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I Forge Iron

It followed me home


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Absolute score there Thomas! As a new smith that you don't know let me introduce myself ;) 
My friend who supplies me with mild as gots a lot of scrap from work called me over today, gave me some more bar but because he had a bunch of tools in the scrap bin again that someone brought at a carboot and decided they didn't want.
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It's not a done deal yet; but my eyes are crossed! (Or was that fingers?)  Biggest problem is that it's a "take it all deal" and there is a lot of stuff I can't use---like the lineshaft bearings.  There are multiple grindstones in the pile.  I'm not very interested in them as they really are only for touching up things and not for hogging metal---it was very much a forge to shape and file to finish and then sharpen on a stone type of thing. I'll probably pass them on---if I get the stuff. I saw a very large star drill dressing swage; must have been from the mines out here before replaceable drill tips.(4 post vises, a large chipping vise, the PW anvil 200#?, a bunch of handled tools---enough rust to run a bloomery all summer!)

I use a small plumber's pipe wrench to straighten out the bottom seam on rasptle snakes.

RG, it's a small town. I don't want to poison the well...I had a friend who kept dumping equipment in his Mother's garage, (metal lathes, bridgeport, screw press, etc), and I told him "next time he was out of town I was going to put on my grungiest clothes and take my old pickup and knock on her door and offer to clean out her garage for US$100---shoot I'd even offer her $200!"   I actually did manage to get the large screwpress out of there---the story was told on the PBS show Startup, season 6, episode 4 (IIRC) about the Shire Post Mint and how it got started...

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Goods, the swage block is in the bottom right hand corner of the third picture, small, old and I could use a travel one when I get to retire...

Indiana is a great place for finding smithing stuff---much higher population density than NM 100+ years ago; get to TPAAAT'ing or should that variation be TPATAT'ing?

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If I get all this stuff I think I am going to have to stop accepting drinks or food from other smiths...just for safety reasons.

The pics are not mine; my phone sends pics in the kilobyte range not megabyte...I prevailed on someone with a more recent phone to take them and send me them.  The piece of string between my phone and the other can kept getting tangled...

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There's enough there that you could pass a bunch on to beginners, AND sell some of the more specialized items on ebay or CL and make your money back for your shop electrification budget.  Best of both worlds.  Just the power hammers alone could bring you $5-6 thousand USD unrestored, plug and play almost twice that.  

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Oh man!

Blowers, I think I see a tuyere.. parts to fix up the forge pan I'll be getting before too long!

Not to mention vises, hammers, and lot of other good looking stuff that I'm too green to even know what it is haha. 

 

Pretty cool!!

 

Well, anyway, a customer has several felled Cedars, I asked if I might have a couple of sections and he told me to go for it!

I know it is fairly soft, but man is it pretty, and it is pretty dense for cedar. Tight heart rings, lovely color, and pretty heavy. 

I only had enough time to trim one up, no fine tuning, but either anvil sits happily on it and is right at the height to rest a fist with a straight arm. Hopefully that works. Now, to mount it sometime in the next month...  Christmas season tends to eat the pocketbook alive haha

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My goodness Thomas, what an example of what the TPAAT can lead to! You're trapped now Brother, the clean  my shed deals are going to take up all your time. 

My little Sister has a garage full of sewing machines people started giving and then just dropping off after it got out she and her SO were refurbishing and using them. She must have a couple hundred. 

Still a LOT of good stuff there though, every shop can use a washer dryer set and a salamander is always handy to have around. 

I'm thinking you have a club meeting or two just to organize the haul. It'll be good to see it back in use. Here's hoping the deal goes through.

Frosty The Lucky.

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CtG, for me doing small stuff and knives "resting the fist" is too low. I tend to bend over while working on them and get a sore back.  Wrist or upper wrist works best for me for small stuff.  Fist works ok for working larger stuff using top tools and larger hammers.  Luckily since I teach I have a number of anvils at various heights in my shop and can use the one that's *perfect* for what I am doing.

There are a number of threads here on IFI on anvil height that go into detail on how to figure out what is best for you.

I'd be waiting on tenterhooks ifn I had forged any tenterhooks....I understand that this is a "negotiation between husband and wife" situation and it will most likely be an all or nothing decision.

At the last club estate sale it was remarked that we were getting to the point where the stuff was just sloshing back and forth between older club members and we needed to get some younger folks in the club.  I've introduced several folks in their 20's and 30's and hopefully some of them will stick. Time for the "young turks" to start taking over.

I'm ready to start moving stuff this weekend: rust in the daytime and rum at night!  (Strictly as a muscle relaxant and pain killer of course.) I'm looking for some load help who are NOT smiths to lower temptation; hmmm yup I'm getting "rust fever"  cue a filk of "Gold Fever" from "Paint Your Wagon"  (Once I would have been Sylvester Newel but now I'm more Ben Rumson...)

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I have 3 stump/trunks, only 1 got the height set, the other big one just got the rough cut trimmed straight. I am hoping to get some time to use it and see how it feels before I go too much further. The 124lb'er is a half inch shorter than the 150 (for now, until I can get time to fix up the 150) so, if taller works better, that extra bit of the 150 may make it the better match. 

31 years here. I sincerely appreciate folks with wiser minds and more experience sharing nuggets of gold with me. Across the board. 

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I must have jinxed it; a "family emergency" occurred and they won't be able to get a price to me till probably next week.  (red hot tenterhooks fresh off the fire!)  Perhaps I can now attend the SCA meeting in Albq Saturday where they are to discuss setting up a metalworkers guild...

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Not so sure it was you, Thomas - must at least one jinx in every family, some host several - "well I bet we can get $10,000 for these pristine vintage rare period antiques!"

EDIT: On the other hand, if it is indeed a family emergency, I hope all goes well for them.

Robert Taylor

 

Edited by Anachronist58
modulate my crabby cynicism
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I've run into such situations; made an offer, was told it's too low and later found the stuff ended up hauled off to the scrapyard for 1/10th of what I had offered. Or the fleamarket dealer who wouldn't take my offer and then went on to throw what I had tried to buy in the dumpster at the end of the day---they also threw a Susan B Anthony dollar coin away too. (I rescued both.)

Well at least I do have a good set of smithing equipment already if it falls through---and I understand Family Emergencies, I spent 14 hours in the ER Christmas night.  I was just hoping to make a deal before the ER bill got to my CFO and Wife...

I did notice that I was able to make out the 50# LG in the satellite photo; it's laying down or I would have seen it a decade ago from the street.

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