Frosty

Hmmmm. I haven't heard anything I'd call a superstition yet. Frosty

I was tickled pink. You have that right, vermin proof really comes to play in the fall. A little hardware cloth and they'll be perfect. They'll need a little work, some of the legs are folded over from being moved but that's no biggy. Heck, 1 sheet of 1/2 plywood is more than that around here and I'll need storage of all kinds. It was a good day. Frosty

The only problem with using natural gas is line pressure, most residential lines are low pressure. This isn't a deal killer even so; you just need a large line. A neutral burn for natural gas is around 1:10 gas:air ratio so the lower BTU/cu/ft is deceiving. Propane requires a 1:17.5 gas:air ratio so they're a lot closer to even up than most guys think. If the university has a commercial gas source you could even use naturally aspirated burners though you'd have to experiment with the jetting. Johnson, NC, Mankel, etc. any or all of them will probably jet a furnace for natural gas for you but you have to ask . . . Them. Frosty

Nope, mirror image won't work at all at all. They need to be the same, identical is too strong a term but they MUST be the same. Frosty

You'll almost undoubtably be wasting your time trying to harden a chinese anvil. the chances are close to 100% it's cast iron and not hardenable. A solution I've been toying with for a couple years now is to braze or silver solder a piece of HC steel plate to the face of a cast iron anvil. To make it work though you'll need to grind the anvil's face to close tolerance. It needs to match the steel plate as well as possible because the thicker the braze or silver solder the weaker the join. If you're wondering how well a brazed or silver soldered joint will stand up to pounding it's how carbides are attached to drill bits for soils exploration. I seriously doubt a human being can match a 453 detroit diesel for hammering something, especially into frozen glacial till. Glacial till being the hardest unconsolidated soil formation there is, It's been compacted by a couple miles of glacial ice for a few thousand or tens of thousands of years. Anyway, I can tell you from nearly 20 years of personal experience a brazed or silver soldered join will take the devil's own hammering without failing. It should do just fine for holding an anvil face down. Something to consider. Frosty

WOW! Thanks Finnr. Frosty

That sounds good till you realize the VAST majority of what I know is useless, made up or wrong all together. I found the pics of the clips by searching the web for "RR track parts" and sifting through the hits till I found a pic. It's not really about knowing very much, it's knowing just enough to know where to look for what you need to know. If you know what I mean, ya know? Frosty

S'okay James. Using something for what it was designed really isn't what we're about. Is it? Frosty

Thanks Ddan, that almost makes me want to work wood. Frosty

I was going to suggest a replica of the Mastermyr tool box, there are plans on Anvilfire but for some reason every time I tried connecting, the link shut my browser down. :confused: A search of the Mastermyr Project will get pics of the locks as well as the tools. I don't think I'm going back again today though. I had to reboot to get cut and paste to work again. Stupid thinky machines! :mad: Frosty

These are the thingies. Shanghai Suyu Railway Fasteners Co.,Ltd. Frosty

Ran into these at a yard sale today, 5 for $25. They'll be real handy in the shop. Frosty

Get some scale from around his anvil, it's good black iron oxide. Peroxide will turn steel wool to rust in really short order. Lastly, if you click on "user CP" at the top of the page and edit your information so we know roughly where you live you might meet blacksmiths in your area willing to give you a hand. I know I don't mind giving away a little forge scale. So long as it doesn't turn into a habit! Frosty

They make decent chisel plates, especially if you're lucky enough the track keeping lips fit the face of your anvil. They're perfect for holding a RR rail anvil down. They make good stake plates for RR spike stakes. Good ballast. While spikes and track plates are handy the real find steel wise are clips, they're good medium C steel around 45-55pts and make good tough tools. Frosty

I sure don't see anything wrong. You're really going to like what having a magician in the shop will do for you. Nice job. Frosty

What you need is an anvil larger than your hammer. LOTS larger, 10-15 x larger is good. You can work on small anvils for sure but it isn't so efficient and you run the risk of breaking the anvil. Frosty

You could try finding a soils lab in your area, buddy up with one of the employees, owners, etc. and see if they'll let you test sample pieces in a muffle furnace. Paying them to test it would cost more than just buying a known refractory. Of course buying new would eliminate the guesswork . . . What fun is that? Frosty

Plasticine or oil based modeling clay works fine for modeling a lot of things, none of them structural. There are different grades from stiff to soft and you can keep it pretty stiff by keeping it cold. Mostly I use it to experiment with forged shapes and made up pieces. It helps me determine the best sequense to follow when forging more complicated shapes and such. I don't use it for large things, long objects, say a coat rack and such. Frosty

Nothing wrong with your anvil, I wouldn't do a thing with it other than use it. If you go to the top of the page, click on "user CP" and edit your profile to tell us where you live there's a good chance there're people close to you who can help directly. Frosty

I suppose a rotor'd work okay but there are a lot of things that make decent to excellent fire pots. I thought there was a thread about alternative fire pots on IFI but a quick search of the site didn't turn it up. Searching IFI for "fire pots" got lots of hits though. A fire pot isn't really too critical as long as you stay within some broad parameters. A coal fire doesn't need to be as deep as a charcoal fire so a charcoal fire pot should be a little deeper. Being conservative says build a fire pot for charcoal and you have both covered. It needs to be big enough but making it too big will waste fuel. It must stand the heat, one way or another. For myself I'll frequently build a fire about the size of a coffee cut for doing delicate work and rarely build one a 9" pot won't hold fine. The duck's nest works really well for me but isn't perfect by a long shot. For one thing it's easy to put your steel too low in the fire's oxidization zone. You also don't have an expanse of flat table surrounding the fire, the brick makes a step up so you find yourself propping stock up to get it level in the fire. Anyway, there're lots of options and improvisation is the heart of smithing. Frosty

Here are a couple pics of home made blowers in Viet Nam. One pic is a blower mounted and in use in a sidewalk smithy. The other pic is a stack of them. I don't recall who posted the pics or where; here maybe MAF, I don't recall. Frosty

A 350kg anvil? Have you posted a picture I missed? If not what's wrong with you Buddy? Okay, I opened my mouth so I'll propogate my tale, though I believe this thread has been done already. Hasn't it? I grew up in Father's metalspinning shop and had little choice about helping out in my spare time. When I say grew up in it I mean precisely that. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on the ways of his spinning lathe playing race car with the tale stock wheel. Well, having spent so many hours doing brutally physical, dangerous but precise work I most certainly didn't want to spin for fun. Playing with fire and hitting things by eye rather than micrometer was a lot more fun and relaxing. Dad on the other hand discouraged smithing as a dead craft and I never really convinced him I did it for fun not profit. Another benefit to smithing was being able to play with fire. We lived in S. Cal. where kids are NOT allowed to play with fire, however if you're "blacksmithing" they cut you some slack. So, I've been doing it since I was maybe 10 as a hobby, teaching myself because Dad wouldn't help in any significant way. Mother wouldn't let him forbid it, it kept me out of her kitchen. Then sometime in the late 70's or early 80's I discovered Bealer's "Art of Blacksmithing" in a local book store. They'd gotten a dozen copies by mistake and they were on the bargain table for really cheap. I picked up a copy and after thinking about it went back the next day to pick up a couple more but they were all gone. All 12 gone in two days. The manager of the book store still couldn't be convinced to stock smithing books because nobody was interested! EEDEEOT! Well, "Art" really opened my eyes, I learned why I couldn't do some things, how to do others, what to call some of the weird tools and maybe most importantly that Bealer was dead wrong, some of the things he said couldn't be done were easy for me. Soon I started finding other books and when the internet went public in 91' I discovered a vigorous smithing community online who gladly and with great tolerance pushed my education into warp speed. Frosty

Brain first, education or imagination tied for second and third place. I buy all my electrical tools and such out of necessity. While I can make most of the other stuff it just isn't cost effective for much of it. For instance a "C" clamp isn't all that hard to make by hand but it takes a lot of time to hand cut the threads for screw and box . Okay, that isn't the question. Most important in my shop are measuring devices whether they're micrometeres or knotted string. Being able to accurately measure, divide, multiply and mark is all important. With a good piece of string you hardly need any other layout tools except something to mark with. Heck, you can do more things with string than any other single measuring device. Cutting tools from saws and chisels to files and sandpaper. Hammers of course. Vises, clamps and dogs. Anvil, stakes, various dies, sets, hardy tools, etc. Torch & welders, etc. Handling equipment from pry bars to cranes, I'm only limited by what I can move around. Machine tools from drill presses to lathes and mills, though these fall under cutting tools I'll give them their own slot farther down the necessity cue. The pickup truck and trailer are probably my most essential pieces of equipment, they're so important I don't include them in the list as they supercede mere smithy/shop duties. Frosty

Rotor or brake drum? A brake drum in the 9-10" range makes a fine fire pot. Semi sized drums are too large for my preference, others swear by them though so it depends. What I like is a duck's nest, basically a shallow depression around an air grate. Then I arrange fire brick around it to make whatever size or shape fire I need. It's not perfect but it's pretty versatile. Mostly I use propane though. Frosty

I believe the undersized spare tires are prefered for tire hammers. They keep changing though so maybe not. Frosty