Greg H.

A couple of possibilities if you can't find them online: Walk along a track and look off to edges of the ballast - not ethical as the Right of Way is considered private property and can be dangerous if you are not paying attention and relies on chance, but they normally don't care if you find the occasional spike an pick it up. Watch for RR track work crews, and talk to them. Explain your situation and offer to trade a RR spike knife for some spikes. If you are real lucky, they might be using thermite to weld the track and you can watch from closer than you normally would. If they still can't help you, try and get the name and phone number of their area supervisor and talk to him/her. Finally, look for places where old track is being removed because a local authority exercised Eminent Domain, to build a hiking trail or put in a building - in these areas, the old RR spikes are often just left laying around until building / grading actives bury them, simply because they are usually not worth the effort to pick up.

I did dome checking, and I as I thought, I asked questions on this forum about "Black Sand" back in 2008 - here is the link to the answers I received: Noob question

I raised this possibility a couple of years ago, and from what I'm told then, not all black sand is iron oxide - some is only dark silica based minerals that can make up a significant fraction ( maybe even most in some cases ). So you would have to assay the iron content for it to be worth much to anyone.

If you live near a city, check with the local authority for mass transit or construction company to see if they have some old break drums from large construction trucks or busses - they are darn near indestructible.

Have you guys seen the books by Nicholas Tomihama? He used to make wood bows ( even wrote a book to help beginning bowers ), but when marriage and a kid made money even tighter, he started making bows out of PVC pipe and he is getting fairly good results, with several bows in the #35 to #50 range and at least one bow in the #75 range - including several take down bows and PVC pipe Horse Bows. I have talked a couple of times with him, and he is all for making archery affordable. Here is his Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Nicholas-Tomihama/e/B004Q2LJLM/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

That's why my next batch of arrows were Fluorescent Orange their entire length - like I said they looked like tracers on a average day or mini laser bolts when the sun was really bright, when it was going down range.

Don't. Not saying you can't, just that it could be very bad juju if you did. Unless, you are Native American using them in a religious ritual, of have a Bird of Prey handling certificate/license the Feds tend to go **Bonkers** about that sort of thing - even if they don't come from a endangered species. They could even take the stance that you killed the bird, just to get the feathers. Classic turkey feathers are cheap and more than good enough for the job, and you can get them in most any color and style you could want.

<shrug> Like I said, more of something I'm speculating on - because in doing some research into archery, I have come across some 50's - 60's era studies into making the limb curves, that indicate modern mass production techniques may be building bows backwards, thus not reaching the full potential of the materials or basic shape. Here is one of the last arrows - as the colors suggest, it is one from the first batch of arrows I made: As you can see, taking these in the field, could prove hazardous to keeping track of them, if I missed the target.

It's been several years, since I shot archery in the SCA, but I have been playing around with the idea of getting back into archery. I have 3 recurves. A 29# Bear that my dad owned as a youngster ( almost no curve left ), a 40# Shakespeare, and a 55# Ben Pearson - only one arrow left as the others ( that were not lost in the field ) were lost in moves around the US, but I made them, with pre-formed materials. My first set of arrows was stained a nice Walnut brown, with a Forest Green cock feather and black hen feathers, 125 grn field points and black nocks - beautiful to look at, and great to shoot at a measured range - but the first time I went field shooting, I lost a quarter of them by the end of the first day. I learned my lesson, and the next set was Flo Orange, and looked like tracers going down range - I still lost them, but not near as fast why sometimes I could go a month or so between a loss ( but I made 5 doz of them just in case so the occasional loss wasn't so bad ). I have even begun speculating on the possibility of building my own fiberglass bow - if I get really ambitious I may even try to build a fiberglass version of a Penobscot bow.

If it was slightly serrated, would it cut better when levering the grubbing blade under a root?

Do you have some pics with different angles to better see the change?

Talking about being stiff to forge. Reminds me of the time when a friend I had, tried to forge a trailer hitch ball. He got the thing bright red hot, put it on the anvil, and took one whack with a hammer, and the trailer ball shot out of the tongs he was using and rolled across the driveway and on to ( and then across ) his garage floor into a pile of clean shop towels at the back of the garage, before it came to a stop. Total distance ~45-50' Forging session comes to fast stop and fire suppression session comes to a fast start, as everyone first couldn't believe what happened, staring at what the ball was doing, and then dropping everything when they realized it was going into the garage. Oops.

Locally might be a no-go, but samples of many pure ( 99% ) elements can be delivered to your door - http://element-collection.com/html/samples.html

I am still finding this thread very informative, as any ore that that might be close to being available locally ( half a state away ), either has sulfur, or titanium or tungsten in it. Obviously, the sulfur is to be avoided at all cost, but the others might be useable even if they have their own problems.

Isn't the counter to the formation of cast iron, running a charge with a higher percentage of ore to carbon? That being said, could you break up the cast iron and use it in your next smelt to recover what might other wise be lost values ( that is, if you are not into casting iron )?