Frosty

Yes, that's the one I was referring to, mine is about 2x as wide and cost a bunch new, I got mine at a shop liquidation sale along with a wraparound and more. I got to shooting the breeze with the old fellow who was holding a retirement sale. Neither of his kids wanted to get into the business so he was selling it off and going to Europe with the missus. We got to talking and he threw in a bunch of other things gratis I could've bought a lathe or mill for scrap if I hadn't lived in a mobile home in S. Mountain View. He was royally ticked at his sons.

I understand their point of view, I certainly didn't want to become a metal spinner after spending the 1st. 17 years of my life working in a spinning shop.

Frosty The Lucky.

An admirable trait you are well known for. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Starretts are good, I've been using Starrett instrumentation since Dad's shop was in the garage and was the only Jr. Hi kid  with his own mic in metal shop 101. Unfortunately that gave the instructor the impression I actually knew how to USE a machine shop. <sigh>

Frosty The Lucky.

Looks like it could be. Perhaps they got tired of big piles of slag, ash, etc. at the bloomery and hauled it off a ways to dump. It might have fallen off the wagon too. You can use a compass to see if it effects the needle.

It might make an attractive fireplace or masonry forge, I like shiny black.

Frosty The Lucky.

Calipers and dividers are really handy. I have one small and one large compass fitted with sharpened tig tungstens for marking steel without dyechem or paint. 

Maybe one of these days I'll get a chance to hit a large conference and ogle the goods. It's not like Deb would let me put much extra in her RV but a boy can dream. <sigh>

Frosty The Lucky.

21 hours ago, JHCC said:

We only have dogs.

I feel for  you.

I don't recall who said it, maybe Hal Clemens or Wiley Post or? To paraphrase, "Every man should own a dog so he knows what it's like to be a god. He should also own a cat to know he isn't." 

Frosty The Lucky.

 The one with all the sliding pins that lets you copy a contour by pressing it onto it. Mine is IIRC 4" maybe more. Dandy handy tools.

Nothing wrong with showing the gang a rich booty of calipers, I use them frequently enough to appreciate the different sizes in my tool box.

Frosty The Lucky.

Not in the day! Happily you and I are too old for the job. I'm a real fan of Wessex archeology, they have a LOT of very interesting pages and topics. One I've been following lately is Ancientcraft UK by Dr. James Dilley. Among many subjects he discusses he's a professional flint knapper and an excellent teacher. He's easier to learn the craft from than many other knappers with videos up.

Sorry for the side track. Thanks for the link Scott, I LOVE this kind of stuff.

Frosty The Lucky.

I love it when you let your Geologist self come out and play George. Having to collect my own coal is the main reason I burn propane. I am looking at the Talkeetna mountains out the living room window a range of coal seams 200 miles+/- wide 400 long and -2,000 to+ 4,000 elevation on average. It's about a 45 minute drive to decommissioned strip mines but remembering which side of which ditch is metallurgical coal and which is one of several other kinds of heating coal left me years ago. I can't even find my old collecting ditch. The coal being mined near Healy is virtually all going to China and only a very limited supply of so-so stove coal is being sold by the sack here. 

It gripes me to have world class smithing coal visible that I can't access without mounting an expedition to collect enough to be worth it which unfortunately violates the agreement by which private citizens can collect coal for personal use. <sigh>

Nice if modest score Scott. I love my curve-o-mark even though I don't need it very often. When I do though! I don't know what it is about calipers but I see them in pawn and second hand shops all the time by the bin full and when I go garage, yard, etc. saling they're everywhere.

Frosty The Lucky.

Depends on the anthracite and you're ability to manage the fire. Charcoal is much cleaner in general and bituminous cokes more easily but isn't necessarily clean or lower clinker. The ONLY way you can tell if you have a load of anthracite you can use is to build a fire and learn how to manage THAT load. 

Coal that is half clinker weighs significantly more density wise because of the carbon goodness that was replaced with mineral dirt badness.

The anthracite we were collecting at the old Jonesville mines burned more cleanly than the store bought "smithing" coal available at the time and.

Frosty The Lucky.

Glad to see you didn't take the reusing everything to the level of kitty litter sand.

Still looks good GTF and gun bluing won't care about hot pans on it. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Ah HEM, I assume that is the tradition specified Kitchen sink?

Frosty The Lucky.

DANG I got myself hung up in semantics again. <sigh>

Frosty The Lucky.

I see can folks devoting a life's pursuit of the tryintific method. You are the Father of Tryence Trevor! I'll be honored to be able to say I knew you back when. 

I'm thinking we need to come up with something new that nobody understands so we can explain and describe it to folk. How about a coal gun burner? Guys would need to make crushers to powder it and feed mechanisms before they could start on the burners themselves. Hmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.

It's funny, as tired as I got of answering the same questions over and over the recent slow spell is kind of sad. Reading the recent posts I see we have a fellow in Ymber who has indeed read past posts and only needs a little clarification. 

Kind of cool eh?

Frosty The Lucky.

Shower exhaust!? I'm pretty sure you mean bathroom ventilation exhaust. Yes? 

I might accept aluminum as a super sucker stack IF you can lay your hand on the hood with a max size fire going, without discomfort. Say no hotter than a cup of cooling tea. 

That doesn't leave you any safety margin so I strongly recommend against anything but steel or masonry.

Frosty The Lucky.

That was interesting. Then I opened the video about making stainless steel tubing. It only looked marginally dangerous like any job handling lots of sheared sheet metal then it got to the part where one large roll of sheet SS had been sheared into LOTS of small rolls and the guy tack welds the free ends to the rolls without a welding shield. Audio was interesting, lots of machine and sheet metal sounds with chipmunks chittering in the background.

And who do we blame for this rabbit hole? Why . . . NOBODY of course.

It is a cool rabbit hole, thanks.

Frosty The Lucky.

4th pic down, rectangular open top box. There is a long lever type arm pointing downward connected to a ram on the lower left side. Looking more closely, there is a foot switch between it and Chambersburg on the right. It appears to be in front of and almost directly below the opening on the forge and to the hammer operator's left on the floor right next to the floor fan. It is in almost all the pics of the front of this hammer's operator's position.

Frosty The Lucky.

Looks like a nice place to tour. What is the device with the pneumatic(?) cylinder on the floor in front of the forge? It appears to be plumbed or wired to the hammer on the right.

Thanks for sharing your visit.

Frosty The Lucky.

35 minutes ago, Ridgeway Forge Studio said:

but it fell into the “tomorrow” pile

My you fit right in here don't you?

Frosty The Lucky.

I'm afraid that isn't something a couple thousandths of most anything can do. Case hardening is generally for abrasion resistance and or friction reduction. Any difference is compressive of rigidity it made would require pretty delicate instruments to detect and measure. 

I think it's a thought we've all had at one time or another.

Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Paul, glad to have you. To go along with Randy's suggestion to put your general location in the header I'll add. Please do not use TEXT SPEAK on the forum it has members in about 150 countries around the world most using translation programs so speaking simple basic English saves many of the 60,000 members bandwidth and time. 

Frosty The Lucky.

He did and also said the amount of steel cuttings was enough of a higher % than the bits of broken garnet, silicon carbide, etc. from the belt as to make little if any difference.

We had a good discussion about it a while back. It's in the sections. . . somewhere.

Frosty The Lucky.

Looks pretty good though if possible it's gooder to bring a mandrel to a sharper point if possible. If you have a belt grinder they're easy to clean up and sharpen.

But as forged you done good!

Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Craftsdwarf, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you'll have a much better chance of meeting up with members living within visiting distance. 

I strongly suggest you spend more time reading some of the archived subjects before you start pointing out things you THINK are wrong with the site or deliberately misunderstanding them. You DON'T want to make "troll" your first impression do you?

Not building a box so you don't have to think outside it, is about as straight forward as it gets. But because you are new and sound pretty young I'll explain. 

If you do not limit your thinking to things you know, you will not have trouble considering new ideas. 

Frosty The Lucky.