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I Forge Iron

Gromgor

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    Seven Springs, North Carolina, USA

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  1. Gold would serve you as a better conductor anyway. You'd likely be best served with a gilded, ornamental blade that has engravings that are gilded with gold that would create the actual channel of conductivity.
  2. I was just about to say the same thing. I learned the hard way with a forge that if you have a hot piece of anything drop down and it has no clearance between the bottom and the air pathway, the heat will back up into your pipe and melt your blow dryer.... Fun times! Seriously, like Glenn said, 12-18 inches
  3. I've never owned a single set of brass knuckles. I have owned dozens of brass knuckle shaped paper weights however.
  4. Just to throw this out there, but all bourbons, whiskeys and other brown liquors are, by design, supposed to be ever so slightly watered down...like from a melting ice cube. It creates a change in the chemical makeup of the liquor and releases a flavor that is subtle, yet, distinct, if you're not just drinking to get drunk. Don't forego the ice cubes! They are literally meant to be flavor enhancers for your drink. People need some culture when it comes to their drinks.
  5. in a pinch, don't even make charcoal. Just throw some chopped up wood into your forge and go. It might not get up to welding heat, but you can forge with it. You might go through twice as much wood to do the same job, but wood is basically free. Only cost is a borrowed chainsaw and some time (and labor). Iron doesn't care HOW it gets hot, it just wants to be hot. Before there was charcoal, there was just plain old wood and it worked well enough to get civilization to the point of charcoal.
  6. Smiths have used every type of building material possible to build shelters. The only thing you need to do to a dirt floor is kick it off your boots before you go into the house.
  7. Something smells a lot like a sales pitch and not an honest question. Not sure exactly what. Might just be me.
  8. Get it. Trade it later if you find you don't use it, but with a proper lathe you can manufacture all the pieces you need to make all the pieces you need to make all the pieces you need for an entire shop. Wanting to stick to forge work is great, but I don't know a single carpenter that doesn't also have tools to work on a vehicle. Nor a mechanic that doesn't own a hammer, some nails and screws and a few tape measures.
  9. Hi guys, I'm just curious and wondering what the first items you sold for profit was that got the thought of blacksmithing for an income as something that might be viable.I recently did a small job for a buddy that had a new house built. He had a wood fireplace installed and wanted a set of tongs to grab hot logs with, a poke and a shovel. Figuring it would be a fun little exercise, I took up the job. He bought some stock I made him what seemed to decent enough pieces. I wasn't planning to charge him for it, but he flipped me $25.00. My first paying commission. So what was it for the rest of you guys?
  10. Unless you have extremely good ventilation, and this likely means a pretty serious air moving fan pulling smoke out of the barn (not just pushing it around inside) you will need a hood and chimney. If you don't have a hood and chimney, I would recommend having a portable forge and moving it outside when you need to use it. It's smoke. It's bad for your lungs.
  11. Need a stand? Make one with 2x12's, a cut log, weld one from steel. Dig a hole to stand in and have the anvil on the ground. I've found simple might not be best, but it's better than complicated. I took up blacksmithing for a couple of reasons: A) to have a skill I can pass down to, and participate in with my kid and B) so if the world collapses, I can have a useful skill to call upon. So I'm trying to go as simple as possible, and learning to make items as simple as possible.
  12. Honestly, it really doesn't matter. Forget everything you've ever learned about how important this or that aspect of building a forge is and keep one thing in mind: Does it get my metal hot enough to forge? After that the rest is details. When I first started, not so very long ago, I was obsessed with making a bottom blast forge using an old grill, a brake drum/rotor, some steel pipe, etc. Then, when I was having problems getting air one day, I just dug a hole in the ground, slid some scrap exhaust pipe in it that had a 45 degree bend (so it could be aimed downward, and then level out before it reached the coals) and I found this to be 100 times better. Since then I've built the sides up. However, I did recently find a potential coal supplier. I'm likely going to be using my bottom blast brake drum forge for playing around with that. TL;DR: Use whatever you have available that gets the job done properly.
  13. Blacksmithing: Taking whatever you can find and making it work. 200 lbs. of free coal that works 90% as well as what you use now, versus $45 for 50 lbs. at 100%. Let's do some math here. You'll get 180 lbs. worth of the effectiveness for free. yeah, take the coal and even if it's so crappy you can't use it in a forge, it's free, and already packaged. Keep it "just in case".
  14. Charcoal requires a much deeper pot than coal. The reason you can't get heat is because your fireball doesn't have room to exist because there's not enough fuel depth. Try dropping that brake drum down into a hole in that, what looks like the bottom of a 55 gallon drum, so that the bottom of the drum is "flush" (I know it won't be perfectly flush) with the top lip of the drum. When viewed from the side it should look something like this: | / | <--What you currently have |____ ====_____ | | | } |_____ _____| <--Barrel } What you want / <--Brake Drum } === } This will give you a container to pile fuel on top of the brake drum, giving you more fuel depth. The actual depth of the fire pot isn't the important factor. The pot is just something to hold your fuel. Increase the depth of the fuel, apply some air (and charcoal requires very, very little).
  15. Just fill it 1/4 of the way and it should still be plenty sturdy.
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