matt87

You don't need to buy fire cement; there are mixtures available which call for sharp sand, Portland cement etc. Much cheaper and available from B&Q, Travis Perkins, Wickes...

Welcome, Ethersin. The question of scrap materials vs. new is one of those dilemmas modern smiths face, a lot like gas vs. solid fuel. Just like gas vs. solid fuel, each has its advantages and disadvantages. New is generally more expensive (and can be hard to find certain sizes, materials etc. in reasonable quantities in this country) but you know what it is and it'll come in a useful size. Scrap is cheap. It can be as cheap free, but you will probably have to do a lot of work to get it useful; if all you can find is 1inch rebar or old railway iron and you need 1/4inch round, you've got a lot of work cut out. (Mind you, this is good drawing practice, and the old smiths had to make EVERYTHING from fairly large billets of iron.) This is a problem for professional smiths as their time is valuable, so even 5 minutes straightening a coil spring could be money wasted rather than buying a

According to Hofi, the French hammer was designed for cold riveting the Eiffel Tower; it's all angle iron and the step is designed to get the pein into the corner. Don't forget ball pein hammers, they're commonly available in a variety of weights and handle lengths, and the ball is useful for many tasks. You can fuller over the edge of the anvil, over a horn, over a bottom fuller... and you or someone you know probably has one you can use. English smith often use ball-peins as a matter of course (this may be due to the low availability of cross-peins over here).

Don't ask what I use for a poker!

I was at the British universities annual smallbore rifle match a couple of years ago, shooting at 100 yards. The rifle had just been used by someone else shooting at 50 meters, so I clicked the sights up however many I needed (80 1/4 MOA clicks I think). So I'm on the point all set up and the RO gives the command 'commence'. I line up at the sighting diagram, breathe, and press the trigger. Bang. Look through the spotting scope, nothing. Odd, maybe I wasn't lined up properly. Try it again, nothing. By this point I am panicing slightly, and I look at my sighting card, when I realise I had clicked the sights the wrong way. 80 clicks the wrong way. So I frantically click the sights up a whole bunch of clicks, guesstimating 160 clicks, and I take another shot. It's on the paper this time but it's in the scoring area and about 18" low for the sighter. Both glad that I was on the paper and annoyed at dropping 10 points already (the hole in the paper was outside of the scoring diagrams) I made a calculation and readjusted the sight elevation, finally then hitting the sighter. I finished the detail just in time, but my groups looked like shotgun patterns and I finished about 5th of over 100 competitors. My lesson: Davy Crockett once said, 'first make sure you are right, then go right ahead.' I must make sure I do the first part before the second! ;)

Just to play devil's advocate here, has anyone considered what we do to anvils to be wrong? Most of the anvils that we use are over 100 years old. They're antiques, and due to the two world wars and the decline of the craft, there aren't many left. Anvils may be designed to be pounded on for a long time, but our anvils may have come from a century or more of daily use, then be used by us. Metallurgy and heat treatment wasn't always like it is and accidents happen. Chisels slip, hammers miss, hardy tools jam and break heels, welds fail. Careful as we can be, we can only reduce the preservation and quality of our anvils. One could say that collectors are preserving anvils for future study. The guy who goes duck hunting with a 1900 Browning Auto 5 every day of the season or the woman that carries a Webley-Fosberry revolver for protection is no different to you or I using a good old anvil. People might collect it, but we can easily damage it. There are modern alternatives, but their quality is possibly unmatchable once you reach a high price. Besides, it's grandma's shotgun and she put food on the table with it for forty years, or grandad's revolver that helped keep him safe in France in 1918. As mentioned, new anvils aren't cheap. They are good value considering their projected life, but they aren't cheap. But there's a lot that a smith can do on an 'improvised' anvil. London, American, Italian, German, Hofi and all the other patterns are certainly not the be-all and end-all of anvils, they're just one way of adding convenient features to the core tool, a big chunk of iron for pounding on. Look at the Brazeal brothers' Easysmith for instance, or the vast majority of anvils until roughly the 18th century in the West. 'Most anyone can make an Easysmith for not much money, and it has a table, a butcher and two fullers. Add a stock stand, a bickern and a small home-made swage block and you've got the functionality of a London pattern anvil with the basic tools, for a much lower cost and a higher portability. Perhaps collectors hate us.

Welcome, Zac. I used to spend a fair amount of time around your neck of the woods as it happens, and still do from time to time. Probably the first thing you should do is sit down with a notepad, pen, drink and a snack, and read some of the variety of free guides available on the internet regarding getting started in blacksmithing. Probably the best are on this website. Also get to your local library and find whatever books you can on blacksmithing. Make sure to take notes on anything interesting you see, ideas you have etc. (This is a very useful life skill and will help you in many ways.) To put it simply, you need 5 things to start smithing: something to hit (iron or steel), something to heat it (fire), something to hit it with (hammer), something to hit it on (anvil) and somewhere appropriate to hit it. Material/stock to use abounds, but you have to know where to look, and what to look for. If you have a scrap yard near you, great. They may not though let you have a rummage around the place, especially at your age. (Parents etc. may be useful here.) What you're looking for are mild steel and higher carbon steels. Cast iron is not useful for us much. You may have to or want to buy your steel new. Again, if you have a steel yard nearby great, but you'll need a lift. Probably the most useful sizes of mild steel are square and round bars from 6mm (1/4 inch) to 12mm (1/2 inch). Flat bar is useful too. To begin with, 6mm (1/4 inch) thick is good, in widths from 12mm (1/2 inch) to 25mm (1 inch). Higher carbon steels are useful for making certain tools like chisels and punches that you will need very soon. It's also useful for making edge tools. Forges are an interesting question. I would probably say that you should go for a charcoal forge to start with. It's a readily available, clean-burning fuel, and you can usually get it at knockdown prices this time of year (one advantage to our 'interesting' climate). Charcoal is THE ancient smithing fuel, and is capable of fulfilling all your needs. Plus it doesn't need much air and there's no fiddling around with potentially dangerous, expensive and noisy gas equipment. There are many simple and cheap designs of charcoal forge available on the internet. Start by looking at Tim Lively's washtub forge. For air blast, you can start with an old hair dryer. Anvils are a real problem in Britain. There are plenty about that usually go for a song, especially on eBay, but the vast majority are in awkward places for pickup only. Don't necessarily think 'London pattern'; that is a relatively modern design with many useful but non-essential features. You're basically looking for the biggest chunk of mild or carbon steel you can lay your hands on legally. Again, scrapyards are a good starting place. New anvils are available, such as through Vaughan's, but a decent one will take you a long time to save up for on

Not all coal is the same. I understand that many coal fired power stations run on lignite, which is a very poor grade of coal. It must be crushed into a powder and mixed with propane to burn at all, which is not practical for a forge. You will have to examine a sample of the coal and see for yourself if it is useful.

Hi and welcome ConchoMan. I hate to say this, but what you plan to do isn't really very feasible. Pure iron melts at over 1500 degrees C (2800 F) and is likely to oxidise (burn) before it reaches this temperature. 'Cast' iron is really iron with between 2.2 and 4% carbon (by weight) and thus its melting point is lower than pure iron (though still much higher than most nonferrous metals). This high carbon content makes it brittle and generally not suited to a knife. It cannot be forged or firewelded to pure iron or steel either. You will get better results by building an ironsmelting furnace, and feeding the blacksand into that. These furnaces, when operated correctly, produce a very hot reducing atmosphere, i.e. one where there is free carbon but no free oxygen. This precludes oxidisation. You do need a lot of feedstock, and you don't get much out. What you are left with is one or more 'blooms', spongey, irregular masses of iron and/or steel... if you're lucky. You will need to fireweld these together and work them into a useful billet. THEN you start the forging of the knife. Suffice to say, it's not really for beginners (or the faint-hearted). There are though much more practicable ways for people to start smiting, which are well documented on this site. They would probably be a better place to get started in knife-making. After all, you don't want to go through all that work in smelting the stock for your knife, only to destroy it due to your inexperience! :D

Vaughan's sells them, and I understand they are good quality. Make sure you're sitting down when you look at the prices though. One of very few companies still making them.

Very observant Mr Powers, but you seem to have underestimated one thing -- the English ability to be modest! I've done a bit of archery before, mainly recurve and compound. I'd like to do more (and I've love to do some bowyery and fletching) but there is something of a historical animosity between the Uni Archery Club and the Rifle and Pistol Club. Seeing as I'm Armourer for the latter, I'm not too sure how I'd be welcomed. Also, feel free to let me 'store' your bow or muzzle-loaders, just as with any smithing tools you may not have used recently! ;-)

As suspected, it is a byproduct of cracking: "[residue] from the distillation tower is heated to temperatures above 900 degrees Fahrenheit / 482 degrees Celsius until it cracks into heavy oil, gasoline and naphtha. When the process is done, a heavy, almost pure carbon residue is left (coke); the coke is cleaned from the cokers and sold." HowStuffWorks "How Oil Refining Works" Seems like a non-excessive amount of sulfur too. oil coke - offers from oil coke manufacturers, suppliers, exporters, wholesalers & distributors

I'm looking at getting a half-way decent air blower. What are people's opinions on what sort of pressure and volume of air is needed? I have been able to find some references to pressures for coal forges but not much on charcoal, except that it needs 'less than coal'. How about coke?

I've had some sort of facial fuzz for a few years now. I've worn a full yet trimmed one for about 10 or 12 months now, but will probably let it bush out a little. I figure it goes well with the mad archaeologist/smith/outdoorsyperson image.

Welcome, Atticka. Tim Lively's washtub forge design is designed for bladesmithing. I'm sure it's very good at that, but you might want to modify the design a little, that is if you are more interested in general smithing. Of course, noone ever said you could only have one forge...

Don't forget to forge a potholder. You can cook your breakfast, brew coffee or tea while watching it! Good luck, be sensible and play safe, Matt (who would gladly swap his 12'x10' concrete yard for 13 acres of woodland)

A bloomery furnace (not forge) is generally chimney-shaped. Forced blast is provided near the base (with a few notable exceptions). The fuel is usually charcoal, which is added at regular intervals, as is whatever iron ore is used (magnetite, haematite, limonite etc.) Blast is constantly adjusted to produce a strong reducing atmosphere within the furnace, i.e. one where there is free carbon and carbon monoxide (CO) but no free oxygen (O2) and as little carbon dioxide (CO2) as possible. Thus when the iron ore (some form of iron oxide) is heated in the furnace the oxygen chemically bonded to the iron reacts with the free carbon and CO to form CO and CO2, leaving excess iron. This gradually accumulates near the bottom of the furnace in the form of small globules and/or larger lumps of iron, which are removed at the end of the smelt. These lumps are blooms. Also near the bottom of the furnace arrives slag. This slag comes from the gangue in the ore (anything in the ore that is not a metal compound) and is mostly silicon dioxide (SiO2), which is glass. Depending on the design of the furnace, this may be tapped off at regular intervals during the smelt, constantly tapped, or simply accumulate in a bowl-like depression underneath the furnace. (Depending on the quality of the ore, there may be little or no slag produced.) Blooms are irregular, spongey lumps of iron, with significant amounts of slag. To make it into a useful product, the blooms are consolidated by taking to a welding heat and welded together. They are then repeatedly folded and welded until they form a billet of iron. It is this repeated folding and welding that stretches the slag inclusions into stringers, which cause the characteristic woodgrain pattern of wrought iron. This refining process reduces the amount of slag present in the billet, the mass of the billet being reduced to typically one third to one half of the bloom's mass, the losses being in slag as ironscale. (Scale can be collected and fed back into the furnace.) The more times the iron is refined, the better quality it generally is, though there are diminishing returns. Other factors may limit the quality, especially the presence of sulfur, which causes red shortness (the quality of crumbling when forged, like cast iron). Historically wrought iron was divided into several grades, the lowest being 'muckbar'. This was the grade used for consumables like wagon tires. It was also often used for anvil bodies due to its low cost. Muckbar is today sought after by certain bladesmiths for knife guards, as it shows a good woodgrain pattern after etching. A series of physical tests existed for wrought iron in the days before analytical chemistry and other scientific testing. The Admiralty (British naval command) demanded the highest quality of iron and so would perform a series of tests to see how it could withstand abuse. "Best best" grade was expected to withstand being bent 180 degrees one way then reversed a few inches away, punched and drifted to its own diameter, nicked and bent (to show its grain pattern)... all cold! (They demanded this ductility from their iron as it was used to make chain-cables for many ships' uses, especially for anchor cables.) I believe that he is referring to bloomery iron, rather than cast iron. Massive difference; cupola are furnaces designed to remelt cast iron (usually pig iron and scrap) for further casting or processing (e.g. fineing).

Well I'm training to be an archaeologist and so have experience digging, analysing assemblages, analysing artefacts and pulling theories out of my backside :-D I can shoot a rifle pretty straight, have the basic metalwork and woodwork skills under my belt, can ride a horse, cook fairly well, and used to build model planes to a good quality. My sewing is kinda like using a mint condition Peter Wright as a boat anchor; it'll bring tears to your eyes just thinking about it, but it'll work. I have a fair number of computer skills too, especially in building databases and in programming. Oh, and I can really put my foot in my mouth without effort.

Welcome, Joseph. Have you checked if the cast anvil is cast iron or cast steel yet?

It's very difficult to cast steel, or even to melt it properly. It is though possible to cast bronze or copper swords (I have been lucky enough to watch it done using very simple tools).

It's a faster quench than water all other things being equal (quenchant temperature, amount etc.). It is too fast for some steels, just as water is too fast for some steels, or oil for others still. For some steels though it can be just the ticket, e.g. quenching mild steel fullers, or railroad-spike knives.

I reckon the difference in abundance is this: hot chisels are of course only any good for the hot iron trades. Cold chisels though are useful for mechanics, stonemasons, builders... heck, you can even find them in B&Q. You might want to see if anyone will ship to the UK, and whether it's worth it if you buy several pairs. GS Tongs for instance will ship to the UK for US$39, or just over GB

High chromium too I think(like stainless steel). Also applies to Parkerising. (This explains the characteristic look of the M1 rifle's muzzle; the Parkerising rubbed off the stainless gas tube almost immediately but not the plain carbon steel barrel.)

Using copper would braze the steel together, rather than weld.

That's not real charcoal, it's briquettes.