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Did y'all know that this is the foundation of why folks throw coins in to fountains for good luck? Way back in the day, folks noticed that wells that had a few silver coins in them didn't putrefy nearly as quickly as wells without the silver. Of course, they didn't know the chemical reaction...

The bow needs to be stiff. A springy bow robs energy from your stroke and breeds a lot of slippage between the string and spindle. The length of the string should be equal to the distance from the spindle (when you're in position to make a fire) to your hand when your arm is extended...

Here's my fancy bow. It's a cow rib with a hardwood handled dowel-pinned on the end and wrapped with rawhide. The stitching is sinew and the string is half-tanned braintan (no softening, just the brains and some smoke) [/URL][/IMG] And my favorite spindle adapter. The rear lower leg bone of...

Had a chance to look at one, and wasn't impressed. Very chintzy build that's rather typical of Lansky.

Leg of cow and horse are rather stout-walled, which gives you plenty of material to work with. Shoulder blades are very thin-walled, which is good for certain types of things. Rear lower leg bones of deer in the US have a very rectilinear cross-section that makes them dandy for bow-drill fire...

Very nice kit. Tip: When you need to do small stuff like needles and gorges, it's very handy to glue them to a larger stick with a bit of pitch glue. The big stick makes for a great handle so you can apply a lot of force and sand/scrape the small stock down as thin as you want. If you need...

Non-ferrous hammers are great for working with thin metal that you don't want to mar. They are also a must-have for any blacksmith that needs to straighten red-hot iron that's been twisted. When twisted, the stock will bow a bit and needs to be smacked back straight on an wooden stump with a...

Excellent job, hoss. It was wonderful to follow along with. We've always called them "locking collars" on this side of the pond.

There's not much too them. Any old saw blade could be cut up for one. To pound one out of round stock would take awhile if you don't have a power hammer, but still not much too the job. Were I a wee bit closer....

It depends on how old they are, Toddy. Wrought was every bit as common and cheap as cast iron prior to, guessing, 1930. You could do the spark test or the cut test to determine the composition in just minutes.

The window weights could be wrought iron, and not cast iron. I would do a spark test to double check. If they are wrought iron, they're worth good money to practicing smiths and knifemakers today.

That looks suspiciously like a blacksmith's set hammer. The railroads used them extensively and had the larger sizes. The one I have probably weighs ten pounds. Would it be suitable to forge into a pan? No. No only is it going to be a higher-carbon steel than mild steel, it would take a ton...

Beautiful. I've seen little round boxes like that in the craft stores......

My strops are always backed, usually on a nice piece of wood, and I only use cereal-box cardboard to hold the stropping compound. The cardboard is very thin, but also dense. It holds the rouge, but doesn't compress like leather does. Obviously not as durable as leather. But it is easily...

I went the fancy way and used two-ply braintan cordage. It's not "break-away" by any means, but it works. Such a cord wouldn't look good with a kydex sheath, though.

My turn! Anvils - what you bought will work, but you're going to want to bury that shank into the wood as far as you reasonably can. The only reason I say this is because it's a small shank and will bend/flex with every hammer blow. This robs you of energy. A 20# sledge-hammer head will be...

Good bit of work, there, Kris.

After the water's at a rolling boil, it doesn't take long at all. This is especially true if you've already thinned it down to near finished. If I recall correctly, and that's never a certain thing, the last horn I boiled to flatten only took about 30 minutes after the water was boiling. The...

Thanks for the info, hoss. You're truly lucky to have access to a shop like that, and a guy that knows what he's doing. When I first learned how to smith, it was with a guy that was more "artist" than smith and his shop was the open end of a dilapidated chicken house. Thankfully, the chickens...

As a practicing smith, I can say with certainty that you display a great eye and a smooth hand. The finish on your work is excellent, neither tortured with repeated heatings nor 'decorated' with a plethora of unnecessary hammer marks. Whoever you trained with must certainly be happy to have...