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I Forge Iron

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It's worth while doing! I have been visiting these forums as a guest for about six months, soaking up everything I could. I suppose I felt that since I have nothing to contribute or any specific questions to ask, there was no need. How wrong I was!

Aside from the obvious benefit of actually engaging the community, the amount of information available in the members only areas is incredible! Huge amounts of stickies with great info for beginners, a lot of which are fun to read with humorous antics. Then there is the blueprints section, which unfortunately from what I've gathered only some sections are currently working. I've read all that is, and it's amazing.

I won't go on more, but as much as this post is advise to those like myself six months ago, let this post serve as a massive thank you to contributors, and to introduce myself.

Alex

Edited by alextynan
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Frosty the lucky, or whatever you go by now, I can't keep up! Haha. I'm a fitter machinist by trade, have only recently gotten a poor excuse for a forge set up at work. I've got a roll of kaowool, 5lb of satanite and a pint of itc100 on the way to show the boss what a real forge looks like. I have managed to nearly complete a set of tongs, taking me a long time to draw the 25 x 8 bar down to a workable size! Only just found a video explaining a drawing technique that might make it easier next time!

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FYI to the new members that want to change theIR Email to a fake one after joining, dont do it.  You must keep a valid Email to remain a member here. or your account will be closed.  This is also a public service announcement for the 2 now X members that didnt believe us when we posted this info in the read here before joining section.

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Plenty of heat, big hammer and small striking serface, lol. When I was a kid. arizona Public Service (at that time the gas and electric utility for most of Arizona) had a blacksmith shop atached to the dearvally welding shop. As many of the powerplants had obsolet or one of equipment, and the machineshops and fabricators produced those parts, the blacksmith shop produced blanks to be finished. They did not replace him when he retired, but in the face of rizing steel (and other metal) prices they may now regret that. 

 

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You got them to set up a forge at work!? Can I come to work there? Making tongs with flat stock like that we'd go with 3/4" x 3/8" or about 19mm wide. It's plenty of beef but not so much workout to draw down for reins.

I've started using coil spring around 13mm dia. it makes nice light tongs that are stiff enough to hold firmly. One of the guys in our club uses 4140 for the same reason. The downside being that they're hardenable steels so you can't quench them in water if you let them get into the red heat without risking making them brittle. If you get them red toss them on the ground and let them cool OR keep them cool in the first place.

A good drawing technique is to make a spring fuller.

Frosty the [place something clever here]

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I'll try using the edge of the "anvil", as in Brian brazeal's tong making video, but I will eventually make a spring fuller. The bar just happened to be the best size scrap I had laying around. 18mm round or there about a would have saved me a lot of time. But as I'm just beginning, getting used to moving steel isn't a bad thing I suppose.

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The horn and a very blunt pein is good for drawing as well, depending on the radies of the anvil edge (mine tapers from about 1/8"-1/2" radius. The edge may be more if a butcher or a set tool. I have a couple of 3# hammers with half round peins, one strait and one cross. By standing facing the point of the horn And using the strit pein I can draw faily fast with minimum clean up as the "hills and vallys" arn't so pronounced. 

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show the boss what blacksmithing can do!  There are lots of things that folks have figured out workarounds  to do the job without smithing because "nobody smiths anymore" but the workarounds take far more expensive time and effort and often don't do the job as well as hot work will.  Show the boss that a bit of smithing can save hours of machining and he will start getting the idea that it's a *good* thing!

 

The horn of my 500#+ Fisher makes a dandy fuller and if I use a straight peen with a large radius, (my favorite one looks like it has a 1" diameter rod on the end!) I can really go to town on a piece with no fear of cold shuts

Edited by ThomasPowers
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I don't have the luxury of a real anvil, I'm using a 125x74x300 block on top of a 200 diameter bar as a stand. It has a lot of weight, but not very good rebound and no Hardie, Pritchel or bick. In Australia I'm having a hard time finding somewhere to buy a good anvil, and I'd rather not throw that much money at something unless I find a good one. I'm going to look at a second hand one this weekend, hopefully it goes my way. The "forge" my boss threw together is similar to a firebrick forge, but with some unknown brittle refractory board donated by a customer. It cracks with the heat but it did get me up to an orange heat on a chunk of steel for a job this week. Funny how within a couple weeks of me playing around after hours forging in the shop a job turned up to forge, and I was the man for the job. Gotta love when life throws you a win!

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The more tools in your toolkit the less likely you will get let go in a bad spell---"We can't get rid of Alex he;s the only one that knows how to fettle the dingo spots for our major customer!"  (And if you do get downsized you have more job options available.  I know a fellow on this board that when he was downsized his blacksmithing was a strong factor in getting his next job---as a metallurgist!)

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