Frosty

That ain't getting carried away unless it's your portable unit, then it's a might be. You Sooooo fit in here. <grin> Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header it'll be a LOT easier to hook up with folk within visiting distance. Take Jerry's advice and hook up with the Texas gang, they're active and and a good bunch. You'll learn more in an hour with an experienced smith than you will teaching yourself in days or more. They'll also almost surely have a tailgating session in the parking lot. Not the BBQ kind of tailgating, the tools and equipment for sale and wanted kind of tailgating. Frosty The Lucky.

Just use the "stump" anvil. Horns are latecomers to the craft you don't need one for most any operation. AND that gear has a nice shaft if you need to true something up. Of course you can try what you propose but all in all you'll be better served learning to forge on what you have. It isn't the tools that do the work, it's the smith. You don't even need a flat surface, I don't know how long it was done but many Viking blades were forged on boulders and I'd be willing to bet using cobbles for hammers. Build your skills sets and you'll find it doesn't make a lot of difference what you use for an anvil, hammer, cut, etc. Frosty The Lucky.

Alex: The Mojave isn't known for wet soils,liquifaction isn't a factor except maybe during a cloudburst. I have my 50lb little giant on the shop slab floor. Sure I doubled the rebar under it and it's a bit thicker but it's so FAR from a cubic yard of concrete. . . It doesn't rattle a thing in the shop and I tested it by standing a nickle on edge on the floor next to it. Just make the footing wider than the hammer's foot and double up the rebar. I'd make it 6" thick but it's probably not necessary, 25lb. LGs don't hammer the floor very hard. Frosty The Lucky.

Well, okay, there's a pic! That'll work, I'd maybe put a higher rim on it especially where the coal's piled. I have helpers on my gas forge that slip in or out as needed. They're simple affairs made of 3/4" rd. tubing and 3/4" angle iron with 1" rd. tubing welded under the table so the helpers can slide in and out. What I discovered after installing the things is they're perfect for holding tongs right where you need them and will give you a memorable reminder if you grab a pair by the bits. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome back. Life is that thing that gets in the way of what we plan. I have a whole drawer full of that "T" shirt. Pics, we want to SEEEEE what you're doing. Frosty The Lucky.

Good looking work all round. My first pair of tongs were near perfect for turning hot dogs on a grill, not so good for forging. <grin> The holdfast looks like it'll do well. At a recent clinic the demonstrator (who's name escapes me right now but I can blame the TREE) used holdfasts with a cross bar welded as a foot. They worked exceptionally well you can hold long pieces in the middle, along the anvil's edge, etc. Very handy mod. I only made one little mod and used/forged a longitudinal curve, like a slice lengthwise of pipe so the holdfast foot wouldn't mark the work. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. The CBA is a very active group and all over the golden state. don't get in a big hurry to buy tools till you have an idea what you want to do and what you'll need. Most of us have a lot of tools we picked up only to find out later they aren't so good for what we do. No big thing, we all did/do it. As Thomas says good wood is good trade stock, blacksmiths are almost always up for a trade but get your dickering face on. <wink> Frosty The Lucky.

Sounds like you're in the ball park. I was estimating your tube length off the screen and am not a bit surprised I was that far off. .035" mig tip should work well and with the shape of the flame it's aimed correctly. What is the "T" size? The first couple I made I used 3/4"x3/4"x3/4" "T"s and they worked well but were a bear to adjust. now I'm using 1"x1"x3/4" to make it intake air more easily and they're a bunch easier to adjust and much less sensitive to breezes. About commercial burners: You'll see the tube is tapered it's full length at a ratio of just under 1:12 or a bit under 12*. This gives them very robust induction and they use larger jets and much lower psi. Tapering the tube full length is sort of outside the typical home shop unless a person wanted to build a spinning lathe and learn to spin OR buy a machine lathe and machine them from billets. Just WAY too much work for normal folk making about $200+ for a commercial burner reasonable. There's no question a commercial burner will beat mine or Ron Reil's or Michael Porter's or a Rex easy. Ron and I spent a happy year brainstorming and experimenting with these things, not because we thought we could make a better burner but because we love to tinker and the early failures got out backs up. Ron spent a lot of time and effort developing an easy to build linear induction type burner and I went with an ejector type for it's more robust induction. Michael got involved after Ron and I stopped playing together with burners and he developed a good instruction set for making his version of an ejector. All in all I have no idea how many hours we invested reinventing the wheel but it's been a fun ride and I get a bit of a rush seeing one of our burners on someone's forge or foundry furnace or whatever. In all that time the biggest problem was getting them to induct enough air to produce a neutral flame. If we could taper the tube it becomes easy as the gradually increasing diameter requires the air fuel flow to fill a larger volume increasing the vacuum and draw. Using a smaller diameter jet and higher psi makes a stronger vacuum as well making for a lean flame so a choke makes for easy adjustment. This is a perfectly valid method and will make as hot a fire. However, we spent a lot of time going the way we did because a smaller jet means less fuel and fewer BTUs per second overall. A smaller jetted burner has it's upside, it's easier to adjust using the choke, no question so it's generally easier to build too. Good points. While it's absolute temperature is as high it doesn't make as much heat total so the size of the forge chamber is less. I use 0.023" mig tips in 1/2" burners for ban can forges with volumes around 150-175 cu/in. Gee, didn't that turn rambly. Frosty The Lucky.

Dustin: Sure rebar is usually not blade steel but the biggest problem is how unpredictable it is alloy wise. However like any found steel dealing with a little mystery is a must, it's just not very often a good report with rebar. If your blades take and hold an edge without being brittle you got a piece that'll work. The fish cleaver actually has some post apocalyptic appeal. The other blades look like good work, I wouldn't apologize if they'd come out of my shop. Then again, I'm not a bladesmith guy. Good score and nice results. Well done. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Dane, glad to have you. As a start pull up a comfy chair, some snacks, a beverage and start reading the sections here. Unless you're some kid of wonder I'll be every new guy question has been answered many times already. From equipment and tools to how tos and contact info, most anything you want to know is there. Once you've done a little reading you'll have enough knowledge base to have good questions and understand the answers. Regardless we're a pretty friendly bunch and really like pictures, heck we LOVE pics, progress pics, projects, shop, tool finds, kids, dogs, recipes, scenery, etc. You know the usual stuff. Frosty The Lucky.

You did fine, that's a dandy anvil. I'd caution you about striking it with the hammer close to an edge it may be hard enough it'll chip. I wouldn't get fancy, I'd screw it to something to adjust the height and put it to use. The dimple in the center is more cosmetic, just don't do any forging over it unless you want either that as a positive on the under side of the work or maybe as a bolster for punching. I'm looking at a group of fullers and swage-like features. I wouldn't take a sledge to it but otherwise I've used a lot worse. Frosty The Lucky.

I'm very happy you got to it in time! Ain't modern medicine wonderful? Heal up soon but don't rush it. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Slet, glad to have you. Don't sweat your English, lots of us live in English speaking countries and don't speak it so well. Seriously we're blacksmiths not English Majors. . . Well, okay there probably are English majors on the forum but it's not the norm. Oh NO don't tell me one of you is named Norm! There are few real rules where blacksmithing is concerned and making a hammer before considering yourself one isn't in the book. As you learn the craft your interests will change and you'll get commissions you never thought you would. It's a life long learning curve and the end is never in sight. Frosty The Lucky.

Okay, on to your burner. I didn't take calipers to my screen but it looks like you have a 5", maybe 6" nipple under the "T". There is a set of ratios to making these burners work well, based on the "throat." The throat is the narrowest part of the tube, usually where it narrows from the air intake. The tube length should be 12 x the bore diameter. For a 3/4 burner, .75x12= 9" not including the flare. This isn't a hard ratio but it's the one used in commercial burners. I've found 8-9" works well for a 3/4" tube. Using too short a tube means the propane and air don't mix very well. Though propane is a gas it behaves like a mist of small droplets so it needs some time in the tube to help it mix. If the air fuel doesn't mix well you'll get areas of the flame that are too rich and others that are too lean so you can have lots of dragon's breath and still make scale. A short tube also means less entrainment to you have to use a smaller jet and or hold it farther back in the T for a less than optimum burner, even if it's adjusted correctly. The flame in the pic looks to be a little richer than I like but it's well formed and close so you have the jet well aligned and it's burning pretty well. What diameter mig tips are you using? I use 1/4" copper to the burner itself and 3/8" pipe from the regulator to the manifold. The larger diameter pipe holds more volume so you don't get a pressure drop that differs between burners. You have your plumbing in series so on burner is first in line of supply and the second is going to suffer a pressure drop. If you replumb it so there is a "T" centered between the burners you won't have different pressure at each one. having everything as equal as possible makes the whole a lot easier to adjust and you won't get changes hen you raise or lower the pressure. Both get an equal bite of the pie whatever the regulator pressure and both will be happier. I plumb my mig tips using a brass 1/8" MPT to 1/4" flare. I take the correct drill bit for tapping 1/4"-28 and use it as a gauge to select the 1/8" MPT end of thee fitting so the 1/4"x28 tap fits properly and I don't have to chase it or do something fancy to thread it for the mig tip. This lets me drill and tap the "T" fitting 1/8" MPT and screw the brass fitting in from the top. don't tap it very deep the "T" isn't very thick so you want the tapered pipe threads to bottom out on the hex section of the brass fitting while the threads are still pulling. You don't want ANY wobble. so, with the brass fitting tapped 1/4"x28 (that's FINE) on the 1/4"MPT end of the fitting the mig tip will screw right in and the whole unit will thread into the "T". don't make it more than snug or it'll strip the brass fitting because the "T" is so thin. Then it's just a matter of flaring the 1/4" copper tubing and putting it together. Oh yeah, don't forget to put the flare nut on the tubing BEFORE you flare it! That's all I can think of with what I know about your set up. It looks like you've done a workmanly job but didn't have or understand some of the basic principles of induction burners. No big thing, everybody has to figure them out, Ron and I spent more than a year brainstorming and tweaking the things. So, try putting a longer nipple on them 8-9" and see how they work. OR plumbing them so they have even supply lines and see how that works. Remember when trouble shooting or tuning, do ONE thing and test it. If you start changing more than one thing at a time you'll NEVER be able to track down what did what without going back to square one. TAKE NOTES! I'll keep track of this thread or you can PM me and I'll do what I can for you. I don't check my comp every day so be patient with me. Oh and tomorrow is a club meeting so I'll check again Sunday. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Professo, glad to have you. I think what you really want to know is if learning blacksmithing will help you in your chosen line of study. There are two basic types of learning, book or pure knowledge, the other being acquired skills. One without the other is like a sandwich made of only bread or without bread. If you wish to become a mechanical engineer doing some hands on engineering work will make you a far better engineer. If on the other hand you actually want to become a blacksmith having a degree in engineering sure won't hurt, you'll be able to design architectural pieces that will be safe and do the job properly. Unfortunately your question is too broad to get the kind of answer I think you're looking for. To give any but the broadest most general advice we need to know you better, what you want to do and a little about you personally helps too. Stick around, read the sections for what you think you want to do and don't hesitate to make yourself known, we're a pretty friendly bunch even if we can get crabby now and again. <wink> Frosty The Lucky.

Dave: You're making an intuitive mistake in thinking the harder the rod the longer it'll last. This isn't how the stuff works, a lot depends on what it's being used on. High tungsten facing is typically used for metal on metal contact points where one contact is brief while the other is constant. Tool joints on drill strings being the application I'm most familiar with. A string of drill joints, 27' each when I was working the oil patch, Prudhoe Bay. Each joint Pin & box or male and female is larger in diameter than the rest of the stick. This puts the tool joint in contact with the inside of the well casing constantly but the inside of the casing is only being rubbed on for maybe 30 seconds to maybe a minute. We used to face tool joints with tungsten carbide grit in a hard facing wire matrix. When hard facing drill auger, bits, etc. the high rockwell facing rods didn't last long at all, one or two holes. The lower rockwell wire/rods tended to last a couple years before needing reworked. The tines you want to hard face will flex so a really hard rod will tend to spall under flexion. Being as you're using it in gravel even wear resistant flexible rod may not do it but I believe it'll last a lot longer. Even a little flex will spall the really hard facing. ON another tack if it's always being used in loose gravel you might try using a high molecular weight plastic sheathing. How's THAT for counter intuitive? In the real world the belly blade sanders used for plowing snow and sanding used to have steel bladed spinners. Spinners are the disks with paddles on them that throw the sand behind the truck. The guys in the heavy duty shop used to order a few hundred spinners as normal preseason prep. Then one of the guys tried putting heavy duty poly propylene blades on the spinners and darned if his experimental first try didn't last almost two seasons. Plastic spinners are now industry standard, he should've patented the idea but no. . . <sigh> Regardless, there may be nothing you can realistically do, these things may just be high wear items. Heck, it might be cheaper to have them replace the granite gravel with limestone gravel. Frosty The Lucky.

I vote for phosphoric acid, it doesn't "remove" oxidization it removes the oxygen, returning the rust to steel/iron. Read a bottle of Naval Jelly. I use lab grade 99.97% phosphoric acid diluted in varying degrees depending on how scaled or how fast I need it to work. Naval Jelly works very well but it's intended to be painted on so it has a jelling agent and surfacants. It works in a bath if you dilute it so it can flow into small spaces. A few words of warning about phosphoric acid above about 20%. It's a powerful acid all safety precautions are in order, PPE includes neoprene gloves, apron, face shield and eye protection underneath, boots, rubber is best. Phosphates work because it's a very reactive element, it bonds far more easily with oxy than most other things like iron or carbon hence it deoxidizes rusty steel. It also bonds very easily with calcium like in your BONES, do NOT get it on you and heavens forbid not IN you! At low concentrations phosphoric acid is used as concrete wash, it'll clean and whiten your floor like magic. If you were to spill phosphoric acid from the bottle on the floor it will react EXPLOSIVELY! As I recall Naval Jelly is 30% phosphoric acid and probably only foams on concrete but I haven't tested it. It REALLY works but it can be DANGEROUS be careful. Frosty The Lucky.

That's a fine piece of work Dognose. The fork is well formed, even and attractive. The decorations on the handle are not only unique, they're attractive and look comfortable in the hand. The finial loop is even, well formed and flows into the shank very nicely. It didn't come out as you originally envisioned it, ask anyone who's done this and see if you're unique in that little fact of life. This is where taking notes of what how and why is soooooo important to the learning curve. I'd be bragging about that fork for decades. It CERTAINLY wouldn't make me feel frustrated or question why I play with fire and hammers. DUDE, we all have days when we wonder why we ever lit a fire or got into ANYTHING. Failure or disappointing results is a fact of life in any craft worth pursuing. Without challenge we're just processing food and air, life is overcoming obstacles, not just living. Some projects don't let us enter the meditative state that allows us to get INTO the steel, it happens, some processes are like that. The decorative punches and filing involved sure could fall into that category. However, the Zone will open if you do it enough. Call it muscle memory, reflex, autopilot, whatever but once we attain a level of skill our conscious mind can step back from the fiddly details of controlling the tools and become the director, THE zone. Sweet metalhead nirvana! Before the accident I could predict the metal's flow under every blow, not just the outward form, the flow of the metal. This zone isn't part of your conscious mind, it's in the part of your mind that controls your muscles, allows you to walk or heck just stand still. Simply standing requires your brain to do thousands of calculations per second in micrometric detail or we'd just fall over, walking takes hundreds of thousands of calculations per second. We have to train our brains enough to put or smithing skills on that level, THAT'S when the zone is ours. Very desirable state but the result of many hours, maybe years of work. It's worth it though. It's glimmers like this fork that are the light at the end of the tunnel and it AIN'T an oncoming train! Frosty The Lucky.

I LIKE your gate Chuck, really like it. The twists look like lot of work but sure are attractive. Very flowing, obviously forged and no doubt very tactile. My favorite body styles include long hoods, bullet headlights, round flowing fenders and running boards, wonderful bus. I'm sure the wife's exclamation was one of joy. <grin> I like your bus too Beth, it's different from what you see over here and different is good. Love the interior shot, wood stove and kid's looking out the back window. I'll bet it's a giggle fest when that crew gets together for a sleepover or road trip. I'm liking this thread better with every post. Frosty The Lucky.

Matt: Do you work in Yellin's shop or subcontract Clare's work? Either way, visiting you is on my bucket list. If you think I can be long winded here you ought ought to meet me. <grin> Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks Wayne but it's not necessary. The local EJ Bartells is only about 50 miles from here in Anchorage and they carry or will happily get virtually any refractory a person may need. I won't go on about the company, they don't advertise here and I don't want to cross the line and get their very name blocked. Heck, next time I'm in town I'll have to suggest it to them. The local guys are INTO controlled fire, love to brainstorm with a fellow and have a pretty BIG library of tech books. Gave our organization (I use THAT term loosely. <grin>) a serious discount without asking, frequently give me product samples to test and "scraps" from their installations. The last time I talked to the guys they didn't carry kiln washes though, not an application in their type of furnace. WE buy Zircopax (zirconium silicate flour) and flat rate shipping included it ran to $3.73/lb. Kaolin clay is more expensive but all told it's a small fraction of what ITC-100 costs. Frosty The Lucky.

I look forward to your progress pics Nick, you do some really cool projects and do them well. Thanks. Frosty The Lucky.

Very cool pieces, lots of fun. Frosty The Lucky.

Very well said Rockstar. Nuge: The difference is or should be clear, expressing myself is harder than it used to be. This is what I was trying to say. Say we make a gate following a Yellin gate as closely as we can but we put our mark on it. We copied his design but are claiming the piece as ours. Copy. If on the other hand we put Yellin's mark on it and claim it's his work. Fraud. Why misrepresent a piece? I'm pretty sure a Yellin gate would bring more than one I built, even if the lay person couldn't tell the difference. Steve used a copy of a Moran knife and how a maker marks it as an example of what I'm trying to say. Let me know if that isn't clear enough, I'll try to do better. I know there's a clear succinct way to say this but. . . <sigh> Of course the way my mind works now may not make sense to anyone else, I don't get it often enough. <grin> Frosty The Lucky.