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I Forge Iron

Clodbuster

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  • Location
    Tri-Cities, Washington, USA
  • Interests
    Metalworking, woodworking, carpentry, stone/brick masonry, jewelrymaking, 1930s IHC trucks
  • Occupation
    Engineer/ Farmer
  1. Here's one more way to do it that avoids heavy upsetting or drawing out: Use an engine connecting rod - it already has roughly the shape you want, it just needs flattened. I took a salvaged rod, removed the end cap from the desired end and cut off the bolt holes. I cut off the rod to give a end to hammer on, leaving long so I could cut off mushrooming after completed. Heat the round end in the forge and drive it into the anvil face to flatten and spread, then clean up with the angle grinder and belt sand to true flatness. Then temper. I didn't punch for a handle but wired on into the nice pocket that they come with.
  2. Here's one more for consideration - I took these photos of a cart from a blacksmith shop museum in Butte, Montana. Then made a copy for myself but added drawers below the top surface to capture some more storage space. I love having it on wheels so I can pull it up to the job.
  3. I've used both coal and charcoal, and once my latest $35 bag of coal is used up I'm never buying another. The charcoal is cleaner, hotter, FAR less smoky, more pleasant and less expensive. I can get decent blacksmithing coal at a premium price, but I can cook 2-3 barrels worth of lumber scraps each fall for nearly free and it lasts me all year. I use offcuts in the drums since they stack tight and neat and yield more charcoal. If I don't fill the drums myself with a year's worth of carpentry projects then there's a local contractor who sells an apple bin full of offcuts for $10. Once drums are full they go next to the annual burn pile, which consists of whatever fell out of the trees around the yard since last year. I stack the pile around the drums, light it up, throw the ends in as needed, and when it's cool pull the lids off the years supply of charcoal and roll them under the bench. This works great for me and I live in the DESERT, so I'm sure this model will work in Western Oregon. I'd really feel strange there paying for coal while a million tons of wood rots all around me...
  4. I've made several of these. Usually stumps are irregularly shaped, so flexible rulers don't work well to lay out a line. Use a tape or yardstick and measure straight up from the floor and mark it. The best way to get it flat and true is with a router. Google "router sled" and you will find a wealth of info. Running a router back and forth will level it easier and more accurately than any other method. Here's three pictures of how I did my swage block stand 1) The first shows the stump rough cut with a chainsaw above the line. I then nailed two boards to opposite sides of the stump with their tops parallel and level to the ground. These serve as rails for the router sled. Note the spacers so that the router doesn't chew up its rails. 2) The second photo shows how you make a series of passes back and forth with the router sled and it levels the cut. The plywood to the left is the sled, the bit is sticking out of it. 3) The third photo shows how a belt sander cleans up the router tracks. When you get one end done you can remove the rails and endo it to do the other end. To keep my stumps from rocking I mark 3 "feet" into the base and freehand rout and sand between them about 1/8" deep. A three-legged stool will never rock. Good luck.
  5. Just my two cents, but if you have the pair of them and they fit some type of machine that's around, I'd try to sell them. You could get enough money to buy stock in the sizes you need as those are going to be big stuff to work. Also, it seems a shame to chop them up into pieces when they are quite useful in their current configuration. All that is based on them being undamaged and not obsolete - if that's not the case then cut away!
  6. Agreed on the texturing. There's some scuffs on the raised faces which catch the eye - texturing would hide those. I don't think the leaving the raised face unhammered would be wrong (it gives a modern feel to the piece), but it has to be polished and pristine in that case. Also, maybe try to get the corners looking like each other, that would clean it up some. Looks good all in all though.
  7. If it's not something that you're worried about breaking and it it has a useful shape, I'd use it as an anvil. So long you don't beat on thin edges/protrusions and you're working hot metal over it the thing should last a long time. I have and appreciate my Peter Wright "real" anvil, but have a swage block (cast iron), ASO, and other random chunks of metal I use as needed to complete the task at hand.
  8. If you want to start on the cheap, then you've picked the right hobby. You can lift yourself up by the bootstraps in blacksmithing like you can in no other field. Money helps, and for certain items like a nice anvil you'll have to have some. But without money you can develop some amazing workarounds that allow you to develp your skills and flesh out your tool set at the same time. But if you don't have money you are going to need time and scrounging skills. The first thing you need to do is to scrounge a large, heavy piece of steel/cast iron to serve as an anvil. It doesn't have to be pretty, but it needs one flat working face. There are many options for forges - the absolute cheapest would be a home-built charcoal forge fueled with charcoal you cook yourself in a drum. This requires only your effort to gather the wood and make charcoal of it. But it also takes time and you have to be in a location to do such a thing. Otherwise a good portion of your $50 will be applied to fuel. Start scrounging for steel to work with. There is scrap available from any number of sources and almost all of it is useful to a patient smith, particularly to a beginner. You can always use it to make do (and to develop your skills) until something better comes along. Work with long pieces you can hold one end of until you can make a pair of tongs. There are plans for a first set of tongs that don't require tongs to make them. Get those and a piece of 1/4"x 1" steel and use that to make your first pair - then the whole world's your oyster. Everything in life is a trade of time or money, if you don't have one then you need the other. Don't let the lack of money hold you back, make it your means to self-improvement. I've made most of my blacksmithing tools and there's no reason you can't do the same or more. Welcome, good luck, and have fun... oh, and spend at least $5 of that $50 on a pair of safety glasses!
  9. Good topic - it's interesting to hear the paths that bring people into this. Mine is kind of roundabout. I grew up on a farm and have been familiar with fabrication and welding since I was a kid. Also could do rough carpentry, plumbing, electrical, mechanical repairs and similar things. Farmers tend to be jacks of all trades... but masters of none. So I did lots of basic fabrication and repairs but never forged anything other than one failed cold chisel in high school metal shop. Our teacher didn't know what the heck he was doing - the school had a nice propane forge but we used it only once - on the day we forged chisels. We drew out and ground the chisel and then "tempered" it by holding it rigidly in cold water - the first time I used it at home it broke at what I now know was the quench line. I didn't know that at the time, and it killed forging for me as I chalked it up as too difficult and unreliable. Later, when I was restoring an 1936 International Harvester truck, I talked to several shops about duplicating the oak cab subframe that vehicle has (it is a very complex bit of woodworking with curves and tricky joinery) Either they wouldn't do it or they wanted a fortune so I decided to do it myself. I was in college at the time so money was tight, meaning spendy power tools were out of the question. I bought some basic hand old hand tools, tuned them up and proceeded to figure it out. In the process I learned two things: 1) What makes a good tool 2) I was capable of much finer work than I'd done previously. It was at this point that I realized that if I could improve my woodworking skills that much then I should see what I could do for my metalworking abilities! I was also developing an interest in tools and toolmaking from the woodworking. These two things complimented each other and led me to purchase a coal forge and find this forum. I took a basic blacksmithing class and started tooling up my shop. I like how blacksmithing compliments the other metal and wood working skills I already have. Now I can honestly say that if it's made out of metal or wood - I can make it.
  10. The nuts and bolts of laying out a handle have been covered pretty well by others but I want to emphasize the "why" on grain direction so it makes sense. Wood is a highly anisotropic material - it's properties vary greatly with the direction. This is intuitive as you can easily split it firewood but have to chop it in two. When you make or buy a handle with the grain alligned across the head here is what happens: Each impact of the head (and even more so for mistrikes) causes bending stresses in the wood. These are largest near the head-handle connection. Since a handle can be thought of as essentially a beam, it is informative to think about what wood beams do when they are loaded/overloaded - they split down the middle. This is where the shear stresses are at a maximum in a round beam and by aligning the grain across the head you inadvertently align the highest stress and the weakest plane of the wood. When you align the grain parallel to the head/swing you force that same shear stress to be applied across multiple growth rings instead of a single plane and in a direction in which the wood is naturally stronger. Hence a better handle. Hope that helps someone with the "why" and ties it together with some things that they may already know.
  11. I've got a 17" Grizzly wood/metal vertical bandsaw. Have had it for a couple months but have been impressed by the quality and details of construction. It has a built-in phase converter/VFD for speed control and runs on single phase 220V. I've been very happy with it for my wood and metal projects to date. I am generally a top-of-the-line-brand-name type of guy, and imports aren't my thing, but I did my homework and read lots of good things about this saw. My $0.02 anyway.
  12. Thanks for the tips so far. I do have a thermocouple that I used for previous pours with pot metal, so I can check to see if it can handle the higher temps for bronze. Good tip on watching for incandescence as well, I'll do that. I already made the pattern (oversized for shrinkage/machining) and plaster mold. I'll probably stick with that as it's made and I've had good luck with plaster to date. I have lots of experience with plaster making rubber part molds, but little with sand molding, so for now it's kind of a devil-you-know type of thing. Point taken on it being easier to purchase round stock and the use of a casting for striking, but it should be fine for this application. Although this is a mallet, I'm using it for stone lettering chisels, which are tapped so lightly as to render the head's brittleness almost irrelevant. If I had a head of solid glass the right size it still wouldn't break as lightly as these chisels are tapped. Also, like a lot of guys on here, I'm not doing this because it's the most efficient or cost effective way, I'm doing it for the learning experience and the enjoyment of making it with my own hands. If I wanted to do it the cheapest/ easiest I'd just buy one. What's the protocol on using the same crucible for melting different materials? Is that ok or a no-no?
  13. So I want to create a bronze carving mallet for detail carving of wood/stone lettering. I've used several nice little numbers other folks owned consisting of pretty wood handles attached to round brass heads like this: These work very nice and would be a good project for me to develop my casting and turning skills on. This one is about 6" long and 1.25 lbs total. What I need is a critique/verification of my approach for casting it. Here's what I have available: Bronze plumbing check valve body, stripped and cleaned for raw material. There is sufficient extra to allow for dross and machining losses. A #3 glazed graphite-clay crucible rated for 2500 F. It has never been used. A charcoal/coal hand blown forge. An oxy-acetylene torch with a huge rosebud. A large propane weed-burner style torch. Lots of firebrick. A simple open mold of the (oversized) pattern made from a 40:60 mix of talc:plaster of paris. The mold is small as it was made in a cottage cheese container. Basic experience with plaster casting zinc alloy and sand casting aluminum. Full leathers, welding helmet with clear glass lens, foundry gloves and boot covers. Here's the approach I am thinking of taking: Fully dry the mold and crucible in the oven, starting at 150F and finishing at 500F for at least 1 hour. Stack firebrick around the forge firepot to extend its height so that the crucible will be surrounded on all but the top side with burning charcoal. Light the fire and place the valve body in the crucible ensuring that it won't expand and put pressure against it. Place the crucible in the forge and pack charcoal around it's sides. Feed the fire with air and charcoal until I can look down and see an even melt on the bronze. Remove crucible with preheated tongs and pour into still-hot plaster/talc mold. When cool, remove part and machine. If you have any critiques I'd appreciate hearing them before I start. Also, I'm curious about the following: Do I need a flux or cover for melting bronze? Is it ok to use the same crucible for different metals (copper, bronze, aluminum, zinc alloy, babbitt)? Is the forge the best way to heat this or would the propane torch be better? Any suggestions on measuring/telling temperature? Thanks for the help.
  14. OK, what you you guys have stated on corners not mattering much during forming from a slot and the stretching of metal makes good sense. I still will probably add a slight fillet to the corners so as to reduce the stress concentrator at the corner in service for parts subject to fatigue. The engineer in me shies away from sharps for that reason... Makes me think of why there's no square windows in an airplane. Brian, to make sure I've understood how you slot and drift: If you don't want to stretch the metal, then you would want to slot cut/punch an opening with the same perimeter as the final desired hole size. So for the 1" square drift I would need an opening with about a 4" perimeter. From what I've seen in your posts it sounds like you use a slitter for this? Thanks for the advice so far.
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