BLACKSMITHING was [TheForge] Patriotic rant....

Thu Jun 20 22:15:16 2002

        Bill,  I'll bit on this one..........  Got a call yesterday from a
good friend that buys and sells stuff.  Seems his travels took him to a
private school that was dismantling thier blacksmith shop that has been
running at the school from 1864.   I went over with the boom truck as he
said there was a large unit for bending pipe with a flywheel......so I had
to at least go see what that was.
        While I was there I filled the 8 x 21 deck of my rigging truck with
all kinds of stuff like hossfeld benders, ring rollers, old axles made of
wrought iron, seven rolls of leather belting, rolls of conveyor belting,
cool old signs, three crates of 12" bolts, some air blowers, lots of chain
hooks and u-bolts, some great laminated as well as steam bent runners and
arches, a caulking vice(step vice), and oooodles of square head bolts, nuts,
and other nice hardware, etc, etc.
        Now back to the real point.  The thing that bends pipe with the huge
flywheel turned out to be a Champion Blower and Forge #2 axle and rim
upsetter.......what a cool old tool.  This thing would buckle 3/8 x 1 1/2
flat cold and not loose it's grip.  I can't wait to put a piece of 1 1/2"
square into it hot to see how it works.  It is in mint condition and I dont'
care if someone doesn't want to buy it or whether it has any value, it is
just a really well made tool in perfect condition.
        I've been taking to more hand tools lately for demos, but this won't
be going anywhere, I'll bet it weighs 1200 lbs.
        So it took me all day to unload and put this assortment of items
away around the shop, and that is what I did for the first half of the day.
        The second half of the day I spent maching out power hammer die key
fixtures so I can take cold roll and make one pass on the milling machine to
have a new key.  I'm finding this key fixture is allowing me to make all
kinds of tapered ramps, which will then allow me to make different power
hammer die dovetails in the dies.
        Interesting where one fixture/jig can take you..........off on a
tangent once again.

Ralph Sproul - Bear Hill Blacksmith
Webster, NH


----- Original Message -----
From: "April & Bill Clemens" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2002 8:30 PM
Subject: Re: BLACKSMITHING was [TheForge] Patriotic rant....


> What has anyone done or thought about regarding  BLACKSMITHING today???
>
> ALL OTHERS NEED NOT REPLY!!!!
>