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I Forge Iron

Michael

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Everything posted by Michael

  1. I've got a 65R too. what I did was find an old hand cranked breast drill with a big chuck and broken frame. A machinist friend of my FIL then turned the sawn off shaft of the chuck on his lathe to fit the "post drill chuck" on mine. Endless garage and estate sales eventually produced a small set of post drill bits. The shaft sizes are all over the place though.
  2. Been helping a beginner out. Set up a slide show of all the pictures in my BS folder on the computer. This hook rack came up as a possible future project. Spent almost 3 hours figuring out the bends (so it will still fit in the gas forge) and the process for a tutorial sketch. Rivets are just cut off box nails.
  3. Picked up a little Dayton blower at my local recycling place for $20. Not that I need another blower, but it already had the cord on it.
  4. Thanks for the catch Swede, I'll update my sketch. I took this from method from an ABANA Article, written by a Nebraska smith, making a version of a Toby Hickman project. Had this printout banging around for years and like many smithing tutorials, it took me a while to get the skill set for the project to make sense. Kind of like 'save some coke from your last fire to smokelessly start your next fire' and 'seeing the colors run across the polished edge and quenching at straw'. You know, that knowledge that comes from doing. This tong method just clicked a while back and I've made a few sets of them, enough to try and teach it one on one. Those POZ tongs are next though. Thanks for the diagram. Tong Tutorial.pdf
  5. Me too, 1/4 by 1 or 1/4 by 3/4 flat bar. Been teaching someone (over zoom no less) this method and drew up a sketch for their benefitTong Sketch.pdf the isolation fullers are defined by thirds of the starting stock material, so it doesn't really matter what size you start with, though I don't like to go thinner than 1/4 inch on the smallest dimension, or you're fighting the material folding a lot.
  6. Moving my scrap pile from the old space to the new, a lot of heavy stock, 2x 1.5 inch, 1.5 inch square, 1.25 hex, is being donated to my friends with power hammers and presses. My eyes were bigger than my arm/hand hammer.
  7. Nice tree Chad! Looks like you have a little shop tucked behind the house in the suburbs. Close neighbors? Solid fuel? Just curious.
  8. Love the dragon penannular's Rojo Pedro! Helped out in a friend's shop on Saturday. After grinding and sanding welds on railings, pulled out an old project from when I first got started smithing, making a small axe out of 1.5 lb ball peen. Hydraulic press made quick work of squishing the ball into a blade. Hand hammer and a gorgeous, 270 lb French pig anvil (so much anvil envy!) got the little 'beard' going on this. Still needs grinding and a handle but should be good for kindling and tent stakes.
  9. Yup, Thor Minion! My youngest has a knack for finding just the right gift for me, one of my favorites. One of those bolts n bits welded together sculpture artists you see at street fairs. Just right mix of hubris and questionable skills for the smithy ;-)
  10. Finding a need to hit something I couldn't break, and some leftover cut stock from a demo, banged out these hooks in about 40 minutes on lunch the other day. Nothing fancy (or even pretty really), taper, bend, twist repeat. Utility hooks for the smithy. Next day spliced some heavy duty extension cord over the rafters for the grinders on the far side from the outlet.
  11. Slit and drift open, starting stock was 1/4 by 1. Flat ring ended up maybe 1/8 inch think and 3/8 inch wide. We punched a few holes in the ring, thinking of running some string across the ring to make more bubbles. The holes seemed to hold more bubble solution. Curious to see if participants will be making these at the open forging time at this hammer in. Some of the other planned demos are more technically challenging (basket twist handles, etc)
  12. Took the afternoon off the other day to visit a friend's shop and work out a demo for an upcoming hammer in. She'll be demonstrating iron bubble wands, picture a bottle opener for a 6 inch bottle cap. I'm the striker. She's done this demo before and the reveal after the quench when the ring is dipped in bubbles should be fun. Hammer In's at a restoration railroad site near Santa Cruz, lots of kids coming off the train every hour. IMG_6206.mov
  13. Thinned out the scrap pile. Some very old school ladderjacks, small sections of plate, pipe and bolts. Moving the scrap pile from the patio in the backyard to behind the shop against the fence line
  14. Looks like a great time Arthur! The heat shield over the forge is a great idea for working under a cover, and an easy setup in a box of dirt. In a medieval setting that blower would have been very height of technology! Well done!
  15. I burned lump charcoal in a brake drum forge for years, bottom blast, holes drilled in a plate type tuyere. With practice it got to about a 5 gallon bucket of charcoal for about 2 hours of forge time. You spend a lot of time wetting down the charcoal so the fire doesn't spread too fast. It helps to put a few firebricks in the brake drum to make a narrow fire.
  16. Ridgeway Forge Studio-Nice shop you have there. Looks like a lot of recycled materials. No chimney or forge hood? My space is set up the same way, lots of gaps between sheet metal walls and burning coke, not very smoky at all in the suburbs. Fired up the coal forge for a quick present for my younger daughter's birthday. She's been into seedlings and plants lately. Took a bent plant stand from the urban recycler and fancied it up a bit with a leaf and some texture. Interesting working a 5 foot piece in my 8 foot wide space. After the leaf and such were done, put the bending fork in the vise near the door so there was more room to bend the long end around.
  17. I have a screened bucket under the ash dump on my forge. Expanded metal screen was available, hardware cloth would be better, would let less coke through. The screen has a raised lip to the coke doesn't fall off, and lets the ash through to the bucket. There's still enough burnable fuel in the ash that when annealing in the ash bucket, I get some slight smoke rising. The coke ontop of the screen gets dumped back into the fire.
  18. Thanks for that info, I didn't realize you had flattened out the spikes first. Have to try this, been making figures ala Anton Yakashev and Zeevik Gottlieb for the last few years. Everyone loves rail spike projects.
  19. Those are great Hojpoj! Split out legs and arms, chiseled or sawn? You got the "lean" just right. Well done!
  20. Great project Machine Shop! Useful size, some swage blocks get really big and hard to maneuver. I wanted to show off a Rail Swage that followed me home a while back. Friend was moving their shop from Oakland to Alameda. I showed up for the garage sale and took home a bunch of scroll jigs and this welded rail swage (I think it's a welded piece of rail) About 12 inches by roughly 5 inches square so movable. Some flat surfaces, a square hole, depressions and grooves. A visiting smith who's a welding inspector was impressed (my welding, not so much)
  21. Neat space! Love the "Hofi" style forge hood, been planning something like that for the new space. Is there a ceiling above your smithing area or does it go all the way to the top of the silo? Thanks for showing us your workspace. Michael
  22. What fun! Thanks for posting that. The narrow gauge railroad where I very occasionally demonstrate has the same sort of open air smithy right next to the tracks. One of the demo requirements is waving at the train passengers as the locomotive goes by.
  23. Great kid project! I'll have to remember that one.
  24. Hi Lior, My friend had his McLellen anvil on a metal stand and that was loud. He swapped over to a wooden stump and that improved the ring a lot. He has a plan to bed the anvil in sand (30 gallon drum, filled with sand to about 6 inches from the top. Steel plate on the sand, under the anvil) but he hasn't gotten that far yet. Please don't let my comment be your sole basis for a decision. It's a good anvil, 175 is a nice size for most work and as was said, you can quiet an anvil Michael-with Peter Wrights on wooden stands and neighbors all around
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