Frosty

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.

Welcome aboard Thibault, glad to have you. Please put your general location in the header, you might be surprised how many IFI folk live within visiting distance. You've found friendly company, we love nothing better than pictures, good stories, good info and good questions. Last but not least, good jokes, puns especially. . . Well, okay I love puns, I'm sure I drive some of the guys here nuts but that's okay, they're nuts already. <grin> Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Sophia, glad to have you. Please put your general location in the header, you might be pleasantly surprised to discover how many IFI members live within visiting distance. a good place to get acquainted with the learning curve represented by blacksmithing is reading through the different sections. They are organized by the general topic of blacksmithing and related subjects to make it easier to find stuff. Once you get started you might find yourself addicted so pull up a comfy chair, brig lunch and something to drink, there's enough to keep one occupied for a long time. Frosty The Lucky.

You don't really need to secure the drum to the table with bolts or welds, cut a hole in the table so the drum rests on the larger outer rim and it's not going to move under anything you're likely to do to it. Then I ram dampened clay to the table top up to the drum to make a level bed. The clay will shield the table from heat so it won't warp or burn if you use a wooden table. Bolt, weld, rivet, etc. the legs on of course. Frosty The Lucky.

You can find my burner and several others in the gas forge section, If you need clarification, not a bit unusual if I'm describing something, let me know Ill clarify. <crossed fingered grin> A little tweeking and tuning is normal for gas burners, no matter how well packed, shipping can move stuff. Frosty The Lucky.

Heck Steve driving our gaurdian angles to drink may be the only reason they stick around ornery old cusses like us. :P Frosty The Lucky.

AIIIII!! I'd already learned to just drive people off when I was cutting unless I knew darned well they knew what was going on and how to behave around chain saw work. So I almost bought it cutting solo. Glad you survived Brother, we do NOT need more folk in the fully paid up lucky to be alive club. Your story gave me chills, I've been so close I don't want to think about it. Frosty The Lucky.

I wouldn't do any grinding till I'd done some forging on it, there's only just so much face and once ground it's gone forever. It'll probably work just fine till you find a better faced anvil. Being patient has it's rewards and that old lady may not have much face left. Frosty The Lucky.

I understand dial up limitations. The library will order books for you. I don't recall the inter-library lend policy name but it's free and reasonably fast. A lot of Youtube videos are scary from most any safety conscious point of view. You can melt aluminum in a wood fire bronze will require charcoal and an air blast. I'm thinking the best bet for good info is hooking up with a local casting organization. Our local caster holds classes and bronze pours where you can pay for materials and make your molds. He (Pat) pours pretty large weights solo but uses a jib boom crane and a gas melter. He also teaches how to build melters. Sooo, if you live in South Central Alaska it'd be worth your time to attend classes with Pat. If not hooking up with a local caster or the local college extension casting program is your best bet, at least check out a library book or two about making a masonry furnace, they're not highly complicated but there are right ways and wrong ways. Stone isnt a good way for first timers, stone can be really dangerous, you have to know what to select for. Frosty The Lucky.

No I haven't heard anything bad about the thermal Design burner except for your experience. My 1" burner will bring 700 cu/in to steel melting temp @ around 12psi and melt fire brick under the burner. I routinely weld in 300-350 cu/in with a 3/4" burner and it's melting the fire brick under it too. Two guys came over today and the three of us spent a few hours welding up some cable. Mine didn't take but I screwed it up, the forge was plenty hot. Your experiences are my only basis for that statement I made regarding your burner not being up to snuff. It should've burned the paint off the outside or scorched whatever's under it with that size burner in that small a forge chamber, in maybe the first 10-15 minutes. Don't sweat it, it just might need a little tweeking or something else might be the factor. Frosty The Lucky.