Frosty

Thanks all. The cup holder is gimbal mounted because I MIGHT have to move, seeing as I don't work for the state anymore. You can NEVER be too careful you know. I made this during a gathering of metal artists in Elk River Mn. over Father's Day. We were supposed to make an "Artist's Book," whatever that is. I've had a paycheck job for the past 35-40 years and am not an artist. Anyway, the "Book" was supposed to say something about the person, their art, etc. I flew down early to give my good friends a hand setting up for the Shindig and after it got going I realized what my "Book" should be. There's a long standing bunch of jokes about what a state employee does. I'm sure you've heard most of them like, "What's orange and sleeps four? - A state truck." And so on. The one I was repeating at the time the muse spoke to me was, "What's this high (holding your hand about shirt pocket level) and smells like an armpit? - A state shovel handle." So, there it is, my "Artist's Book". A brand new, stickers intact, shovel, with foam padded handle, that'll NEVER scoop anything, ever. It's permanently mounted on a stand with DOT - RET in forged letters welded to it. Also to show just how versatile a State Employee has to be, the cup holder will hold not only a beer but soda can or coffee cup safely. The real story of this book is of course that it's the end of that story. Time to open a new volume and move on. And YES your wheel barrow should have a cup holder! Good grief is it even a QUESTION? Frosty

Darn I hate having to reply to my own posts but the pic of me and my shovel didn't attach to the last one. With crossed fingers. Frosty

Sure, there are all kinds of things I could've scrounged to make handles. I haven't broken an axe handle in a long time so don't have one around. Same with shovel handles I'm REALLY easy on them see attached pics. (I retired from the State of AK June 1) I picked up a couple hockey sticks but they're too narrow for these hammers. Repousse hammers maybe but not forging hammers. I have a bucket of unused hammer handles I picked up when a hardware store went out of business 15 or so years ago and I may grind them into slab handles. There are a number that'll make good striking hammer handles so I won't have to make those. I suppose I could've looked around more for old tool handles to adapt but with the price of fuel buying a 1" x 6" x 8' hickory board was not only cheaper but got me a bunch of handles fast. Frosty

Nice Tat. I hope I'm looking at your's and you're Gary from Montgomery. If not, there're a lot of excellent tats. Give me more specific directions and I'll take a look. I've already worked myself through most of about 8 catagories, I'd like to know I'm looking at yours. Thanks for doing the job you do. Not everybody has it in them to run towards trouble and fix it. Frosty

Thanks Tyler. It's 3 1/2" x 1 1/2" and weighs in around 2 1/2 lbs though I haven't weighed it. The eye is 5/8" x 1 1/4", slit and drifted for a slab handle. The handle is a piece of 4/4 hickory I picked up at the local hardwood store. We don't have anything really suitable for handles growing in my neck of AK. As it is in the picture, the handle is too long but it will get shortened as soon as I've used it enough to grind some grime into it to mark exactly where I'm gripping it most. It's a straight taper with the edges broken lightly on the belt grinder. A few months ago I got to use a Tom Clark version of Uri's hammer and liked the way the handle felt. I've been using what I call a fencer's grip for decades and didn't realize how poorly a "standard" hammer handle worked for a loose grip. Once I figure out just how I like this handle I'll start changing my other handles over. I'll try grinding them flat first to see if they suit me before I make new ones. Frosty

Sounds like a classic practice issue to me. Make sure your anvil is the proper height, between your wrist and knuckles. Make sure your hammer faces are radiused so you have no sharp edges. After that, practice, practice, practice. If you're really putting lots of sharp marks in your work you shouldn't worry about making "things" as such. Make lots of long draws or try some of the other exercises suggested already. The real secret of a master smith is control. If you can't hit what you're aiming at in the way you want to hit it you aren't going to be successful. The only way to develop the control is by using your hammer. Driving finish nails with the ball pein might be a bit extreme but if you can do it reliably you be de MAN. Frosty

A couple points: A screen is a really good idea. There are a couple problems using motor oil or waste oil, especially waste oil. It'll work alright ,as a quenchant, if you thin it some. The old "formula" we used was 3pts 30wt. motor oil to 1 pt. ATF. (Automatic Transmission Fluid) I've used 10wt. in a pinch but it's still to viscous for really good results. The real downside is the smoke, it's heavy, noxious and flamable. If you have nothing better motor oil will work but make sure it's deep enough to completely submerge the piece or you're going to be up to your armpits in flames. Waste oil is worse because there is no telling what's in it, just a little antifreeze can make your day go badly. Even if there are no oddball ingredients the byproducts of use can be nasty. If you have to use petrochemical oils use proper heat transfer or quenching oils, they're not that expensive especially when you consider their performance. Frosty

It depends on what you're quenching of course but you want a sufficient amount of oil to keep it from overheating / boiling on you. A couple three gallons for small pieces like punches, chisels and hammer heads is plenty. A decent weight container is important, while a coffee or paint can is okay a dropped chisel can poke a hole in the bottom. You also want an air tight cover for a number of reasons. First being fire control, you want to be able to smother a fire that gets going. A 5gl. steel bucket with lid and a piece of 12-14 ga. sheet in the bottom to prevent hole pokage is a good choice. A length of pipe welded to a piece of plate is a common quench tank for bladesmiths. There are a lot of solutions and most of them are good. (no tupperware right?) Keep your eyes open and you'll find what you need. Peanut, etc. oil is good but regular: quenching oil, heat treat oil or heat transfer oil is safer as it doesn't flash as easily. Some hydraulic fluids work well too, like DN-600, they have high flash points and the fumes aren't too bad. Do it outside though. Frosty

These pics are of a turning hammer I made at a friends place a couple months ago. It's made from a Ford truck axle. (Mark's truck unfortunately) After forging and grinding I heated it gradually to non-magnetic and water quenched. I then used a heated drift to draw a progressive temper. The eye is drawn to blue and the faces are dark straw. A missed stout blow will ding the faces slightly without chipping so I'm happy with the heat treat. So far anyway. Frosty

I don't have a good pic loaded but these are my two main anvils. The closer one is a 125lb. Sodorfors Sorcoress #5 and the one showing it's heals is a 202lb. Trenton. The area is the old tarp tent I was using a couple years ago. Most of the stuff is moved into the new shop even though I haven't been able to go back to work on it yet. Frosty

Christopher: You may have noticed how shiney most of the guys keep their hammers. This isn't just for show, though nicely polished hammers do look better. It also helps move the metal easier. Think about what's happening when the hammer impacts the work. It's momentum carries the hammer face into the hot steel. Being non compressible the steel has to get out of the way but it's being crushed between the hammer face and the anvil face, just like a rotor in a disc brake. The rougher the face of the anvil and hammer, the sooner the metal stops moving. Keeping them polished means less work for you, it also means you'll have better control of the results. The other reason to dress your hammers is to prevent the edge of the face from marking your work. With the exception of metal working hammers the edges are not radiused and the sharp corner can really do a number on your work. The face should have a slight radius as well or you have to hit the steel perfectly or one edge will bite in. Frosty

Dan: I wouldn't give up on the full 30" twist till I gave it a try, it really isn't that hard to twist 1/2" sq. especially if you normalize it first as suggested. There are other alternatives as well, including building a trench forge and heating with charcoal briquettes. You don't need orange heat for this so you don't even need an air blast. My "try this first" suggestion is to just slip a piece of pipe over the wrench handle, put a piece of stock in your vise and give it a try. THEN make your decision. I don't know how much time I've wasted designing and redesigning a piece because some untried aspect had me worried. There will be times you can't try it first but this isn't one of them. Frosty

I agree with Thomas, pick up a copy of Weygers book, it'll show you a lot of cool field expedient forge set ups. I think a wheel rim is way more firepot than you want for making wood working tools, even if they're for cabin making. Go to a mechanic's shop and ask if you can have an old brake drum. They usually have to pay to have them hauled off so you may have to resist taking a bunch. Frosty

This is a reminder that Peter Renzetti will be auctioning off several tons of great blacksmithing and metalworking equipment next month. Please visit Cabin Fever Auctions - Home for many pics and details. Everything Peter has to sell has been excellently maintained. This is likely to be one of the East coast social events of the year. Hope to see some of you there. Regards, Don Plummer ---------------------------- I didn't FWD the list of stuff Don included in the E-mail. You'll find everything at the URL under "upcoming auctions". I'd sure like to go. Frosty

Two thoughts: First if you have a back door on your forge just move it back and forth till you have an even heat in the section you want to heat. If no back door, make one. Secondly, make a long handled twisting wrench and twist it cold. It's easier than you think. Frosty

Nice use of the comically small scaffold you can find at the Home Depot, Lowes, etc. Frosty

My shops have been varied over the years. Started in the backyard of my parents house with entirely improvised tools except for hammers. Moved to Alaska in 72 and suffered a hiatus of smithing for some 7-8 years. Slowly got back into it, mostly as an alternative to knocking off a half rack of beer every evening after work. (This is typical for off duty drillers, especially out of town drillers) Most of those operations were around a camp fire, some more sophisticated than others depending on how long we were in a camp. Home at the time was a mobile home in South Mountain View (A neighborhood in Anchorage) where I kept everything stowed in a shed and the arctic entry. I unpacked and repacked every time I wanted to do any smithing or fab work. To keep the neighbors mollified I did a LOT of gratis knife sharpenning and light metal repair, some light fab, etc. PR is important you know. Around 95' I ran into a local bladesmith through a farrier aquaintence and rented space in their forge. I escaped THAT situation, short money, tools, equipment, trust and respect for my old "buddy." I met my wife online in the winter of 96', got married july 11th 97', bought 30 acres of woods and started building the house. In the past going on 10 years most of my smithing has been outdoors, then under a tarp tent attached to the front of a 40' Connex (shipping container). Four years ago we subdivided the 30 acres, selling 15. This paid off a bunch of debt and left me enough to start construction on a real shop. I lucked out and bought a 30' x 40' red iron steel shop kit just before steel prices went through the roof. I spent almost $10,000 on the foundation and slab, mostly because of a building boom but also because of all the stuff I crammed into it. Well, I've been putting the new shop up, mostly solo, for three years now and would've had it closed in last fall if I hadn't taken the dirt dive and shattered my arm last sept. I'll get it close in this summer though. It'll have a separate machine shop area inside to keep the machine tools clean but the bulk will be a fab shop and smithy. Deb gets room in the "machine shop" for her fold forming, enameling, repousse and other metallic pursuits. Frosty

While this might not work for our red/green and other color blind friends (please let us know if you try it) it should work for others. There are lots of color charts in books and a number online. Take the book or print out to a paint store and ask for color chips. Paint stores routinely give away color chips. Match them to the heat colors on the chart, take them home and glue them in order to a stick, the leg of your forge, etc. Match your steel to the chart till you develop an eye for heat. Be aware the accuracy of printed charts will depend on how well your printer is calibrated. Finding a book with a current chart would be preferable. Frosty

If you have Quicktime viewer you'll love these pics. Frosty Wortley Top Forge - Panoramas

Agreed. Don is welding up his forge, not something requiring inspection, nor with a liability exposure. Actually, unless you have to meet hard specs 7018 isn't all that desirable a rod. Sure, it's excellent stuff but it requires special treatment and NO it can't be "revived" by baking at any temperature. The old saw, "any open cans at the end of a shift are trash," is the only way to keep hydrogen contamination within "spec". If you want to use 7018 and keep to spec you'll be making proper scarfs, preheating, making root passes, pinging and stress relieving AND throwing the rest of the rod out when you quit for the day. On the other hand, the chances you'll need the full 70,000 lb/sq/in and full deflection in any weldment in your forge aren't too great. You'll be fine using it on your forge. Frosty

I started using a mixture of 4 Pts. Borax and 1 Pt. Boric acid a while back and like it a lot better than straight borax. It's more aggressive and still not noxious. You can find boric acid in most pharmacies or in the bug killin section of the super market under the name "RoachPruf." If you want to forge weld SS you start getting into the toxic flux additives like Sal Amoniak(sp?) and other flouride compounds. It takes something pretty serious to remove chrome oxide from SS. Frosty

Don: Unless you're doing something that is going to be x-rayed or exposed to liability such as a staircase you're fine. 7018 isn't going to show hydrogen embrittlement on your forge. Unless we're talking something extraordinary in a forge. You aren't going to be heating RR cars or the like are you? Frosty

The irrnsrgn forgot to include "eye" in the definition. I guess it's why we don't call him the "English Professor." "Eyeballing" means using only your eyes to measure. That said, Thank you for showing us your video and other picture sets Roger. It's good to see what it's like to have the right tools and knowledgeable help. Frosty

Another thing a city blacksmith is s/he'd probably be a specialist rather than the all round smith you'd find in a small town. Philly was already a pretty sophisticated city by the revolutionary war. Farriers, bladesmiths, locksmiths, gunsmiths, hardware, housewares, industrial items, tools, etc. etc. Almost anything turned out in quantity, say nails would have been made by someone who did little if anything else and spikes would've been made by another person. There were large (relatively) competetive factories by then. You might try looking into historical business listings of the time. Perhaps tax records would give you names, places and relative volumes of business. Let me know if you need a proof reader. Frosty

That's a cuty Valentin. I have one that weighs about 4gm give or take but no pics. Frosty