ricejm01

Thought I would share some pictures of the brake drum forge Steve Sells helped me throw together. This is a variation of a brake drum forge with a welded tuyere. What we did was weld together a tuyere from some pipe that was laying around, welded a hinged gravity ash dump on the bottom. Pretty standard stuff. However this is a modification, instead of welding directly to the break drum, we welded the tuyere to a brake rotor. I then cut off rotor part leaving the center of the rotor. This leaves enough of the rotor so that it can be notched for a clinker breaker. Since the rotor and drum have the same bolt pattern, 5 bolts hold it together. My main goal was a functional clinker breaker, and easy to install and remove from the forge table.

Last post on this thread was in Feb, Hope I'm not too late to the party :) Thought that we needed some visuals here. Two videos I found that are good examples to make charcoal. Both are out gas/retort methods utilizing found or cheaply obtained materials. A simple way http://youtu.be/8vdh0gs8P9k and complex way http://youtu.be/hZD6hrVhZGc

a termite walks into a bar and asks is the bar tender here?

Congrats on your first post and welcome aboard. I have a solid fuel forge and mostly use coal and lump charcoal when I'm out of coal, However there is nothing wrong with what your doing. If you happen to be stuck with no source of coal and have a steady source of wood, I suggest looking into way's to make lump charcoal. Having supply of lump charcoal made up will save you time where you don't have to keep burning down the wood to coals. May I suggest a couple of things, 1) get familiar with searching the forum, chances are if your asking the question someone else already has asked your question. if you can't find the answer you seek start a new thread. I personally lurk more than post. 2) add your location, so other members can see where you are, and you never know, another member might live near you. 3) Try to find your local black smithing group. If you haven't found it already, having a group of experience smiths you can learn from hands on is invaluable. Hence another reason to add your location

I use the 2 parts Bees wax, 2 parts turpentine, 1 part boiled linseed oil for finishing work for non-food applications. For food applications, straight bees wax, or canola oil (makes a nice shiny black finish). If you go to the big box store you can purchase a new metal 1Qt paint can in the paint department. You can then use that can to as part of a double boiler. You should never heat wax directly, a high chance of a flash fire. I personally use a hot plate outside and an old pot I use for candle making, I fill pot with water and put the can in the water. I fill the can with chucks of wax. once the wax is melted I then pull it out and let it start to cool a little. I then add then add the turpentine and boiled linseed oil. stir well, and I put the lid on the can and let it cool until the next day. ( a trick for getting the wax volume correct. figure out your parts you will be using and fill the can with water with the 1 part then use a sharpie marker to mark a line in the inside of the can at the water level. pour out the water, then you can then melt the wax until you reach line you just marked). A note on wax, Not all bees wax are the same. There are softer and harder bees waxes. I've used the softer bees wax from toilet floor flange seal. I have also used candle grade bees waxes. I prefer the candle grade waxes because it is harder and the mix goes a lot farther. The candle waxes can be pricey though. It all depends on what your budget and preferences are.

So I've been toying around with the idea of building a brick forge. However like most of us funds are a problem. so I'm trying to do this on the cheap and use as many found materials or with as relatively in expensive materials as possible. oh and to try and use as little materials possible So i had the idea wouldn't be nice to just get a chunk of stone like a stone counter top and set it on some cinder blocks to make simple forge table. Well I found this in my interwebs searching http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/how-to-build-a-concrete-countertop/index.html so now I have the crazy idea of building mold (with a void in not quite in the middle for inserting brake drum for a fire pot) for pouring a forge table and setting that on four legs of cinder blocks and attach a half hood or metal side draft (a later project). (16 standard cinder blocks 4 per leg), with a table surface around 3'X3' and some flat stock to help support the table between laid across top of the legs. My only issue with this is that i don't want to use straight cement or concrete because I read about cracking and/or exploding sending hot spall everywhere. So does any body have any suggestions or a refractory recipe that I could use instead of cement/concrete? Or do you guys think that since the fire pot will be an insert that the walls of the fire pot will be enough to block the heat to use cement/concrete, because the fire is not directly in contact with the cement/concrete? If I can find a suitable replacement for the cement/concrete or to just use cement/concrete the whole forge should cost right around 50 bucks for just the materials. I've thought about using metal plate, but cement/concrete just looks seems like a cheaper way to go in cost per surface area.

here are some photos of a small out gas can. it is an old minwax can I cleaned out. these photos go along with my last post. the last photo is of some charred cloth made in this can from an old white 100% cotton tee-shirt. hope this gives you some ideas on how to scale this up. you could do this with a metal 5 gal bucket too for making charcoal on a small scale.

The process is called out gassing. you are raising the contents of the container to a tempatures that would normally combust, but does not due to the container being sealed (note there must be a way for the gases produced inside the container to escape other wise you have a bomb) I use this process for making charred cloth for catching a spark for flint an steel. you can see this process on a small scale. you simply need to get a 1 quart paint can. (I prefer to go to box store an buy an empty unused one.) you will need a nail. All you have to do is pound the nail directly through the center of the lid of the paint can, and set the nail a side. then pack the can with 100% cotton cut into squares and close the container. heat the container on a open fire, eventually you will see smoke coming from hole you punched turn the can on its side to catch the jet of gas escaping on fire, turn back upright. continue to heat until the flame goes out. remove from the fire, put the nail you set a side back in the hole to stop oxygen from getting back into the container so the contents don't continue to burn. let cool. open an viola, perfect black squares for catching a spark. Note you can also do chucks of wood to make charcoal. however in a 1 quart container it is not practical for large scale production. so you take two 55 gallon barrels and cut one in half and weld it to the bottom of the other, you then cut a hole in the half you welded so you have door to build a fire in. now you have fire chamber under a barrel that can be sealed. in the whole barrel you run a piping from the top down to fire chamber to burn off the gases escaping. you can if you want put a valve that can be closed off when the gases stop burning (note if you put this valve in you have to put out the fire in the fire chamber). just start a fire in the fire chamber and tend the fire until the gases start to burn, then let burn until the gases not longer burn let cool completely before opening. it is the same process as the small 1 quart container but on a larger scale. Please be careful with this, you are heating a sealed container, there is a always a high risk of explosion.

Thanks for the tip. I've seen this floating around too, however have mostly seen this for hot application. I never thought to use it cold. I'll give this a try.

I agree and would appreciate that we stay on topic. if you would like to discuss proper ways to do restoration please start another thread. I'm not trying to argue, nor was I arguing, I was there 3 days ago to pick up my anvil. Steve gave me a tour of his shop. These were my observations, I could be wrong, I due trust my own eyes though. However on technical note. using a blasting medium with a mohs hardness scale of less than 4.0 would be appropriate for this type of restoration, and would save many man hours of cleaning up rust. If I am wrong, then this is something that Steve should probably consider for his business. Wrought iron by the way has a mohs hardness of ~5.5 - 4.0 (depending on how soft it is), steel can be as high as 7.5. soda blast (gypsum or Sodium bicarbonate) is ~2.5 - 3.0, crush walnut shell ~3.0-3.5 http://www.reade.com/Particle_Briefings/mohs_hardness_abrasive_grit.html http://www.nortonsandblasting.com/nsbabrasives.html http://www.georgehernandez.com/h/xMartialArts/Gear/Metal.asp

Yeah, I did see some guys going to town, One on a swage block with an angle grinder. I did see what looked like a blasting cabinet and another guy loading an anvil into it. So I'm pretty sure he's using a blasting medium to clean them up, and lightly grinding any surface that is supposed to be flat. Taking wire wheel or an angle grinder to a body of a wrought iron anvil would be a little rough in my opinion, especially if you just were removing rust. I don't see any tool marks on it. Plus the wrought iron is normally pock marked with high a low points, so a twisted wire brush would leave some marks no matter how careful you were. I would expect to see wire marks left on the high points while trying to get the rust from the low points.

I bought it to use, I'm not worried about the face or the horn that will get pounded plenty. I just want the body to stay nice so you can still read the markings.

So I just bought a sweet 101 pound Brooks anvil on ebay from Matchless antiques (Steve). Anyway its wrought iron and it appears that Steve use some sort of blasting medium to clean off the surface rust. It is awful pretty right now and i would really like to keep it that way. No I know what your saying its in a blacksmith shop its not supposed to be pretty, but this is an 1885 wrought iron anvil and it is in remarkable shape and I want to keep it that way. However it's starting to rust again. I don't really want to paint it, so I was thinking of lightly taking a propane torch to heat up just the body just enough to burn on some beeswax. anyone have any better ideas? by the way it is the anvil on the bottom.

I too started with a hole in the ground about 4 months ago, and was solely book learning until I found a local blacksmith group that meets once a month. Reading how to do something vs. being shown how to do something makes a world of difference. I would definitely suggest that anyone who is solely self taught, to find your local group. The worst thing that can happen is that you show up and learn a easier and faster way to do something. Heck, you might even teach them a thing or two as well.