cidue22 Posted December 13, 2010 Share Posted December 13, 2010 Hey everyone, I stumbled across this great forum the other day and have lost many hours reading old posts and decided it was time to say Hi. My friends and I started blacksmithing last winter in a wood burning stove using a piece of railroad as an anvil and some regular household pliers. Since then we've made some progress, but after looking on here I realize how far we really have to go. Well you know what they say about pictures. There are some of our old blown burner and the one with fire was just last night with our new naturally aspirated setup. There are also some of the small projects we have made. And yes the forge body is a crucible lined with used untreated Kaowool and some broken bits of kiln shelf, but it is better than the rusty metal bucket we started with Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GunsmithnMaker Posted December 13, 2010 Share Posted December 13, 2010 Cidue22 welcome to IFI. I'm not exactly an old hand here myself as I haven't even posted a "hello" in this section, but I have made myself known in other sections. I would like to comment that it would be nice to see your pictures, but even with my "high speed" internet it's taking forever. May I suggest you download IrfanView, http://www.irfanview.com/ for free and resize your pictures using 800 x 600 as a near perfect size for this forum. I had to learn this lesson the hard way as well, but I hope everyone appreciates my current efforts to keep the pictures to a speedy, more viewable size. It looks as though you have been busy, and I speak for myself when I say I've been where you are, and as a matter of fact I'm not where you seem to be now yet. I have loads of projects to do, but too many irons in the fire to concentrate on the smithing part of my life right now. Enjoy the craft. I know I intend to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cidue22 Posted December 14, 2010 Author Share Posted December 14, 2010 Sorry about that. I'll work reuploading a few of the pics when I'm not mobile. It really does draw you in though. We have a lot of have wants and halfway there's. Always more to do than we can devote enough time or money to. We just got a free piece of 16" diameter steel pipe about 18" long that we want to turn into a two burner pass through but we can't find a good insulation method cheaply in our area, north central Oklahoma. We're also thinking about renting a big propane bottle, getting a acetylene torch, or a small mig welder (have an old tombstone stick now). Just can't decide what we need the most. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted December 14, 2010 Share Posted December 14, 2010 can you add this to your profile so it shows up when you post---saves a lot of where you at posts when you ask for a source for something! "north central Oklahoma" Back in the early 1980's I worked in the oilpatch out of OKC, (mud logger), I picked up quite a bit of stuff going through all the small towns out in the boonies of NW OK! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Dean Posted December 14, 2010 Share Posted December 14, 2010 Howdy from East TEXAS!! and welcome to IFI! I strongly encourage you to check into the Saltfork Craftsmen Artist Blacksmith Assoc. You have several fantastic smiths with an hour of you and all willing to help a newby. www.saltforkcraftsmen.org is the web site and you can check for a meeting near you. Check out thisl http://saltforkcraftsmen.org/Calendar.shtm Gerald is the President of our group, (yes, I'm a member even tho I'm in TEXAS!) No charge to attend and you can get some "hands on" instruction from some of the folks. It's this weekend, Dec.18. Once again welcome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cidue22 Posted December 15, 2010 Author Share Posted December 15, 2010 Howdy from East TEXAS!! and welcome to IFI! I strongly encourage you to check into the Saltfork Craftsmen Artist Blacksmith Assoc. You have several fantastic smiths with an hour of you and all willing to help a newby. www.saltforkcraftsmen.org is the web site and you can check for a meeting near you. Check out thisl http://saltforkcraft...g/Calendar.shtm Gerald is the President of our group, (yes, I'm a member even tho I'm in TEXAS!) No charge to attend and you can get some "hands on" instruction from some of the folks. It's this weekend, Dec.18. Once again welcome. We've checked them out online but so far have not had a chance to make it to a meeting. We always have 2-3 guys at our shop anytime we are out there and it's mighty tough to find available time to forge when we all work different schedules so a weekend trip is just not in the works without months of planning because I think at this point if one of us goes we are going to have to all go together. We used their plans for both our cross and pineapple twist and really look forward to being able to actually go to a meeting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.