Anvilfolk

Wow, what a helpful community This is great Thank you all very much Glenn, thank you again. These were my first experiences with charcoal. Thank you also for the link, I have read it and will use what I've read! I'll try to post a picture of the place I'm currently using. It's a small room, walls made of cement, the windows are negligible, and we have a big wooden two-part door. I usually keep one closed, and the other wide open so the opening should be around two and a half feet, or along those lines. This was during a portuguese summer, so it was pretty bright outside. The anvil is about one and a half, two feet from the door. The lighting conditions I was used to were a huge warehouse, it had 3 bays of 6 two-fire forges each, and plenty of space besides. It had some artificial lighting at the very top (it was also very high), and it was in England, so the weather was different. I might very well be underestimating the brightnesses, but the time I brought it to a nice yellow, the metal moved so well! It's also really easy to misjudge, since it's been over two years since my last blacksmithing experience The charcoal might've been eucalyptus or pine, I'm not sure. Those are the two more abundant trees in my area. I will be sure to ask next time I buy. Thanks for the tip, Makoz. Also, the picture was taken with a digital camera, and it didn't take too well to bright colours, it amplified them, so don't take those colours too seriously. I wasn't taught the water part, no. Coke fires don't expand a lot if you start with a small initial fire - I'll have to find a handy bucket & sprinkler can! Thanks! Thank you all again. Maybe the weekend after this one I'll get another go at the forge!

I sweat a lot, so I prefer ear-plugs instead of muffs. Like Aaron said, the ones connected by a string are great. You barely notice them when they're around your neck, and only slightly more with them in your ears. They're really nice. I used them whenever I was on the angle-grinder, power-hammer, working cold sheet steel, etc. If you don't have ringing anvils and your metal is hot, hammering doesn't produce that much noise. Speaking of which, I remember the ones (anvils) I learnt on having a few layers of lead sheet beneath their base. It should absorb some of the noise, I think.

Glenn, thank you very much. I apologize for any inconvenience, I was avoiding creating another topic on a similar issue. I'm guessing around 3 to 4 inches deep (from the air entry-point to the top of the mound), and I'm just using the hand-crank blower you can see on the picture. I'm actually amazed at how much air it manages to push through, it's quite nice. Thank you too Don and Pete, I'll try those out as soon as I get some more forging time! I'm sure they'll help! I don't have any easilly available firebrick, but I'll build the edge around the existing firepot with some clay. From the topmost bit of fuel to the air entrance, how many inches do you think is appropriate? From 5 to 8 inches, from what I've read in other topics? Regarding the air... I believe we did try that. Maybe it was a lighting issue, but it didn't seem like it went far beyond a semi-bright orange. From what I remember being told, if you have a constant air-flow, the temperature of the fire will also remain constant. And if you've got a piece in a constant fire, then the piece will not absorb heat above the fire's temperature. I'm accustomed to bringing this sort of piece to a bright yellow. It drastically reduces the effort. Again, might've been the lighting, though I doubt it. Thanks again, you guys are great! :)

Hi everyone! This is my first post here! I'm sorry to use an old topic, but it's better to recycle than create a new one on the same topic, right? So I took a one-year blacksmithing course at Herefordshire's College of Technology in, you've guessed it, Herefordshire in the UK. It was excellent! Then I came back to Portugal, and I've been in university ever since, so I've had no time for forging... These holidays, however, I finally got everything together and managed to hit some hot metal! It was great! I did ended up burning my piece (it was going to be a fire rake), turning it into... well, two pieces. Heheh. I think I've found the reason, but I need your help making sure that was it, and how to solve it. I was used to coke, which was heavy stuff. The fire nearly went out after about 10 or 15 minutes without blowing, and it created a fair bit of clinker (a large, closed fist after about an hour and a half). So far, I've only managed to find charcoal - pine, I think, so that's what I'm using, here in Portugal. I've attached a picture of my forge. The actual firepot is really small, only being around 4" wide and 2, 3 or so deep (I'm European, so I hope I've gotten the measurements right). First of all, there's a HUGE, horrible amount of flying burning fleas. Me and my sweetheart (who I convinced to join me, yay!) looked like we had freckles all over for awhile. It's hard to move the charcoal around and keep a blast going, because we get all burnt. Second, that stuff is LIGHT! After a half hour or so, it seems like all we have in the fire is pinky-fingernail sized pieces. We do add some more, but they're still there, and fly off if we increase the air-blast. I also think that, related to this lightness, it is common for the firepot to become an open dome full of oxygen, because of the constant air flow. Unfortunately, since the pot is so shallow, that ends up being where I put my piece. Oxidation paradise. I had been drawing out the 16x16mm square bar I had (a bit more than half-inch), so it was pretty thin, and I think that as soon as it hit yellow (which is darn hard with that charcoal flying off and creating that dome), it burnt away. So, short of finding a new source of (char)coal, is there anything I can do? I do have access to clay (the grey type), but I'm not sure I want to put too much of it on there because of the weight. It seems like the ideal thing would be to increase the depth of the firepot though. Not sure that would avoid the empty dome... no idea about the fleas. Sorry about the long post! I hope I manage to keep coming here every once in awhile. It'll be kind of hard! "John"