Frosty

NICE job Mitch! I'm really fond of a fish tale or reverse scroll finial and those are just right. Frosty The Lucky.

My old Hobart mig gun has a hanger hook on it and a coffee can with a little weight in it works fine. Then again mine is off when I release the trigger so hanging it is mostly to keep it clean and out of the way. Still, that's a nice hanger and my torch can use one, heck, I have lots of stuff that'd benefit from such a hanger. Thanks for the tip. Frosty The Lucky.

Blood of your enemies? Frosty The Lucky.

Looks good enough to sell Daniel. If you make the top scroll section and the lip lifter shorter it'll reduce the flex. A little refinement and I think you have a fast seller on your hands, folk really like bottle openers and cork screws. Frosty The Lucky.

Is this concrete blade impregnated with tungsten carbide? If so drilling it's going to require a diamond bit. After that the matrix steel could well be too soft to make a decent blade. Abrasion resistant steels can take many forms and many don't require much rockwell hardness. Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks for the video and pics Lyle. Great stuff Dave deserves no less than you two. Frosty The Lucky.

Buy and wear good safety glasses, if the period police have a hissy fit pack your kit and leave. NO period is worth an eye, no way no how. All I had to do was start packing and the period police went away, never to whiz in my soup again. It's been a many number of years since anyone at any historical event has said anything about safety gear,the insurance co. maybe had a talk with em? As a blacksmith you have a highly desirable craft for period events, this gives you leverage. NEVER fail to use whatever you have to protect yourself and the public. Heck, talking about the blacksmith's retirement plan is a standard part of my demos. Lose your second eye and you're RETIRED. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome back Patrick, good to hear from you. I had pretty ugly luck with an associate some years ago but won't go into it except to say I know the or a similar feeling. Let me know if you have questions about making a gasser. Frosty The Lucky.

Good score for sure! I lined mine with fire clay rammed in while just moist enough to clump. I think you got enough sand in the cement it'll be okay. If it heat checks either increase the sand or use 4pts fire clay to 3pts sand to 1/2 pt cement it'll be reasonably fireproof. Frosty The Lucky.

I'd rethink case hardening as it's more for wear resistance than impact resistance. Can you make friends at the local truck (lorry?) shop? Large trucks have plenty of parts of the right kind of steel for hammer making. Axles are good for hammers and they don't require exacting heat treatment. Frosty The Lucky.

I love it! I'm hoping it wasn't a chromed wrench to start with. Bringing chromed steel to forging heat is really BAD for your health, hexavalent chrome is not only toxic but a serious carcinogen. I mention this as much as a warning to other smiths wanting to give wrench morphing a try. I'm also really taken with your texturing tool. Ain't power hammers grand? Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Dalton, glad to have you! Blades are more technically advance than general smithing and can be daunting before you've built enough skills. Armour is another thing almost entirely but sheet iron work has many applications, many of them well paid. Get all the education you can, as said already, drafting is good as is artistic drawing, melding the two is important. Geometry and general math are really handy. Business, money management and the bane of many smiths marketing are important if you're planning on making a living at this. Getting in touch with local smiths and the local organization will really boost you on the road, smiths enjoy passing the craft to interested folk, especially the next generation. Learning the craft yourself is certainly possible, I did but I don't recommend it if you have an alternative, what took me years could've been done in maybe one or less had I known smiths. Oh yeah, don't forget to ask questions here, post pics, we love pics and love answering questions even if we have to make the answers up. Frosty The Lucky.

That's a very cool piece Randy! If word gets out you do this quality work you won't have any time to BS with us here. Frosty The Lucky.

Looks pretty good Mike. One of the things I find hard is remembering horses heads are flat from the ears to their noses, all the contour is in their chins and jaws. And NO I don't make on in a single heat! How cool is that, we're both non-competitors. <grin> Frosty The Lucky.

Good for you both! You won't be sorry, it's a good bunch. Frosty The Lucky.

I'm with you, I'd have the tire behind the hammer and use a crank. For the clutch I think I'd try using a conical drive wheel on a slide mechanism. This way it'd make a variable drive transmission, the farther you press the treadle the larger the diameter of the drive wheel engages the tire and the faster/harder it hits. Did I mention I had several power hammer designs on the drawing board, comp memory, before I found a 50# LG for reasonable? Frosty The Lucky.

I have a 6" Indian Chief, it's VINTAGE! The wealth in the shop is making me giddy! Folk going to auctions seem determined to get a deal no matter what it costs. I went to a police bicycle auction once and if it said Schwyn (sp?) on it it went for a couple hundred $, even a bare fork with bent handle bars. Tool auctions are bad too, I've watched beat up Milwaukee power tools bid up to nearly 2X new price. I didn't even bother to get a number last auction I went to. Frosty The Lucky.

Somebody probably glopped a heavy coat of paint on it to make it purty. Otherwise it sounds like a good anvil. Frosty The Lucky.

They should work. Oh yeah, good to be reading your first proper post AND it has PICS! You're off to a good start. What are you planning on planishing, those are some long shanks. At that length it might be a good idea to aim the bend towards the heal rather than the side of the anvil, it'll be more stable and offer more resistance. For making bottom tools I prefer to start with stock larger than my hardy and draw it down, then upset it for a nice shoulder. I'd have to say you're using too heavy a hammer upsetting the planishing face, a light hammer and fast blows will move the struck end where a heavy hammer tends to upset the center of the stock and bend it. Looking good, well done. Frosty The Lucky.

We used to have a guy like that where I worked in the early 70's. The only term we came up with was, "Old Tom" nobody had to say more. Do we have a concise term for "statistic wanna be?" The really sucky part of these types is they're likely to take innocents with them. Frosty The Lucky.

Have a stick welder? A 125 fluxcore wire feed is pretty light to be welding 1/4" 304 without a lot of messing about. I've done too heavy welds with my Hobart 120 Handler but not with fluxcore, I run 75/25 so multiple passes without a lot of chipping are just burn it in till it's full. Frosty The Lucky.

You're making a piece of jewelry, not a weapon so do Mokume Gane instead. I don't know what the coinage is in the UK but in the states quarters make nicely contrasting copper/nickle mokume, add a Canadian quarter for a higher % nickle and it can be striking. You don't need a "forge", anvil or special tools. A couple fire bricks and a plumber's propane torch do just fine. Oh yeah, a smallish block of steel to hammer on so I guess you DO need an anvil. A little borax helps but isn't essential. The process is to clean excess gunk off the coins and clamp them together tightly, then heat the billet to sweating temperature. Sweating temp will display as a wet look at a medium high orange heat. Leave it soak at sweating temp for a while to make sure the billet is heated to the center. Remove the clamp and gently hammer the billet layers together. It's a good idea to reclamp and heat again to make sure the difusion welds are solid. After the difusion weld is completed you can heat and hammer the billet like it's one solid piece of metal, it is. The showy part of the process is how you expose the different layers, you can grind grooves in the billet and hammer it flat or hammer texture in it and grind it flat. You can of course make a twist and counter twist and weld them together for the chevron pattern, sky's the limit. You can of course use metals other than coins, silver and copper make nice contrast but do NOT try making mokume Gane with Silver and Brass, this makes "silver solder" which has a MUCH lower melting temperature, it'll turn into a puddle as soon as fusion occures. Send pics please, we love pics! Frosty The Lucky.

Very nice Ian and there's the problem, they look entirely too much like real flowers to be "art!" The closest I've ever come to entering an "art" show was the year I displayed a couple of my doffers in the spinning guild's demo/display at the state fair. When I picked Deb up one evening I discovered I'd taken a purple and a blue ribbon for spinning tools. And, that's MY secret to success at "art" shows, display my stuff but not enter. I believe that displays just the right snootishness to be a winner in the "art" community. Of course I could be wrong. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Mongo, glad to have ya! As Thomas says concrete isn't a good choice, it'll debond and pulverize a couple thousandths at a time. Do you have a set of plans or are you designing the hammer yourself? Post some drawings and we'll be able to make better suggestions and spot things that are unlikely to work. Frosty The Lucky.

I really like the barrel beasty thing, it has life and a bit of humor. Pricing is the most important learning curve you have to climb, even more so than learning the craft. I price by shop rate x time adjusting by my profinciency at specifics. Meaning I don't charge full price if I'm not up to professional levels, fair's fair. Also, overhead is calculated in my shop rate, heat being a biggy and averaged over the year. Frosty The Lucky.