Frosty

Good score! Love a Wilton, great vises. Frosty The Lucky.

Very nice, I like it. It gives me ideas like a combination hummer feeder wind chime. I'm thinking maybe one balanced delicately enough that the hummers would make it turn and ring as they fed. Yeah yeah, that's probably kind of out there even for me. Frosty The Lucky.

I'm happy to help Michael. The dragon's breath from your forge is blue, it looks to be lean to me. Is the steel scaling INSIDE the forge? Ideally the dragon's breath should have flames tinged a little orange at the ends. NOT a lot of orange or heavens forbid yellow and fluttery. Having a reducing atmosphere in the forge keeps scale from forming IN the fire and makes things like welding much easier. however the downside side of a reducing fire is increased CO formation so the need for good ventilation is much more important. Having a too lean fire doesn't mean no CO is forming but it does increase the NAO2 and other noxious fumes. Breathing exhaust gasses is a BAD thing. Ventilate! Try choking it down a little at a time till you get a BIT of orange tertiary flame in the dragon's breath. Another thing you can try is aligning the burner differently. A lot of guys like the burners aimed directly at the far wall/floor/etc. My burners are aimed straight down at the forge floor. However, a lot can be said for angling the burners so the fire rotates in a vortex in the chamber. This makes for a much more evenly heated chamber and reduces back pressure on the burner itself, increasing entrainment. It also keeps the fire IN the chamber where you want it a little longer. Build just one forge? <puzzled look> Frosty The Lucky.

BLEVE = Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion. I already described to the best evidence and eye witness testimony available to me how one occurred at the neighbor's kiln. Including the source cause being a power failure. I actually went to school regarding the things, seeing as I inspected recorded and sealed tankers at a fuel and asphalt loading dock. I'm reasonably sure most folk here have good enough reading comprehension to see through your deliberate Misrepresentations of what I've written. You are too boorish for me to continue wasting my time on you. Frosty The Lucky.

I don't fault you for not taking hearsay as fact. You are right, I didn't see the neighbor's kiln melt down nor the FAE event, I stayed away after seeing the lashup in preheat. Having spent a couple years loading fuel trucks I am reasonably aware of how explosive fuel oil is. Please don't take my word, check it out yourself. What happens when the air supply to a superheated furnace shuts down but the fuel doesn't. The fuel burns all the oxy and the fire goes out but the fuel is still being dumped into the heat so it vaporizes. Once the vapors spread to a flammable ratio it ignites. This is exactly what happened to the neighbor's kiln. No I didn't SEE it blow but the 40'dia black scorch mark centered on the kiln was obvious for a week. His kilns and mishaps were neighborhood legend. I'll give you the relative safety of some oils, motor oil is pretty non-explosive unless you build yourself a BLEVE as described. NO he didn't shut the blower off before shutting the oil down. I can't tell you how happy I am YOU don't live in a place where power failures can happen. Killing the blower on a propane gun burner doesn't generally result in more than an exciting flare up, at least not burners of a size used by small operators like me. Frosty The Lucky.

Interesting problem Nick. I'm sure it can be done but I'll have to give it some thought. I've never been happy with the way overhead hood draw and have been really impressed with sidedrafts. I have a couple ideas but need to think them through a bit. Frosty The Lucky.

Taper, incise first. Torch heat as you go, start the twist at the thick end work your way to the thin end. Remember to keep count. Don't worry about keeping it straight, just use a mallet on a wood block at a moderate heat to true it up. Not easy but not a major pain. Frosty The Lucky.

Brian Brazeal showed us the trick, I believe it was Brian. I've seen it done but never tried it myself and don't recall the process. Frosty The Lucky.

You could put a positive pressure fan in the garage rather than exhaust. I don't know how well that'd work in winter, how cold does it get in Tenino? Frosty The Lucky.

I just have a 1/4 turn ball valve on mine and can turn it on and off without hassle. I have to leave it turned off for probably 10-15 minutes before it starts slowing heating times significantly. The forge temp has to fall below low orange before it won't relight just turning the gas back on. Ron Reil designed an idle circuit for his set up, the plans are probably on his site. Frosty The Lucky.

Silver and white gold. The silver, depending on alloy, will tarnish or etch from muted silver to gray. The white gold will remain silver colored. My mokume gane wedding ring is White gold, red gold, yellow gold and silver. The white gold and silver are like a hard pencil streak on silver. If you want more subtle contrast you want different grades of white gold. I'd ask a jeweler or gold smith about specifics of alloy and color. Frosty The Lucky.

Turbine blades are monocrystalline castings. The most common failure initiation points under stress conditions are most often crystal bounderies. The same monocrystalline casting term applied to steel is "amorphous Iron." I don't know the specific process but it's typically a casting and can be done in many different alloys. My only information regarding monocrystalline casting is in regard to watching a program about making turbine engines and how they make them strong enough to spin in access of 70,000rpm while driving a shaft with a couple K HP and being driven by thousands of lbs. of thrust. It's been a few years but it was an interesting program and stuck with me. As I recall the big trick was the chill time, it had to be quick enough the entire iece formed only one crystal. Intuitively I would've believed it would've taken a long chill time not quick. While interesting it was obviously NOT something I could even consider doing myself nor afford to purchase so it's filed in an "interesting factoid" file folder of my brain. I did read some about amorphous iron and think the process was very similar but not quite the same. Chill time was still critical and dependent of alloy. Frosty The Lucky.

This is true but a pretty crude burner system and they're also much more prone to explosions. I had a neighbor who fired ceramics with an oil fired kiln. His system was to preheat a cat iron frying pan with a torch and drip oil onto it backed by a blower. The oil vaporized and burned just fine and he only melted his kiln down the one time before he installed a decent way to shut the oil off quickly. The one time the blower shut off the kiln didn't actually explode but it did make a pretty cool FAE device. The oil vapor sucked the oxy out of the air for several feet around it and then it back drafted for an impressive whoosh and fire ball. When I said you need high psi pumps and proper nozzles I was referring to a proper fuel oil burner and no, not like the ones in the high volume steam generating boilers where I used to work. Fuel oil is far more explosively dangerous to mess with than propane or gasoline so I don't encourage folk to try figuring it out themselves. Frosty The Lucky.

That I don't know, I've never tried it. However I assume it isn't important so long as it keeps the molten flux off the refractory. I believe SS is better than plain steel because it won't weld itself to your project piece. It's a trick I heard about from bladesmiths some years ago. I just change out the split fire brick floor in my forge when it gets eroded enough, I designed it to be easy. Frosty The Lucky.

You can lay a piece of stainless steel in the bottom to shield it from flux. As always only use enough flux to do the job, it isn't glue after all, there's no reason for it to be dripping off the work, just coat it. Frosty The Lucky.

Dan: Again you're looking for specifics from wildly variable circumstances. for instance, Were I making surgical tools my forge wouldn't need to be much larger than a small flower pot, less than twice as wide as a tea cup and about as deep. Were I making fences and gates it'd need to be substantially larger, say a 12"x24" sq. pot in a 3'x4' sq table. So, one variable YOU must quantify is the scale you wish to work. Remember you're starting out so you do NOT need a large forge but I certainly wouldn't make it tiny. A small forge table is a good thing too, the fire pot sets off center and the table allows you to lay stock, tools and keep coal at the fire without it being IN the fire. That is of course assuming you wish to use coal or coke. How much room you need is the smithy is another variable YOU have to answer for your purposes. I've known guys who were successful bladesmiths ad lived in a condo several floors up. Kept their tools in a closet and forged on the balcony. As a general rule of thumb look to kitchen work space design. As a rule one pace betweeen major tools is good, 6' between forge & anvil & bench & vise laid out i a general triangle. The central tool depending on what and how you're doing is the anvil or forge but it may be the bench or vise. It just depends and there's no way you can know just what you'll need till you've been at it a while. Bear in mind I'm a propane forge guy so I don't have to worry about smoke removal, though CO and other fumes are a factor. The only piece of equipment I don't move is the power hammer and It's NOT bolted down. I rearrange things as I need but I have plenty or room (if I cleaned it up more<grin>) and a concrete floor. Frosty The Lucky.

Yes, too long a tube will reduce entrainment due to friction back pressure. reduced entrainment can indeed result in a rich burn and excesse dragon's breath. Feeling dragon's breath? How can you tell the kiss of a flame from say 2,000f exhaust gasses that are no longer burning? Fire it off at night or against a dark background and shoot a couple pics so you'll actually KNOW how much dragon's breath there is. A little is a good thing but too much is excess CO which is a B-A-D thing. Your forge chamber is around 500 cu/in which is a little large to bring to welding heat with one 3/4" burner. The general rule of thumb is one ea. 3/4" burner per 300-350 cu/in volume. What do you consider "nice and hot"? If it's hot enough for you then you're golden. Frosty The Lucky.

I can't say about installing the igniter I'd have to experiment myself. What I do know is you don't want it far enough towards the end it takes too much heat. How long is the burner tube? Yours looks awful long to me. The basic ratio is 8-9 x the ID. So a 3/4" dia. tube should be between 6" and 6 3/4" long give or take a little. and a 1" tube should be between 8" to 9" long, not counting the flare. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Dan, glad to have you. Studying infectious disease eh? Be aware, blacksmithing is highly addictive, incurable, no hope for you once you take up the hammer. Ain't it cool? <grin> Making a living smithing is so full of variables there's no telling; like most everything about the craft, it's up to you. It's doable though but probably not a very romantic pursuit. I know a couple guys who make a living at the anvil but most of their income comes from shoeing horses. Of course if picking manure out of a hoof while 1,000 lb. horse leans on you sounds romantic, you're golden. <grin> Don't sweat it, we can get grumpy and sometimes it comes out when we get asked the same question for the thousandth time that month. Happens all the time, sometimes it just gets to us. Still, start reading sections in the forum, the information there is epoc and once you start getting a handle on things you can ask good questions and understand the answers. Believe me, we LOVE good questions. Of course for every two smiths who answers you'll get at least three answers but that's one of the magic bits of smithing. Frosty The Lucky.

Sam: You're falling into a typical beginner's mistake, expecting experienced folk to be able to lay specific numbers to a very individualistic craft. Nobody here is going to be able to tell you how much fuel YOU will go through per hour or how long it will take YOU to make a THING. etc. As you gain experience, skill and knowledge you will be able to squeeze more from everything, your tools, materials, consumables and time. I've been smithing mostly for fun for a going on 50 years and still can't do a good one heat nail. When I'm showing a new guy the craft I typically spend more time telling him/er to think IN the fire not after the steel's hot and they've pulled it out. It's normal for folk to draw the steel from the fire THEN try deciding what to do with it. I also have to keep reminding them to NOT stand there watching the fire. All normal stuff. Getting a good rhythm and procedure going will really speed things up and reduce materials and consumable's us. Frosty The Lucky.

That was my first thought John but it's not something I usually recommend to folk who don't already have experience with dangerous machinery and techniques. It's probably been a spun product since the birth of metal working except for cast chalices or in guild bound places. Frosty The Lucky.

Congratulations Yves, that's welded! As a recent graduate beer's on YOU! <grin> Doesn't it feel good when it comes together? Frosty The Lucky.

I love it Nick! Please consider me as a charter member of your fan club. doggonitall I'm going to have to do some reading about locks to make intelligent comments let alone know what's going on. I get the idea of how this one works and after the combination lock I'm about at my end of locksmitherly knowledge. Thank you for sharing this, gets my juices flowing you betcha. Frosty The Lucky.

Spruce: Pattern development and color contrast are two different things. To get good color contrasts you have to use metals different enough they will show contrast in the finished product. Pattern development is done by exposing the layers after manipulating them. There are different methods of manipulating the layers, twisting rolling, folding, etc. manipulate the layers in relation to each other and the surface. Or you can incise then flatten, cutting through layers and flattening them expose them and form them. OR you can flatten them, then incise or cut to expose them. For instance a simple twist pattern is developed by first welding up the billet, refine it into a uniform bar, twist it as desired. Reform it into a bar, saw split it. what you have now are two billets with mirror patterns on the faces facing each other. If you finish the outside you won't get the desired pattern and what you do get won't be of good contrast. Finish the inside and you'll get the classic twist pattern with well exposed layers and bounderies. Another example is incise and flatten. Weld your basic billet and refine it into a bar, now incise it across the width with say a burr, though a saw or gouge work nicely too but to different effect. Now flatten it to uniform thickness and refine it into your blank. When you finish the developed surface you will find the layers exposed to good definition. Depending on how you incised the billet will determine the finished pattern. Say you Made close incisions with a small radius burr, the finished patter might well be described as a "ladder" pattern. If you use a larger radius burr more widely spaced the finish pattern may look like ocean waves at the beach. You can incise across in a sine wave pattern, or a chevron or diagonals, etc. OR you can cut circles or bars with wide spots in the center or. . . The possibilities are only as limited as your imagination and ability. Frosty The Lucky.

You want an iron chalice? How large an opening? No, even if I wanted an iron chalice I wouldn't start with 1" pipe. I might, MIGHT start with stainless exhaust pipe and swage it down but ss exhaust pipe is darned tough stuff and hard to forge. Were I seriously considering a chalice I'd start experimenting by sinking halves and silver soldering them together till I got the hang of it. This is a darned advanced project. Frosty The Lucky.