Frosty

Ditto, RR spikes are too low carbon for most tools. They were intended to be tough with low fatigue characteristics. Jack hammer bits are a decent choice, another is 5160 leaf spring stock. There are ups and downs to either steel. Jack hammer bits will take the heat and impact better but are a bear to forge if you need to reshape them. There are also heat treating issues with some jack hammer bit steels. 5160 is a lot more forgiving, easier to forge and heat treat and is easy to aquire. The downside is it isn't very heat resistant and if you don't exhibit care the heat from the stock being cut will damage the hardy's heat treatment. Use the RR spikes for tong handles and other applications where a little springy toughness is desirable. Frosty

Another thought is to make a sheet metal anvil shaped stove. If you've seen Roger Degner's, "Peter Wrong" anvil you know what I mean. Then you'd be able to make it into a BBQ, stove with gridle or whatever. It's a cool or should I say "cooking with gas" idea. While this isn't really on topic, it's close. Last summer I found a 36" dia wok at a garage sale and intend to make an outdoor setup for it in the summer kitchen. Well, while a club member was out welding up his home built anvil the wok got noticed and now I'll be taking it to our next meeting to cook a potluck lunch. We'll be using the casting furnace for the burner. Like I say, similar but not quite the same. Frosty

MIxing a little graphite with black paint will give a nice "steel" finish as well. Frosty

I can think of another real bonus to taking an anvil stove tailgating at a game, it's unlikely anyone will JUST walk off with it. Frosty

Also, a punch, drift, chisel, etc. can jam as the metal being penetrated cools and shrinks while the punch, etc. heats and expands. With experience a person will know when to stop driving and knock the penetrator out of the work. A good lube makes removal more forgiving in addition to making the whole process more efficient. Frosty

Yes, ditto thanks for posting the URL. Frosty

Are you talking about the oil port above the gears? It's just one of the little spring flap covered oil posts you see on machinery everywhere. Hmmmm, come to think of it I don't recall if mine has the little flap on it. I just put a little (half dozen or so drops) 30wt motor oil in the hole and it works fine. Chainsaw bar oil works well but gets stiff if you live in cold country, say teens and below. Frosty

M- There's nothing wrong with planning for the future, even if it's a fantasy future. Make your drawings and plans, keep them in notebooks and keep them handy. I've been doing it since I was 9-10 and still do it. Every once in a while I'll browse back through my old notebooks, sometimes laughing at the grandiose plans I had "way" back then, other times I wonder than my plans and desires haven't changed in 40 years or more. The best though is when I happen on something I wrote or drew decades ago and the lightbulb goes on. HEY! That wasn't a bad idea! I didn't know how to do it then or couldn't afford it then but now I do and can. So, don't stop dreaming, life itself will do enough to keep you from them and every once in a while it'll allow you the opportunity to realize one so it's best to keep a goodly trunkful of dreams handy so you can take advantage. Frosty

What ARE you talking about? Separating the solids from the volatiles would eliminate the flamability and wonderfuly delightful flash! Next thing you'll say is you want to eliminate the sound. What IS the world coming to? A smith who doesn't want flames bursting forth from the project! I think I'll go morn a dying art now. Frosty

Hey Ralph! Good to see you posting here. It's a picture of two goats, one baby, one old. I fell asleep playing with baby goats once and woke up at the bottom of a pile of sleeping goats and one great pyreneese mountain dog. Fortunately I woke up and got out before Deb saw me or there'd be pics all over the web. Frosty

Not quite Glenn. Yur recent aquisition looks like the fire pot, not the whole forge. I'd say the entire forge would have to be based on the end of a 500 gl fuel tank rather than a 55gl. drum. (size wise. Don't actually use a fuel tank unless you REALLY know what you're doing!) I'd say it looks like a fire pot for forging anvils. Large anvils and other large stuff. Frosty

Thanks but you should be thaning Brian Gilbert. He's the one who spurred me into cleaning it up enough to print, spend a lot of time helping as well. He also provided the process pics and references so you can compare. I've been sending versions of it for years, finally saving a copy and cutting and pasting with revisions as needed. It must've finally gotten close enough to okay for Brian to try to save it. Well, sending it to a newsletter editor's list we both belong to might have had something to do with it. The tongs were a real pleasant surprise, Brian had already sent me a copy of the pattern issue of the Blow which was more than I expected. Finding the tongs at the P.O. was a day maker for sure. heck, it was a week maker at least. Tunnel Mill was a good time, the first real hammer in I'd ever been to. AK is pretty isolated. I remember meeting lots of people but I don't remember a Skunkriv in the house and your Avatar pic is too small for me to recognize. I hope to get back for sure. Deb and I plan on doing some traveling but it'll be a bit yet. Frosty

I've heard of this, it's a method of case hardening and needs to be done at near welding heat. I've never tried it either, I can afford a little tool steel if I can't scrounge it honestly. Frosty

I begin by breaking any lump coal to around 3/4", about acorn size but I don't get too fussy if it's a little larger, 1" or walnut's fine. Depending on how much I'm prepping I'll screen out the fines with hardware cloth 1/4" mesh or roll it down a piece of plywood to separate it out. I start the coal with a strip of cardboard about 1 1/2" - 2" wide and 12-18" long. I roll it into a tight coil and place it over the grate. My grate is a piece of 3/4" plate with a pattern of 14, 5/16" holes tapered wider on the underside so junk pokes out easily. I've never tried a slotted air grate but will. I'll also say 14 holes is more fire than I usually need but dropping flattish round headed rivets in the excess holes works nicely to reduce the grate and it's easy to lift them out if I want a larger fire. Anyway, I place the coil of cardboard over the air grate and pile coal around it then allow the coil to open slightly. You want a little space between layers of cardboard 1/16" is plenty. This is to allow the air to blow through the coil making a flame like a torch. I then continue piling coal around and on the coil till all that's left is an inch or so visible in the center. The first layer of coal is all pretty clean so air can pass through it easily. Around and over the initial mound of coal I pack my wetted fines, leaving the crater in the center open. When the mound is ready I light a couple stick matches and with the gentlest of blast, just enough to keep the matches lit I drop them into the center of the coil. There's nothing wrong with giving it a LITTLE squirt of charcoal lighter fluid, kerosene or diesel but don't tell any traditionalists I said so. Once the cardboard is burning I slowly increase the blast till I have a torchlike flame showing. At that point I fill the crater with clean 3/4" coal and increase the blast a little. In a minute or less there'll be a healthy plume of smoke and the center may slump a little as the cardboard burns away, time to increase the blast again. Once the mound flares off I cover all but a little bit of the center for a vent with wetted fines and let it have the blast. Don't go crazy, use a little judgement eh? Once the smoke dies down the fire is ready for use. Or if you have good coking coal you can do what I do and just coke up a bucket's worth for a smoke free rest of the day. Coking a 5gl bucket takes about 15 mins and is rather smokey to start with. I prep the mound the same but it's considerably larger being around 5gl. of 3/4" coal. Covering the outside of the mound with wetted fines really helps, especially coking a larger quantity because it contains the heat better and lets me control where it goes. For instance if one side of the mound isn't heating, you can tell because the whole mound should be seeping smoke evenly, even after it flares. If one side isn't seeping smoke it isn't coking so, poke a hole through the fines there and close the top vent a bit to force the fire to the part of the mound that isn't coking. After a bit the mound will start sticking together and after a bit longer it'll start to slump like hot asphault. At this time I take a sharp shovel (that's one with a sq point. Yeah, and I call a spade a spade too;) ) and turn the mound over for a couple more minutes of blast. You'll get a goodly flare of orange and yellow flame and black smoke when you turn it but it won't last long. When this last flare dies down it's ready. Using your shovel and rake spread the breeze (forge coked coal) and extinguish it with water. There'll be plenty of fire left in the pot to rebuild the dome and start forging. I prefer coking up the day's coal in the morning to get the smokey part over with. Also, if you do it at 0'dark:30 in the morning the neighbors are less likely to notice and complain. Outside of prepping the coal this takes way longer to read than to get a good fire going with this method. One last thing, I don't hold my methods as being superior to anyone elses, they're just what work best for me. There are other ways of doing almost everything and some work better some not. Coal differs place to place, it's age, your altitude and the day's weather all contribute to it's burning characteristics. So, keep an open mind, try new things, even when what you're doing works fine and have fun. Play safe but have fun. Frosty

If you're making the drive get a couple bags of each, sometimes one just isn't enough for a fair trial. You can mix them as well just for a third option. Frosty

Attractive knocker PT. Nicely done, it'll make someone happy for sure. Frosty

I just looked and didn't see any wrought iron, turned up no results on a search as well. You might want to double check before you order John. If they do have wrought on the page you pull up, please post THAT URL, I'd like to find a supplier of small quantities of wrought. Axles make fine hammers, it's a very forgiving steel so you don't have to get your heat treatment perfect. Frosty

Good point Thomas. It wouldn't take too long to adze the side of a log flat. Still, having tried to forge on a piece of plate I'd rather use a sledge hammer head or proper stump anvil. My list: Stump anvil and bickern. 3 hammers, sledge, 2lb+/- and 10 to 16 oz finisher. A chisel, couple files and hacksaw blades. Draw knife to make handles. Appropriate stock to replace items I couldn't repair. A horse can carry the farrier's supplies. Frosty

I've done a lot of campfire forging and unless it's really out of true I hardly notice. The only time I can think a really true anvil would be important would be if you have an Oliver mounted to work on it. Solid is FAR more important, to me anyway. Frosty

Oliver is a company name, they made lots of other equipment besides the hammers. Oliver has come to be the general term used for a simple helve type treadle hammer. By simple I mean a single swing arm, return mechanism and treadle. Many Oliver hammers could be mounted behind your existing anvil and swung into or out of position for use. Others had integral anvils. Many of the Oliver hammers were incredibly complex for how they worked. There were lots of claims for increased mechanical advantage in the ads though I don't see how adding components would make it hit harder. More modern treadle hammers use two swing arms to keep the hammer parallel to the anvil throughout it's stroke. Oliver hammers swung through the arc so the farther from the anvil the farther out of parallel the hammer and anvil are. Even more modern treadle hammers use guides or Watt linkage designs to keep the hammer not only parallel but traveling in line. The straight up and down movement allows for the use of dies for a more versatile hammer. With the increased precision comes increased complexity. An Oliver being the simplest is the simplest and easiest to build at the other end of the spectrum would be something like the Grasshopper designed by Bruce Freeman which requires lots of time and precision to fab up. An Oliver type hammer can be as simple as a sledge hammer hinged to a post by it's handle with enough bungee cords to lift it and a rope loop for a treadle. Frosty

You can reduce the melting temp of waxes by combining them with turpentine. If you soften it to the consistency of a soft paste wax you can wipe it on the piece and heat in the oven for specific and repeatable results. polyrmerizing oils like linseed or olive (to name but two) benefit from the addition of Japan drier available at paint suppliers. Baking polymerizing oils in the oven speeds the process as well and can be used to produce nice colors from golden to black as desired. Frosty

Most but not all. Frosty

The biggest problem with using a heat stove for a forge is the heat. Half an hour into a session the stove will be putting off so much heat you won't be able to get near it. As for using a wood stove for an anvil, forget it, it'll just break up if it's cast and if it's welded steel it'll just dent. There is a good forge available from old time home decorating though. If you find one of those old (1970's) free standing conical fireplaces, they make fine forges. You need to line the floor with brick, fire clay, etc. and plumb the air blast but that's no big deal. Unfortunately the conical free standing fireplaces are getting harder and harder to find, besides being ugly they aren't very good fireplaces so making your own from scrounged (salvaged ) materials is likely to save you a lot of time getting you up and smithing. I don't know the number but there are a couple plans in the blueprint section for making forges from 55gl drums amongst other perfectly good plans. Some are simpler than others, some require more tools and expertise than others but all in all a person who wants to get into smithing should be able to make themselves a working forge from the inspiration. Frosty

James: I think your description of the charcoal making process is way better than my windy version. Seriously, you've covered the basics in three simple sentences. :cool: I've never run a comparison so can't say from experience what the different techniques mean to the quality of the charcoal. What I've read says the more indirect the method the better the charcoal for smithing. Making activated charcoal requires a super charged version of the direct method but that's not relavent here. Searching the web for charcoal making will get you more info than you'll know what to do with. So, read through a number of sites and get back to us, we'll do our best to unconfuse things. Frosty

If it's clayey (that's such an awkward word) soil it'll stop leaking shortly. That's all bentonite is though it has some unique properties. Plain old clay is going to swell and seal itself off after a while. Frosty