Craft Forum / Wood/Metal / Blacksmithing / December 2007

A Google alert found my inbox this morning with a delicious PDF of all
sorts of ironwork ideas:
http://www.metalwebnews.org/ftp/wroughtiron-drawings.pdf
Although some of the plans are for the truly industrious (gates, park

I've run across stuff that seems to say that water is helpful in the
coking process, but it was a little heavy on the particulars of the
chemistry and I got lost in it.
Can it be explained in somewhat less technical terms for the layman?

I was wondering if anyone had any feedback on this video produced by
Jere Kirkpatrick's Valley Forge and Welding.  Is it of good quality?
Does it focus more on tooling, techniques or setup?  Is it worth
getting (assuming I can find a VCR!)?  I have an inline treadle hammer

my wife is a blacksmith and we bought her a "strike" hammer from a
metal worker who did mostly cold work and specialized in architectural
metal work, mostly fabrication.  he seemed to think it would be simple
to convert the "strike" hammer into a power hammer, with reciprocating

I am setting up a shop before having done any work.  If I have a rectangular
forge in front of me and I'm right handed, will I want the anvil to the
right or left of the forge?  Why?  Where would you put the quench barrel
relative to these?  Thanks for any help!!

Let me apologize if this is too off topic for this group but I do read
you guys talking about carbon content, etc.
I build water cooled exhaust manifold systems for small 2 - 4 cyl sail
boat engines. The prevailing practice is to not build exhaust systems

The Veteran
You stood up; you showed up; you stepped forward.
You raised your right hand; you stood in the gap; you walked in the
fire.

Project 1:
---------
As I was finding it extremely difficult to get sheet spring steel, or
spring steel strip, I figured out another way to skin my personal cat.

Found this in the New York Times this morning:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/nyregion/26manhole.html?ex=1353819600&en=4968d
d4f2f427ada&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Multimedia version here:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20071126_MANHOLES_FEATURE/index.html