ThomasPowers

I have a dead soft hammer for students who have no hammer control; but I make them use a different one when they go to use the hardy. For me it's a lot easier to zip the hardy edge on the belt grinder than have a deep cut in the face of the soft hammer to deal with. It's interesting that my old: tools, anvils and hammers have a range of hardness and I will sometimes choose which to use based on that and what I am doing.

Some steel strapping and self drilling, self tapping screws and you can have rigid X cross bracing on the 4 sides. (Be sure to get the frame square before bolting the braces in place.)

Making twisting wrenches and bending wrenches is a known good use of grader blades. Not good for blades or where a lot of grinding is required, for some reason abrasion resistant alloys tend to resist abrasives!

Ditto on draw filing, a great skill for a knifesmith to know, and keep your files clean!

Up until the mid 1850's and the rise of the Bessemer/Kelly process the smith only worked wrought iron and cast steel after the Huntsman process was discovered. So depending on WHERE you are at there may be a lot of it left around or almost none. It definitely has different properties going with and across the rolling direction. So much so that when forming wrought iron sheets they sometimes rolled it in two directions 90 deg to each other to get it more uniform in properties like yield strength. Bi directionally rolled wrought iron has a platy tear when broken rather than a fibrous one. (I have some from the water tower tank of the old Prison in Columbus OH, installed in 1929.)

Well I ended up in the shop; picked up a new V-belt for the swamp cooler and while installing it I noticed that the float valve was decrepit, while taking off the float valve the steel fitting it was fastened to crumbled away. So off to the shop, dug a piece of scrap stainless out and made a new one; two holes and a tab and will outlast the rest of the swamp cooler. Tools Used: postvises, crowbar, shear, file, drill press & drill bits, hammer, milwaukee drill, SDST screw, center punch, drillpress vise. So a simple "replace the V belt" took all morning and multiple trips up and down the ladder.

Ahh not always the body of a horse. There were some variations with deer like or goat like bodies and some had the tail of a lion and the beard and cloven hooves of a goat. The spiral horn is fairly standard and was often faked with a Narwhale tusk.

I hope to bring some real wrought iron to Quad State, only about 25# of it though. Some old coarse wagon tyre and some higher grade round. Also the spark test is good, real WI has a spark closer to cast iron.

Was bored after lunch so I did some rearranging in the shop. I moved the Champion 60# power hammer out by the 25# LG to make it easier to work on. (Waiting on parts for the LG).

Reminds me of a friend back in Ohio; he worked as a powder monkey for Battelle and when it came time to move he had a large stack of heavy double and triple walled boxes, wax impregnated that he used to move his collection of used artillery cases...The neighbors called the cops after watching him carry box after heavy box labeled "High Explosives" into the basement of his new place. He ended up having a great discussion with the cops and showed them some of his rare and unusual examples. I don't know what the neighbors ended up thinking...

Scrapyard Run: 81 pounds out, some sucker rod a few old license plates, a set of crimpers for electrical work (realized I needed a pair when I was replacing the lugs for my mower blade sharpener cord), 1 foot of RR Rail, a couple of pieces of fence and a fence pole for a neighbor---the one that loaded me down with fresh ripe homegrown peaches, and a new trash can for the shop: Unfortunately(?) it came empty.

Does it weigh 70 pounds? I have vises stamped 45 and 100 that weigh their stamping.

Moved my 1" steel slab with the 25# LG on it, changing it's orientation so I can get the 60# Champion on the slab too and no Billy, I don't need a tractor for moving such small items! ps: I put a new cord on my Belsaw 279 mower blade sharpener, oiled the bearings and watched it go! 20 USCents a pound at the scrapyard and now no excuse to not sharpen the mower blades anymore.

And would his Loo Tenancy be wiped out if he was transferred to a different post? Yes, I was referring to the peat bogs; they still dig up corpses from several thousand years ago in the bogs being processed for peat for fuel.

My kin used to deposit inconvenient folks in the bogs...

I've seen goats climb a 4' fence to get to rose bushes and fruit trees!

Went back out later and started moving my 60# Champion power hammer and re-arranging where it was stored; gotta get some space for when I can work larger projects again! Hot and Humid.

IIRC there is a archeological study out about a blacksmith's shop in Southern Canada from during the Fur Trade era anybody want to dig that out? Also "To Draw Upset and Weld" A collection of Daybooks from rural Pennsylvania from 1742 to 1935. (A daybook is the ledger that a smith kept about what he did and how much he charged for it. Only 80 pages so try to ILL it rather than pay outrageous prices for it!) Of course any book on old time ironwork that has good pictures and DATES would provide ideas on what smiths made: "Early Lighting in New England", "Early American Wrought Iron", "Colonial Ironwork in old Philadelphia" , "Early American Andirons", "Antique Iron", books on down hearth cooking, etc. Of course the fancy stuff tends to be documented better than the plain everyday stuff. Take a look at the stuff the Lewis and Clark expedition had to bring with them!

Local folks saw the flash from the Trinity Site; you don't want to know what's in these hills!

I'd drill out the round hole anyway and drill a substantial round hole in the base of the hardy hole to allow a "pop a wedged hardy tool out" rod to be inserted. (I've had a number of students wedge tools in hardy holes they don't fit in.)

Unlike North Carolina and what they claim is BBQ sauce, we in New Mexico tend not to cook and eat our neighbor's pets...or at least to not admit to it...

What a scintillating offer Scott! I could corner the worlds supply! Billy, what's that in Rupiah? (When I was last in Indonesia the only way to find examples of Indonesian coins was to search the gutters as they were not worth pocket space. The next year they were worth 1/10 of what they were worth that year.) Are you thinking of opening a repair shop in Zimbabwe? Forged awhile this morning until it was getting hot and my timing was "off". Still making stuff to sell at the State Fair. If they cancel it again I will be stocked for the Festival of the Cranes. I'll need to replace the V belt on our swamp cooler tomorrow, the day we go to town.

OK, 1800-1850; so real wrought iron and "cast steel" would have been your materials and most places you would have been using charcoal and a bellows. Anvils tended to be smaller and blockier, US anvils with long horns and heels tended to be late 1800's and into the 1900's. Now would you be on the eastern seaboard, north or south, the western frontier, or in the Southwest in the Spanish colonies? (I'll assume that the Russian colony in what is now California is right out... "Two Years Before the Mast" published in 1840 talks a bit about how California was pre gold rush; from a Sailor's perspective.)

Pity my wife won't be attending; as in "someone had pity on our bank accounts". (Or as in Bored of the Rings: "It was pity that stayed his hand, 'It's a pity I've run out of bullets...")

A Fisher is a quiet anvil and for some "public demo's" the ring of an anvil will draw the crowd to you and so I tend to bring one of my "noisy" anvils to those. In my shop I quiet the anvils for my ears' sake.