Frosty

Pretty nice opener, a little tweaking and polish (I don't mean shine it up polish) and you'll have a very marketable item. I've found letter openers to be popular sale items at demos, especially if you can make them fast enough to sell it warm from the fire. Frosty The Lucky.

Nice tool James, basically a guided holder for lathe bits. I love it when a tool user adapts tools, faster, better and easier. At first glance I started running the basic principle through my mind in other configurations. Sweet, thank you. I'm going to keep an eye on your posts for sure. I'm an accomplished idea sponge and you my friend are a fertile field. <grin> Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Bud, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header folk won't keep asking you where you live. Nice ladle, especially for a beginner. Are you hooking up with Bryan? He's still too gimpy to spend much time at the anvil but his knee replacement is healing. I'm thinking if you go pester him enough it'll be like therapy and get him up and making stuff sooner. I'm hoping enough of you interior guys will get involved enough to start an interior chapter of the Association of Alaskan Blacksmiths. Our next meeting is in Palmer January 18th. Maybe you can pry Bryan loose for the meet, we haven't seen him in too long. Frosty The Lucky.

Two things come to mind: The #1 cause for huffing is typically exhaust gasses getting in the combustion air flow. OR breezes across the intake. Your home made burner will work a lot better if you use a thread protector rather than a bell reducer for a flare. Bell reducers enlarge the cross section far too abruptly to work well, they induce bad turbulence which inhibits induction. The 1:12 taper is the MAX diameter change without inducing turbulence. Don't scrap your old burner, it only needs a little tweeking. If a Rex is huffing it's probably exhaust in the intake air, I often have to put up a shield when using mine outdoors to break breezes and block the exhaust gasses. Frosty The Lucky.

A HUGE problem with wire wheels and buffs in commercial shops after the huge hazard the are is the guys using them. Seems guys THINK they have to push hard to make them work, it's just the opposite, light pressure is far more effective, the tips of the wire do the cutting and pushing bends the wire over so they don't cut at all, they just rub. Same with buffs, pushing bends the cloth flat so it doesn't work very well. Pushing hard is also really hard on the motor. A little training improves most operations but buffers and wire wheels really need user training for effectiveness and safety. They're two of the most dangerous pieces of equipment in most any shop. Frosty The Lucky.

They make fine letter openers for practical tools. I believe they're so popular sale items is everybody knows what a RR spike is and looks like so the transition into another easily recognized tool is obvious. Even though they make poor blades without a bit welded in a lay person can see the before and after, touch it and use it. I've found RR spikes make good stock for a number of mundane items simply because it doesn't take an expert to see what said item was made from. It's prof positive it was made by a "real" blacksmith. Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. Frosty The Lucky.

Life jackets? <snicker> And couple Gems: chainsaw bar oil and Duralube for lubrication jobs that need to stick and be slick, chainsaw bars of course and I REALLY like it on my Little Giant, less than a 1/4 tsp squirt in the journal pads and it's slicked up for weeks. It's slicked up and doesn't slobber oil. My other Gem is Treewax for finishing, it's carnuba wax and is very hard and durable, it's the stuff used to armor bowling alley lanes. Frosty The Lucky.

Yes, SAE 10 wt. is fine, a few drops in the oil ports at the beginning of a session is all it needs or it'll spew oil all over the place or drain out the bottom. ATF is good too, it doesn't stiffen up like motor oils do but unless it gets really cold light motor oil is fine. ATF has the advantage of being good at cutting sludge, old blowers tend to have a good accumulation of sludge sticking to the inside of the case. Don't use heavy oil like gear oil, it's more trouble than it's worth, the gears need to track it around and a little sling covers the rest. While precisely built blowers come from a time when a lubricant was whatever was handy and though I've never tried it I'll bet a little rendered bacon grease (lard) warm enough to dribble would work just fine. Don't over think it it just needs some lube, 3 in 1 oil or Mazola just nothing heavy and sticky. If you want to go high tech use Dura Lube it's a light weight motor oil additive that provides really high film strength & lubrication at very low viscosity but just a few drops at a time. I use chainsaw bar oil with a little Dura Lube, 1-2 fl. oz./gal. for all my high sling and hot lubrication jobs, the chainsaw bar of course but it works a real treat in my Little Giant, keeps it really slicked up without slobbering all over the place. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard B, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be pleasantly surprised to discover how many of the IFI gang live within visiting distance. The NWBA is a strong group, good bunch of guys to hook up with. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Debra, glad to have you. Wax, oil and other various finishes are a regular topic of conversation and experimentation amongst blacksmiths. None are really long lasting and will require some maintenance. My favorite is Treewax, it's carnuba the same stuff they armor bowling allies with. 18 ga. is pretty light so you're right to consider differential heat as a warp hazard. On the up side Treewax becomes darned fluid at 300f or less so a heat gun is plenty for application. I warm the project and apply it with an old cotton sock I keep in the can. Just bellow smoking hot and it's fluid enough to be drawn into very fine nooks and crannies. Now for my SECRET! I actually have two old socks in my wax can, one for applying the wax to hot steel, the other is dry and I use it to wipe off excess. The stuff is hard as nails mighty tough and doesn't yellow with age. Yellowing is one of my main complaints about most oils, unless the work is dark, it'll alter the color, for instance brushed steel can end up looking like it's been ferric chloride patinaed if oils are applied too thickly. Just so you know, this is MY experience, nothing official so YMMV. Frosty The Lucky.

Medium high carbon steel or even salvaged 5160 spring, coil being the best shape for tong stock will give you the properties but you have to be careful to NOT let them get too hot. Let them get medium red, water quench and they're going to be brittle in they don't just break. Metalmangler's 4140 tongs are really outstanding, they're stiff enough they can be light weight and Mark is so fast making tongs he has a wall full, takes less time to make a pair than find one. Mild will work fine but you need to leave more depth in the bolsters and reins so they don't flex too much. Personally I prefer medium carbon and I have a bucket full of car springs. Frosty The Lucky.

Going well?! After ONE production run you're upping the runs by 20% that's more than "going well" in my book. <grin> Good looking hawks and it looks like you have the tricky part handled. What's the production time per unit? What's the coating, phosphate? Frosty The Lucky.

It's been years since I used the epoxy tubes, my greatest experience was testing them in the materials lab. We'd drill a test block of concrete or sawn rock cube and anchor a piece of thatever they needed tested, bolts, rock anchors, rebar, etc. Let them set and put them in the breaking press, it'd either press concrete test cylinders or pull using the attachments. The stuff they used to anchor the rock along Turnagain Arm was in long plastic tubes with the catalyst in a stripe down the side. They'd drill, insert a tube in the hole, sometimes with a stream of water pouring out like a hose, shove the anchor bolt in and spin it till it stalled the air track drill rig. The couple times they overdid it the drill fatigued the 1 1/2" "Stressproof steel" anchor and snapped it, it NEVER broke the glue. All that rambling and I have to say I don't know what the new stuff is like but my experience with epoxy anchor cements from 30+ years back says it's got to be better now. Frosty The Lucky.

I lifted mine on 4x12s through bolted with all thread. I made a treadle extension to get it back down to comfortable working height. Unfortunately I couldn't find pics of it with the extension. I keep it from walking in use by anchoring it into a gozinta, she rocks but stays put. Frosty The Lucky.

That'd be up to Deb. Pocket is winding down, making new friends isn't really on her bucket list. Heck she isn't into rides in the car she has a heating pad in her chair or a nice fluffy blanket she seems to like almost as much as dinner. Jer

Striking pattern, very nice. Frosty The Lucky.

Curly: Epoxy anchors is how I' mount the railings. My favorite comes in glass tubes almost the same size as the anchor bolt use. You drill, drop in a glass glue tube, drop in the bolt and spin it with an air ratchet till it sets, about 30-45 seconds and there it is for good. The glass tubes have the epoxy is separate sections with a sharp gravel fill. The anchor bolt breaks the tube and spinning mmixes it thoroughly as it cleans the hole, te gravel jams the anchor bolt and the epoxy bonds it all permanently. For your application almost any industrial anchor medium will do just fine, be it expanding anchor cement mechanical anchors or chemical glues or epoxies. all do the job. The only thing you need to do correctly is pick the one suited for the diameter and length anchor bolts you're using. It's simple arithmetic. Frosty The Lucky.

You've lost me, Nozzle . . . Burner SHAFT? Are these terms Ron's started using or something you've come up with? Burner folk commercial or us home builders call the last part of the burner tube where the flame exits the "nozzle" and I'm not familiar with anyone using the term "shaft" in relation to burners. I'm not playing semantic games with you but to have meaningful communications we have to speak a common language. Yeah, I know "jargon" is evil but only as an exclusionist slang. What jargon means here is a common set of terms, names and such so we don't waste a bunch of time and text explaining what we just said. Don't sweat it, we all had to and are still learning the craft's language. Something new is always coming up from somewhere. Frosty The Lucky.

TreeWax is my personal favorite of the more "traditional" finishes, it's carnuba wax, the same wax they use to armor bowling alleys. Apply warm enough it liquifies wipe excess lightly and let it cool. It's not only really tough stuff it's non-toxic. Still it's not going to survive infinite trips through a dish washer, scouring pads and such. Oil is easy to renew after every wash and is my preference for kitchen utensils. Olive oil polymerizes so is tougher than some oils and heck bacon grease is a time honored finish, my camp toasting fork sport it in good health. Rust is going to happen though unless the end user is diligent in prevention. Frosty The Lucky.

I don't know what too cold is, I have a cut off temp for non-must have projects in the +20's f. A young man just picking up the skills and I will be out in the shop tomorrow and it was -15f during today's coldest part of the day. Sunrise +/- 1 hour. This morning it dropped from -7f to -15 in about 40 minutes just before sunrise. Tomorrow I'll go out an hour or so before I expect my new student to show and build a fire in the barrel stove. the stove might take a little of the edge out of the cold but it isn't going to "heat" the shop. I'll lay a couple pieces of steel on it so I can take a little chill out of the anvils when we start. There are tricks for working on cold anvils though like holding the stock just off the face and letting the hammer drive it down into contact at impact. It helps but the stock still loses heat at record speed. Standing in front of the forge isn't a sweaty miserable thing though, even with all the dragon's breath we tend to stand a little closer. Heck, get in each other's way in fact. Frosty The Lucky.

I LIKE it! It's not just a wine rack it's a center piece for any fine table. I'm looking at a very marketable item. Well done all round. Frosty The Lucky.

I have a Soderfors, cast Swedish anvil, a close relative quality wise. It has the date or manufacture stamped in the side opposite the name Soderfors and model name. While interesting it's birth year has very little bearing in an anvil's quality. Old doesn't mean more valuable or better. As she sits she's as good an anvil as you're likely ever to strike, put her to good use. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. I have some of my Father's tools and both my Grandfather's pocket watches they mean a lot to me. Being able to use your Great Grandfather's anvil would be a treat indeed. It looks to be in outstanding condition, the little bit of chipping on the edges isn't severe enough to dress out. A little time with a disk grinder to radius the chipped edges would take care of it without effecting it's usefulness at all. You're golden on this beauty. Get yourself hooked up with the CBA, every hour you spend with an experienced blacksmith will equal days or weeks learning on your own. The CBA is an active group and by all accounts great guys all round. Frosty The Lucky.

Very nice John. I've always liked wrapped leaf finials and those are especially eye catching. Well done all round. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard James, glad to have you. We love pics, I look forward to seeing your work. Eat plenty, sleep well. Frosty The Lucky.