I gained about 400lbs

I've been working on my 156# Peter Wright since about April 2005 (at least, that's what my old emails indicate).  I wish I'd recorded what I'd paid for it, I'll have to look at my smithing journal. Even though 156# seems like a good weight, there are limitations. This anvil was (ab)used but a smith in the mid-west who likely did a fair amount of horseshoeing, or shoe repair. There's not a square edge on the whole thing, the hardy hole is 1" at the top and wider at the bottom for some reason, so all of my hardy tools wiggle around (even with shimming) and I can bounce it with my hammer strikes. It's been a fine tool, and I plan to keep it in my stable for now. But, it's time for an upgrade.
After not being able to decide between a new Nimba, or an Old World Anvil I did a google search for used anvils and ran across a post about an ad with anvils for sale. Turns out the seller is local, but in the ensuing year had sold off all of his 250#-range anvils. So I picked up a 400# instead. He had a 500# anvil with a nicely polished face and horn, but it was $600 more for another 100# and I really couldn't justify it.

I've chalked the sides. I've used soapy water and a wire brush to scrub off any dirt, paint, etc. I cannot find any markings on it at all, except for a large 6 that was deeply stamped just to the left of the handling hole under the horn. It only has 3 handling spaces, too. The hardy is just about 1.5" and the pritchel is about 5/8". She rings like a bell regardless of where I tap her. My hope is that it's some unnamed Swedish anvil that is forged from steel- it was clearly forged by hand, given the rough texture under the tail and horn, and the unevenness of the sides. I'll take a ton of pictures and I'll tip it on its side to see if there's anything underneath.

It is far from perfect. The people who used it before were clearly not blacksmiths- there are punch and chisel marks all over the sides and face, the edges are rounded (though not apparently from abuse) and there is welding stick in some of the holes. It's going to take a while to dress it, but instead of spending an additional $600 on the other anvil, I can spend a full work week at my shop rate and break even. Tonight the face meets Mr Angle Grinder, the step is getting touched up and I'm putting at least 2" of fairly sharp edge somewhere on it.

Shiiiii....

Well, the knife that I posted the photos of has turned out to be a failure. The heat treat came out alright but I discovered that the bevels weren't at all even, and there wasn't any way to fix it-- I worked on it but it was starting to not look like the knife I was trying to make and I wasn't getting very far with the bevel fixing anyway. So I bent it, chopped a 2x4 with it then shaved, threw it at the ground a few times and called it a day. The pisser is that I'd put about 10 hours in to the reclamation of what was a pretty ugly blade experiment (that includes the guard which was about 80% done).

grrrrr.....

First Bowie WIP

Here are some pics from the heat treat of the "bowie" I'm working on. I put bowie in quotes because no one knows what Jim Bowie's knife looked like and anything that's large anymore is either called a bowie or a seax. I digress, on to the pics:
Prepping for heat treat-

  

 Normalize cycle number 3

 

Burning off the oil from HT 1 prepping for second heat treat. I've never done this before, but I've heard of it and decided to give it a try. Dramatic, yes?

 

Quick thanks to Jaime Forero for bringing over several filters this weekend- I shot these with the UV filter and I think they came out really good.

Website

I've been trying to work on the Alchemy Forge website since the weekend, without much success. When my old computer (the stolen one) was running Vista and then Win7 I didn't have any problems with Yahoo Site Builder. Now that my new machine has Win7 Pro running, I can only make the smallest of changes, and only once. So when I fix a typo or smooth out a rough section of my prose I find that I can't save the file to then publish it.
The Mrs has been taking a mass media class about blogging and web design, and has moved her personal site and blog to a new provider. I may do the same and switch over to a WordPress-based format which will allow for easy creation of dropdown menus and embedding. I'll keep the blog up to date with major changes.

Catching up on life

It's been a while since I posted, and about as long since I've been in the shop. The 31 months it took to finish my BA kept me out of the shop more than I liked and it's been hard to get going again. I had a conract writing roject at the end of September, which overlapped my dealing with my backpack being stolen (including laptop and backup drive- long story). I've been trying to catch up on missed TV (Netflix is -not- helping me get back in the shop) and books that have been collecting on my shelves. Not to mention that I loooove video games and the BioShock2 multiplayer has been really addictive. I've also been reapplying to master's programs in public history, which has involved rewriting my statements of purpose and waiting for letters of recommendation from instructors.

In the mean time, I've been making slow progress on a bowie style that is going to have a coffin handle and "s" guard, a dragon-tooth dagger and a quasi-tanto (which is taking forever because I'm trying to do it the "right" way following the instructions in Walter Sorrells' DVDs). Using a sketch book has been helpful in figuring out how pieces fit together before I start mangling metal.

I'm hopeful that I'll finish that bowie in the next couple of weeks and I'll have it posted for sale in time to have it shipped for the holidays.