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Thanks! I wonder about the Harbour Freight ball pein's? Great stuff!

Travis - Thanks for the link to the safety (lack of) stories and the grisly photo's. It's important to see that stuff. It's odd that the guy who lost some of his finger sliced it off on the guard. Angle grinders are so effective and so dangerous, especially with a grabby wire wheel. If you are using wire wheels to remove scale and raise highlights they don't need to be spinning at 10K+ rpm's. One of the motorcycle forums I check out now and then has a section where you can post pictures of when things go wrong. Protruding bones, huge lacerations, etc... Usually the poster has a coinciding thread in the classifieds. Really helps to slow you down and be smart.

Hook it up to a router speed control thingy. It still might get ya, but maybe not as bad.

A lot of the time you can hit a few glancing blows or "on edge" smacks with your hammer to dislodge the scale. Saves tons of time messing around with a brush, switching it for a hammer and then going to work.

My press has two large nuts at the bearing where the screw thread hits the ram. These are for setting the falling rate. I had the same problem after a while and loosed them up a bit (big wrench!).

Check it out - 2 WA Whitney Hydraulic Presses ANGLE PLATE SHEAR w/Pump - eBay (item 370256941946 end time Sep-14-09 08:48:20 PDT) Looks like quite the work station for a good opening price. No affiliation

I've worked a fair amount of rebar with few problems, make sure its got good color. A good way to educate the public on the process of forging and the elasticity of steel is to forge something on the end of a stick of rebar and leave the rest intact. This is effective on finished work as well by taking a found object slightly out of context while keeping a reference point to the original material.

Nice, keep it coming!

I am going to look a a railing job next week and it contains the dreaded curved staircase. I have some ideas as far as how to approach this but whats your technique? Any tips from measuring to fabrication would be great to hear.

I have a garage filled with gear for the "gravity" type sports. Snowboarding, whitewater kayaking, and Mt. biking are the favorites. I'm 38 and cannot imagine life without those pursuits. Had to give up soccer. I believe that when you stop working out your joints and muscles and lungs is when the aches and pains begin. The physical intensity and required finesse is what attracted me to forging metal.

–verb 1. Archaic except in some senses. a pt. and pp. of work. –adjective 2. worked. 3. elaborated; embellished. 4. not rough or crude. 5. produced or shaped by beating with a hammer, as iron or silver articles.

Saw this in a brewpub, the pipe is about 12" in diameter. Any ideas as to the techniques/tooling?

I couldn't agree more with your approach. The first ironworker, tig, air hammer,etc, I used was the one I bought. Sometimes you just know that some machines or processes are going to suit your work or make you some cash to keep the wolves at bay. I've never seen a pullmax in person and only have a few ideas of what they can do but man I want one, a BIG one. What happened to the gooshy experiments? Sounds interesting.

Ditto on being careful with the money. Even more so because you are dealing through a friend. If they aren't at least a bit shocked by your #'s, you are probably not asking enough. Give yourself room to simplify joinery or design elements to make the job more affordable for the client if they can't meet your budget requirement's. Also, get the finish lined out early. On big jobs it is really nice to have a pro do the painting and not have finish work (and warranty) even be part of your scope. When doing large jobs, often the work work is the easy part.

What control! Sweet outfit too, you're like the Willy Wonka of smithing.

My point is that rebar has a bad rap as a forgeable material and I want to do all I can to dispel that idea because as scrap it's everywhere and in quantity (and almost free). Use the cutoffs and you're green! I have forged a lot of it and never had any problems that couldn't be traced back to human error. Work it hot and you're good (whats better for beginners than this mantra?). I have a huge love for "found" materials. In fact, one of my favorite things about the craft is that you can find a rusty hunk of something on the side of the road and chances are you can heat it and squish it. If I could only fake charm I'd probably get more jobs.

Here's a few shots of some tapered, textured pipe worked under an air hammer. The texture was the last of three heats and the die was a typical wood grain (one sided, not a spring type). The dies on the hammer are flat which added some nice opposing lines when they (the dies) clipped the taper.

Here's one of mine similar to BBrazeals ring, with a different approach. This technique makes upsetting fun. Pic1 - 3/8 round stock (is that rebar? everyone knows you can't forge rebar. blah blah blah) Take it to the far edge of the anvil and isolate about 1", rotate 90 degrees and then back to your original position. Repeat until you have a thin strand attached to a nice hunk of meat. Pic2 - take the strand to round Pic3 - Bend the meat to 90 degrees as shown Pic4 - Now the fun part, upset the blob. Don't worry too much about overlaps, concentrate on getting the thin strand to the edge of the mass and not under the lump. This is better visually and things don't get weak. This part is the crux. You need a few off kilter blows until things settle down. Pic5 - Decorate as you wish Pic6 - Cut Pic7 - Draw out (Is that rebar? Can't be, I mean thats a pretty delicate operation for junk metal. That taper must be 'bout 1mm or so. (blah blah blah) Pic8 - Bend the eye with a needle nose. Pic9 - The finished piece, after a little deformation. Adapt and enjoy

The problem with using a fly press to texture pipe is in the nature of the blow. Because a fly press has a lot of inertia it really wants to collapse the pipe which means you kind of need a mandrel inside the pipe to back it up. Not easy for long sections. Ideally this job would be better suited to an air hammer (or mechanical) which can lightly tap tap tap the material. Or you could do it cold in the press with a chisel and have the pipe support itself. Probably quicker to do it by hand at a low heat.

Brian - thanks for the dry run. Devon - yeah, that would work but I gotta do a ton of this and it needs to be tight so i'm not too keen on torching it. well, the gas axe would be fine but that's too much sanding. I'll let you know how it goes.

Am I on the right track here with the cutters? Or do I get a straight end mill and angle the fence? Is air power essential, or could I use a beefy wood router and turn down the rpm's?

please elaborate. i thought of a router but they're for wood, right? Rpm's? What kind of bit? merci

What would be the best (cheapest or most efficient) process to put a 45 degree chamfer on the edge of a a piece of 3/4 x 10" piece of mild steel. The edge needs to be vertical for 3/8" and then be beveled at 45 degrees for the remaining 3/8". There's probably 100' or so, who gets the job?

My #1 favorite is the flypress. Quiet, powerful, precise.

Here is a tapered v-block I made recently. Simple and effective. Makes short work of tapering pipe (and solid, but it really shines with the pipe).