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I Forge Iron

beard

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Everything posted by beard

  1. I pass the Folk School on my way to work, it's a pretty cool place to just walk around and look at things.
  2. I went to Florida for a little while to see my grandparents, came home with a nice little fan that my grandmother used in her days at Honeywell before my time. I'd like to see any fan made today last that long... anyway it fit an 8" pipe like a glove so I snagged a couple things from Lowes after work last night and got it set up. It's an 8-6 reducer and a 4-3 reducer, the 6-4 was another $8 so I skipped that, cut the 4 side of the 4-3 into fins and bent them to cradle the 6 and taped it up with some polish chrome. I drilled a couple holes in the end to ziptie the fan to it. It worked kinda alright but it was blowing more air backward than forward, I ran a some tape around the duct and overlapped the fan cage to see if that would help trap some of the escaping air and I was right on the money. I might only be losing about 10-20% of the air now but it blows plenty hard enough. If I ever want that last little bit I'll come up with a new design, or a stronger fan. I'm pretty sure the reducers are galvanized but I'm certain it's far enough away from the heat source to not be a problem for me, and the fan will be going so it should stay cool.
  3. If I had one laying around I would, as a temporary fix though. I never cared for the way they looked on a forge.
  4. I'm sure it could work but I would rather not have a system set up to reverse the rotation. I'll either end up using the radiator fan or getting a different motor from my cousin. The good thing about using a radiator fan is if it ever burns out, I've got a dumpster full of stuff to replace it with.
  5. Picked up an exhaust flapper and a sack of coal from TSC this afternoon, put the flapper on when I got home from work. They were out of the flapper size I needed so I went up 1/4" and I had to tighten it all the way because it's a little oversized but it's secure on there. As far getting the forge in working order that leaves me with setting up a fan and cutting a section of tree trunk to mount my anvil to. There's a few minor things here and there like dropping some bolts with big washers through the sheet metal to stop it from curling up the way it does, replacing missing bolts in the body of the grill.... Speaking of the fan though, that 3 speed motor I have spins clockwise and can't be reversed. I may end up getting a rheostat and sticking it to one of the radiator fans... donno. I could probably have it ready to work on by the weekend but it's supposed to be pretty rainy so I may just let my laziness out for a little while.
  6. hah yea. If I had any neighbors around. The nearest one is about a mile down the hill. I can hammer all day and all night, nobody would care about it. I don't have much of a work space or anywhere covered that I can do this in until I sell one of my bikes. I'll likely end up keeping my tools under the lid when I'm not using it so they don't get rained or snowed on.
  7. I got out of work pretty early today so I brought a couple tools home to work on the forge. I found that I didn't need to cut the bottom out of the grill, it was just a sliding catch pan. The sheet metal has a little curve to it but I'll just drop a bolt through the corners and fasten it down to the grating underneath. Then I found this old 3 speed fan motor I saved and forgot I had so I'll see about rigging up blades to that next, instead of one of the radiator fans I originally planned on.
  8. Alright, more updates and pictures guys. I brought the pieces of the forge to that machine shop by work and showed him what I had planned, I'm not sure if it makes any difference at all but I wanted the pipe coming off the flange at a slight angle to prevent anything from falling/collecting in the intake part of the forge. I left to get lunch and he had it all put together before I got back. I also asked him about some sheet metal and he found a piece of leftover that was just a little too big for my grill, I gave him my measurements and he cut it down for me. He also gave me some leftover steel mesh from the elevator cage he made for our shop. I think if I just use two layers of the mesh it should be enough to keep my coals in the pot, and I'm assuming that since it's so badly rusted it's likely not galvanized but I'm not experienced enough in metal to know for sure. If anybody needs a good machine shop in the Murphy NC area let me know and I'll give you some details, this guy is easy to work with and he prices his work affordably.
  9. I forgot about this old thing.. the burners stopped working ages ago and we have been making wood fires on it to cook ever since. We finally decided to replace it so I'll use this instead of the 55gal drum. Much less cutting this way. I have some new questions though. Will that grill grate be able to hold up the rotor and withstand whatever heat it puts off? My uneducated opinion is that if I put it centered and to the left, keeping the weight even on that middle bar it would work. Or should I get rid of that and replace it with a big piece of steel.
  10. I agree with that. $6 for a 40lb bag of coal at TSC sounds like a pretty fair deal to me anyway, plus there's no shortage of locust on my property and that stuff burns slow and HOT.
  11. I took a bunch of pieces in a bunch of sizes and put them in my fire place last night to see what would happen. They lit up instantly, didn't produce any smoke, and after a minute or so I stabbed at them with the poker. They fell apart a little bit but didn't crumble or break. The best way I can describe it is they were coming apart in layers. I've never used actual coal before but that didn't seem to me like what should happen to coal in a fire.
  12. I've seen more scrap horses around here than I really care to mention. I'd like to see somebody do something a little less 'majestic'... like a walrus, or a sloth glad you all liked my garbage can haha
  13. Good stuff guys. Thats Hot, I really like what you did with the grill. I've had this old 55gal drum behind the chicken coop for about two years and I don't think anybody else is going to use it so I think I might use that as the base for my forge. I had a feeling that the first rotor I got wasn't right for me. I hit up three more garages and the steel supply warehouse today. The only actual brake drum I found was a monster, and I came across another rotor that I think might be the one. I'll put the pictures of those two below starting with the rotor. I got my flange and T from the steel supply, and about 3' of 2" pipe. The price on the T was nuts, I almost told the guy to put it back. I'm going to see the man I got the first rotor from in a day or two about welding a few things, if he's got one he'll sell cheaper then I'm taking this other one back. Here's a few more pics of the scrap that I deal with. I figured somebody might enjoy seeing it. The first one is about a week worth broken or damaged parts I pulled off the wrecked bikes. The rest of them are what has accumulated in the dumpster over a couple months. There's a bunch of oddly shaped stuff in there.
  14. I don't mean to sound rushed but could anybody offer some input on the crack in the rotor I have pictured? If that's going to be a problem for me down the road I'll stop at a few more places and see if they have a brake drum.
  15. I never said anything about casting an anvil, but good point about working with long stock. Thanks for the tip. Gonna take a ride to this steel supply place tomorrow before work and see if they have what I need to pipe out my cheapo forge. I never did make it up the hill today to cut myself a stump, too cold and wet.
  16. Well like I said, "eventually" For now I'm working with what I can get for free, even if it is difficult.
  17. I hadn't considered that, I had to look up what a swage was. And to Thomas, I haven't read anything formal on the subject yet. I've only watched a few videos on assembling a forge and making stands for anvils, and a couple google searches on what can't or shouldn't be put in the forge. I plan on figuring out a lot of this for myself. I enjoy things more that way. I think I'll eventually want to start melting down some of the scrap into some solid chunks, I might do some reading about how that is done and what tools I'll need at that point. Until then I'll be fine cutting pieces off GoldWing frames and grabbing the damaged suspension kits out of the dumpster for the springs.
  18. It was hard for me to buy a piece of track instead of an anvil. Any time I've ever started a new hobby or tried something different, I've always been the one that gets quality things that I'll keep and use for life. I don't mean I'd go drop $1000 on a new popular brand 150lb anvil, I mean I would research and find what's good and what's good for the best deal. I was looking in the 200-300 dollar range for a while but everything looked like blobs of beattodeath metal and rust, or it was an old 50lb cast iron with no markings that somebody thought was worth $6/lb. I saw a piece of track shaved flat with a horn cut on one end, it was probably 8 inches long and the price tag was $200. I found this guy selling the unused track for so cheap and I gave in, it was the most reasonable price on anything anvil-ish I've seen anywhere. By the way if anybody wants some track I can send you the guys phone number and ebay info, I'd just post it but I'm not sure what this forum considers advertising or how strict the mods/admins are about that sort of thing. Your suggestion though... that's likely what I'll end up doing. If it doesn't work for me I'll have the top trimmed a little. Then again if I ever get lucky enough to make any money off the junk I make I'll set it aside so I can buy a real anvil.
  19. Hey everybody. Blacksmithing has been something I've wanted to try for the last year or so. I've been looking around ebay and craigslist for anvils and tools every week or so but all I ever find is broken overpriced junk or extremely overpriced halfway decent equipment, until last week. I went a few pages deeper in ebay than I normally do and came across a guy named Igor that has unused railroad track pieces cut to whatever length you want, and sold for $1/lb. The track anvils at my local flea market are priced well over $100 so this seemed pretty fair to me, I bought a piece cut to fit a USPS flatrate box like a glove(11 1/16 inch) and paid $32 for it. At first I wanted to have a little bit shaved from the top for a flat work area but after looking at it I'm not completely sure that's what I want to do, what do you guys think about that? I picked up a couple hammers and tools for next to nothing from that flea market, I've got a few of them at work right now so I don't have pictures of them. The Bonney feels about 16oz and the drilling hammer is 3lb. I brought the 2lb engineers hammer and 3lb cross peen to work. The face on all of them are in pretty good condition except the cross peen, I can tell it's had a hard life. I'll probably use some big vise grips until I find nice tongs, or make my own when I'm skilled enough. My forge-to-be is a rotor with a huge bowl, I got it from a machine shop right up the road from where I work. I went there originally to ask the guy about cutting the top of the track and as I was leaving I saw his scrap metal pile, he let me dig through it and let me have the rotor. The bowl is 8" across and 4" deep, I think I might want to find something smaller but I don't know a lot about it so I could be completely wrong. There's also a big chip and a crack in the side of it, I'm not sure if the constant heating and cooling would cause that to get worse. I'm still trying to find the right pipes for it too.. I went to Lowes a few days ago and the only non-galvanized piping the had was this cheap feeling super thin metal conduit. There's a steel supply warehouse near work I want to stop by on Monday to see if they have what I want, if not I'll go back to the guy I got the rotor from and talk to him about helping me get this thing piped out. I know he has the material but I wanted to do this project myself. Now this stuff.... It's all over my property and my neighbor tells me it's coal, and to me it looks like the coal I see online. I picked up just what was on the surface of where I park my jeep and filled a 5gal bucket. I'm finding it in all sizes from an acorn to bigger than my hand, and it weighs almost nothing. Could I get a little input on this? As far as materials go, unless I think of something specific I need to buy the metal for I'll probably get most of what I use from the scrap at work. I work in motorcycle salvage and there's a 40ft dumpster out back full of steel and aluminum bike parts and as long as I make stuff for my boss too, he's cool with me taking pieces of it from time to time. I'm going to work for a little while tomorrow to finish cleaning the last of a GSXR I tore down yesterday and when I get home I'll head up the hill to look for a big enough hardwood to cut and make a base for my 'anvil'... then I'll see about setting up a forge. I've got a couple radiator fans I rescued from the trash at work but I think they'll blow too hard unless I set up some way that it doesn't push every bit of air into the pipes. I feel like this is a pretty decent start, if anybody could point out something I could do different or better I'd really appreciate it.
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