I'm well on the way with this project, but lots more to do. I have a Buffalo Forge re-done, sandblasted, new parts made, painted, and new fireclay in the pan. Bought a very good crank powered blower for it made by Canadian Blower and Forge Co. that only needs a bath, a coat of paint and some lube.

Today I bought a Buffalo Forge brand post drill. Have it washed up, and pleased with it so far. Only one missing part, the feed ratchet pawl that I can make and have a sample to copy. I already have a decent 115 lb. anvil, a hardy, a collection of hammers that I've slicked up and rehandled, plus some tongs, although I tend to use Channellocks and only a few simple tongs.

I need some advice on putting a new shaft in an old natural grindstone. It is over 2" thick, about 20" in diameter, and has the traditional square hole in the center. The original shaft is of course rusted off with only a cast iron flange on the sides and less than an inch of shaft protruding. These stones either had a square wood piece wedged into the center hole (which tended to crack the stone), or were poured full of lead around the shaft with one flange put on to keep the lead from running out the bottom.

Anybody ever done this? I am mindful that the old sandstone will soak up a lot of moisture that could cause hot lead to spurt all over when you pour it! I'm thinking maybe sit this thing in the sun for a couple weeks, covering it at night to keep the dew off. Or, I could run the electric bill up by putting quartz light on eaach side of it for a few days. I also have a propane weed burner torch that runs pretty cheap that I could use to preheat the stone. I'm concerned about cracking the stone, since they don't come cheap.

When it comes time to pour the lead, I'll make new flanges and a new 3/4" CRS shaft, with a roll pin driven through the shaft to keep it from slipping in the lead. All ideas will be appreciated on this project. Jerry

A touch of acid paste solder flux brushed around the new shaft before pouring might help the lead-steel bond as well.
Just my $0.02 worth..... I'm jealous of the "real" anvil.
Doc

Yes! The flux idea sounds good. I'll do it.

The anvil wasn't too bad. I gave about the going rate a couple years ago of $2/lb., or $225 for it. But at least it is a hard face, and it wasn't in bad shape, just slightly sway-backed which ground out fairly easily. I have it on a steel stand, but I think I want to put maybe 1/4" of leather under the anvil, and something like a thick slab of rubber under the stand. Maybe some chunks of old truck tire?

The rest of the stuff was more reasonable. The post drill was $100. The forge I got in a complicated swap that was almost no cost, but the blower was 40 bucks at an Amish auction: Dinky's Auction, near Washington, IN, Daviess County. Lots of that sort of thing there, Spring and Fall auctions that last about 3 days each with 3 to 5 auctioneers going at once! If someone is interested, I'll post the sale time when it comes in the mail.

Bargains do come and go. Last summer I saw both a 700 and a 900 lb. anvil go for $125 ea.
As a tip from my nephew who makes Damascus steel knives out of old steel cable: You can never have enough tongs. There are some great DIY blacksmith sites on the web. As I recall at least one of them said the same about tongs.
Doc

I think I would try J-B Weld ( maybe the only time I will ever recommend the stuff...) before risking the stone.

Our 250lb anvil at the shop was mounted on a chunk of tree trunk about 2' tall and 2' in diameter. It worked well and you could kind of "roll" it around on one corner of the block!
T

My dad had a forge when I was little. He bragged about the vacuum sweeper blower he put on it as the best thing about the forge. Don't know if you are doing a classic restore or going to do work with it. I would think you could install a vacuum sweeper blower without damage to what you have. Just in case you get tire of turning that crank. On the electric blower you need sliding vent thingy to adjust the air flow. Like those bbq smokers have on the top of the smoke stack.

Jerry
Some day hope to get the time to set up a shop too. Have collected couple of forges, grandpa's ASO (anvil shaped object) about 120 pound but dead, no ring at all.
Anyway, on the grind stone, did one years ago, made up the shaft, threaded one end and welded the flange to the other, poured the hole with polyester resin, the stuff for fiberglass. Let it set up then put on the second flange with a nut to draw it up. If you grease the shaft you may even be able to remove it after the resin sets.
Another method would be filling the hole with resin/sawdust blend then drill it to fit the shaft.

I'm with f350ca & Bobodu except I was just thinking of epoxy autobody filler.

I have family not far from there, but I'm closer to Indianapolis. You can let me know, or link to a website.

Thanks for all the replies, and for the good ideas! I really like the resin idea for the grindstone. Why the heck didn't I think of that?

I'm going to use the shop, so it is less than a classic restoration. Although I want to use ball bearing pillow blocks on the grindstone, I can't think of anything better than one fixed flange and one threaded on to clamp the stone, as originally done. Then it gets mounted in a loose copy of the old pedal setup, but with decent bearings throughout to make it pedal easier. It seems to me that with large flanges, well padded with pasteboard, the stone can be driven reliably without any sort of key to the shaft. I like the removeable shaft idea.

I once used a 12 volt heater fan from a truck to blow a forge, which worked very well, but I'm going to install this outfit at my kids' off-grid homestead, so think I'll go with the crank blower. The no-power idea is crucial there, thus the cranked drill press and grinder, too. We have talked about a power hacksaw, wire wheel, and some other stuff driven from a lineshaft by a small gasoline engine, too. I recently restored two burr mills for them, a 3" dia. mill for grinding household flour, and a 5 1/2" dia. mill for animal feed, with 2 1/2 and 6 1/2 HP gas engines, respectively. Helping them develope their homestead is the ultimate goal for me.

Found a workbench, 30" X 8 ft. long with a 1/2" plate top, where the post vise will go. That thing sat around the local salvage yard for years, until the yard sod, and the new owner decided to scrap it. I got lucky to be there at the right time and bought it for 40 bucks! Dunno how heavy it was, but my little S-10 truck was sitting on the axle blocks all the way home. I have a jib crane with a 1 ton chain hoist in front of the welding shop, so that made it easy to unload. It's a wonder I didn't break a spring or something. Probably 800 lbs. or more.

I'll be sure to post about Dinky's Auction. This is the nearest thing I could find to a website: http://www.auctionzip.com/IN-Auctioneers/75860.html

Another fine source around the same area is The White River Valley Antique Assn., at Elnora, IN. http://www.wrvaa.org/
They have a flea market that covers acres, and a lot going on there if you're into that sort of thing. That's where I found the grindstone and some other stuff. Their event is coming up soon. I gotta go see the tractor square dancers! (See their site, and click on "attractions".)

I'm not fond of the gasoline engines as an ultimate power source for their situation, so I'm open to any better ideas. The really hard problems here are power for grinding grain, cutting wood, and running any shaft powered equipment , like a metal lathe. Eventually, they will get what ever they want from my shop, but we need a way to power the stuff. Ideas? They have some solar PV, and a windmill to power lights and small things in the house, but that is too costly to produce brute power for the shop. Same problem they had in the 1800's. We are pretty much scared to death of steam, but diesel/biodiesel is a possibility, as is wood-gas, aka, producer gas for a stationary setup. They have 30 acres of woods. The overall problem here has kept me thinking for several years, and I've only come up with partial solutions.

Okay, I found Dinky's new website: http://dinkysauctioncenter.com/
Click on "Schedule of events" for the dates. The machinery and antiques auction is Septemeber 21-22nd. They only do antiques on ONE day, so I'll get back when I know more about this.

Living off the grid myself, so far what I've been doing is to run the smallest generators I can get a hold of to sip as little fuel as possible to run laptops and recharge the trailer batteries and such. Then I have bigger remote start generators that I only start when they are called for to run a microwave or shop tools, then turn them right off again.
I've got two banks of PV's and the mondo magnets to make about an 800W windmill generator. The wind blows mild, but fairly constant about 75% of the year on my property. I also need to add a couple more batteries to the system, but when all installed that should pretty much deal with my regular low power needs without running the small generator, except perhaps on calm cloudy days. From my perspective, unless you are trying to set up a business production shop then the extra investment for an oversized PV, wind or other system just isn't worth it. Just get a good sized (4.5 to 6 KW) generator with a remote start and only run it when needed.

A possible alternative for a production shop might be to run a small engine driving a large enough flywheel to average out whatever loads you might put on it. From what I've read, load averaging will be the most ecconomical path to take for off grid living. At least until all those dirt cheap PV's they've been promising for years actually show up for real.
For my heating needs I just have simple cast iron woodstoves that I picked up for about $50 each. If you buy it in the summer wood is as low as $80 a cord delivered to my property. A friend in Salt Lake heats his entire two bedroom house on about 2 1/2 cords per winter. That would be $200 a YEAR to me. (Costs him about $300 in salt Lake).
For more ideas, I'd have to know something about the property itself. Any streams close by? How much does the wind blow, how hard? How much land available for PV or solar heat arrays?
Any hot springs around?
That sort of stuff.
Doc

this is probably old news, but two of my favorite sites for wind power is www.windstuffnow.com and www.scoraigwind.com Both sites have info on designing and building blades and alternators to match your average wind conditions.
kent

I've decided on quick and easy blades. 10' length of 8-10" heavy PVC pipe quartered lengthwise and tapered. Two 10' blades and two spares and all that is needed is a jig saw and a drill. My tower will be a piece of 2 3/8" drill pipe mounted on a Jin pole pivot atop my 40' cargo unit. My additional tricks are active FET rectification and a buck circuit that will kick in and start charging my 12v batteries when the gen is only pumping out about 3V. Suck every erg I can get.
I've been thinking about manufacturing and selling the buck circuit on the greeny sites. Might pick up a few extra bob.
Doc

Son in Law has built a 10 ft. dia. wind generator based on a design from: www.otherpower.com/ and is waiting for logging to get finished on their property before erecting it. This is a low speed, direct drive permanent magnet alternator he wound to suit the prop RPM. This is for supplement only, as wind is not a good resource here in southern Indiana. Only the fact that they are on a hilltop and get temperature change breezes twice a day makes it anything like feasible. Don't know the wattage. They have a digital recording weather station going, and have done some research on available wind, and the average speed is low. I don't have figures at this time. He bought composite blades, I machined some parts for it, and he did the fabrication. Had a 6 ft. dia. test machine up when huuricane IKE went through here a couple years ago with sustained 80 MPH winds, and it lived okay. Has an odd tilt-back feature for furling out of the wind that works against a counterweight.

They currently run lights, small TV, and minor control functions on 12 VDC from the solar PV, using two 180 watt Evergreen panels feeding a Bulldog brand forklift battery through a Xantrex C60 charge controller. It would be simple to add a couple panels to this. They have a Maytag wringer washer that runs from an inverter, but usually requires starting a small 12 VDC generator built from a 2.5 HP gas engine and a Delco 60 amp alternator. It sips gas very frugally.

Their fridge, kitchen range, a small RV furnace (that heats their super insulated 24' x 36' home), and the on -demand water heater all run on LP gas, at about $700 worth/year. That will go down a lot when the wood stove goes in.

They have a 5,000 watt generator, and can run heavy power tools. Also have a Miller 200 amp welder with a 16 HP Onan on it for portable use there, and it can make 2400 watts at engine idle.

But their goal is to not just get off grid, but also to get off petroleum as far as possible. So, they are looking at many options, including solar/ammonia refrigeration, passive solar home heating (well on the way there, with a box heater they designed and built), and possibly a woodgas setup for heavy stationary shop power.

They are 300 ft. + above the nearest surface water, so no water power. All that is available is 30 acres of forest, wind and sun, and about 8 acres of tillable land. And, they are working on a cooperative deal with neighbors to work a team of horses. Daughter grew up working and training Percherons; SIL has no horse background, but is expert at most welding processes, and has machine design and fabrication ability.

If LP and/or gasoline is available, no problem. There are many ways to deal with it. Take those away, and it gets more difficult. A couple locals are talking about biodiesel, but no action yet.

So, the blacksmith shop I'm working on is to be able to run on Indiana coal, charcoal, and muscle power. Any power tools beyond that are another matter.

Doc,

SIL has a CNC plasma cutter with an index head, and has cut some blades from 6" schedule 40 PVC pipe. The profile requires something of a spiral cut around the pipe. I think he got the plans from Otherpower. I can find out if needed. This can be cut out from a plotted paper pattern, as well. Supposed to be able to alter the profile for various average windspeeds.

Back on the blacksmith shop, I also have these manually operated machines:
- 8" lever shear that will cut up to 1/8" flat and 3/8" round.
- Beverly lever shear, for cutting curves in up to 16 gauge.
- 50" stomp shear, 18 ga. capacity.
- couple small tool grinders, crank powered.
- turret punch, 1/8" dia. to 1 1/2" dia. x 18 ga. capacity.
- corner notcher, 3" x 18 gauge capacity.
- 3" x 42" power sheet metal roll, 16 ga. capacity, that could be crank powered.
- Hoffman bender (copy we built) for flat bar and rod, scrolls, and such.
- English wheel, we built, 6" hard upper roller, 12 commmercial lowers, tipping wheel, etc.

What will need power is a 1 1/2 HP vertical mill, a South Bend heavy 10" lathe, a 16" Hendey lathe (presently 3 phase), a #4 MT drill press (21 RPM low gear, can drill 2" dia.)and a 3/4 HP surface grinder. This shop is to be their livelihood going forward, concentrating on repair and local needs, probably including a number of alernative energy items. The biggest demand is the 2 HP Hendey lathe. It has "Lima Drive", 3 phase motor/gearbox affair with 4 speeds. That could easily convert to drive from a lineshaft. The rest are 120 bVAC, but could be lineshaft driven.

Thanks. I already got a working profile drawing from some site or another. But seems that a chalk line snapped from widest point to narrowest is probably pretty close to the drawings I got. I love simple!
Doc

"I love simple!"

Amen to THAT! Me too.