Dropped $180 on a proper cone mandrel last month and I don't know how I ever tapered anything without it
I've been forging for about 4 years now and always just eyeballed my tapers on the horn of my anvil or hammered them flat on the face. A guy at the Southern Ohio Forge demo in Dayton let me try his cone mandrel and the control I had was night and day. So I drove to a tool swap in Columbus two weeks later and paid $180 for a used one that needed some cleanup. Now I'm wondering what other tools I've been sleeping on that everybody else already owns. What's the one tool under $300 that you put off buying way too long?