Frosty

You're on the list here Hans. Frosty The Lucky.

The only fires the polar native makes in an ice house is an oil lamp. Igloo isn't a native word but I don't recall the origin. almost any earthly temp on one side 1' of snow and the other side will be 27f within less than 2 degrees. Snow caves are a tried and true winter camp/survival shelter. It's hard to beat sleeping in a snow cave, a little visquene to keep your sleeping bag dry and a proper domed roof so you don't get dripped on and it's bug snug in any weather. A CO monitor would be iffy as snow walls aren't air tight so you may have a little fresh air entering at the monitor and not get a warning. I'm only rehashing the dangers and it looks like Crazy Ivan has decided an ice house isn't a good place for a forge. Good to see Crazy doesn't mean dumb. Then again if you're using an induction forge why the heck not? All you'd have to worry about is the humidity in the air and the rust. Frosty The Lucky.

That's a nice looking little stove Frank, I especially like the oven. Nothing bakes like a wood fired oven and a fresh pizza for lunch would be sweet. They haven't been putting dampers in stoves for quite a while, they tend to increase creosote formation. How many sq/ft does it heat i what temp weather? Frosty The Lucky.

Get instruction, as in take a class. The folk at the welding supply will be happy to recommend one to you and may teach safe handling and use of their welding equipment. Buy new equipment, you have to know what you're doing and looking at to safely buy used. A compete torch set isn't enough more than buying bits and pieces, just get the kit. Heck, it's probably more expensive to buy just a couple tips with the rest of the set. Oxy propane may do you well and propane is much less expensive and is available most anywhere. At least here this side of the pond. Frosty The Lucky.

Don't worry about using plumbing weight black pipe for the air supply. Exhaust pipe works a treat, it's easy to work and weld without much for special tools. My larger forge has 3" from the air grate down with 2" welded in from the blower. the 3" extends below the "T" with a 3" exhaust flapper cap clamped on for the ash dump. A little counter weight keeps it closed unless I flip it open with a poker, tongs, etc. OR a back fire pops it open. I got all mine form the shop as drops except for the flap cap. Frosty The Lucky.

I agree Steve, they need to be more upfront. Of course they may just be so new they're not very well organized. I wouldn't burn any bridges but I would tell them they need a more established presence. Of course if they cross my palm at the going price, it's good enough for me. I'm thinking I'd have to be careful about someone just looking for a discount. Frosty The Lucky.

Oh yeah, I LIKE it a lot. Frosty The Lucky.

We have a neighbor who used to complain a LOT but the last time she complained in writing about our barking livestock guardian dog being abused and neglected got her written a ticket for being BAD. Most agencies do NOT like being used as a club for personal nitwits. Anyway, the problem being smoke you can burn the smoke by putting a pilot flame in the plume. It's the same effect as poking a hole in the coal fire to light the smoke. It usually doesn't take much and once lit is usually self sustaining. Sometimes all you need to do is pass a lit torch-like thing through the smoke or use a weed burner. tossing a piece of burning paper in the smoke will work but tends to send burning sparks aloft so I do NOT recommend it. A bit of screen, hardware cloth size +/- at the top of the retort where it can get hot will act as an igniter once the smoke gets burning and keep it burning. Personally I much prefer an indirect retort, after a very little smoke on lighting they're very clean. Ian's rocket retort looks to burn darned clean but if you have nervous neighbor a couple yards of flame shooting into the sky might scare the B'jeebers out of him/er. Of course it MIGHT be worth it. <evil grin> Frosty The Lucky.

What are you going to build for a stand Dave? Good anvil, good price = Goooooood score. Frosty The Lucky.

Looks good John. Frosty The Lucky.

The forestry service will know if they're legit as well. What are they asking you to make? If they pay, does it matter? I suppose it does if you offer a discount to fire and rescue organizations so it'd pay to know. Frosty The Lucky.

You sure got me on that one, I don't think there is a "Usual alloy." I'm thinking asking Timken or the competition is the best bet for good info. What I do "know" is the larger they are generally the lower the carbon content necessary but I doubt they ever drop below medium carbon unless they turn to high alloy. I'm thinking something like 4140 as the bottom end alloy. But that's a guesstimate. Also, the faster they turn, generally the lower the pressure deformation they suffer but the higher the heat and abrasion resistance then need. Breaking augers brings back memories. It probably won't come up again but if it does, use tubing instead of solid bar for extensions and subs. there may be more steel in solid bar but it bends FAR easier than tube.Auger puts tremendous torque stresses on the steel and any flex will end up failing sooner than later. And yeah, I've been thrown on the ground by a hand power auger. Heck, both of us but I rigged a kill line to the plug wire before I'd run one. Just hearing the stories about the other guys getting the snott beaten out of them made that little mod a no brainer. Frosty The Lucky.

I love these questions, I think they're my favorite part of doing demos. The very best questions are from the kids while some of the most bone headed are from their folks. Like the kid who asks he's Dad, is that a real fire? Actually a pretty natural question as we'd coke up the coal early and just burn the breeze so there was very little smoke or flame. Anyway, Dad says, "No, there's a light bulb under the pile with a fan to blow the plastic strips up like flames." I'm thinking, What flames? then the boy says, "but look, the steel is glowing yellow hot!" I was thinking, this kid's got it down! Dad says, "Oh no, that's a flashlight, it's not hot." Well, I just reach past the anvil and touch the bar to the anvil's block to a burst of smoke a whoosh and ball of flame. "You have it right buddy, that's a real fire, this is real steel and it's really HOT." I think the lady standing behind Dad was maybe his wife for the BIG smile she gave me and the poke she gave Dad. Dad asked if it was okay if the boy stayed and asked questions. You betcha! Dad was a decent sort, just didn't know smithing but the boy expected him to know everything. Kids are like that. We got that a lot, that was just the best one. Mostly I use a propane forge at demos now so I don't hear the real fire questions anymore, the jet engine roar and dragon's breath is answer enough. Part of my normal demo patter is dispelling the mythos of blacksmithing, knowledge and practice, no magic. I tell jokes, stories, describe what I'm doing, why, what the tool/hammer/etc. does, the usual. Usually after a little bit I'm fielding magic jokes and we're all laughing, then here comes this gal in a "mother earth" type gown with a small flock of sycophants taking note of everything she says. She breezes up in front of me gazes significantly at what's going on, picks up a leaf finial coat hook off the table on and asks, "Is this old or did someone make it?" I say, "It's still warm from the fire." Folk in the audience behind her are looking shocked and biting their lips. She says as she exits stage right, "Magic, it's just MAGIC!" The audience and I just stand there watching as she breeze off making more profound observations and her sycophant following diligently writing every word down for posterity. She's maybe just out of earshot when someone in the audience starts laughing and shortly we're all gasping for breath. For the rest of the day I have a pretty full audience and folk keep saying, "it's magic, just MAGIC!" I don't know how many times it happened before I noticed this but on another day at the fair a teacher stops with a batch of elementary kids on a field trip. She asks if I can describe what I'm doing and maybe explain it to the kids. You betcha I can, love kids, best questions in the world. I say hi and tell them my name, teach corrects me with Mr. Frost and that's okay but I wink at the class when she's not looking. I'm IN, and we're off and rolling. I start by asking who knows what THIS is laying my hand on the anvil. One youngster is jumping up and down up front with his hand up so I call on him. "Its a coyote killer!" He shouts excitedly. Okay, I'm dead in the water for a few seconds, hadn't heard that one before but had to agree, even though it isn't an Acme anvil. Since then I've heard from a number of guys who've heard the same thing from youngsters at demos. One of these days I gotta get me a WilE Coyote stuffed toy to lay under my anvil. My favorite type of questions at demos are the, Can you fix this? Oh baby! I love those almost as much as the kid's questions. I've always seen myself more as the town blacksmith type guy, a generalist who'll take a shot at whatever comes in. "Specialization is for insects." R. A. Heinlein. Frosty The Lucky.

Very nice, I like it a LOT. Frosty The Lucky.

A glass pack or other muffler for the air noise, don't forget the intake, some compressors are noisier on the intake side. Set your hammer on wood with a layer of felt under it and ground vibrations will be significantly damped. Better than a sheet of rubber in fact. A welded steel frame hammer might make noise from the frame, you can glue felt to the frame in places to damp the resonance, it doesn't need to be total coverage. Another method is to bolt zinc strips to the frame. Basically anything that will damp the resonance of the frame will cancel a LOT of noise. this is why my anvils all stand on steel stands, they damp the resonance and my anvils just clank rather than shriek out with ear splitting rings. My 50lb. LG is pretty quiet, even dry firing the dies. You can hear it outside the shop but not in the barn or house, let alone the neighbor's place. It's mounted on 4x12s on concrete floor, nothing special atall, atall. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. I think the officer might've been exaggerating a bit to maybe discourage you from scrounging along the tracks. THAT is a federal offense, don't do it, getting caught can result in a little graybar hotel time. You can buy rail and spikes from the RR at their salvage sales or perhaps the scrap yard, if they sell to the public, just get a receipt. When I started figuring out propane forges I copied the Johnson Appliance 122 I had access to for measuring and have had good results using their basic ratio of. 1 ea. 3/4" burner outlet per 350 cu/in volume. the Johnson uses a blown (gun) burner and the same ratio works well with NA (Naturally Aspirated) burners. I've had much better luck using multiple plies of 1" refractory blanket than thicker say 2". The 1" bends to fit the shell better, fewer and smaller wrinkles. In my first pipe forge I made a hard inner liner from a rammable high phosphate refractory with a 1" ceramic blanket outer liner. Worked well but kind of overkill. For a pipe forge I like stainless steel stove pipe. It's available in many diameters and lengths, usually multiples of 2" for short lengths and the hardware is off the shelf. Wall hanger brackets make perfect legs, for instance. You can work it without special tools, hole saws, drill bits, pop rivets do the trick, nicely. Lining it with a ceramic blanket is as easy as cutting it an inch or so long and compression will hold it in place securely. Using a good kiln wash like ITC-100 will help it survive welding fluxes if you're planning on welding. A split 3,000f hard fire brick makes a fine floor but a lot of guys use kiln shelf, both are dandy floors but both last a LOT longer with a kiln wash. I don't know what kind of blower you're are referring to or what CFM you need. Check some of the commercial forge/burner manufacturers and see what they use. Running the air fuel mix around a corner is a good practice to assist mixing and it helps prevent back firing though if you get a backfire going, just shut off the gas 1/4 turn ball valve is my favorite shut off, and do some tweaking on the mix or air speed. A back fire is when the flame front starts moving us the burner tube away from the forge chamber BACK towards the blower and if allowed to continue can do BAD things. You'll see a lot of opinion about which basic burner design is better but they'll both perform well if properly designed and tuned. Beyond the obvious, portability, ease of construction and being tied to electric, both are more than capable of driving an iron melter let alone a welding capable forge. Frosty The Lucky.

Bread, mmmmmmmmmm. When I was a field guy I'd make up a batch of dough and we'd open a canned ham, cut long pieces of ham, give it a quick roast over the fire, wrap it in dough, then bake it. Mmmmmm. Dessert would often be cinnimon sugar rolled in dough and baked over the fire, of course a guy could roll or smear anything on it. Or just pat little flatish loaves, wipe with some oil and whatever and bake on a hot rock by the fire, Roman stye. The biggest thing I miss from my cabin in the woods days up here is the wood cook stove, they bake like nothing else. Frosty The Lucky.

Nothing worth straightening on that leg, better than mine and I'm just using my vises. Plenty good job on the spring, mild steel is plenty good enough. I made mine from spring steel and I did WAY too much work for the job it does. Search around the site for leg vise pics, you'll see so many different ways to mount the things you may have trouble deciding which is easiest for you. Personally I prefer the easiest operation (whatever I'm doing) that does the job with a reasonable safety factor. Frosty The Lucky.

Apple seed grind? Is that a specific convex blade grind? Or am I so far off it'll take you guys a while to stop laughing. S'okay, I'm good with laughing folk, sooooo much better than angry folk. <grin> When I was working highways maint. all our trucks had escape gear, a window punch and a belt knife. The belt knife has a proper name I'm sure but that's what we called them. They were sort of like a plastic knuckle duster with an enclosed blade. You used it by making a fist with it and drawing it back across a trapped victim, the belt would slip into a shallow "V" shaped channel and be drawn across the blade. Training classes had us all using the things and they worked as well on leather as vinyl or seatbelt web. Later escape tools had the widow breaker and belt knife on the same tool. A knuckle duster with a hard steel point to break windows and a really sharp blade to cut belts. Great tools, you can punch right through a side window and cut the belt on the back stroke. A few years before all I had was my pocket knife and knocked out a side window and managed to cut the gal out of her belts. The really frightening down side was the car was catching fire rapidly so we couldn't do anything but just yard her out through the window, spinal injuries or not. I really wish I'd had one of the escape tools, we might have had time to go more slowly and at least stabilize her neck. Turned out the air bag had knocked the snott out of her and she was just out, not injured. Still, an escape tool should be an item in all our vehicles, might be us or one of ours next time. Seriously, if you have a window punch you don't have to wait till the car fills with water to get out. Frosty The Lucky.

When I reread my post I was afraid I'd offended you or worse. I'm not nearly so good at saying things as I used to be. Throughout this thread I'm pretty sure we're looking at the incorrect use of a trade/craft jargon at one level or another. The original question is about forging case hardened steel. A few follow up questions and we're left wondering if the original question is really about forging. Then using a gas forge comes up and I'm even more confused. But that's not really important. We made an assumption the person asking knows what they're asking and try to answer it as best as we can. Once we get some more info the thread diverges into us talking about case hardened vs. high carbon and sure could go farther. I'm thinking one of our biggest challenges sharing the craft is the language. Jargon has a bad rap but in most cases it has an important purpose. It lets folk talk about a subject and everybody who hears or reads knows exactly what's been said or asked. For instance if I said,"I REALLY had to draw that one out." Most everybody here would know exactly what I meant but what if the listener was a psychologist or counselor? They would be more likely to think I had to ask a lot of leading questions to get to someone to reveal some darned thing. Consider how many of the young folk entering the trade have as their entire experience base WOW, other RPGs or movies. The poor guys THINK they know something but they're not in a position to even ask good questions and certainly can't understand the answers let alone be able to sift through answers from guys who have their knowledge based on RPGs or maybe, who knows what. It isn't really their faults they don't know what they're saying or think they're hearing but it sure can get frustrating for all of us. We get frustrated at the repeat questions of another kid who wants to learn blacksmithing by forging a Damascus sword and hasn't bothered to read any of the bladesmithing threads here. So, as any folk who've been following the forum know, our frustration turns to short tempers and sometimes anger. Of course our reactions frustrate them and that shortly turns to anger and we all lose. Ain't life a pip? Frosty The Lucky.

Hunter: Ed is in our prayers, as is your whole family. Frosty The Lucky.

Oh yeah, the hand crank Singer is still the best selling sewing machine Singer made. One fits in a small suite case size case and doesn't take up near the room. Folk moving west didn't have room to spare, a treadle sewing machine was pretty high fallutin. My sister collects, restores and uses sewing machines of all kinds at least used to have a couple hundred of the things in various states of restoration. Knows the Singer info number by memory. The hand crank machines are unbeatable for embroidery. Frosty The Lucky.

Looking good Eddie. Turn the flash off on your camera and put the light to the side so it doesn't reflect so strongly. The texture is going to show strong highlights regardless of how you shoot it unless you make a light box. An easy light box can be a piece of frosted plastic with the light on the far side. Even easier in the field is one ply of or toilet of nose tissue over the flash to diffuse the light. Digital cameras do pretty well if you just put the subject next to a bright window and shoot the pic from a distance, standing by the wall the window is in. This keeps the light from reflecting straight back at the lens. Frosty The Lucky.

It'll work but you'll need a really BIG fire to provide enough heat to draw. Why is a chimney costing so much? Does it really need a concrete pad? I haven't checked prices lately but I do know 12" is pretty spendy. Are you planning on triple wall except where it passes through the wall? The off the shelf hangers are generally good unless the stack has more than a few feet free standing over the roof line. I really prefer to use 1/2" electrical conduit flattened on the ends as guys rather than cable. We get the occasional 100+mph. wind "event." "Event" is what whoever makes the decisions prefer to call wind storms so as not to scare off folk wanting to buy homes. A really good thing to add is a "T" at the bottom running from the horizontal section to the vertical stack with one leg pointing downwards. This allows warm air to move upwards along one side of the stack and allows the cold air to move downwards on the opposite side. It also lets any water to drain without entering the shop. Regardless of what I suggest, check with code, your insurance and folk who know. Much better safe than sorry. Frosty The Lucky.

No Jerome they're NOT necessarily HC at all. Sheared steel isn't a sign of high carbon all things being equal. Shattered or snapped is a "maybe for HC. Or do you mean shattered, crushed, broken? Roller bearings can support huge loads because the force is distributed over the length of the roller, the case hardening is to resist wear. Not to pick on you but you offer a lot of advice here, is your knowledge and skills sets up to helping folk break into the craft? I know I ask myself that question frequently. One major part of the craft is failure analysis, you have to be able to figure out what went wrong and why, maybe one of the most important parts in fact. Frosty The Lucky.