Archie Zietman

He's fine with me using the lamp-thing. It was in some dusty corner, and he had never seen it before. :lol:

I am having trouble with the outer casing for the forge, I can't have only the thin steel lamp, it will melt through, so I am wanting to pack at least an inch of cement, but I don't have any casings quite that big except cardboard boxes , do you chaps think that'll work?
By the way, here is a summary of the forge:
Firepot= the lamp-post lamp, upside down. it has a thicker bottom (top when right way up) than the sides with a 1 3/4 inch hole in the bottom, into which I will put a large chunk of piping, with a 55 gallon forge style grating for the tuyere. The firepot will be encased in concrete, and... wait... I could make a plywood box for that, yeah okay, plywood box around it. Blower is gonna be the pool toy untill I can get around to making a better air supply. All mounted on my little red wagon of course. :D

Personally, I like charcoal over coal. It may burn faster than coke or coal, and you need more to get the same amount of heat, but it is less of a hastle to clean, doesn't smoke as much at first, and is a renewable energy source, as opposed to coal. (yes, you can tell I'm from Massachusetts can't you :roll: ) you can make it easily yourself, you can't get forge rash from it, and you can add fuel to the fire without having to wait for it to purify, if you're doing welding, or projects which need an especially clean fire.

actually making a kinda deep brakedrum type thing with a massive wierdlight fixture chunky thing which is perfect. gonna surround it in refractory though. I think the chunky light-thing is a streetlamp, what was it doing in my basement?

It just imploded, so I'm re-making it with stainless steel, and refractory cement.

Hello.
I am almost done with a small knife in 1095, and wish to do an oil quench on it. What oil should I use?
Thanks,
Archie

I just put in the 1/8, and it seems to work fine. No pictures today cuz it's raining, and I don't want to go outside.

I'll get some this afternoon, but it really is laughable. A paint can and a flower pot, (which I think I will reinforce somehow) and a pool toy inflator, all nailed to a chunk of lumber in a radio flyer. It's the household objects version of the brakedrum forge, except I feel it works better. I am also gonna put a 1/8 inch steel bar grating over, or instead of the chicken wire.
The other forge was based on Tim Lively's bladesmith forge, and wasn't very practical because it was too big for small projects, burned up charcoal like the devil at breakfast, and the ash was all washed into the tuyere, (for lack of an ash dump) which slowly clogged up until I had to smash the concrete open to get at the tuyere so I could scoop the stuff out of the ends. :roll: It was too versatile, and impractical, not good combination, so I could never get around to actually doing anything, because it had no limits, except that it clogged up every few days.

Now that I've thunk about it, I agree with Rich, tools don't make the smith, or whatever the saying is. :)

hello.
UI just build me a forge which is FAR superior to my old one. it is still mounted to the radio flyer, though it is so dsmall it really doesn't need to be mounted. It is a flower pot with the bottom knocked out, and a grate made of several layers of offset chicken wire (so that the gaps to let stuff through are smaller) left over from making my chicken coop, and a paint can lined with portland cement/sand. The pot w/ grate is slotted into the top of the paint can, which is nailed to the lumber which used to support my old forge in the radio flyer, and there is a pipe going from it to the nozzle of my pool toy blower, which is also nailed to the lumber. It starts beautifully, because the shape of the poit sucks the heat up into the coals, and I got my heat first try, and in less than a minute I had the bottom coals glowing yellow hot. The flower pot/ash pit/tuyere thingy ensures that there is a constant supply of oxygen from underneath, which is replenished by pumping, which also gently forces air up to the coals. I like it, and it took me 3 minutes to think up, and 5 to make. also, the shape stops me from making only lbades, so I can forge me a couple'o thems carraige hooks (I LOVE carraige hooks!!!)

I'd definately say air/power hammer. saves a lot of time drawing out (I hate drawing things out by hand, takes hours, and that's how I have to do it) that way you can make a lot more flat bar stuff in a shorter period of time.

that was absolutely hilarious, but I changed the words back.

I just fiddled around, and got a 1/4 inch bolt up to welding heat in 5 minutes. I need to finish my bellows and it'll take a lot less time. Right now I just pump the xxxx out of my pool toy bellows.

words edited by the site Admin.

does charcoal burn steel as well?

My chacoal forge is, it seems, too small to get the steel to a yellow heat. I shall make it taller, and the air supply larger.

Hello.
Today, I started to pound an old inch thick round stock kingofallnails which is 3 feet long. Drawing it out is long, and tedious and eats up fuel, but is VERY satisfying. I am using a one pound claw hammer, and elbow grease. It's hard, but if I use my 3 pound mini-sledge, I have barely any control, and still less with my proper sledge hammer, because I have to be both striker and holder, which doesn't work very well.
I also took a helluva lot of scrap wood, and made a lot of charcoal, while grilling some cajun catfish. mmm... :D

Shall I anneal it before working it? I think it is 5160 or something like that. It says D 6 89 on the thinner end, does this have anything to do with steel quality?

I found about a foot of leafspring at the end of my garden, tangled up in some weeds. It's from a ford, and it's pretty rusted, but I'm using sandpaper to get all of the rust off. I have seen several others on the way to the center of town, walking along the sidewalk. :D

You can easily make a forge w/out welding. Mine is a wooden box filled with cement, and a tuyere pipe. It can even be a hole in the ground with an air supply attached. Or you could bolt things down as opposed to welding them.

funnily enough, I just found an old pair of carbon steel garden shears in my compost heap, so I unscrewed those, and cleaned them up for bladework. :D

Thanks very much oakwoodforge! I found that fascinating. :D

Hello.
I have a couple o' questions regarding iron/steel. I just learned that several weeks ago my dad threw away almost all of my metal, thinking it was trash, including a big ol' truck leafspring which I had cleaned up, and was intending to cut into chunks and strips for various blades. grrrrr... I am going to go out to get some more steel/iron soon, and I am wondering, what are the most useful types of barstock for small time blacksmithing, I still have about 3 feet of 1/2 inch round with copper plating around it, but that's all. would this be of any use? Also, what are good commercial sources for barstock, and thick sheet metal, fairly cheap?
Thanks,
Archie

I have the boards cut out for the bellows. It's made from 3/4 inch plywood of some sort, so it's VERY heavy, but that's what I had, so... :D

this is the portable bellows design I have come up with correctly will it work? http://www.yourimg.com/?page=05/173/18/bellowshanging.jpg

Hello.
My friend Noah and I are going to start making, and possibly selling charcoal over the summer, and I was thinking about forge fuels. What if I were to use the indirect method, and direct the gas underneath the retort, so that the charcoal cooks itself, and also use that flame as a forge? So that way I could make and sell the charcoal, and use the gas as a fuel, and that would make everything very fuel efficient and burn cleaner. What do people think about that idea?