EtownAndrew

How does the knife edge hold up under use?

I used nails as pins for my first knife. I tried to drill three holes for the pins and after a couple broke bits decided that two holes would do it. A first knife is something to hang onto.

My guess is that you would like to be able to forge weld if you are not satisfied with an orange color in the steel you are heating. If so I have a couple comments that may help. It looks like your chamber is open front and back. If so you should be able to develop more heat by blocking off some of the front and back. Also my guess is that you have a 1/2" burner. (1/2" nominal size of the long pipe). I have used a 3/4" burner with the same brick forge set-up and got to a yellow forge welding temperature. However, I never succeeded in forge welding. I probably have numerous problems but I think a basic one was too much oxygen in the chamber. My burner needed to be turned up a lot/openings adjusted to try and get an excess of propane gas into the chamber to consume the oxygen. If flames are licking out the openings there shouldn't be much oxygen in the forge to interfere with forge welding. I suspect you will get tired of bending down to look into your forge. I built a roll around stand for my brick forge when I finally had enough of it. Probably all of your soft fire brick will have developed cracks in about a year. I bought a whole case a couple years ago and they are all broke in multiple pieces despite me trying to be careful with them. Don't try to use a soft fire brick as the support for what you are heating. They are too fragile for that abuse. Also if you try to forge weld and dump Borax flux on the metal it will get all into the porous brick and ruin it. Flux on a hard brick. (Personal experience)

Occasionally when I am describing my use of blacksmithing to others I say that it is another tool in my tool box to go along with carpentry, welding, machining, foundry, etc. It gives me options that I would otherwise not have to make what I need. Plus I am all the time carrying what I am working on over to my post vice because it is my biggest strongest vice. Likewise when I need to center punch or flatten something I often go to the anvil. Also I occasionally enjoy the irony of using blacksmithing methods to make lathe tools for precision machining work.

Looks good. Are you mig welding the pieces together?

I'm going to support the people recommending MIG/TIG. I have a stick welder and am getting tired of dealing with the slag. I often get slag that is in a pocket in the weld and is very difficult to get out prior to laying down another bead. Also I occasionally think I laid down a good weld and then once the slag is removed realize that I only welded to one side. If I could see the puddle I would have been able to adjust as I was going and get a good weld. It would be nice to finish a weld and have it free of slag because even if it is a good weld it is still difficult sometimes to get all the slag off. So for my own personal use I may hit the weld a couple times to try and knock off some slag and then just leave the rest.

I agree with one of the other guys that suggested shoveling out the coals and putting them in an ash bucket with a lid. I also do that and it does smother the charcoal. As for the cost of charcoal you could make it yourself and then your only out your time. I make my own charcoal. I start a wood fire in an old 55 gallon barrel that has the lid removed and a blower putting air into the bottom of the barrel. After the wood seems to be all glowing and converted to charcoal I remove the blower then close the blower hole with dirt and put the lid on the barrell. The next day I take the lid off and unload about 1/3 to 1/2 of a barrel of charcoal. It helps to start out with wood that has been split or cut down to be about all the same size and maybe no more than 2 1/2" thick. That way it all turns to charcoal at about the same rate. It also helps to start the fire with about only the bottom quarter of the barrel full and after the fire is going good gradually fill it up to the brim. I started out forging with charcoal and then switched to propane and coal once I found a local source.

I had never heard of spinning until reading this topic. Now I understand how some copper fry pans and other vessels were made. My lathe is too small to do this but maybe sometime in the future I'll be able to try it.

For springs you should be able to get them at a scrap yard. Call the scrap metal dealers in your area and find one that lets you walk around and pick out steel that you can buy. A typical price is 35 cents per pound. Pretty much every time I visit a scrap yard there is some sort of high carbon spring steel laying on the ground. What you can find will vary from flat springs to automotive and truck coil springs. I have also found old hay rake tines. The current scrap yard that I frequent is so nice that they will even torch cut off a piece if you do not want the whole thing. Not all will do that. My experience with spring steel is that it's strength limit seems to show itself on smaller punches. I have about decided that a 1/8" hole punch is too small to make from spring steel. A 1/4" hole punch seems to be the minimum at least for me.

So what was his recommendation for smithing? Shade 3?

I asked my optometrist about this last week during an eye exam and he had no idea. He said that it seemed like a valid question but he had never been asked it before and they had not covered anything on it in his schooling.

Yes. I used it for some light forging this evening and had no problems over the course of the session. David Robertson puts a 2 1/2" long piece of 1x1x1/8" square tube in the end of his 1 1/4 pipe burners and plug welds it in place from both sides. Apparently it fits into that size pipe. For a 3/4" burner I tried to proportion that down and made an X out of 14 ga sheet that I cut 1 3/4" long. I don't know that the size matters much. I bent two pieces 90 degrees and put them in to fashion an X shape. Tacked the ends to the pipe. I also used a 10" long pipe nipple with the thought that 8" of it was the normal mixing chamber and the last two inches was the stabilizer. David said that this was really old technology that he had seen in some antique burner equipment. So far the end of the pipe has gotten hot enough for the shiny metal threading to change colors into a dark yellow which my color chart says is about 450-500 F. That is much cooler than the normal dull red glow of a nozzle.

Most of the shade 3 glasses offered are for those who do not already wear glasses. However, as ptree said there are also clip on flip up ones available. I use the ones shown at the link below that work well. I can see fine outdoors during the day and inside with good lighting. I am also able to judge the temp of metal wearing these. http://www.amazon.com/3M-Protective-Eyewear-Infrared-40427-00000-10/dp/B007JZ3WOU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368155647&sr=8-1&keywords=b007jz3wou

I have been using a brick forge with one ¾ inch propane burner for a couple years. (I also have a coal forge for stuff that won’t fit in the propane forge.) The brick forge has generally worked fine and is handy. The only struggle with one burner was when I was hardening a longer knife. I would have to move it back and forth a few times to try and get it all hot at the same time. I might have also struggled to heat a longer bar to do a spiral bend. Anyway, I decided a couple weeks ago to make a second burner for the occasion when I want to be running two burners simultaneously. In the picture the far burner is my original one that I bought from Jay Hayes. I finished building the near one this evening and tried them out. They are shown running at about 3 PSI. They run fine from about 1.5 PSI to 20 PSI. I normally run one at about 3 to 5 PSI for my small forge chamber. I worked a couple changes into the new burner. The new one uses a .030 wire mig contact tip. After I broke about 6 drill bits trying to drill a .040” hole in an 1/8” pipe cap I changed plans and went with the mig contact tip. Also the new burner does not use a nozzle but instead uses a flame stabilizer made from 14 ga sheet metal stuck into the end. The advantage of a flame stabilizer is that it does not heat up so much since the flame is just beyond the end of the pipe. A nozzle slows down the gas and combustion starts inside the nozzle. I heard about flame stabilizers from David Robertson who demonstrated them at last year’s SOFA conference in Troy Ohio. I had to forge a new nozzle to replace the one that came on my original burner last year. It is doing ok but I can see that in another year it might have needed to be replaced again. I still need to rearrange the bricks and rig up a second burner holder.

You will probably have times that you want more than one burner going to help heat up a long knife or something similar so you can heat treat it. I agree with others that most of the time one burner will heat the area you are working on. I was working today to build a second 3/4" burner but expect to need it only occasionally.

You could burn off the galvanizing in a small wood/trash fire. Just don't breathe the smoke. :) Another option is to soak any galvanized parts in muratic acid (strong stuff) sold with other solvents at hardware stores. Soak it outside overnight and don't breathe the fumes. I also understand that soaking things in vinegar will remove galvanizing but I haven't tried vinegar. You could also take some tin snips to plain thin sheet metal and form whatever shape/size tube that you want.

very nice.

It appears that your brick gas forge will be similar to mine. I use one 3/4" burner in it but could use two when doing longer work that I want all heated up at once. Often I am working several inches at a time so one burner in the middle works fine. I can heat up somewhat longer work like an 8" long knife. I block off one end and end up moving the piece back and forth some to get it all heated. An advantage of the loose stacked brick forge is that you can rearrange it to suit different projects. Another advantage of a propane forge in general is you can turn it on to do some quick work and then shut it off if you need to stop suddenly. The disadvantage is the size. As soon as you put a couple bends in a rod it may no longer fit. I started out with this propane forge and then later built a coal forge. I now use the coal forge more often since I don't have issues with fitting the work I am doing into the chamber. I initially bought a case of insulated fire brick that I used. They have gradually all broken. I keep using them until they get down to being in about four pieces that I can't get to stay in a brick shape. Hard fire brick is much more durable but takes longer to heat up. It's also about half the cost. I really really messed up some insulated fire brick by trying to do some forge welding. The borax sunk into the porous insulated fire brick and I couldn't clean them up. Certainly use hard fire bricks for the bottom bricks to take the abuse. I started making mud bricks as replacements that are shown in the picture. Also I got tired of getting on my hands and knees and built a high table to raise the brick forge and allow me to easily see into it.

For me making tongs is probably going to be a long learning experience. My first pair of tongs is functional but ugly ugly. My second pair, picture below, from a year or so later was better but still a long way from the nice tongs I see others making. I may eventually get there.

Sorry I missed it. I didn't see the invite until today.

I agree. I think you have already had some prior practice. Where did you get a 14" wheel?

You can also make a forge cart with wheels and add it to that. See the attached picture. The angle is not the best since I was really taking a picture of the adjustable rest.

Here is a picture of a portable set-up. The board makes it a little bulky but you are adding your weight to it when using the vise to help stabilize it. Possibly the board could be bolted on in the field to make the basic vise with post easier to transport.

The electrodes are consumed. After each use I normally need to adjust them forward about 1/4" when getting set up for another session. I don't know how this compares to gouging as I haven't done that.