Archie Zietman

I really like them! Great work!

Beaverdam that is great! I am very impressed! You might want to try insulating with koawool and then satanite or apg 36. I was using just koawool, but putting a coat of apg 36 over everything upped my fuel efficiency quite a bit. You might get your forge hotter that way. EDIT: also, how did I manage to totally miss that thread's existence? It gives me joy (the thread, not its' lack).

Beaverdam, the gasifier I made didn't work so well, it was very very jury-rigged/jerry built. I once saw a video of a "dasifier" made my a guy called Das, which he used to fire a bronze furnace, got plenty hot. be merry, Archie

Doug: In a week I'm off to college, so that was my last event for the summer. I'm going to do more next summer, people have asked about weather vanes and farming tools, so I might get into doing that. Kevin: Someone was taking pictures, no idea who they were though. I also mistakenly called it "craft fair" (I edited the post) technically it's a Farmer's Market, but there are a lot of craftsmen there. I don't think it has a website all though if you search "Cape Ann Farmer's Market" you might come up with something.

Hello. Just went to the Gloucester Farmer's Market again! Even more successful! I sold out 4/5ths of my inventory, made a 200 dollar profit, and had several people approach me about used blacksmithing equipment they want hauled away A very successful day! I need to get a website up and running. be merry, Archie

If you go to the forums at forums.dfoggknives.com and search wvo forge in the Tool Making subforum you'll get a bunch of stuff on my forge. It will burn any liquid fuel. All the restaurants by me are sending their oiul to biodiesel places. Alas. I can still get a couple gallons of motor oil when I need. If I let it sit for a couple days, a lot of the crud and metals percolate to the bottom, which helps a lot with the nasty metals. I wish I could find a good source of veggie oil again. I'm probably going to go back to solid fuel and biomass soon. It's much easier to get than oil: woodchips from trimmed brush, old wood being thrown away on the side of the road, nut husks, tree seed pods, corn cobs etc. be merry, Archie EDIT: I've heard of glass workshops which fire their furnaces with the scrap wood from local carpenters and from brush being trimmed, and they get all the broken glass which the recyclers won't touch.

Yeah, it probably would. I've used plastic sheet in a bellows which worked well.

VITA TECHNICAL BULLETIN it's got a good simple bellows design. They don't absolutely have to be triangle shaped/hinged. be merry, Archie

Hello So, I have two chunks of 1.5 inch diameter wought iron, very beat up (from the beach, both are corroded enough to show the woody grain extremely well, I pulled one apart a bit to make sure though) one is 6 inches long, the other is about four. SO: I want to make something out of them, but before I jump in I need to know: Are there any ways in which the forging of wrought iron and mild steel differ? Thanks eversomuch, Archie

Your enthusiasm is wonderful to see! It's great that you guys are starting off making your tools, you'll learn tons, and you'll also actually have the tools when you need them. be merry, Archie

My anvil height had the same problem. I just jacked it up by sliding a few flat paving slabs and wooden board between the stump and the ground.

Very nice! two things: EDIT: I just read the words again and realized that you know the anvil height is too low. also, if you chop up your charcoal into thumb-sized pieces you will get a denser fire, it will serve you better heatswise (your metal will heat quicker) and it also looks much much neater. great work guys! keep it up! be merry, Archie

Triw, the briquettes I can get are called "Rancher Briquettes" and the bag says they're just charcoal squished with a wheat binder, so there's no crud. I can get'em in 20 lb bags from the local grocery store.

If you are using a chunk or post-anvil, sinking it into a bucket of concrete totally deadens the sound. also, make absolutely sure, whichever solid fuel you use, to bust it into pieces about the size of your thumbnail or thumb-digit. If you forge with big lumps of charcoal like it comes out of the bag, you won't get much heat at all. It also looks silly. hey, guess what? I just found a company that makes briquettes out of real charcoal with a wheat binder, so no clay and limestone binders to stick to your metal. I tried'em and they seem to work really well when busted into thumbnail sized pieces. I learn something new everyday. be merry, Archie

About 6 years ago now, I was getting Bar-0Mitzvah-ed. Traditionally one sings the week's Biblical text and Haftarah and gives a sermon. The link between my haftarah and Torah was the holy vision of the huge lamps in the first and second temples. I decided I was not only going to sermon about them, but also make my own interperetation of the second one. I met a great welder-fabricator near me and he and I worked for three months on a three foot tall copper tree with coriander flower-cupholders (13 of them) and we set it on a base of stone from Jerusalem. After working with a torch and copper I was totally hooked on metalworking. After that I pursued my love of metals into armouring which I tried and failed to do for a good two years (This is a whole nuther story with it's own cast of characters). I never made anything, and I got frustrated, but refused to learn from anybody. I regret that attitude now. Then a friend of mine told me that she was learning blacksmithing from a blacksmith about 40 minutes away, and it might be interesting since armouring and blacksmithing are similar. So I went along reluctantly (I was very much into being all snobby about armouring. Should have been given a beating.) but once I got there, I fell in love with iron. The workshop was a garage crammed with two anvils, a coldwork bench, a treadle hammer and a coal forge. It was dark, the fire was glowing, and my friend, and the blacksmith (who looked like Abraham Lincoln) were pounding hot iron. She was making a toasting fork, he and his son were repairing a japanese pull-bell for somebody. It was amazing. He told me afterwards that if I wanted to get into blacksmithing I should just throw some coals in a barbeque, use and old chunk of steel and get going. This is exactly what I did. I loved hot iron so much that I often forgot to actually make anything. I forgot to actually make anything for a good 3 years. I can only really call myself a blacksmith now that I've learned to learn from others and made stuff. As my grandfather used to say "Well there you are!" be merry, Archie

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Farrier goes to Olympics This is a very cool snippet about one of the 3 farriers who is going to hong kong to shoe the horses at the olympics. Be Merry, Archie

Totally depends on how much you are forging. (the how much question) Buy some, try it out, and then go from there. As to the forge, you might be better off stacking the firebricks like a japanese charcoal forge, so you can adjust the size of your forge. It's also specifically designed for using charcoal and is ridiculously simple to build (stack some bricks, stick in a blower). Or you can just dig a hole in the ground, stick a pipe in it and forge from there. The laws depend on where you are. Barbeque briquettes don't really work. Well, they burn, but they cover your piece in icky clay stuff. Lump charcoal is what you want, you can probably buy it at you hardware store or your supermarket. It's wood with the smoke cooked off. twinoaksforge.com has a great tutorial on making charcoal. be merry, Archie

Hello. William McDonough wrote a book called Cradle to Cradle based on the idea that waste always is food for something else. He applies this to ecological cycles and extrapolates it to industry. I am putting out an invitation for people to try and use as much junk as they can in their smithing setups and show it in this thread. Ideas would be: make a post anvil from giant 3-inch thick bolts, waste oil forges, making charcoal from old brush and scrap wood, using second or third hand tools and revamping old broken tools, making blades and tools from leafsprings and old cold chisels etc.) I know a lot of people do these things on a regular basis, but it would be great if people could showcase their use of waste as "food" for smithing. be merry, Archie

I mostly sing to myself, anything from Collie Buddz to Gaelic Storm, mostly happy Celtic-irish-scottish stuff to keep away the bad vibes. When I'm happy at the forge, I work much much better. be merry, archie

August 14th I'll be back, maybe one other time before then. I'm not demo-ing, only selling, but I might have a few tools out to show people or something. it'd be good to see you. be merry, Archie

My business-piece-of-paper-wot-can-be-folded-to-the-size-of-a-card, attached. be merry, Archie About the Artistsafe.doc

TODAY IS MADE OF WIN!!!!!!!!! I had a booth at the Gloucester farmer's market, people loved my stuff (gave out many many business cards), and I made about $100 in 3 hours, and lined up several commissions: 2 big fancy spatulas, a pair of big fancy salad servers, a set of hinges, and an organic form lantern holder and a handle for a nice push mower. All on a rainy day. Outside. I also worked 5 hours in the morning (landscaping), and I have the day off tomorrow to do those commissions. Woohoo!!!!! yay!!!! There were also tons of people whom I knew there, which was good fun. Thank you all for being so helpful to me over the past few years, helping me to get this far in smithin'. Archie Zietman Zeitgeist Forge

Do they only work for straight stuff, or would it be possible to adapt them for holding hooks'n stuff?

That is truly incredible. People's love for one another can give them strength to do amazing things.

I'm just wondering how they would keep the rust when heating for the oil finish. Maybe they did the oil finish first, then rusted, then wax/ clearcoated it? The rust finish is smoothed and shinied up too.