jcornell

1/4-28 if you're planning on using a mig-tip - but be sure you buy the correct size mig tip!

I do some work on junkyard metal, primarily spring steel, which more often than not is 5160.  It makes nice punches and usually turns out a decent blade as well.

These odd scraps you've found will require a lot of work to shape into useful pieces, and may or may not be something that can be hardened or tempered.  Better to build your skills with stuff that you know will behave.

Fuel and time are limited.

I've purchased Schedule 80 nipples from McMaster Carr and Grainger.  McMasterCarr ships quickly, and Grainger will ship to one of their local stores (which in my case is about 15 minutes from my house.)

http://www.mcmaster.com/#4550k117/=rnw4kr

In keeping with the dragon theme, you could take a bolt with two washers and have the threaded end sticking out, using the washers to close off the hole.

Personally, I'd just leave them there - the kaowool, once you've used rigidizer, will suffice to block these holes.

"Honest, Officer, I put that anvil up on the saw horse because I wanted to put rustproofing paint on the bottom.  I never knew that it would fall over and pin someone to the ground.  I was away at Quad State for several days and I didn't find that poor man until I came back..."

Anvilfire says that their online ordering is broken right now, but if you call you should be able to order.

I bought the plans a while ago and put it into my "I need to do this someday" file.

J

>>> I mainly want to do bladesmithing but this forge looks like it will kind of restrict me because it doesn't look too big inside(I may be wrong). But most gas forges look like the will stop me doing anything too big(which I probably wont.. but just in case).

My main forge is made from a 3# coffee can.  The limiting factor is the size of the pass-through hole in the back.  Yes, if I were doing 8" spirals, I'd need a larger forge, but I've made railroad spike knives, knives the size of a machete and other odd bits of tooling and jewelry in an itty-bitty forge.  The mistake of most beginning smiths is to go too big - because of course "I may make a sword."

By the time you get the skills to do bigger stuff, you'll be able to justify a second (third, fourth) forge, or you'll go over to visit a neighbor smith and use his coal forge.

At the back of Porter's book on forge burners are pictures of a 1/4" and 3/8" NA burner.  I've built a couple of 1/2": burners, and that was as small as I wanted to go.

I for one would stand in line to order a reasonably priced kit.  As much as I like my propane forge, the notion that I could move things into my garage is very, very attractive.

Thanks for the info fellas - those Genshiemer burers sound very interesting.  I will probably try to get in touch with him to see how much he's charging these days.  Anyone know a price offhand?  And contact info?

He quoted $110 to me this week - PM me for contact information.

Wouldn't it be easier to make a cross using SS keystock?  I just made a small pendant sized SS cross for my college-aged daughter.  Melting down a tea kettle to make a cross seems to be like burning the garage down to bake a ham - yes, it can be done, but there are easier ways to do it.

Here's an anvil that Glen Stollmeyer is making in Taiwan (I don't think he's selling them).

Given the size of your stock, I'd actually prefer this design - I'd use a bick of some sort if I needed turning that I'd do on a horn.

Keep us posted with your progress.

If it breaks that's a good thing, right?

I have a Milwaukee Portable Bandsaw and have kept the old bimetal blades as I replace them.  Is it possible to use these for pattern weld (using a contrasting steel, like strapping) or is this project doomed?

Check out Thermal Art Design.  They call their burner the JF#1 - I've seen them in action, they seem to be a nice burner, and the people who have them say nothing but good things about them.  Me, I make something like the Porter burner - it's not as fancy as the hybrid burner, but it's not as pricey either.

Do your  burners have flares?

Back in the 1970's, before Disco, I was somewhat active in pottery.  Many of my fellow students had trained under an artist (Macanalan) who used to be in town, but then moved to a studio upstate.  Everyone who'd trained under this fellow made mug handles in the way that they'd been trained - they made their mugs with Macanalan handles.  I never spent a minute with Macanalan, but I learned second and third hand from his students, so I too made mugs that way.

None of us (that I know of) tried to pass our stuff off as genuine Macanalan, but it was obvious to some who'd been his student.  Likewise, Mark Aspery has put out his marvelous books, and many of us learn from him how to make Aspery-style wizard hooks.  Brian Brazeal has made his marvelous videos and trained us how to make horse heads.  There's a little bit of every smith that I've ever worked with in my work, as I try to learn something from every smith I see. 

I'll never make a knife as pretty as Owen Bush, but I like how he made loop handles on his Viking knives, and I now make all of my loop handled knives using that technique.

Do I try to pass my work off as that of another smith?  Nope.

Do I say "I was inspired by Owen Bush to make my handle like this?"  Yup.

I have no problem with people selling horseshoe hearts and horsehead bottle openers - we know where the technique came from.

I'm fairly certain that a blade that's been repaired in the manner Steve described would not be allowed in a competition. These look to be non-electric (hard to tell from the photo) so they wouldn't be used in competition, only in practice. The steel alloy used in fencing foils is rather complex and the heat treating is beyond complex. My son was fencing with me a few years ago and the tip of his non-electric foil shattered. Owner of the academy stopped us right there and took the foil back to his office for a replacement (on the house). Foils are supposed to bend, bend and then bend some more. A foil that breaks is dangerous to the fencers.


By the way, Steve, nice job.

Thanks!  There are a boatload of blades out there made of OCS steel  (old chevy spring).

I'm somewhat fond of OTS steel (old toyota spring) because my neighbor donated a full set of coil springs to me and then a fellow at church gave me the leaf springs from an old toyota pickup truck.  It may or may not be 5160, but it sure acts like it.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

What is the ideal lining thickness for ceramic wool material? I see most people use 2" and some forges are sold using 1". I'm trying to find out the right size of container to use and need to know what goes on the inside. I am thinking of using the 5 gal bucket on Zoeller's website because I don't have any access to welding equipment. I think it will need at least 2" of wool, though, as the chamber created is too large for one burner. People around here don't discard propane or freon tanks, either, so those aren't really an option. Could I use 1" and cover it with a half inch of refractory and then hit it with an IR wash? What's the difference with another inch of wool? Thanks for the help.

If building the "no welding easy forge" on Larry Z's site, I'd do one of two things:

1) I'd go to three inches of insulation (to increase the efficiency, but more importantly, to reduce the volume); or

2) I'd move from a 3/4" burner to a 1" burner.

In either event, I'd use rigidizer on the ceramic wool and then coat the wool with a reflective/refractory coating. 

People love the Chili forges, and I've noticed that their current Diablo stock burner is approximately 1" - which means the forge is getting a healthy number of BTUs, more than it would get from a 3/4: burner (they used to use something like Larry Zoeller's 3/4"  sidearm burner.)

J

a ball valve  to do a quick shut-off of fuel to the burner is a very good idea,

The gauge is nice, but not entirely necessary - eventually you'll do it all by eye and ear - what the flame looks and sounds like.  It may be helpful to know that a particular steel welds well at 15 psi versus 20 psi, but I don't know how really accurate the gauge is in reality.

I've used both the Bayou Classic and the High-Temp Tools/Zoeller Forge set-ups.  Long term I trust the more expensive regulator more, but I can't articulate why that is - the Bayou Classic works just fine.  I wouldn't use the Bayou Classic without a ball valve for a shut-off though.

Here's a few projects that I've done this Christmas.

These are a variation on the Frederick Christophe (or Christoper) cross.

The larger crosses are made from 3/8" square rod with the circle made from 1/4" square rod.   Here's how it's made: Slit the larger stock for the cross.  Forge weld the smaller stock into an appropriate diameter circle.  Unfold the cross long ways, slip the circle over the shorter arms and then open the smaller arms.  The right-most cross is my "proof-of-concept" piece, and my wife liked the unfinished look, so I kept this one around, but I'm showing it here mainly to give a hint as to how it's put together.  For most of the ones that I made as Christmas gifts I then forge  welded (or attempted to weld) the circle into the cross.  After that, I used the cross pein to spread the ends of the cross arms, then used a ball pein to dimple the surface all over.

The smaller cross uses 1/4" square rod stock for the cross and the circle is made from that nifty wire used in election signs (I harvest them every election) - it's a little bigger than 1/8".  Some of these I then welded like the larger crosses, but I liked them more in the small size as shown.  These were given as Christmas ornaments, with a slender red ribbon attached as a hanger loop.

This gadget is what I call "the blacksmith's hotpad."  I was fooling around with a piece of #3 rebar I picked up from the junk left over at  my church from a construction project.  I made a push stick with hooks on the end to pull and push the oven racks when putting things into and out of the oven.  The hook is also useful to snag the lip of some pans, pulling it out far enough to get a good grip with a conventional hot-pad.  When I do demonstrations one of the common questions is "do you ever  get burned?" and my common answer is that I burn myself far more often in the kitchen than I ever do at the forge (which happens to be true).  Rebar has its own texture, which does interesting things when you twist it, so I twisted all of the models I made this year.

I'm wondering if Vermiculite would work in a gap between the hard and soft bricks?

I don't know if your soft, outer bricks are rated for this temperature.  If not, the expansion and contraction that come from heating and cooling will crack them into pebbles sooner than you think.  The hard bricks suck up a lot of heat.  If you coat it with Plistix, Metricote, ITC-100 or home-brew zircon/kaolin wash, all of these are refractive coatings that reflect heat back into the chamber, and incidentally, cut back on how much heat the hard bricks suck up.  The coatings make the chamber more efficient, but would do next to nothing if painted on the inside of the soft bricks that are outside the chamber's hard bricks.

That issue is not online - can you provide a bigger picture?