All great ideas! I'm wearing one of the wrist bands now and it's super comfortable. At least my wrist is warm here in northern Ohio! Ha!

I sold my Atlas mill recently and the guy brought some “hammers” he had. They look more like struck tools to me. Any opinions? In particular, what is that curved tool for?

 

36 minutes ago, bajajoaquin said:

In particular, what is that curved tool for?

Looks to me like it might be a farrier’s creasing tool, but I could be wrong. 

Greetings Baja.

        Looks to me like a forming tool for a deep inside edge. I don’t think it is a struck tool. IMHO

 

Forge on and make beautiful things 

Jim

Picked up a new spool of welding wire — and some more grinding wheels. 

On 1/14/2018 at 6:43 PM, JHCC said:

Picked up a new spool of welding wire — and some more grinding wheels. 

I may just start sending all of my welding work your way! LoL!

Wait until I get good — or at least consistent!

With which? One leads to the other you know.

Frosty The Lucky.

From a quick trip to the restore. The bag and box of square nails was marked $1. This stuff and a nice older new stock XL life jacket( not pictured) for $10.us. The backup/ loaner life jacket was worth that to me. 

1000lb Fairbanks hanging balance scale. 38 1/2” by 1/4 or so solid brass beam. One of the clevis pins is broken off on one side. Slight S bend in the beam. Both are fixable with a bit of patience. It is heavy. I think this was used in a slaughterhouse. 

It will shine up good.  I paid $30, any one know anything about them or have any idea of value? Thanks 

 

Picked up a reprint of the 114th  Sears Roebuck Catalog, 1905,   (reptinted 2012 and fairly cheap if you look around; I've seen ones for sale for US$80 on fleabay and US$5 from an online book store...)

On page 462 "Cast Iron Anvil with steel face: the face of this anvil is one solid piece of English tool steel thoroughly welded to the body of the anvil by a patent process. The horn is covered with and it's extremity made entirely of cast steel. The face and horn are then accurately ground and tempered. We do not guarantee this anvil, but it will give satisfaction for light work."    20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90 pounds anvils offered  with the 90 pound anvil costing US$4.60

Now their "Acme" american wrought anvils went for 8.5 cents per pound in weights over 80 pounds...a 90# anvil cost a  whopping $7.65 (WHich would be $211.80 in modern dollars or $2.35 a pound so anvil have not gone up that much in price over the years!

Now a 200# post vise would run you $16.25 back then though you could pick up and extra screw/screwbox for $2.90 to $5.45 depending on size...)

Very interesting Thomas. 

I enjoy reading those ads about "rare", "valuable"  antiques when you see them listed as "our cheapest version of item XYZ" in the SR catalog...

Currently I have reprints of the 1897, 1905 and 1908 catalogs; probably finer granularity than I need; but I buys them as I finds them cheap!

3 hours ago, TimberBull said:

1000lb Fairbanks hanging balance scale. 38 1/2” by 1/4 or so solid brass beam. One of the clevis pins is broken off on one side. Slight S bend in the beam. Both are fixable with a bit of patience. It is heavy. I think this was used in a slaughterhouse. 

It will shine up good.  I paid $30, any one know anything about them or have any idea of value? Thanks 

Nice hanging scale. I like them. Have a set hanging in the shop just because it was there when I bought the house and never moved it.

I use it sometimes. Value? $30

It followed me home many years ago.   I believe this is a top tool used used for making quarry drills or bits.  

 

I’m sure with a little inspiration you could find other uses for that. I could be wrong but I doubt you’ll need to be sharpening too many of those old drills.  

I can’t even imagine how they did that.  Wish I could see the whole process somehow to better understand.  

I't think those would be used pretty much at the end to dress the edges neatly right before you did the quench and temper.

Now I've use the "modern" screw on ends for rock drills with my screw press to make regular impressions on strap stock.

And a weird word or warning for folks in old mining country:  Rock drill stem often has a hole through a center of it to allow pressurized water to clear the cuttings from the working end. I have heard of one case where a worn out bit was used as a tamping rod for setting up explosives for blasting and gradually that center tube got packed with explosives and when it was later thrown in a forge the center stuff complained....So make sure it's empty before reusing---makes dandy Pipe tomahawks, the old stuff is high C and the hole sets up the pipe end for drifting and working out.

Funny story on this one: I’m looking for garage door extension springs for the treadle hammer I’m making, so when I passed an overhead door place with the “OPEN” sign on, I stopped to see if they had any old ones left over from a repair job. Alas, they were actually closed, but I stuck my nose over the edge of their dumpster to see if this might be the kind of thing they might have.  Sure enough, there was exactly the thing I was looking for, but since I didn’t have permission to dive their dumpster, I reluctantly let it lie. 

Fifteen minutes later, as I was getting on the highway, I spotted this lying on the shoulder of the ramp. Not quite what I was after, but a step in the right direction. 

Virtue is its own reward, but sometimes you get a bonus!

I would stop back in when they are open and ask if they would let you scavenge things from their dumpster from time to time. I would explain you're a blacksmith and what you would do with anything found. Take a little "trinket" to give them.

Certainly would — if this were anywhere near home. The only time I go past this particular place is on the way home from taking my daughter to/picking her up from college. 

The current plan is to see if there’s anywhere closer to home that might have something. Tomorrow, I’ll be calling the folks who fixed my own garage door a couple of years ago — they were very generous with broken torsion springs. 

Went to a buddy's house this afternoon to visit his epic pile of cool stuff. Came home with a lot of goodies. 

Couple of kerosene lanterns. 

Jackhammer bits and a Kelly brand axe. 

A bucket full of future tomahawks, aka hammer heads and handles. 

This big old axe. This is one of the single bevel kind for squaring timbers. 

Some leaf springs. Some will become part of my power hammer. The ones in the right are from an International Scout and will become knife blades. 

He also has 98% of what I need to build an Appalachian power hammer, including a 4.5" solid axle and a mud pump sleeve that together can make an anvil in the 300 pound range.  That'll be a thread for another day, as we just spotted everything today.  I think we'll end up going down there and fabbing everything in the next month or so.
 

Awesome Jason! 

I did my usual Sunday morning after work exploration of the Las Vegas valley and garage sale hunting. First stop netted a couple of prints by one of my artist friends. Then I found this along with quite a few other treasures. I see these called by a few different names. I didn't think $20 was out of line for it. This is a Google image, but same condition and shape as mine. At the same sale I picked up some scrap steel to help out one of the new guys who posted recently, and a couple of aluminum oxygen tanks, one small, one tall along with a bundle of handsaws to chop up for stock. 

Those are known as dam scoops in this part of the world. The one in the pic is missing the handles. We have a few in our museum, and by all accounts they were difficult things to handle. Some of the old timers have stories about injuries caused by uneven ground, tree roots and rocks.