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I Forge Iron

matt87

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Everything posted by matt87

  1. You'd do well to break your charcoal up a little, Willy. Walnut size is about right. An air gate or other way to control the air flow is very important.
  2. I'll swap you some for an induction forge.
  3. Avadon, how big is your usual forging hammer's face? If it's less than 2inches you should be fine. Until iron production became somewhat industrialised (for argument's sake, in the middle mediaeval period) the standard general-purpose ironsmithing anvil was roughly cube-shaped and weighed 20lb... if you were lucky. If you were very wealthy it might even have had a medium-carbon steel face. Until the 18th century (not very long ago) most anvils were basically the same shape but a bit bigger. There is plenty of work can be done on a lump of A36, and if you find something that can't, use it to make a tool that can.
  4. Angele Forge (Germany) sells new hand-cranked blowers for I think 170-odd Euros, but I have no idea on their quality. (No connection.)
  5. I love the sound of a ringing anvil but I'm not too keen on high-end hearing loss, nor are my neighbors too keen on the noise. I'm using a combination of lead under each corner, a chain holding the anvil down via screws and a large welding magnet. It's not perfect but the 'thud' from the badly supported concrete floor is more of a concern...
  6. That's exactly what this anvil was used for. The description of 'high quality work' was mine, I saw some of that smith's work. Grinders hide a multitude of sins, especially of the beginner -- decarburisation from working slower than a more experienced smith, pitting from not cleaning away scale, poor hammer control... oh and an imperfect anvil face.
  7. Just how worn is your anvil? This one was in daily use as of last summer, probably still is and probably will be for quite some time.
  8. I'm not so sure on the carbon precipitation but as a rule the working temperature window narrows in proportion to the carbon content; the higher the carbon the lower the burning/sparkler threshold, the harder it is to move under the hammer (hot hardness) and the more likely it is to be hot-short. Hot-shortness can be likened to forging cottage cheese; it crumbles and falls apart into a nasty mess. To see what this is, try forging a piece of old file steel at a yellow heat, or cast iron at just about any heat. The stiffness under the hammer unfortunately makes you want to work it at a higher heat for obvious reasons, however not only do you risk burning and hot-shortness but decarburisation occurs faster at higher temperatures. This is not often much of a problem to a general blacksmith (as opposed to, say, a bladesmith). Other alloying elements (Mn, Ni, Cr etc.) confuse the issue somewhat.
  9. glilley, if you hot-cut most of the way through the stock leave a thin layer and either saw it as Sam says or fold it both ways repeatedly to break it off. Must... not... enter... archaeologist... mode... But what will you store it in?
  10. Weygers discusses the drilling of square holes in The Recycling, Use and Repair of Tools. He describes two methods: using a long drill tempered so it can flex over the length of the shaft or using a short drill with a floating workpiece. Both methods use a very hard steel guide to limit and define the hole to be drilled. He also describes the making of the drill.
  11. 'Cast steel' can mean either a steel object directly cast into shape (e.g. a Vaughn/Brooks anvil) or 'crucible' steel that has been cast into an ingot and then forged to shape. This was the typical method for the Huntsman process, where steel was refined by melting in a crucible but the available technology precluded casting directly to shape (I understand this is to do with grain structure and gas absorption). From the point of view of the scrapyard scrounger, I would say that the majority of old tools marked 'cast steel' would be the latter, i.e. forged from a cast ingot. Assume it to be a plain steel with around 1% carbon unless otherwise tested.
  12. 'Cast steel' can refer either to crucible refined or produced steel (e.g. Huntsman or Wootz process) or steel that has been cast into shape. The latter is a much more modern process and can be used with virtually any steel. The former is generally quite a plain steel with carbon content from around 0.6% to 2.2%. 'Cast iron' almost exclusively refers to a material, i.e. an iron-carbon alloy with carbon content somewhere between 2% and 6%. When cast iron was first encountered by the English-speaking world (for simplicity's sake, let's say the 15th century and ignore issues such as excessively reducing bloomery furnaces) no-one knew about iron-carbon alloys; this was only discovered in the 19th century. 'Cast iron' doesn't share many useful properties with steel (edge holding, springiness etc.) so its applications were largely to replace bloomery iron (and stone). I suppose this is probably where the name comes from. Agreed there isn't much logic to it knowing what we do, but think how confusing and pointless changing it would be; just look at so-called damascus steel as an example :D
  13. Perhaps a little off-topic but anyone else seen Tales from the Green Valley? Five historians and archaeologists spend a year working a small Welsh hill-farm with James I era tools, practices and garb. It's better than your typical 'throw a bunch of 21st century hot-house plants into a contrived situation resembling a certain period and watch them whinge' show. In a similar vein is the recent series Victorian Farm. Same scenario, three of the same archaeologists, but late 19th century. This is an especially interesting point in history as it's the start of agricultural mechanisation and industrialisation; lots of cast-iron patent drudgery-be-gone gadgets.
  14. I did similar a while ago when using a vertical piece of railway iron. I cut a piece the width of my anvil face and added a couple more inches, then isolated, drew and bent the 'spare' length so it formed two 'ears'. This stopped it jumping around as much. One supplier (I forget the name) actually admits their anvil devils are old three-square files.
  15. That depends if you can build a deep enough fire and provide an adequate volume and pressure of air blast to allow the full bed of corn to burn. You may have to modify your forge to support a larger 'pile' of corn. Having never used corn or indeed found many detailed reports of its use I cannot provide any useful idea as to what these might be. I suspect you will have to experiment.
  16. A water bottle with a 'sports' pull-up top is good too. I understand that bladesmiths in Nepal traditionally use a teapot to precisely apply water (for a differential quench) when heat-treating khukuris, can't think of a reason why it wouldn't work here. A smallish dipper on the end of a handle is a good accompaniment to the slack tub, especially if it's got a pouring lip. With upsetting (aptly named, for 'tis) the heavier the stock the more it tends to resist bending when at a lower heat. Think about taking two mild steel rods, the first an inch diameter, the other a quarter inch diameter. Imagine both have a fairly well isolated heat at one end. If you were to stand the quarter-inch rod on the anvil and upset the end, even when cold the stock will bend pretty easily. Now imagine doing the same with the one-inch rod. Also, generally the heavier the blow the deeper it will penetrate; if we take that same example of a quarter-inch mild steel rod and bang on the end with the isolated heat using a 6-pound sledge it's going to go wrong pretty quickly. Do the same with a half-pound hammer and the end will upset or peen (as you direct the blows) more than it will bend and flop about. There is a blueprint, I believe called 'upset helper' or somesuch, which is essentially a mild steel block with a number of through-drilled holes. The idea is to choose a hole slightly larger than the rod so as to give it some lateral support and reduce 'wobble'.
  17. One excellent book (Mike Ameling has already suggested it elsewhere) is Iron for the Eagles by David Sim and Isabella Ridge -- it delves into most aspects of ferrous metallurgy with regards to the Roman Army. Unfortunately it's out of print so try libraries. Beyond that there are many academic books and papers dealing with specific topics, e.g. typological studies of Roman swords but they tend to be quite dry and not readily available outside of academic and personal libraries. A very interesting topic is phosphoric iron. It's harder than pure iron but prevents carbon migration, so you can't really turn it into steel. Pragmatically it's just as good as steel for the right applications and with somewhat primitive metallurgical knowledge and equipment it's easier to produce. That said for a lot of applications such as projectile points (which are typically disposable and so don't need to be able to hold an edge) bloomery iron is sufficient; it in fact has an advantage in fact in that it can deform on impact preventing the enemy from returning the favour. Iron and steel were very widely used by the Roman Empire. Iron is sometimes known as the 'democratic' metal as its ores are much more commonly found than copper-yielding ones.
  18. I've heard of adding slag back into bloomery furnaces to act as a flux but I can't see any benefit to adding it back to a forge, unless you're allowing the slag to build up to such an extent that when you do finally drag it out it's stuck to a bunch of coke. Slag is basically dirty glass. Glass does not burn.
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