Excellent, thanks! That will make it much easier to get the info into the lads head as he is definitely of the YouTube generation. Text books he has to be in a rare frame of mind to sit down and enjoy reading at length. It has happened but not very often. Next session is planned on Wednesday when he can be home by 2.30, early closing for some reason and no after school revision clubs. We'll mainly be heating up old files to soften them after slow cooling, going to fill a bucket with sand for that until after bonfire night when we'll have all the wood ash we could possibly want. I've a old rough wheel I can put on the bench grinder I don't mind sacrificing to the teeth on the old files. A few are so smooth from rust that they won't need doing.
At first we will be making a lot of fire steels, various periods and styles, hence the stash of old files, so we will get experience of heat treating them . Need to look all that up again as the whole process of getting my bum in gear has been so protracted that I have forgot what we were told ( sorry folks! )
For that matter we need to refind what we're were told about heat treating the file knife he roughed out. It's the first thing he's ever forged so he wants to make it a keeper. It's rough and I'm not letting it anywhere near my water wheel until it's had the jagged bits smoothed off and it's been heat treated as any fine edge would burn and any extreme sticky out bits would bugg@r up my stone! I've already lost too much off it after I was volunteered to revamp a dozen sadly abused axes from the wife's scouts. I've since got a cheap hand driven wheel for that sort of stuff.
Off to asda while the eldest is dumped at the teenager crèche also known as Explorers ( tonight it's a three legged race to the kebab shop in the valley ). So I'm wondering what veg oil to use for certain quenching operations until I get some engine oil to filter and use. Too skint to blow much on kit after my recent extravagances!
Next big spend will be on a bunch of railway sleepers and cement to make some permanent stands out at the top of the back lot. For some reason the lads love digging deep narrow holes ( must have skipped a generation ) so getting then in wont be a problem. One halved and bolted together to stand the mini forge on, one half to take the bellows and its eventual more elaborate replacement, another half to take the leg vice and I estimate 3 to make the super heavy duty pole lathe I want to do big stuff and ladles. At least we have plenty of bricks and broken slabs to beak up further for hardcore. The big question is the layout, relationship, between the forge , anvil and vice. I'm resigned to having some sort of lock up at the top of the garden as the whole carrying stuff up and down would put us off having short sessions when the weathers right. A sort of small coal house we could keep the fuel and heavier gear in. But they can wait!
Thanks again for everyone's advice and help!
ATB
Tom