Joel OF

Yeah this is another thing I don't get, the only time I crank the blower is when I put steel in the fire. I was concerned that I was cranking the blower too often but I always see people that use electric blowers telling others to turn off the blower when you're away from the fire/at the anvil...but for me that's a given because I'm using a hand cranked blower. Gotcha. Now I'm thinking I should buy a toilet cleaner brush to scrub out the tuyere before each day's forging! Haha.

Cheers folks, I'm burning coke singles, Jim. I read that a lot and it always makes me wonder whether I'm unknowingly committing cardinal sins in getting the fire going as I don't have any trouble. I'm using a hand cranked blower too and I've read a countless times that hand cranked blower aren't suitable for coke forges. On top of that it's a hand cranked blower for a side blast forge but mine is a bottom blast...so I've had to adapt it into something that looks like an ugly cousin of a Buffalo hand cranked blower. (I don't use any fire accelerants or anything, just 3 pieces of newspaper + 2 handfuls of charcoal + coke.) Blimey Jerome! Thankfully coke hardly produces any dust but I'll certainly keep that in mind because I do always have dust at the bottom of the fire pot from the charcoal I stick in first to get the fire going. I can't remember off the top of my head exactly how thick my fire pot is, I think it's about 12-15mm, I made it out of a couple bits of RSJ. It's about 9 and a half inches x 11 and a half inches and about 5 inches deep.

I've been reluctant to control the fire size with water as for a while I had problems with moist coke straight outta the bag spitting - my thoughts being that if I put water onto the coke whilst it's on the fire it'll just spit more, but it for whatever reason, it didn't. Anyway, in the last couple days I decided to give controlling the fire size a go and I've had useful results with both concentrating the fire size + conserving fuel. So my question is...at what point do you start adding water? Whilst you're filling the fire pot? Once the fire pot is full? Before the fuel's in the fire pot? Just curious... Cheers

From my limited experience I can't find any difference. I used to use a brake drum forge before I fabricated a rectangular fire pot out of some RSJ...and shock horror...they both burn coke. Before I fabricated my own forge I too researched this question till I was blue in the face as I was determined there must be an answer but I couldn't find any answers so I just gave up and thought I'd get on with it. To me this is a bit of a Pepsi vs Coca-Cola situation...they're virtually the same thing and serve the same purpose...and the people to gain the most out of telling you otherwise are the people trying to sell you one over the other. I'm also using a hand cranked blower on my rectangular coke fire pot/forge and it all works fine. Before I got my hand cranked blower every thread I read about them said they can't run coal or coke forges...so if I was to believe the round vs rectangular fire pot argument + the hand cranked blower argument then I might as well given up blacksmithing and taken up knitting. Reminds me of an old Guinness advert: "80% of facts are false".

It's not for me Timothy, he has half a dozen or more empty cylinders lying about taking up space so my point is he could salvage them into mandrels and sell them. If he did do it he wouldn't do it by hand, he's got a variety of machines for various jobs. The reason I thought of mandrels is because I don't see many about, and I regularly chat to a guy who buys & sells blacksmiths tools & he said full size mandrels sell easily as they're kinda rare.

You learn something new every day! Cheers again!

Yeah, cone mandrels. The fabricator has already cut oxygen cylinders for me and I've used the bottoms as bowl sinking tools. I guess you'd need to cut the top and bottoms off, then cut a V shape out, then somehow compress it so the V is closed and you get the cone shape, then weld shut. Easier said than done though and I don't know what sort of machine could compress it to shut the V. At another steel supplier/fabrication yard I came across an off-cut of twisted solid bar that was at least 1.5" square. I asked one of the guys there if he twisted it, he said no and pointed to a machine in the corner and said that it twists cold solid bar. My jaw hit the floor and since then I've thought that anything's possible.

Hi folks, could heavy duty oxygen cylinders be turned into decent mandrel cones? I've recently come to know a local fabricator that has all sorts of big boys toys and seems to be able to turn his hand to anything - boats, film sets, gates, farm machinery repair... He has many redundant cylinders lying about and if the consensus is they'd be suitable then I'll suggest to him he could turn them into mandrels. Aside from the suitability are mandrels sought after much nowadays? Penny for your thoughts...

Sorry I'm still a little confused - are you saying I might find blacksmiths' anvil stakes at ex M.O.D sites??? It sounds like you're talking from experience, is there anywhere you've already been that I could Google to get an idea of what sort of place you mean? From your videos it looks like you've invested a fair bit of time and effort into making these bowl tools, are bowls something you specialize?

What does "ministry" mean? I'm guessing you don't mean Ministry of Deffence? How come you favour 312 rods over 6013 for stick welding mild steel? I was under the impression 6013 were pretty much the standard for mild steel. I'm new to welding (but completely addicted) and am just curious.

Nice phrase. I could do with some raising stakes too, should they be a particular type of steel or would mild steel do? I've got some lengths of solid thick mild steel bar, some lengths of train track and the cyclindrical bodies from the oxygen canisters. Any tips for stick welding train track/railroad?

Cheers folks. With the canisters on top of the log they are at anvil height, I'll be sinking 4mm+ sheet steel into these (not thin brass/copper sheet) so belly button would be a little too high for me as I think I'd quickly strain my forearm. Is the mirror finish to help the finish of the bowl or just for the aesthetic of the tool? Yeah I'll see how it goes, if it's too noisy I might adapt it or damped it down. I'm a drummer so dampening unwanted overtones is kinda second nature to me so I'm sure there'll be an easy fix if kills my ears. Alan, I hadn't seen these videos of yours before I'm afraid. Love your gadgets, your at the top rung of the ladder and I'm down at the bottom with half a foot on the first rung haha.

Hey folks, a while ago I asked if there were tools to help with bowl making, many of you were very helpful and told me that oxygen canisters have concave bottoms which I could sink into if I cut the bottoms off. A few months back at the scrap yard I came across 3 empty oxygen canisters of varying sizes, I cut the bottoms off but for a long time didn't get round to using them. I've finally had the time to do something with them and below are the pics of what I did. Please please please ignore the uglyness of it all, it aint a pretty system but it works! I just thought I'd show you all what I did with them so you know your efforts to help have made a difference, thankyou. I'm a little pushed for space in my workshop so I've come up with a system where I have 1 stand that each of the 3 cannister bottoms will fit onto... I've welded the 3 canister bottoms to bits of thick scrap plate and in the bottom of each plate I've drilled 3 holes in a triangle shape.(You can only see the holes in one of the plates but trust me there's holes in all of them). I found a decent height log then forged some 6mm plate to fit snugly over the top, I then drilled and screwed the plate to the log. On the top of the 6mm plate I welded 3 pegs in the same triangle shape as the holes I drilled. The idea being that the 3 pegs slot into the 3 holes which keeps the canisters from moving around too much. The final part of it was I welded some bits of scrap to the 6mm plate to make "pads" so that the canisters wouldn't get stuck on the pegs and if they do get stuck for whatever reason I've got a gap that I can get a crowbar under to prize them off. If you see any obvious mistakes or ways I could have done it better please feel free to keep the ideas to yourself haha. Drilling those holes too me forever and was incredibly boring so I'd hate to think it was a waste of time!

I dont know about the weight, i cant picture what you mean but it sounds more hassle than is needed. My first anvil was a chunk of RSJ - I got an offcut for free from the local steel supplier. I'd suggest that to you though i'd also suggest dampening it down a little as they ring quite loud.

Glad someone else has asked this as I was thinking of making a metal stand. I'm like you Mac, I'd imagine the same on the noise/vibration front. To overcome that I was thinking of making the sides reasonably tall and including a solid base so I could put sand in there to deaden it down.

Cheers Bentiron. Being the massively impatient person I am I wanted to give it a go yesterday, even though they're not yet mounted. I dished out some 6mm plate into the smaller canister to make a large ashtray, and have started dishing out some 4mm sheet into the bigger canister - maybe that can be a bird bath or something - I'm just playing/practicing and using up odds and ends of scrap I have. I only have a little 4.5" angle grinder Thomas, I could give it a go cutting the canisters with it but it might take me till Christmas.

Cheers for the replies. Sorry, I'm not sure I completely understand you. When you say a "ring base" do you mean welding a ring around the hollow end of the canister, (hollow because it's been cut in half), as opposed to the pre-formed concave end? Do you have a pic to illustrate what you mean? Thomas, what's a lag?

Folks, I'm kinda resurrecting this thread as I've got another question... I got some heavy duty gas canisters a while back, they're about 10mm thick, I haven't done anything with them yet but now I want to use them. The scrap yard I got them from had already cut them in half for some reason. I can cut them down shorter into more manageable sizes as they're still quite long - I don't have a torch cutter so I'll take it to someone else to get that done. After that how can I mount them? I invested in my first welder the other day, it's a 175 amp arc welder. I was thinking of welding each one to 6mm plate, then fixing the plate to a tree stump. I'd bend each end of the plate over the stump so that I'm not drilling into the stump end grain. I've seen this pictures of this plate/stump combo before with leg vices, do you think this will work for the gas canisters, or has anyone got any better ideas? Cheers

Cheers for all the pointers folks. Thanks for the pics Dale, love the top one, it's like the drill bit version of the Vitruvian Man!

Cheers John. I've now seen a few YouTube videos of people using your low speed and lubrication method and drilling with ease, I was definitely taking the wrong approach. You're right I should have done a search, it didn't cross my mind to do a search because I thought I was being incompetent and no one else would have encountered this problem (or have admitted to it) so I'm glad that others have asked similar questions!

Two very novice questions about drilling metal with an electric hand drill folks... What sort of drill bits are best for regular drilling? I had to drill a 8mm hole in some 10mm plate the other day and was recommended HSS bits but they only got into the metal a few mil and wouldn't go any further. I gave up and punched it in the end. Is there any particular type of hole saw I should look out for if I want to drill a 2 inch hole in some steel pipe that's about 3mm thick and a piece of plate that's 6mm thick? Cheers

I'll bet. Driving through places like Lewisham is great when you spend 99% of your time in a staid middle class town, but there's always a point when you think...better wind the windows up now. Wondered what a policeman was guarding on the pavement last time I drove through there, as I went past I could see it was a pool of blood.

Dan - The gentrifying sounds familiar and boring but otherwise it sounds like your were in a pretty cool area. I love spotting workshops and lock-ups like that in London, like under railway arches etc. Like the sort of locations they had in old Prime Suspect episodes. Neil - Although I don't know the answer to your question I very much doubt that being a member of the Company holds and sway, not because the Company isn't highly regarded, just because noisy neighbours really do get clamped down on in Britain. Remember Britain is a fraction of the US and Canada and especially in a city like London we're a lot more bunched up and people are very precious about the peace and quiet of their own home, and the Environment Agency and councils do follow up complaints regardless of who you are.

A back scratcher, I could do with one right now!

Wow, cheers John, that site looks like it's full of goodies!