December 11, 20187 yr OTOH you can avoid the dreaded "tong bounce" when holding them between your thighs while using your hands for hammer and tooling!
December 11, 20187 yr Very cool! Are there any adjustments as to where it hits? Meaning can you do an edge to edge or half faced blow?
December 11, 20187 yr 2 hours ago, ThomasPowers said: nice to restrict them to small hammers; but in the project class they run into typical beginner issues---like wanting to use free stock that needs massive breaking down to be usable for their project ~Humor attempt!~ I have this vision of a class like that with 10 or 15 wild college students whooping and a hollering, huge hammers flying and beating large 1" sized iron into 1/4" submission,,, with more fire in their eyes than in their forges!!! I guess all you can do is wait for them to tire out,, then head on out the door. Lol Nope, in truth, I've never had a class, or anybody in my shop, for that matter, where they are doing something I dont feel they are qualified to handle. At least, not for long. I know you teach classes. I'm guessing you have multiple forging stations. Do you have a striking anvil at each station? And to be sure, a tool is a tool, and if you have, or see a reason for any tool, then go for it!
December 11, 20187 yr Small classes, 6 max for the beginners side and my forge and generally 3-4 anvils of different heights and a couple of "advanced" students using the Fine Arts class forge and anvils. One thing the advanced students are prone to do is wanting to forge a ballpeen into a tomahawk. The advanced class is a project class and they usually know better than me as they have watched FiF several times and I have only been smithing 37 years. I usually try to direct them; but will let them learn the hard way (as long as they are being safe.) A previous student broke the horn off the original class anvil. I found a better anvil for them and the instructor gave me the remains for my small collection of abused anvils AKA my wall of shame...I also found the bridge anvil sitting in the desert behind one of the University building and told the FA instructor who got it moved to her class...
December 11, 20187 yr 2 hours ago, anvil said: Very cool! Are there any adjustments as to where it hits? Meaning can you do an edge to edge or half faced blow? No, it just hits in one place. I don’t forge with it directly; there’s way too much slop in the pivot mechanism for accurately placed hammer blows. It’s fantastic for use with top tools, though.
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