The shop is four items on a blue 1" thick steel plate:
Pictures:
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1) Propane forge
2) Anvil on wood block
3) 2" thick blacksmith table (I made it, inquire if you want to buy one)
4) 100 year old Reed 6" vise
The table is made from a 2" thick pipe flange.
It is all to be fastened to this blue plate. The point of this is to have a self contained shop and to have it all portable on a pallet sized steel plate. The plate is pretty heavy to handle everything nicely.
Very nice, Iggy. I suppose it's sized to fit on a forklift.
There used to be smiths around here who operated out of pickup trucks. The vise was bolted to the bumper,. everything else had to be unloaded to use it, which gave them all the clearance they needed around large work pieces. Sometimes I have to cart my anvil out to the driveway to have enough room all around it. I clamp the leg vise to the small table I weld on.
There are several hand powered machines that could use a mounting hole pattern on a heavy plate for when you need them, such as this shear:
Also very heavy. No way to unload it without a forklift. Blacksmithing meets I go to don't usually have a forklift available.
As for position, right-handed smiths will like to pivot 90 deg. right from the forge to the anvil -- minimum travel distance for the workpiece.
Height of the vices: You might want to consult with the buyer before you lock the vises in place. Makes a differrence whether the smith will be doing fiddly small work, filing, heavier hammering at the vise. Same for the anvil height. Two inches off from good ergonomics can lame the smith in a fairly short time, at least lead to very inefficient blows.
Nice work Iggy. I've been thinking of doing something similar for a small foundry casting setup. Foundry furnace, safety area of fire brick for casting and for molds. Rack for tongs, scraper, and crucicbles, and a rack for a 100lb propane bottle all on one assembly I can roll out of the shop to use and roll back in so weather doesn't ruin it.
I don't know how fast your forge will use propane, but on foundry furnaces often those small bottles cool down so fast that they actually have reduced flow of propane. They even ise up on the outside. You may want to consider a larger bottle, or be ready to swap out bottles if it becomes an issue. Liquid propane evaporating in the top of the bottle as you use it has a very significant refrigeration effect.
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