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I Forge Iron

Store bought hammers vs hand forged hammers


JeepinBoon

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Humidity is usually lower than folk would think here, tough single digit is usually clear winter weather humidity. Heat index is usually lower than ambient. Heat index not to be confused with chill factor though both effects apply to hot or cold.

Frosty The Lucky.

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You lucky dog you. LOL! I just trued the ends of a torch cut 316 stainless pipe, 6" ID, 13" long, on the lathe for a propane forge and now I've got slivers and shavings EVERYWHERE. No magnet can help me. Today was 91f humidity at 56% heat index I think was 101.

What brand hammers do you use? What is your most used hammer shape?

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I've posted some of mine on the show us your hammers thread.  In general I buy shape rather than brand and so have a large number of brands: Woodings Verona Tool Works are well represented as are Atha, Fairmont, some english brands, german brands, french brands, etc.

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And I have a crate of hammer heads sources as stock for other projects like stake anvils

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Yes I am a hammer junkie; but most were bought for US$5 and under.  I don't own a single "fancy" $100+ hammer. (Bought my Lynch Collection ones early and cheap!)

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AH-HAH!!! Thank you for the tread reference ThomasPowers! I couldn't see the forest for the trees. I was asking all the wrong questions and ended up with way too specific requirements for a hammer. I wish I could find even five hammers like what's on that single rack. Louisiana is a dead zone for good antiques, hammers included. We had a scrap iron price hike many years back and everything that wasn't bolted down and closely monitored was scrapped or stolen for scrap.

This is the Dunning-Kruger effect. I'm hopefully at the bottom of Mt. Stupid and in the Valley of Despair. 

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A lot of my hammers are not antiques; just 60's 70's and 80's stuff from garage sales.  I do have matching 7 pound straight peen sledges marked with the broad arrow and one stamped 1943 and the other stamped 1983. One found in Ohio and the other in New Mexico...

(Of course others are 100+ years old---but bought as rusty old tools not antiques!)  I find some of my hammers at the scrapyard for scrap price.

The thing with blacksmithing is to not get hung up on tools---watch the videos of people in third world countries forging with *rocks* or crudely made hammers that were probably truck axles pieces.  It's the *skills* you need to develop; then the fancier hammers can speed things up for you.

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I get rather annoyed by folks calling stuff antique when it isn't; most types of stuff have an established date for when it turns antique; cars at 25 for instance; furniture---used to be 100 years but now a lot of folks claim it's 50  which means a lot of us can remember buying such "antiques" new. Another annoyance is the mass branding of things as "vintage" especially when posted in the "antique" section of CL.---Must be Friday!

I've mentioned before being at the flea market and running into dealers who think "old"  means "expensive" and offering them a piece of gravel from the ground and telling them it was a million times older than what they were trying to sell; but I'd trade them even...

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But but there's rust! It must be a vintage antique! You don't think rust just happens overnight do you? 

Uh. . . Yeah, it's Friday, twit your friends day.

It kind of sucks to think that when I had the dead 86 4x4 Chevy pickup crushed it was a valuable antique.:o Double DRATS!

Frosty The Lucky.

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Man I agree with ya'll. We need a new classification system! I can put antique tags on a 95 chevy S10... Antique also determines wether my slot machines are legal in Louisiana. Only one machine left that is illegal but I ain't advertising.

No interesting hammers at the antique stores in Vicksburg but I did pay WAY too much for a ROWE FDRY 22lb anvil shaped object. Took pictures of the *anvil tower*. Gotta have symmetry, I'm weird like that.

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I reupped my curmudgeon card over the weekend.  Read a good book on Damascus Steel cover to cover and found myself penciling in  corrections where the translator didn't know how the technical terms should be translated from the German to the English.  Luckily I *own* that copy!

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I figured someone must have as it's been out there 7? years; but as they have an email listed I probably will.  I need to go back and review the start of the book---before I stopped gritting my teeth and started with the pencil.  (A bit of the shame as there is a lot of stuff in there I really like.)

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Ah, a REAL curmudgeon would've gotten himself on the ignore list demanding corrections by now. :rolleyes: You MUST like the book.

This is almost enough to buy a copy just to quote things that irritate you on low BG days. That way I can save IFI members who don't understand. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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I was? Cool, just a bunch of bounders contriving to sound ungentlemanly. What excuse do I need to twit folk? You can be so eloquent in response, I often learn printable new words. It's a win win.

Frosty The Lucky.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Life has its ups and downs. I finished a railroad track anvil yesterday and knocked the tower down today. Three anvils fell off the top of the pile and punctured one of my solar power batteries and the Hay Budden crushed a playstation 2...  The up side is I've got several offers on the RR anvil, lol. Nobody has any RR track to trade. Pic before the crash.

Anvils3.jpg

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