Frosty

I hadn't thought of it that way Ian, Stephan King writes bills several hundred pages long. Not living on this side of the planet I suppose you didn't know you could most certainly have bought a 2011 vehicle in August 2010. Our cars are very advanced you know, every one ahead of it's time. Frosty The Lucky.

The fire would start eating the TUYERE? You're not talking about a side blast are you? Side blast forges tend to bur up tuyeres. A bottom blast tuyere isn't or shouldn't be near the fire and the air flowing through it should keep it cool enough to last for a long LONG time. Generations maybe. OR are you talking about large fire eating the fire pot? If it is actually eating the tuyere please describe your forge how it's built and what conditions cause it to eat the tuyere. Frosty The Lucky.

Take a good read through the forges section here, there are more designs for coal/charcoal/etc. forges than a boy could want. Pictures, drawings, plans, etc. from store bought to home made to improvised, they're all covered. Frosty The Lucky.

Refer him here? I don't know how often folk here tell people wanting to make a sword for a first go at smithing to learn the craft before going into advanced projects. I'm sure there are many tens of pages if not hundreds saying the same basic thing. Frankly I get tired of trying to help folk who already know it all. Guys are always telling me they want to learn so they can make swords but know how many ever come over? Two so far and not a one made a second visit. I guess I'm just too stingy to tell them THE secret. My enthusiasm for teaching blacksmithing is now largely contingent on seeing some effort on their part before we get together. I mean really, is it too much to expect someone who really wants to learn the craft to at least pick up a book. Or give it a lash with charcoal briquettes an ASO and a ball pein hammer. I'll drive to HIS/ER place and pick him/er up! You'll get my WHOLE attention. I've had a student like that Lindsay, she sought me out, paid careful attention, worked hard and researched on her own time. she designed exercises to strengthen her arms, practiced my hammer holding technique and with probably less than 40 hrs. total time with me forged and finished a darned nice utility sheath knife. After she moved on somewhere in Virginia I believe she talked to the head blacksmith of a living history mill and was put in charge of the smithy so the old smith could get out of it with a bad shoulder. She's a treasure I envy anyone who employs her or otherwise associate. I've had may good students but Lindsay is a crown jewel. It's kids like her make me want to give other kids a shot. My advice? Let him give it a go, maybe suggest a good bladesmithing book or two and let him have at it. Frosty The Lucky.

Never having seen a slate shingle hammer, I can only comment on the apparent workmanship. Nicely done Stuart. Is this a regular job? I don't think there's a slate roof in Alaska but I could be wrong. I've only ever seen a slate roof from the ground at a distance. My Father's rock hammers (geologist's picks for you younguns) have the leather washer grips. Frosty The Lucky.

His name is Vince and he's a professional farrier and blacksmith. How often are you checking IFI? I invited you out last Sunday but I don't know if you saw the post or what. Frosty The Lucky.

New clamps are good, we used to replace them at the welding shop for GP. Being the new guy/helper it was my job to change them every other month unless one was wearing faster. Overheating is a sign of bad connections, cable or clamp on steel OR over amping the capacity of the ground clamp. (okay, over amping isn't a connection issue.) Changing them out is never a waste of money. Frosty The Lucky.

It's all the chrome and manganese making it hard, the low carbon helps keep it from work hardening and maintains it's flexibility. Big circle saw blades have to have some flex or they just don't work right. Now if you were talking about a good old fashioned misery whip you'd have some really good knife stock in hand. In the 1045-1050 range typically. Frosty The Lucky.

Try stove paint, it's higher temp than high heat paints, or was. I haven't read a can of high temp paint in years. the last coat of stove paint on our stove pipe is still fine, heck it's only about 13 years old. The problem with stove and high heat paints is they will rub off and scratch, they're not so tough as regular enamels. Header paint is good but it needs heat to cure hard. tossing the piece in a wood fire works a treat for header paint and there are lots of cool colors to choose from. Frosty The Lucky.

Resting on the picture of the Great Pyr who saved my life a few years ago we have a flower a friend made Deb and I for our wedding. It's a treasured wedding gift. The flowers you made will be treasured for may years. Perfection isn't the important factor in gifts, it's the time you invest making them that counts. Those are fine flowers no matter how you cut it. Well done. You joined the petals to the stems with a peined tenon. FYI<wink> Frosty The Lucky.

Powerful looking forge Banan, very effective. My only suggestion would be to reverse the air belt so the hose is behind the forge and out of danger from a hot piece of steel. Well done. Frosty The Lucky.

OOOH, a fulsome English ale, consider it quaffed! I enjoy passing on what I've learned, I spent a number of years learning fabrication and welding but only practiced the trade a short time. Till I discovered how quickly welders seemed to succumb to occupational hazards, mostly metal poisoning and UV burn cancers. Yeah I took my training before welding smoke was considered a hazard and the guys tigging the inside of milk trucks used to do it nude with really tiny shade 12 goggles to get a killer tan. Ah, I'm getting all windy again. Truth is I like helping folk, it makes me feel good, I often help folk load groceries lumber, whatever just to earn a smile. I learned about how good being randomly helpful makes me feel one Christmas, the story is unimportant. Anyway, I discovered making others feel good made me feel good and got me over depression better than anything else I'd ever tried. I can be manic but on the rare occasions I feel depressed I go to the mall and just do things for people and it fixes me. Sharing what I've learned is sort of a maintenance dose of nice and keeps me in a generally good mood. Funny how something that makes you feel good rapidly becomes habit forming eh? Frosty The Lucky.

Nicely done. What are it's dimensions? Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Watrick, gad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you'll be surprised to find out how many IFI folk live within visiting distance. Just Google the question. You really need to be more of a problem solver to be very successful as a blacksmith. Just whatever you do, follow Chinobi's advice, Google frequently, do NOT print it out! To be honest, I don't know many if any blacksmiths who care much about melting points let alone specific temperatures. It just isn't something we need to know, we're not casting. Sure you need to know temps, sometimes very specific temps for heat treating but that isn't anywhere close to melting temps. Frosty The Lucky.

Great score! I'll need half an hour or so to stop hating you. Brush it off and take some hot steel and a hammer to that beauty, she deserves it. What the HEY? I've stopped hating you already. DRATS, what's the use. <sigh> Frosty The Lucky.

Clamp it back in the mill and do all but the corners of the hardy hole, then all you need drift is to sharpen the corners. You'll still be able to say you drifted 3" steel. I'll be looking forward to more pics. Frosty The Lucky.

Something other than the clamp may be the grounding problem. Is the cable connected to the clamp well? this is what I've found to be the most common hardware problem. Another common problem is dirty steel making for poor contact. It can be dirt, rust or the coating on it coming from the mill. In the field I just scratch a clean spot with a rock, a golf ball piece of granite is good ad small enough to carry is necessary. Just make a shiny steel spot for the clamp to contact. The C clamp grounds are for large projects, say a ship or sky scraper, even a trailer frame isn't large enough to warrant one of these PITA grounds. In short, check the cable connection on your clamp, clean a spot for it to contact failing those just buy a ground clamp. forget the home made ones, they work but why bother, they may work but not as well. Oh yeah, a home made ground just may offer enough resistance to get hot, REALLY HOT, light a fire or brand you if you touch it. Frosty The Lucky.

There are a couple ways to reinforce the join between the fire pot and the table if you feel it's necessary. The first would've been to make the fire pot wedge just slightly before it rests on the lip. To do this now, you can weld some thin strips around the pot under the lip so it's large enough to wedge a LITTLE. You'll probably have to tap it out from below to remove it. Welding a bead inside the angle of the flange and pot will enlarge it too but I'm not fond of that kind of wedging. Then is whether what you've done is worth worrying about. Are you going to be putting something IN the pot heavy enough to break the flange welds? Seriously, it only needs to support a load of coal and your work, heavy stuff is going to be laying on the table with an end or middle in the fire so the post isn't supporting anything but the fire. Seriously, it's not like you're going to be heating a 70lb. cannon ball are you? Standing a heavy shaft on end to heat the end are you? I'm pretty sure it'll support 10+lbs so it's not worth messing with. With what I can see this is my advice to you. The rest is me being my usual windy self. <wink> For practical, take a hammer and give the flanges a couple whacks, if one fails clean the join and reweld it. When I say whacks I don't mean take a home run swing at it with a 4lb hammer, you're only trying to apply a hundred lbs. of force in a shock loading situation. This is FAR worse than will happen to it in any normal use. In the future, welding flanges like this align the steel in the join so one side protrudes about half it's thickness above the other. This will concentrate more heat in the join but the protruding bit will supply the additional filler and seeing as half the join is melting beyond normal penetration without the downside it'll make an easier to achieve solid weld. If the stock is 1/4" or above align the joins so the edges don't quite meet by half the stocks thickness, weld it there. Make these kinds of welds on the OUTSIDE of the join angle. Another method I like is to use the end of a welding rod spacer to make an open gap in the join. It makes penetration easier without having to grind a scarf but you do need to know how to keep from burning through. Practice practice, etc. Trying to fill the inside of an angle join makes it harder to get good penetration and takes practice beyond most folks home welding experience. NO, over amping the rod isn't a good technique, it may leave a pretty weld but a good weld is WAY preferable. End windy ramble and I bow humbly to the welding instructors here. Frosty The Lucky.

Jakob: claying the fire pot isn't necessary at all, it will in fact reduce your fire pot's useful volume so your fires will be much smaller than necessary. Brake drums and rotors are easy to find so they're disposables no worry when they burn out. Just pick up a couple where you found the one you have. Most any auto shop does brake jobs and frankly tosses old drums and rotors that can't be turned true, they're not worth hauling to the scrap yard for smaller operations. By bolting the air supply to the drum simply make a steel disk that covers the lug holes in the drum/rotor, 14 ga is enough but thicker is okay too. Now, drill holes that match a few of the lug holes, don't waste the time, effort and drill edge drilling all of them, a few is plenty. there you go, that's your bolt flange. Weld the air supply to the bolt flange, hook up the air supply and that's your tuyere. Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks for the pics Kurgan, it's always good to see how shops are set up. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Henrick, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you'll discover we have lots of folk from Germany here on IFI. Sorry I'm no help with selecting blade steels, especially European alloy designations. Heck, I'm not a bladesmith guy here in the USA. Frosty The Lucky.

Have it powder coated. OR hot oil and leave instructions and maybe a can of the oil prep. I prefer to avoid bees wax as it tends to stay tacky but that's just been my experience the above recipe may be just the ticket. I don't know. Frosty The Lucky.

The white is probably residue, maybe what it's supposed to roll or maybe what kids put through it for fun. It looks like a pasta roller but I don't know of a pleated pasta so maybe it's for pleating fabric or similar. I sincerely doubt it's for steel or serious metal pleating, heavy foil, probably max. Another thought is it's a roll for laminating something, think old style linoleum or maybe fabric being glued to a surface. I don't KNOW anything about it but it LOOKS familiar, I think I've seen one or more than one in the past but it's just a dim maybe memory. Frosty The Lucky.

If you're going to grind the pein start out with a wider radius than you think you'll need and give it a try. Use it for a wile and modify it till you have what you like. The heavier the hammer the wider the radius has been my observation. My Diamond(I think) turning hammer has a radius I estimate to be around 2". Another thing I've observed is the radius of the dome of the pein is less than the radius of body of the pein. Of course that's just my thinking, I could be full of beans. Frosty The Lucky.

Beautiful blade! Frosty The Lucky.