky.

That makes sense. Like a resist etching or a chill plate to control weld bead. Excellent a new trick to add to my old mental tool kit. Thank you. Frosty The Lucky.

Coffee can works just fine but you won't be able to do much for bent or built up work. Eve a Fredric's cross has to be pretty small to fit a bean/coffee can forge. And if you make it larger you run out of burner so you find yourself building a propane burner. No reason NOT to go ahead on it, it's a gentle taste of having tools and equipment, no matter what you have something else will catch your eye, present itself or be necessary to do a job. Shop space is another ever growing need thing, no matter how large your shop is, it's too small. I built a 30'x40' steel shop and it was getting crowded before I got the roof on. You can never have enough power outlets, ventilation, doors, lights, storage, bench space, compressed air. On and on. Don't forget the tunes. Tunes are good. Frosty The Lucky.

The issue keeping your forge from coming to welding heat in a reasonable time is not insulation, it's the specific heat of hard fire brick. Think of heating and cooling like momentum in a moving object, the higher the specific gravity (density) of a given object the more energy it takes to raise or lower it's velocity a given amount. Specific heat is analogous but for a given amount of heat, energy is energy though it manifests itself in different ways. So, your hard fire brick has a much higher specific heat than isulating fire brick or kaowool insulating refractory blanket. Hard brick has two things going that make your forge slow to come to heat, first it's high specific heat, second it's low insulating properties, I believe it's R value is pretty close to 1 rather than R 5 for Kaowool. That's per inch and I could have the numbers all wrong. Still, it holds as an example. Simply insulating outside the hard brick is going to improve performance but not much in a small forge. What getting that mass of hard brick up to heat will do is impressive, it will heat your working stock much faster than an insulating refractory liner. We're using a reverberatory forge, meaning the flame heats the liner and the HOT liner heats the working stock by IR radiation. In this case the higher the specific heat of the liner the longer it's radiation will stay energetic. The working stock won't suck the heat from the forge as fast as it will in a Kaowool lined forge. You have a few basic solutions without having to go over the top. First, you can just let your forge get hot, maybe do some hand or prep work, clean and sharpen tools, have lunch or whatever it takes to keep you sane for the length of time and amount of propane you'll burn while it gets to welding heat. Once it's up to temp you'll be able to work fast as small stock especially will be sparking hot in a minute or two. Another option would be to split your hard bricks. If you have access to a tile saw it's pretty easy, split the hard bricks to between 1 1/4" - 1" and lay your forge with a layer of insulating brick as backers. The liner will be pretty resistant to flux, not proof but resistant, it'll be resistant to getting poked and scraped by stock and it'll have a decently high reverbratory quotient. (Whatever the real term is) Again leaving a free space behind the split brick liner and an outer liner will act as insulation to a degree. Not a lot but a whole bunch better than trying to heat a full brick. Using an insulating refractory liner, be it light fire brick or ceramic blanket, Kaowool being one of many, has issues of their own. Light refractories are relatively fragile, even cold a poke or scrape with a steel bar is going to mark or seriously damage it. Get it hot and it's more fragile. Silicate ceramics are susceptible to caustics and forge welding fluxes are generally pretty caustic at welding heats. Borax and anhydrous borax will dissolve soft brick and ceramic blanket like hot water through cotton candy. There are ways around flux damage though and those are generally kiln washes and the current favorite among the gas forge guys is ITC-100 though it's price is kind of taking out of the home forge market. There are others though and a web search for "kiln Washes," will find many. I'm sure some are available in Germany and everybody over here ships. An alternative I've adopted is mixing my own. ITC-100 is kaolin (porcelain) clay and zirconium silicate at about a 30%:70% ratio. Another fellow on Iforge likes a different recipe being zirconium silicate, colloidal silica and sodium silicate. This recipe is an established kiln wash but is so silica heavy I feel it's likely a lot more susceptible to flux damage. That's just my opinion, I haven't tried it so my opinion is suspect and a LOT of guys like it. He has how to videos on Youtube but I don't have the link handy. Sorry. Frosty The Lucky.

You WELDED graphite to cast iron? Those brushes couldn't've been straight graphite or it wouldn't've even looked like it stuck let alone welded. Of course I'd be a multiple PHD if I learned enough from all my mistakes, being wrong is a way of life for me. I'll be reading to see what's going on. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard, pilot error guy, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you might come to like how many IFI folk live within visiting distance. It's good to acknowledge mistakes, good on ya. NOW post the pic! <SHEESH!> Frosty The Lucky.

Nice looking bracket Gundog. Besides reinforcing it to take side loading from wind swinging signs. The suggestion I have is to tighten up the quarterfoil. As the main element all four scrolls should be more even AND connect. It's also the perfect place for creative collaring, band, twist, coil, etc. Twist or coiled collars can showcase some nice features, say a forged pea vine holding it all together. I like putting little touches that aren't obvious to reward folk for takig a closer look at my work. Of course that can backfire, sometimes more skilled craftsmen look and the flaws are standing out more than they need to. <wink> Without getting all wordy, my critique is to even (tighten ) up the quarterfoil. Frosty The Lucky.

No, it is NOT society. WE are society, you me and all the other chowderheads walking the planet. Thinking society should or should not be a certain way is delusional. If it's broken enough fix it. Bemoaning how things SHOULD be just makes a person a "shouldhead." When it gets down to issues the only thing we can really change is ourselves, we can influence others but not really change them. If nobody in your society wants to do manual labor the person who will can name the price. The king of the world has a backed up toilet, the plumber is going to get called and that plumber can demand a king's ransom for the repair. Plumbing is a high paying trade, so is electrician, auto mechanic, mason, carpenter, less so but a LOT of guys want to be carpenters, still as long as they don't get too greedy their family never goes hungry, mortgages don't get foreclosed, etc. A person who has good manual skills and isn't afraid to use them never goes hungry or sleeps on a park bench. Heck, thinking about it we ought to be hoping EVERYBODY decides to go to college, earn multiple degrees and never ever learns to take care of the dirty jobs. We'll be rich. And not just have lots of money, we'll be rich in the knowledge we CAN do whatever we need to and not depend on others for the basics. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Shane, glad to have you. I'm afraid a 100lb Beaudry and a 380lb. Peter Wright are just not good for someone just getting involved to expose themselves to. Oh no you should immediately divest yourself of these dangerously addictive objects and start picking up tools in the traditional manner. Hunt, sometimes for years before you find a proper 100lb. beginner's anvil. Only in this way can we even begin to consider you a true devotee of the blacksmith's craft. To maintain yourself in good standing with the brotherhood of blacksmiths you need to find somewhere safe to hide those pieces of equipment. I will, at no extra cost to you, store them out of sight in a secluded back corner of my shop where no unsuspecting person can accidentally subject themselves to their evil charms. I shudder to think of how close a call you've already encountered, save yourself! I'll send you my address in a PM. When you're eyes stop rolling please be advised we LOVE pics, shop, tools, projects, works in progress, scenery, kids, dogs, cats, food. No joke, we LOVE pics. Frosty The Lucky.

Try blocking ONE side of the intakes, don't block both sides the motor relies on the blower for cooling. There are other methods that work well, like aiming the blower so the air only hits part of the tuyere pipe. A gate valve in the air lie works well too. Frosty The Lucky.

Nice looking blade, distinct pattern with good contrast. That saw chain comes off one version of a "feller buncher." Pretty awesome machines in use, watch from a distance though, they throw debris. . . HARD, like a brush hog. Frosty The Lucky.

Ivan: Thank you for the honor of asking us this, your trust is treasure greater than gold and gems. While my substance abuse never got to the level of seriously disrupting my life I did spend a few years in the, "live better through blood chemistry" crowd. I find smithing is therapy for my bad days. When I feel I'll never smile again till I kill something slowly lighting a fire and making something sets me right. You see, to get the steel to do what you want you must control it, the fire, the tools and everything that comes in contact, to control those you must control yourself. I've never been able to heat a bar and just beat it. Why not, it's not like you can hurt steel, it's nothing but highly refined dirt. You can destroy it but you can NOT hurt it so what's the point. Before the accident and TBI I was pretty darned good at the anvil, now I'm not much. I know what to do, the muscle memory is pretty much still there but I can't see well out of my left eye. Nerve damage messes with my vision so my brain doesn't have the depth perception to hit where and how I want. My glasses only help some but no correction can make the blear clear. What used to take minutes takes hours and doesn't come out right. <sigh> You bet it frustrates me, gets my back up and I just go after it till I'm too tired to go further. Seriously I can't head a nail straight but I make nails. Last weekend a friend and I went into Anchorage and spent the day with Teenytinymetal guy and I took a shot at something I'd thought of years ago but never got around to trying. It came out recognizable but not so hot. It wasn't nearly so frustrating, it was something I'd never done so I had no superior past examples to compare it to. It's still a pretty mediocre piece but it came out pretty well for a proof of concept piece. a little goofy but so far everybody recognized what it is. It makes me feel better. When I feel better about myself it's easier to control myself so it's easier to control the fire, tools, equipment and all. Still can't see worth beans but what the hey, I'll figure a work around. Heck maybe I'll invent a new tool. <wink> Rashelle: hitting the bags sounds good, I don't need close depth perception and I haven't hit bags since I stopped studying the martial arts. Maybe I'll set up a makawari(sp?) board, I don't need to kick. Then again I did really love the kicks. I've never used martial arts in a fight off the mats that is but I sure did love practicing. thanks, I need things to challenge me and maybe get my fat butt back in some kind of condition. Ivan: Thanks for starting this thread, I'm thinking we have a whole community of folk who deal with frustration, anger and general PITAs. Constructive coping skills are always good things to develop and I'm a sponge for techniques other folk find useful. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Backyard guy, glad to have you! Please put your general location in the header there are a number of smiths in Anchorage. I'm about 50 miles north just the other side of Wasilla. to attach pics to posts click the "More Reply Options" button under the text window, Click the "Browse" button and select the pic file. It's a good thing to resize pics to a couple hundred kb. so they don't fill entire windows when the thumbnail is clicked in the post. Anyway, once you've selected a pic, click the "Attach This File" button and it'll appear in your post as a thumbnail we can all view in your post. John: The name of the place is E.J. Bartells on Witney Rd. I'll shoot the link in a PM. Be sure to tell them you're a member of the Association, we've been getting a great discount. Will you make it to the January 18th. meeting? It'd sure be good to see you again. Frosty The Lucky.

I have a number of pieces that have been outside for more than 10 years with no rust. The finish is from Alex Bealer, "The Art of Blacksmithing" 1pt. paraffin wax, 1pt. turpentine and lamp black. As mixed, in the can, it has a consistency like shoe polish and smells of the turpentine. I apply it to hot metal and it fumes turpentine vapor but leaves a well penetrated and durable finish. I've used a similar mix to water proof my leather boots using bees wax and neats foot oil rather than turpentine and it does a fine job on the boots. I've tried it on steel but the bees wax stays tacky and the neats foot oil doesn't help at all. Plain bees wax is popular and I use it but like a harder wax finish on wrought work. Treewax is my current favorite it's carnuba wax, the stuff used to armor bowling ally lanes and it's about as tough as it gets. Another that is very durable is LPS-3, it's a commercial aerosol product that leaves a coat of very durable and rust preventative wax. The stuff beats the socks off the wax mix I made and by a LONG shot. My Soderfors has a hot applied coat of the paraffin/turpentine/lamp black finish and it's kept her black and nice looking for a good 25+ years some 7-8 of it outdoors. No rust except a fine dusting on the face which has no coating that won't withstand hot steel and hammers. When I say hot applied I took a torch to her till she was fresh cup of coffee hot and rubbed her down with the shoe poliish consistency wax mixture. The turpentine has evaporated out years ago and I have to melt it to use it now and seeing as the samp black settled out a loooong time ago it stays where it is on the shelf most of the time now. Frosty The Lucky.

Okay, we'll forgive you. <grin> Everybody wants pristine tools, especially when breaking into a new craft. Nothing wrong with using that anvil, be careful of the edges with mushroomed edges and don't take a sledge hammer to her. Putting her back to work will rejuvenate her faster than a grinder. maybe a little wire brushing to clean off the loose rust and dirt but that's about all I'd do. If you have a pile of rebar use it, it can be unpredictable but it's plenty usable. It makes dandy yard/garden art and things like tongs, fire tools and fireplace tools and other general use things. For marketable items making them from with things a lay person, potential customer, can identify allows them to experience the transformation of the forge. This is why RR spikes are so popular after being made into knife shaped objects, steak flippers, toasting forks, gnomes, etc. Frosty The Lucky.