ThomasPowers

I hear that a lot of fishy stuff goes on up there; but nice country if you can bear the weather.

Some antlers have a pithy core and some are solid---why Sambar stag was so esteemed for antler work!

Got a meter to determine where the power "stops"?

You can use the dragon's breath from a propane forge for excess hair removal...

My prayers go with them.

The Asian box bellows is great if you are very tight on space or travel a lot; however I prefer the European double lunged bellows as it gives a continuous air flow and can have the top chamber pumped up to push air while you switch tongs or hammers. The box bellows stops air flow the moment you stop pumping. I've used both and so can state a preference.

That's why we can hot fit angle iron to deal with all those issues!

My favorite flea market was in a Drive In Movie site that was still active; *everything* had to be loaded back up at the end of the flea market so they could show a movie that night. No permanent stands for dealers to sit on stuff forever. Of course I got a lot of good stuff out of the dumpsters at the end of the day---including stuff I had made an offer on earlier and was refused! (Also a US dollar coin once---who throws away *money*?)

Drilling long straight holes in a material that is not uniform is difficult. Do you have access to a lathe?

If the mount point will be stable in location and you adjust height with the chain; why not forge a loop or drift a hole in the leg? (Or rivet a hook on...)

So have you started foaming at the mouth and avoiding water yet? Gives a totally new layer to being a "rabid blacksmithing fan". My Daughter the Veterinarian; had to get the Rabies shot series in Vet school as part of their classes.

Well as I see it making it long because you may need more length in the future is rather like buying a dump truck as your daily driver because you may buy a load of gravel sometime in the future. Also, in general you don't want to heat more steel than you can work before it gets cold; so you got a powerhammer? Strikers? We see this a lot in folks that want to make swords who don't realize that heating more than they can work degrades the steel through grain growth, decarburization, scale losses. Medieval European smiths were able to forge battle swords in forges with a "hot spot" of about 6". When you want to heat the whole blade up to temp is in heat treating. (See dump truck analogy above.)

I had a postvise with *very* aggressive checkering on the jaws; sharp points! I made jaw covers from light, mild steel, angle iron.

There were immense numbers of post vises out there in the day, Sears Roebuck catalogs from the 1900's had them in it! Over time most shops went to machinist vises and even the high dollar machinist vises like the Wilton bullet that will take a lot of abuse but cost the moon! It's a lot like cars; new ones are very expensive but you can find used ones much cheaper. Learning to judge a good one from a lemon is the trick. When I was tooling up in the 1990's in Ohio; I ended up buying postvises as they were so much cheaper used than machinist vises. US$20-25 for a 4" gracile one and even 6" robustus vises were to be found for US$300. With the bubble prices have soared; but the last robustus 5" I bought for my own use ran me $75; and that was within the last 5 years or so. (Quad-State) I find that the more work I put into finding an item the cheaper I can generally find it at.

BTW is "the magical rebellion of American moonshine" referring to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794? After the Oilfield crash of the early 1980's; I apprenticed to a swordmaker and was planning to go on my own as a bladesmith later. Well at 28 I got married to a lady with 2 kids and had a family to support and got a "real job". Worked in a custom wood shop, worked in a factory on the line while taking EET classes; finally got a job with Bell Labs! I was lucky; I was able to find out that I was not suited for self employment without dragging my family into bankruptcy. I also had benefits from my wife's job when we got married which was lucky as about 6 weeks after we tied the knot I had emergency surgery, as in 15 minutes from the correct diagnosis to being put under on the table...Most self employed craftspeople are 1 medical issue from bankruptcy. 11 years after starting at Bell Labs I was diagnosed with Adult Onset Juvenile Diabetes; a sort of type 1 Zebra. Medical benefits have been a lifesaver! Generally in bladesmithing we suggest people have a "real" job and work their craft on the side until they are making about 1/2 doing their craft as they make at their day job and then organize the changeover to full time at the craft. This also allows folks to tool up while they have a steady income. Learning to run a business is important too. The swordmaker I apprenticed to had a 2 year waiting list and still some years whether he made a profit depended on how he depreciated his tools!

Cool yesterday; so I fired up the forge and worked on my replacement grill project. Flattening the rods that go across the frame. In between heats I started drilling the frame for rivets, got 43 holes drilled with a single 1/8" bit, 3 to go and the bit broke; but came out of the hole, second bit broke and stayed in the hole. 3rd bit is doing all the other drilling before working on that one hole.... I needed to establish where each individual rod will cross the frame and hot flatten it. So I flattened and drilled all the tops of the 23 rods and positioned them on the frame using some 1/8" stock through the holes and then used soapstone to mark where the frame on the other end would hit and then heated and flattened. This is where a fairly sharp edge on the anvil was helpful so I used my Fisher. (For the first end, I scribed a line near the face's edge and then just placed the ends to meet that line and hammered them flat.) I going to have to source some nails to use as rivets; 46 needed and NOT 16 penny. Going into town tomorrow and will hit the hardware store. Goal is to be using it to cook hamburgers over a mesquite wood fire on July 4th!

Do you need a forge that long? Propane prices will go up and heating what you don't need is just throwing money away. Perhaps cut it in half and make it so you can put them back together if you need the length from time to time? Knifemakers tend to use fairly small forges.

Views do not equate to the quality of the information; some people you watch just to see the "train wreck"... a thousand "likes" by people who do not know anything about a subject are not worth a single like by an expert in a subject---but they are portrayed as being more important. There is a reason that "Peer Review" is so important in the sciences! (I knew an editor in an astronomy journal who was hunting for a scientist to review an "astounding new discovery" that as an old timer; they knew was an artifact of the equipment being used and should have been discarded from the data...)

Forge braze---if you can find a feller/fella with a forge...

Or *both* to show that both the metalwork and the wood work was done by you.

Add a trap to one of those "Complaint? Please take a number" gags where the number is attached to the ring of a fake grenade. That would suit Billy for his business...

I know pro's who started at twice your age and folks who were smithing into their 80's and 90's. 28 is considered a fairly *young* start! Shoot I got married at 28 and even though other people had 4 kids by then I didn't feel "Late in the game!"

Bowling for Dollars John? Might try cleaning the chased area and brazing some spelter over it and filing smooth to get a gold design in it...

A lot of the old "farm" books include a section on Blacksmithing and sheet metal working. I have a copy of "Farm Shop Practice" on my shelf with a 1939 copyright. Not nearly as good a getting started book as "The Complete Modern Blacksmith"; but you can learn something from almost any decent source. I like the COSIRA books a lot too.

6 feet off the ground I can generally place my had against my coal forge's chimney and hold it there; the warmth helps my arthritis.