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I Forge Iron

Jawa

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  1. How long is it supposed to take to heat up, say, a railroad spike to a workable temperature? How fast should you crank it? I find I can’t get it hot unless I’m really winding that thing and even then I’ve got to do it for, I don’t know 3-5 minutes at least. I can’t tell if I’m doing something wrong or if my forge isn’t any good or if it really is this tedious. I’m using a brake rotor w/ coal. Tuyere is black iron pipe w/ flex duct connection held on my a thick black rubber drain connector.
  2. The 77lb anvil came in today, and I think it will suit my needs while I rent this apartment. It's actually 75.8lb, by the way. I think I'm going to have several stands, depending on where I'm forging. Mostly I'll be shooting for tree trunks still rooted in the ground at certain locations I'll often frequent, but I have a metal stand now for portability if need arises. I also have a really beautiful chunk of maple I'm carving. It's only about 12"x12"x12" though. Was going to bolt a plate to the bottom and weld 2" pipe legs to it, fill them with sand and weld little plate feet on the bottom. Maybe have a hole or two in each "foot" so I can nail them to the ground with railroad spikes/barbed tent stakes.
  3. Well, due to the weekend delay in payment processing I had one chance to change my mind. I'd called them an hour before they opened today to let them know I was considering changing my order, and unfortunately did not have time to get back to check forum before they called me back. I decided to go with the next one down, a 77#... I'm wishing it was more in the 90-110 range, but I do like that it's a single piece of drop forged steel. I am wondering how this will compare to the 77# Fisher I use in class. Unfortunately this rules out a 1 3/4" drill rod I had hoped to turn into a claymore, but apart from that most of my plans are pretty small scale, and I think maybe if I beef up my stand I can make it a bit more effective. This way I know I won't throw out a disk in my back, I keep telling myself. It will also make setting up a lot more convenient. And it increases the likelihood that later on down the line, when I have my own space for a workshop, I'll get an anvil even bigger than 165#. Thank you for your replies, I feel a lot better with down-scaling though I know the bigger size could have been *doable* I feel like I would have hated that part of set-up, and I don't want to hate any part of it. How much more effective does the stand make the anvil? I'm thinking of embedding steel into my stump to make it heavier. For an example: Is a 50 pound anvil with a 300 pound stand more effective than a 150 pound anvil with a 50 pound stand?
  4. I might have made a big mistake. For quite some time I was designing a post anvil around a piece of steel I got from a swamp by the railroad tracks. Turns out it is a heel block. Nice and heavy, especially once I would have combined it w/ a 6"x6"x3" mild steel block and the face of a foot of track. It was an evolving process. Was. That changed when I discovered late one night that the heel block is almost certainly cast iron. My spirits sank, and impulsively I spent all my money on a Peddinghaus 165#. Thing is, I live in an apartment in the city and cannot forge near where I live. I am determined to make it work. Plan is to load my stump, anvil, forge table (detachable pipe legs) all all my other equipment into my truck every single time I want to forge and drive it somewhere else, unload, set up, have fun, take it down... I will probably be doing this alone most of the time. I'll cut to the chase. Is 165# too heavy to be a "portable" anvil? I know some people here can easily lift much more. But I mean four lifts each time you want to forge something, with a short flight of stairs involved... I'd estimate I'm of average strength and above average determination, but I don't want to wreck my back.
  5. Have you tried holding a piece of burning newspaper under the pipe it as you're getting the fire started, to help create the draft?
  6. Forbidden... Are my pictures not showing up? Thank you for your replies. The large piece of steel might weigh a bit less than 70+, I haven't actually put it on a scale. Might have felt heavier when I was hauling it out of the swamp. It's labelled GT 80 A639. The GT indicates it was from Grand Truck Railway, which later became Canadian National. It operated from 1853-1923. I don't know what this piece is for, but I think it was part of a rail switching assembly. Hopefully these might work.
  7. Hello, new member here. After much youtubing and lurking on this forum, as well as taking a couple night courses in blacksmithing and welding, I've decided to go ahead and try to make a coal forge and post anvil. It's still very much a work in progress, and I'm still scrounging up materials. For the forge I've got a brake rotor and the lower half of a bar stool. The bar appears to be relatively thin steel, comprised of approximately 5/8" square tube. I've no idea if it can stand up to the heat that will be close to it (but not directly in contact with) but since it's designed to bear the weight of a drunken human I suspect load bearing won't be an issue. The top of the stool is a frame made of the 5/8" steel, and is about 17" in diameter. The rounding of the legs extend the diameter at the widest point of the frame to about 21". My idea was to weld 14 gauge sheet metal over the top, with a hole in the center to accommodate the bowl of the brake rotor (leaving a lip of about an inch on the top of the sheet to help support it in case the welding starts to go, as I've read might happen. Is 14 gauge thick enough, or should I try for 1/4 inch? I'm also unsure of how wide I can make this sheet. I don't want to make it too tippy, but I'd like as much space up there as I can fit. As for the fire pot, I've got to decide how to block up the holes around the center hole. For the center hole, which is about 2 3/4", I am considering a 2" black iron end cap (OD is 3") with one or more holes drilled into the top. I read somewhere on this forum that a single 3/4" hole in the top of the cap is a good choice for a coal forge, provided the cap extends about an inch above the bottom of the bowl. I can grind the cap down some to make it shorter if need be, because I think it's at least 1 1/2" as is. A flange will be welded(/bolted?) to the bottom of the rotor, to which a 4 inch segment of 2" iron piping will be connected. That piping will connect to a T elbow, and 5 1/2" inches of 2" will lead down from that as my ash catcher. I was planning on welding a piece of angle and bolting in a small circular plate running flush to the bottom of the 2" pipe that I could just push aside to let the ash fall out and close it after. For my air intake I'm having a 4" segment of 2" pipe connect to the T elbow, and I'll attach 3" aluminum duct to that. The duct will connect to a cheap bathroom fan I'll use as a blower. I'll adjust fan speed with a dimmer switch type cord that's plugged in between the power source and the fan. I had wanted to use a valve between the fan and the piping to control air flow w/out having to slow the fan down, but it looked a bit heavy and was too expensive to rationalize buying at the time. I don't have a clinker breaker. I'm still mulling over anvil ideas, mostly to do with how to mount it on the stand. I picked up about a foot of railroad track, but then later found a very interesting piece. It's from a railroad, but it doesn't have a rail (though it's about the same width) It's about two feet long and weighs at least 70 pounds, possibly more. It's broader on one end than the other. It looks like a support of some kind. I'll take some pictures when it's been cleaned up.
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