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I Forge Iron

What did you do in the shop today?


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On 6/29/2020 at 8:37 PM, Welshj said:

That, and my dad always told me theres nothing more dangerous than a dull knife.

My Dad said that too but smart Alec me used to respond, "Except a dullard with a sharp knife."

Beautiful knife but it left all that colored stuff on your arm, how sharp can it really be? :rolleyes:

Chris: Did you REALLY go through a 100lb. tank of propane in one day?!:o Turn that thing down! I can run 2-3 burners for several days on 100lbs.! 

2 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Your anvil stump is a bit tall.

Too close to the wall too, better move it (the wall) back some, Jungle man.

Frosty The Lucky.

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You sure made it sound like you did! I ran my RV tanks dry and filled up my 100# tank. I was making a set of tongs and hit bottom of my 100# today. Sure sounded  like you just blew through 25 gallons of propane to me!

I'M a HOOT?!:o 

:P

Frosty The Lucky.

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11 minutes ago, Frosty said:

Too close to the wall too, better move it (the wall) back some, Jungle man.

Yea, That has been bothering me. Some configuring around the stump will be needed. I’m not sure if it will stay. It doesn’t give much room for smashing. Could still cut and bury where I want but this is as good as it gets for solidness. Bumping the dimensions up to 16’x10’ would be great! However, we need to follow the fence line. Maybe we can make an exception:D. I have a bunch of cement board I plan on using for inner walls around the hot work. 


 

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I think burying a section of log is a legacy practice, I've never seen a real benefit though I'm sure someone will tell us shortly. You want your anvil out where you can address it from all directions and until you KNOW if you have a serious preference leaving it reasonably mobile is a good idea. Once you know what shop and equipment layout works best for you is time to start thinking about nailing things down. 

Of course the neighbor might be willing to sell you a couple feet for some nice wrought iron. Hmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.

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I think the main value of a buried stump is twofold: greater stability and greater mass, which together mean no rocking or other anvil movement and the ability to absorb heavier hammer blows. That would be a significant concern when you had a striker or two doing a lot of heavy hitting. Nowadays, however, most folks either aren't doing that much heavy work at all, or if they are, they're using a power hammer. Just get a stand that's solid and massive enough to do the job, and feel free to move it around as necessary. My anvil has been in about six different places over the last five years, as I have reconfigured my garage shop to accommodate changes in forge, tooling, etc.

Funny story (which I'm pretty sure I've told before, but it bears repeating): at the last Quad-State, I noticed that Colonial Williamsburg smiths Aislinn Lewis and Mark Sperry had set up their anvils with the horn on the right, even though they are both right-handed. I asked about that, and they laughed and said that all the anvils in the CW shop were set up that way on buried stumps by Peter Ross -- who's left-handed!

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Great story!  I have always planned to bury an old creosoted mine timber as base for my large shop anvil---not hard as it's a dirt/sand/gravel floor; but I need to wait and get the final shop plan together---I assume that I'll want to change things around a bit when I add the trip-hammer to the work tesseract.  I may want to actually set up the huge solid fuel forge for use!

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Dangit, lost all my text when I added the last photo.

Got a firepot for Father's day.  Came from FieryFurnaceForge, not sure if their fitup when welding was off, or damage was sustained in transit, but there are a few things that didn't line up.  In retrospect I wish I had gotten the mini forge pot from centaurforge since this slightly larger than I need.  Got a rolling metal table from the scrapyard and dropped it in and put it to work.

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Did some tool-making with my impotent flux-core MIG.  1/2" Smoosh-a-matic for small and light work.  Overarm tool guide.  Small hook bending jig (to be used for bottle openers).

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Tong adjuster tool.  Using some scrapped tong attempts for illustration.

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Worked on this hammer eye punch, first go at slit/drifting a tool.  Unfortunately the eye's a little crooked and the punch is off the axis of the body and struck end.  Need to fix it without boogering up the eye.

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Put a handle on this texturing hammer I made from a small hammer head.

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First attempt at drop-the-tongs weld.  putting a 1/2" handle on a 3/8" neck.  Will test its mettle when I add a twist the handle.

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How do you like using the pill punch?  My favorite hot chisel is made from one of them, S-1 alloy.  I made a handle that holds it in the recess and it has a rocker blade shape and it walks up a piece of sq stock for an incised twist beautifully!

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Haven't used them much since I don't have pair of tongs that fit them well... yet.  I have used one that was oval-shaped for starting the tabs on a bottle opener.  Another I tried using as a hole punch as-is, but it definitely wanted to get stuck in the hole since it didn't have any taper to it.  Many of them look like they're already set up for being eye punches (especially for a reptile), but I've not messed with that sort of work yet.  There's a couple that I plan to make into precisely what you describe, though.

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For my handled one: I took a piece of strap stock that fit in the recess and hot bent it around the chisel and riveted it together and then stuck the combined ends in a small piece of pipe  that was from a camping "bag" chair and did another 16 penny nail rivet.

I used to hold it with a pair of tongs that fit perfectly until a college student using way too heavy a hammer on it missed and broke the tongs. Hence the "cheap" handle as it was used a lot for those classes.

I've also have one ground down into a sharp point for eye pupils, but it's not handled---yet...These were the items that taught me something.  When I went to look up the heat treat in the ASM Handbook it said that S1 did not profit from normalization. Working common blade steels I was used to normalizing stuff multiple times as part of HT to refine grain.

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In that configuration does it rotate relative to the handle?  I was anticipating having to grind a flat or groove into them so there's something to index off of.

My thinking was "they're already heat treated, so I'm not going to reforge them"... if it can't be ground into shape then they'll stay as they are!

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Saw the concept from the guys that sell the RX tongs blanks.  They sell something in the same configuration that uses hex nuts instead of spacers, I just used the spacers since my hex nut supply was either too small or too large.

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Recently someone gave me a bar of mystery steel that had been sitting in their barn for many years. Despite the conditions, it had not rusted and was still fairly shiny ( it was not plated). I spark tested it, and it strangely produced almost no sparks. The few sparks it did produce were reddish-orange. It is attracted to a magnet, and is soft and easy to file. Today, I tried forging it. Oddly, it hardly produces any scale at all, and only at high temperatures (at about bright orange, it seemed). 

I also drew a taper on the end and test quenched it it water. It did not harden at all and I was able to bend the quenched end of it over cold without it cracking. After this, I was satisfied that it was a decent material, and I decided to make a pair of bolt jaw tongs from it. It forged fine; it was just a little bit harder to move under the hammer than mild steel, but nothing like 5160 or anything like that.

After the tongs were done and I was just doing the final tweaking of the jaws at a low heat, one of the jaws broke right off. The material did not give any prior indication that it was prone to cracking in my earlier tests, but it did here. The grain structure was pretty large at the break; I wonder if all the heats while forging it grew the grain size and made it weaker?

I guess it was just another lesson on using mystery steels. Anyone know what sort of steel it could be, given the information above?

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RE Chisel Handle:  The loop is fairly snug on the chisel recess but it is possible to stick the chisel in a post vise and rotate the handle---which is a feature as depending what you are doing it's easier with the blade axis Inline, at 90 deg or at 45 deg.

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4 hours ago, HojPoj said:

Came from FieryFurnaceForge, not sure if their fitup when welding was off, or damage

Is it just the ash dump that's tweaked? That's a pretty straight forward fix. If the hinge is bolted or screwed on lower it about 1/8". Or you could grind the square tubing next to the hinge so it can swing farther before it contacts it. Or my last choice would bump it to a closer fit with a hammer. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Chelonian:  I think that you may be dealing with some sort of low carbon stainless steel.  Low carbon, moderate to high chromium.  It should take a really high polish well.  Use it for something decorative like a knife guard of pommel.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

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Frosty- One of the mounting tabs was off kilter, as well.  The hinge is welded on, so no adjustment possible.  Was hoping to avoid having to do major modifications to make it work properly.   Usually I spend money on other people doing the work so I don't have to... just a little irritated, is all.

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4 hours ago, HojPoj said:

Usually I spend money on other people doing the work so I don't have to... just a little irritated, is all.

Heh, that's the ONLY reason I spend money. I understand the irritation receiving something that isn't right. 

I like your plant hanger John, it looks well. Did you put something on the feet to set into the ground for stability?  If not you can drive a spike or two into the ground the leg will slip over. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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HojPoj, contact Dave Custer directly.  He stands behind his products 100%.  A friend of mine bought one of his excellent tire hammers but was having problems.  Dave drove all the way from Kentucky to Arkansas to check it out.  I think the problem may have been mostly user error, but nonetheless, Dave stood by his work.

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