Frosty

I don't know about ductile iron for anything but the swage blocks but 4140 isn't bad. It may be a good place to buy a new anvil and related tools. Frosty The Lucky.

I'll buy your results, I haven't tried the mix so I can only express supposition for what that's worth. I've used bees wax for years and in different mixes but not this one. I'm generally a little leery of linseed oil, it can be a fire hazard in some conditions and I wipe the finished piece with a rag to even it and remove excess. None of that has anything to do with your recipe just my foiables. I'll give it a go and see how it works, I'm always looking for good finishes. Frosty The Lucky.

Jeff: The above drawing is close. If you move the main door to the wall with the forge and another where you have the gate through the outside wall, all you need do is raise the fence walls to that section of roof hang a couple windows and you're there. Use horizontal casement windows in the high wall and you can use crank extensions, (cool hand forged crank extensions mind you) and you'll have good summer ventilation. If you move the forge to the upwind wall where the two areas meet the prevailing wind will help clear smoke by enhancing the draft. As the wind flows up the outside wall it'll create a low pressure zone as it crests the roof line. If you put the stack at the down wind side, horizontal vortices (rotors) can cause back draws and blow smoke down the stack. The stack must extend a few feet above the high point of the roof. Check local codes for specific details. Of course that's just what I'd do, I could be wrong. <grin> Frosty The Lucky.

Good looking piece of machinery! I'm happy to see larger lines and ports starting to be applied. The next step up in performance will be replacing every rubber hose possible with steel line. Yes please, a video of it running would be good. I just love seeing hot steel beaten like a red colored step bar. Frosty The Lucky.

Don't you mean they got that good because they had no choice? Oh wait, you DID say that didn't you? <wink> Frosty The Lucky.

Dave has a number of good youtube videos online. I believe he mentions how to make a flare if one isn't available. I use a thread protector on mine rather than a flare, I get them from the local plumbing supply. thread protectors are like couplers but are much lighter and usually free for the asking. Their job is to protect the threaded ends of pipe and cost more to ship back than they're worth. they do however make a decent flare substitute. You can heat and forge a thread protector into a flare, if you're careful you won't damage the threads on the small end so you can screw it onto the burner tube. Or you can enlarge it enough to slide on and use a set screw which lets you adjust it much more easily. Frosty The Lucky.

Try a machine shop that does jobs for heavy machinery, dozers, backhoe, railroad cars or ships. Bremerton has a shipyard I believe. Also, I've seen a lot of blacksmith equipment east of the coast, Hwy 2 used to have some decent salvage yards and 2nd hand shops. It has been a good 15 years since I've done any road trips in Wa. so I'm sure the hunting has shifted. Still, it's heavy industry country, heavy pieces of steel are pretty common. Heck you can find good material and WI in the Columbia river near the coast. Frosty The Lucky.

Make me go look why don't you! Okay, so learning where this stuff is on this new computer is a good thing. Still! The attached pic is a doffer for removing wool from a drum carder without damaging it. the hand grip is a pineapple twist. I hope this pic is clear enough. If not John has posted much better pics of one a little while ago. You incise all four faces of square stock equal distance. Twist and keep count, this is important, stop the twist with the faces lined up. Flatten the twist on all four faces returning it to square. Incise all four faces the same distance. Reverse the twist HALF as many turns. If everything works out correctly the points on the diamonds will line up but a little adjustment may be necessary. these make excellent demo twists, they're actually pretty easy to do but look like magic to folk watching. Even blacksmiths are impressed, especially with a well executed pineapple twist. I learned something important with this doffer, even though the ladies thought the pineapple twist was attractive none of them liked the way it felt in their hand, the points are too sharp on soft hand. Guys like how they feel but not the ladies. I find the spinners really like a cable twist doffer, falls right into the theme of spinning wool. Frosty The Lucky.

Not a company I'd do business with if I had a choice. Yeah, RIGHT the pres sent you an E-mail and if I bit on that one, I might, just might believe it costs THEM $150 to make a manual. If it's so, then they're so backwards they have monks transcribing them somewhere and are far too backwards to do business with. Sure one off manuals for one off pieces of equipment will indeed cost a bit more than a Yamaha 250 enduro manual but I find it impossible to believe they can't Zerox the one they have on file. Problem they have with a take or leave it attitude is it's so much easier to just leave it. Frosty The Lucky.

Okay, that's more a linseed oil finish, there's hardly enough bees wax in it to effect it. That certainly wouldn't be tacky at all. I'll put that in my finish recipe book. Well, the note pad. Frosty The Lucky.

Makes guy want to write a Bursty Sparks story eh? Something along the Tom Swift line? Frosty The Lucky.

Nice job on the hawk Sam and fast too. Frosty The Lucky.

Cool blower Bigcity. I stopped counting teeth and compare diameters to figure ratios, it's accurate to a reasonable rule of thumb degree. Frosty The Lucky.

WOW and I thought the Lucifer part of the name implied a hot furnace, not customer service. Maybe you have to trade your soul for the parts. I'd be looking elsewhere or for a staggering discount. If you're still interested, print the Emails out and use them for a bargaining chip. Frosty The Lucky.

Sounds to me that it's dog time, just a couple can make bad guys think about finding an easier target. It's not like they're willing to work so making it hard to get through the gate or fence isn't a bad idea. I've made bales from hardened spring steel,more than 1/2" dia. is pretty much bolt cutter proof. If you think they may bring your torch back, making the bale from steel pipe or tubing and filling it with paraffin wax is a marvelous deterrent. A probably better option is hanging motion sensor wildlife cameras so they can get nice portraits of the visitors. Thieves make my badness come out, I really dislike thieves. Frosty The Lucky.

I'd have to pass on that, it's not RR rail by the looks of it. Still, it can be MADE to work, most anything with enough weight can. I've used smooth boulders for fun and on a bet. However, you could use that one to make enough to buy a more serious anvil, you're in anvil rich country compared to Alaska, be patient. I used a rail anvil for years till the real deal came to me but I didn't have a LOT of choice. If you do buy that one, we'll be more than happy to help you get everything out of it has. Frosty The Lucky.

Drats! I guess I'll have to do some marble melting all by my lonesome. <sigh> Have a good weekend, I'll try to have enough fun for both of us. Frosty The Lucky.

Zircopax kaolin clay forge coating progress. I finished washing my forge and some new soft fire bricks today and it'd dried sufficiently for a test firing in a few hours. This neck of Alaska has very low humidity and a fan dried the wash to chalky dry in a few hours. So I bisque fired it, bringing it up to high red and letting it cool. Even less than bone dry it came to high red in under five minutes. The next firing brought it up to yellow heat in about 6 minutes, it heated much faster but I credit a lot of that to the forge not being ambient temp but around 150f. I could put my hand inside but wasn't about to touch. I let it burn at mid yellow for about an hour and shut it down. I'll let you know what it looks like, how friable or soft it is now. I followed Phil Krankow's 70% Zircopax : 30% kaolin ratio, sort of. My kaolin is a thin slip so I added zircopax till it was the consistency of thick gravy. I buttered the bricks and painted on the wash but needed to thin it a bit more so it'd fill the voids. I'm using the same basic mix as ITC-100, kaolin being far more resistant to molten borax than silica compounds. Kaolin is also non-toxic, you can in fact eat kaolin. Heck, lots of us have, kaopectate is kaolin clay and pectin, well it used to be. This mix has so little silica as to make it a low level respiratory hazard when dry. A good filter mask and safety glasses are called for. Frosty The Lucky.

I have my fingers crossed for you Rob, it looks like a fine one from here. Frosty The Lucky.

Got a pic? What kind of deal it is will depend a lot on how much work went into it, and what kind of job was done on it. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Damien, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header it'll help hold confusion to a minimum and let folk within visiting distance know you're there. I'm not the first nor only blacksmith kind of guy to note or mention how many blacksmiths are involved in many media and art forms. I'm thinking you'll fit in here just perfectly. Frosty The Lucky.

Remove or just soften it with emery cloth till it performs as you wish. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Scott, glad to have you. Please put your location in the header so I'll know where to come pick up that rusty old Swedish anvil.<wistful sigh> I have a 125lb. Soderfors cast steel Swedish anvil and it's the finest one I've ever used, she's one of my prize possessions. the Swedes didn't use the English stone weights, I mean REALLY, they're ENGLISH! The weight is marked in lbs. This one looks like the old tradition of testing edge, and such against the side of the anvil was done to this old lady. Owning a Swedish cast steel anvil in the 250-300+ range is a dream of mine.If you decide not to use it, please give me a chance to buy it. Frosty The Lucky.

When you take pictures of reflective objects use oblique lighting, not straight on. the camera flash ruins more shots than almost anything else. For a quick fix, put a single ply of tissue over the flash, it'll diffuse the light and soften the highlights and the reflection. Taking a pic with the light shining at a shallow angle from one or the other side is good for making physical features stand out, things like cast markings or stamped markings will show much more clearly. For an example take a look at the moon with a pair of binoculars, if it's full it's really hard to see the craters and mtns. except at the edges, look at an early or late crescent phase and they stand out vividly. Frosty The Lucky.

Doing this kind of animal head is one of Metalmangler' bread and butter finials. Maybe we can talk him into a how to. Frosty The Lucky.