blafen

In front of the house I am renting there is a gong made from old oxygen tank with the bottom cut off and an eye welded to the top so it can hang from a little structure made of header beams.

Files- flat carbon steel tools covered in tiny teeth designed to fill up with crap and gouge your workpiece.

Drill bits- used to make a hole halfway through something, then break forcing you to start all over again.

Taps- made specifically to ruin the inside of a good hole before breaking off and forcing you to start all over again in this respect i is closely related to he drill bit.

Vernier Calipers- Very handy tools that show you how far past the line you cut so you can throw that piece in the scrap pile nd start all over.

Hold down tool- designed to sit in the pritchel hole of your anvil and never hold anything because you put oil on it, again, and now it wont hold anything, also serves the purpose of slipping out from under your hammer so you hit your workpiece fingers or anvil face.

work out more.

Ive never hot forged brass before, but I have cold forged a bit, you can move it quite a bit if you anneal regularly. To anneal brass you heat it up ( I got it to approximately the same heat as non magnetic for steel) and then quemch it in water and it will be dead soft.

I had 10 dollars, then i got hungry, now I'm broke.

I have seen large deep coal forges with a side draft but Im not sure how something that small would work, although it is always worth a try.

Well I dont know I'm only about 6' 2" 240 and my right arm is only a few inches larger than my left, but then I again I havent had much forge time for quite a while. But I have seen all kinds of smiths, big smiths little smiths lady smiths and kid smiths so I think the only accurate way to determine a blacksmith is with a strong arm to weak arm ratio ie if strong arm = 1.5 weak arm diameters you oughtta be a smith.

I have made gun parts, but only for myself, I have in the works right now an underhammer musket that is made entirely from scratch (except the barrel, that I only had to thread for a breech plug) all the parts are hand filed and forged from scrap metal pieces found in the shop, and the stock is cut from a giant chunk of koa wood with a tiny handsaw.

A schuestzen style finger lever should not be too difficult, I would make a bending jig so you can knock out several of them, believe me you wont want to build just one gun or gun part its almost as addictive as blacksmithing itself.

Here it is still under construction, I have since made some thick plates to attach the breech to the action and close up the top of the action more, and am working on making a floorplate for the reciever, and I still need to do some work on the stock. keep in mind this isnt a traditional design its something I designed and built for myself wanting the fastest possible locktime I opted for an underhammer, but a traditional design would be just as easily done.

Edited to fix spelling.

Thats quite the neat round thingy.

I take anything I dont want to rust and submerge it in used motor oil, boom no rust EVER, of course to use or examine anything you have to fish it out of a vat of black bubbling goo but it works.

I have a larger jar.

take some borax and make a paste with a little bit of water and and rub your hands with it. It is abrasive enough to remove most grease and oil and even superglue.

crap would fall into because gravity hapens to pull that way.

Yeah take it from it is quite disheartening to a beginner to get what they think is a nice solid pattern welded billet that falls apart when they try to forge it into a knife.

By the way there is no cure, i have been forging for a few years and lately have lost my employment and am broke so i cant even afford propane or a big enough geneator to run a shop vac, so i have a small hand bellows and a charcoal forge that i run on on homemade charcoal, sorry buddy your hooked.

If you have clay throw some bits into a bucket and when it gets nice and runny its called slip.

How much Blackpowder are you using in your test barrels? and how thick are the walls? You are using blackpowder right? the reason i ask is because it is rather odd to see even a test barrel blown with blackpowder also how are you breaching thses barrels? not trying to be rude i just want to know as i am also trying to get into home barrel making (rifling more than forging and boring and reaming)

First off do some filing practice if you get rounded or wavy rsults, I find it works good to lock your arms at the side and move the file with your hips, and definately learn to draw file, I used to suck at filing then i read the complete modern blacksmith, and it has a very good chapter on file control and projects to help you out.

No, ceramic floor tile is not a god refractory fr many reasons, first off the clay itself will either spall or melt at forge temps and if it is glazed the glaze will either spall or melt off, and regualar ceramic clay used for tile making isnt the best refractory. I would suggest getting some kiln shelf pieces, they are roughly 1 inch thick hard ceramic refractoy built to withstand high temps, not sure how they would stand up to flux however.

I went with the old adage of setting the anvil to be the height of your fist when you stand with your arms slack to the side and your hands clenched, but i musta grew an inch or two since then because now it seems an inch too low.

I use cat litter to line the bottom o my forge, it just clumps up when the flux hits it and the flux can be picked right out and more litter added.

For hammers i suggest ball peins from 12 to 32 or 48 ounces and cross peines from 2 to 6 pounds and a single jack or two. Claw hammers work for beginners but the face is usually too hard and the edges too sharp giving you those infamous PITA to grind out half moon dings.

As for the furnace i think that ones fairly self explanatory.

Looks a lot nicer than mine. How much does it weigh?

I made my first forge from straight up red river clay inside a tire rim with a piece of threaded pipe for a tuyere, and have gotten it up to welding temp with charcoal and a shop vac hooked up to a rheostat, the forge took me about two days and 20 dollars to make (most o the two days was spent waiting on the clay to dry) I had no preblems with the clay spalling, but at very high temps it kind of glazed over in a few spots, and i read you can make a very good refractory from ash mixed with clay.

Kevint hat looks much better than any of my first attempts, and you cant get much better than 1095 for knife steel BTW.