bois d'arc Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 Devon is my name. I live near Tulsa, OK. I am not any kind of blacksmith - but my youngest son (just turned 12) really, really wants to try his hand at it. I do make the odd tool for woodworking - I have a MGAW setup and I am fair at that (so much nicer than the stick rigs I learned on 30 years ago). I have a nice shop with an old Van Norman 12 mill, a Clausing lathe, a DeeBlast 50 cabinet, decent compressed air, etc. My father is a retired mechanist and my grandfather was a Tool and Die Maker who tinkered with wood in his retirement. I have inherited both of their tools, tooling, etc. I have an ASO that was in the clearance area of Wholesale Tool some years ago. I have beat some black locust trunnels down the hardie on it and that is about all. I traded an old friend for a 16" chunk of railroad track last year (it cost me 10 good 7ft T-posts). If I setup a forge for my son the track will probably be our anvil. I have 2 Osage Orange stumps from wind-blown trees that are around 40" tall and 30" around and I plan on carving an anvil stand out of one of them. We have a Johnson 122 Double Wide forge that was converted to propane at some point. I have a question post over in ForgesGas soliciting advice on refurbishing that or scrapping it to build something smaller - feel free to pop over if you have an opinion that. My son and I have learned a lot from reading your posts here - I appreciate the candor and the real world experience shared on this forum. I am attending Handworks 2013 in a few weeks. Its a free conference focused on woodworking (but not strictly limited to) held in the Amana Colonies, IA May 24, 25. Anyone from Dubuque to Mt Pleasant, IA, from Des Moines to Moline, IL should think about coming over one day if you have any passing interest in hand tool woodworking. http://handworks.co/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mitch4ging Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 Hello, Bois. My name is Dennis and I amfairly new as well. Great info here on the ifi site. I am just down the pike in south Okc/Moore. Another group you may want to look up if you have not yet is the Saltfork artist/blacksmith group. They cover Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri area, and have events from time to time. Dennis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mitch4ging Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 Sorry, should have used Devon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bois d'arc Posted May 3, 2013 Author Share Posted May 3, 2013 Thanks for the welcome, Denis. I hope you all missed the freeze last night. We had sleet here and it dipped into the 30s. If I wanted sleet in May I would have stayed in the Midwest! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mitch4ging Posted May 4, 2013 Share Posted May 4, 2013 I think my wife's new flowers have died now.... another trip to get some more...oh goody! But at least the rain has been a good thing this year! Hope you guys get set up and start beating some iron. I have been practicing on nails, still need lots of practice! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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