/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>189092
Yep.

Because it's not about striking surface, it's about mass. See, if you've got an _anvil_, you've got 80-200 pounds of steel, right? If you're using a rail, you don't have the mass you'd have with a real anvil. Upending it puts as much of the mass of the anvil as possible under your hammer. Once you've got an upended rail, you can weld another chunk on top if you really feel the need- but step 1 is a vertical rail, and that's enough for a beginner.

Note, in this picture, that the rail's not ground down or tapered or whatever the hell happened in yours.

The link I mentioned earlier; http://www.anvilfire.com/21centbs/anvils/making/RR-rail_anvils.php

Now, if you want to explain why *anvilfire* is getting it wrong, I'd be greatly amused to hear your explanation.

>>189068
umad? 1/10 for trolling, but I'll correct some of your statements so that the innocent aren't misled.
>If you stood it on its end you wouldn't even have a flat place to hammer anything.
Spoken like someone who's never seen railroad rail. The piece I've got in my driveway provides a 2"X3" area, which is plenty large enough for hobbyist smithing. The _curved_ top of the rail isn't any harder than the rest of it, and that shape changes how hot steel moves when struck on it. It's like using a pein hammer instead of a flat face. I mean, if that's all you've got, then okay, but upending it is better.

OP, check the sticky for the blacksmithing links. There's a guide there for how to assemble railroad anvils, with some illustrations and explanations of how and why.

Read the sticky. Sticky sticky sticky.

>>188985
>Anyone have any experience with blacksmithing?
Yep.
>What could I use as an anvil if I don't have access to a real anvil?
Anything hard enough to not deform, tough enough to not shatter, and large enough to hold the piece you're working on.

>>188989
>Quick answer: chunk of railroad steel
To be specific, a chunk of railroad steel standing on its end, the top roughly the height of your knuckles when your hand is by your side.

>>188991
>a big square rock?
Yep.

Concrete's bad because it has water trapped inside that will explode if you heat it enough by leaving hot steel on it. Wood can be used in very specific circumstances but isn't that useful to you at the moment. Your primary concerns are mass, a flat surface, and height.

For what purpose? Ren faire, fantasy LARP, SCA combat, hardcore historically authentic recreation?
Here's the two most often-linked sources in the SCA, full of effective and generally authentic designs, most of which can be done in cuir boulli as easily as steel, if you're comfortable working with it.
http://www.armourarchive.org/
http://www.arador.com/main/index.html

>blacksmithing
>for hours
>been weeks since I was at the forge, lost much stamina in arms and hands.
>getting sloppy, big warning flag that I need to stop and come back again tomorrow
>"Oh, I'll just finish this small piece."
>pull piece out of fire, orange colour, approximately 900 degrees C
>hit it with the hammer
>get the angle just wrong enough, make the piece bounce
>hand too tired to grip tongs properly, twists, gives 900C piece a vertical channel to bounce up through
>900C piece of 1/4" thick, 3" long steel twirling merrily through the air
>straight at my neck
>too tired to react
>bounces off beard with the smell of a thousand burning hairs
>bounces off my hand- no wait
>sticks to my hand
>brain finally registers that OHFUCKHOTSTEEL
>swear, shake hand
>piece falls off and plops into water with a hiss and a boil

No scar, but I had one hell of a blister for a while. I'm much better about stopping when I'm tired now. Still don't wear gloves, but that's because I lose too much control over the tools when I do.

>>183433
I looked up the material spec sheets on RR spikes a while back during a /diy/ discussion. They're required to be less than 20 points of carbon. You need 77 for a reasonable ability to harden. tl;dr: RR spike knives look pretty but are useless unless you plan to sharpen them every other day.

OTOH, you can practice shaping with them. When you're satisfied with your ability to move steel around, pick up a old file from your local second-hand shop. They're made of perfect smithing steel, 70 to 120 points of carbon, just anneal it once or twice before you work it.

>>185041
What's described in the images is a method of dealing with the exceptionally hard treatment that already exists in a file. They're made to be harder than the steel they grind against, yeah? The "heat until the edge is blue" advice is how to soften the tang/back of the blade and still leave the edge with enough hardness to be useful. Essentially, the steps for making a knife on the forge are
1) Shape soft steel with hammer, grinding wheel/stone.
2) Harden shaped steel.
3) Soften spine, and to a lesser degree blade, of knife, so it doesn't shatter like glass when you use it.

and what the images show is how to deal with a file, which is already hard, by
1) Shape hardened steel with power tools.
2) Soften spine/blade so it doesn't shatter when you use it.

Speaking of which,
>>185073
Really? Best source ever. You'll pick up the occasional old file at the second-hand or pawn store for $2, works great for knives and high-carbon tools if you have the forge to re-form it.

I don't even hang out on /ck/, but have you thought about using it to store dry foods like barley for soup or steel-cut oats for breakfast or rice for supper? I've got a dozen similar bottles and have them full of flour, sugar, oats, rice, dried peas, lots of dry bulk stuff I use occasionally for cooking.

>>185551
You can prototype with wood gears, and use them to cast brass gears. Except you want it "small," which isn't likely to happen with anything you can make by hand. Small desktop clock maybe, pocketwatch... nope, can't see it happening. Unless you want to become a clockmaker and just order all your parts in, I guess.

>>182961
It's less the jabs to the head with the padded spear tips than the driving two-handed crunchy blows to the shoulders with the unpadded rattan "polearms." Hence the shoulderplates.

Had fight practice this weekend, and while nobody was hitting the shoulders, a little bending of the plates meant they didn't restrict my movement at all. :D Quite happy with how the whole thing turned out.

ianadrywall installer, but it doesn't look like you've got vapour barrier installed. That might cause you problems later on. I've done drywall on that style of roof and yes, that upper angle part will be an _impressive_ pain in the ass. Two people to hold the sheet and one to drill it is adequate, two people holding the sheet and passing a drill back and forth is a fucking comedy of errors. One person isn't going to be able to do it.

No idea about the 3/8 and bowing, sorry. Dad and I did either 1/2 or 3/4 on two-foot studs and it's held together just fine. The weight doesn't make the installation any more fun, though.

>>183046
>>183042
Not a tradesman, but have tradesman friends. Live in Alberta, Canuckistan, but have heard similar stories from just about everywhere there's a lot of oilfield or construction work; the majority of tradesmen are old. There has been a decade or two where the trades were considered "beneath" the high school graduate, so everyone went to college for liberal arts degrees instead. Now the tradesmen are starting to retire and there are not nearly enough people to replace them. Your province or state will very likely have a trades or apprenticeship sponsorship program, because most regional governments are painfully aware there aren't enough people to handle the local needs for electrical, HVAC, welding, plumbing, carpentry, etc. Get into it now, get apprenticed, get journeyman tickets, and in five or ten years you'll be making $50+ an hour because nobody, *nobody* will be able to do the work because everyone'll be retired.

That's what I hear, anyway.

>>183153
Home vacuum-forming plastic. Plaster or whatever, shop-vac, careful application of heat, profit.
http://www.studiocreations.com/howto/vacuumforming/index.html

/fa/ is that way -->

I work for a housing manufacturer (not mobile, prefab, and I handle computers, not hammers), and we've had people request leaving a space for this particular kind of project for water and air heaters. It works as an augmentation of your NG heat, not a replacement, but it's evidently terrifically effective because people are installing them in *Canada*, which isn't the sunniest place in the world.

>>182761
There's a guy on the main street of my town that has one of these on his roof. From the street it looks like an insulated 30-gal tank about 4 feet long, with a panel below it 4 feet long and 3 feet deep that's full of black tubing (I presume something that's UV-friendly). It can't possibly be his only hot water source, because that shit would freeze solid in -40C winters, but it probably saves him a bunch if he uses it to pre-heat his HWT feed.

You can hollow out a firebrick, get a little propane torch from a hardware store, get a cruicible, make your own green sand, melt brass, and cast your own rings or lockets. Bit of an involved setup though. backyardmetalcasting.com is full of advice.

>>182839
Nope. The metal stops things from hurting, the leather's just there to hold it in place. You can put it on the inside or the outside, whichever you like. The historical patterns had both.

>>182854
Thanks! Spaulders are a possibility, and I have a few designs on hand I can pick from, but the next project I want to work on is a set of splinted legs. I've got some sport-safe but not very pretty leg armour at the moment, and if I can replace them then my armour will be considerably improved in look and effectiveness.

Posted some pics of this armour before, but I just recently added integrated shoulders to it, and this pretty much finishes the piece to medieval spec. Based on armour from 1361 at the Battle of Wisby, dug up and analyzed in a text by Bengdt Thordeman.

While it's made of modern materials, they're pretty close to what was available in 1361; roofing nails instead of hand-formed iron rivets, and 18ga mild steel sheet instead of hand-forged plate, latigo leather instead of brain-tanned. But, without killing and tanning my own cow or making my own steel, this is a danged close replica. Pattern is based off of armour 22.

I use it in SCA sport combat, a full-speed, full-contact sport interpretation of medieval swordfighting. There's plenty of "this isn't how it actually worked" safety caveats, but we get to club each other like baby harp seals.

I'm passing out now, but I'll have a couple of hours tomorrow morning to answer questions, if anyone has any. Otherwise, have a good weekend, /diy/, and I enjoy hanging out on this board!

>>181966
This. Comes and goes, sometimes, but this.

I'll add that you attain it the same way you attain anything else; regular hard work.

>>181567
Woot, look forward to reading about it.

>>181578
Big 'ole magnets. They reduce the ring to a dull thud, much easier on the ears.

>>181196
Alberta. Surrounded by coal seams, and chemical testing companies get traincar loads of the stuff they don't need. I've got at least half a ton sitting in my forge.
>>181203
>cement
A note to others about this; cement traps water pockets inside when it sets. Fireclay, used to mortar firebricks together, doesn't trap water. This is important when you get the area hot enough to turn water into steam. Obviously this anon's construction took that into account, but please don't try to form a forge out of concrete. Also, my blacksmith friends assure me that you can get steel red-hot with wood, but you need charcoal (as this anon mentions making) to get to proper temperatures.

>>181088
As big as possible- check the sticky links, there's a LOT of warnings about anvils versus cast-iron lumps, how to test them, etc. Basically, the biggest hammer you want to use is between 1/50th and 1/20th the weight of the anvil, so to use a 2-pound ball pein you want a minimum of 40 pounds of anvil, and you're safer with 80. To buy an actual anvil new costs a lot because shipping companies don't like anvils. Old anvils are $2-5 a pound if the owner knows their value, less than that if they don't.

OR, hit your local train yard, look for the "manager of rail maintenance" or something like that, and ask him if he's got a 2 or 3 foot length of scrap rail you can have. Stand a log on one end, chop it into an L-shape, bolt the rail vertically to the log so one end is resting on the base and the other is the height of your knuckles when your arm is loose by your side and your hand is closed. Voila, free anvil, small but useable striking area, handles small hammers and dicking-around amounts of steel. Don't have to pay hundreds of dollars or lurk farm auctions for three years.

>>181058
I was about to blow you out of the water with superior knowledge and experience when I encountered trufax; beech provides about 24M BTU/ton, and coke provides about 24.8.
Huh.
Well, if you can find a ready source of hardwood, then go for it. I can get coal for free in my area, so I stick with that.
...
You know, I think I might try using birch for my port-a-forge when I get it working, just to see how it works compared to coal. Thanks for posting, bro!

First; sticky. There's links to anvilfire and iforge there, and they've got all sorts of designs for forges.

Second; good for you! Enjoy smithing, it's a fun hobby.

Third; unless you've got a reliable source of bituminous, low-ash, low-impurity coal, you're not likely to get to welding temperatures. If you don't want to, that's fine, but using store-bought "charcoal" is a bad idea because it's basically sawdust and glue. Consider making a small propane forge with kaowool and/or firebrick; a tiger torch or homemade venturi should be able to heat up a 3"X3"X6" space to welding heat.