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I Forge Iron

DanielC

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Everything posted by DanielC

  1. Bottom die. The top die is also 5.5" wide, but 9" long.
  2. I'll have to measure. Not quite that long. From memory i think the bottom die is 10" long, and maybe 5" wide. The top die is just about the same. I'll measure later this afternoon. Your 300# would work an entire bloom gloriously.
  3. Of course. I regularly experiment running a bloomery with Mark Green. Www.youtube.com/danielcauble We run various ore. A very rich in Fe and all of ghe right minerals, limonite we re-scavange/dig from the original ore pile under dirt and trees at a civil war finery furnace. We have a magnetite field we have mined from, but it is much more labor intensive, and now that we have access to a clean magnetite pile in upstate New York, we dont mine it any more. We recently acquired about 400-500# of specular hematite from our good friend and swordsmith Jesvs. This stuff is in the high 90 percentile Fe. A lot of guys from parts of europe send us a smelts worth of ore from time to time to run and test out for them, and provide data. We produce several hundred pounds of bloomery a year. In the coming years Mark is going to retire and run smelting classes. I hope by then this hammer and the new shop will be ready, and we can do a few at my place, and pull bloom straight from bloomery to this huge Nazel dies, and light taps. Talking to all of my euro buds, bloomery is suitable under the hammer, you just need big dies, and these are huge. I have worked over 100 pounds of orishigane in 1-3 poind increments exclusively under my small 50# mechanical, along with many bloom quarters (4-5#) with great success. Its all in knowing how hard to hit, where to hit and when to hit that comes with practice. We make so much that i no longer treat it like gold, and give myself a chance to push it to the limits.
  4. I most certainly will. Once it is set and operating i will shoot some vids working 15-20# steel blooms.
  5. Cleaning up, hoisting ram up to move out of way to set sowblock and die. View underneath compressor, oiling system.
  6. Take note anyone moving a machine this big. Our shop ceilings are 20-26ft high. When that truck with crane was moving the hammer and lifting over a 3' anvil, we still had limited clearance. Infact, the crne had room to lift it over the anvil and not much more. If you happen to get a 4b, you will also find out that United Rental especially in rural areas will have a hard time renting you a 12,000# capacity forklift. They told me they would have to truck one in a few hours away and the cost was going tk be nuts. Not only that but they could not coordinate with their truck driver with my delivery driver, so i would have to rent it for extra time i wasnt using it. And this is a united rental we have been doing business with for over a decade. The forklift rental was going to cost well over $1,000. My local wrecker has a $1 million 75ton crane truck thats used to lift tractor trailers out of revines, and did this for me, over the course of 2 hours for $400. Of course we do a bit of business with them, but it was well worth it. Still, it was sketchy knowing if we were even going to be able to lift it over the anvil or not. When i take this home, im pouring foundation first, setting hammer, then building new shop around it. Then truck crane driver was also not new to moving big machinery with it. He showed me a picture he took earlier that day moving a 55,000# Trane A/C unit for a hospital, so my hammer was a toy, lol. 4b frame = 12,000# 4b anvil = 7,000#
  7. Pattern weld, working full bloomery, tool making. I really wanted a high ceiling in capacity, and this Nazel popped up at a weird crossroads in my life.
  8. This machine travelled from Seattle Washington to Salisbury, NC lol.
  9. This was Larry's 4b that had trouble half stroking without a blow off valve. I plan to have Mark Krause fix it one of these years. I initially had more immediate plans for this, but life changes. Right now it will be stored and tweaked in my family shop until i pour a foundation for it at mine. In the mean time, its hard to not appreciate such an imposing figure. Also it is crazy to think that in 2012, i joined this site and this world, and 5 years later i own a Nazel.
  10. Please post pics. I never see old style 250's or 500's.
  11. After more research, the consensus is yes, for a machine like this, it is categorized as a "hard load", and a 15hp converter will not suffice for the 15hp motor on my hammer. With the bypass always open on start up, I should be able to get away with a 25hp converter. Thanks James. In the end, I will be on the phone with a representative with whichever brand converter I purchase.
  12. Ok, so differing opinions on this. Others in the know have informed me that I do Infact need to increase my phase converter size to my Nazel motor because my Nazel motor is powering a high load compressor. I am told with the bypass open I can get away with running it on a converter 1/3 at least stronger than my 15hp. Without the bypass, probably double and will need a 30hp converter. So along with powering a high load compressor there is also the giant gear.
  13. I dont see it cooking off. Retorts get very hot, but not enough to melt much of anything.
  14. Well that's not necessarily a good thing. If the wood contains trace amount of a copper rich mineral, I would assume that you could then transfer and distill enough copper to mess with your bloom, especially if it's giving off color. Copper is the Achilles heel to iron production. We use copper tuyure in our smelter because if it's heat transferring properties (it is also historic in some parts of the world), but always at the risk of melting some off (though with proper slag management this isn't an issue). Basically copper will precipitate to the surface of the iron, and not allow at forge weld to take place. Very hard to remove as well. Anything that goes into the smelter is going to contribute to the end result (some much more than others). Even the smelter material itself. Go with the best ores, and good charcoal and you are past a huge hurdle.
  15. Different species of wood ash contain varying levels of phosphorous after talking with Lee. For the most part though, we find it negligible if you run general lump. We have tried a few smelts using Stubbs (not a typical briquette), in a pure curiosity and hopeful cost cutting measure. Several smelts were successful, but we found that the "5 % vegetable binder" to be pretty bunk, and the slag content was through the roof. Back to lump we went. When it comes to my hearth runs however, I only use charcoal I have made. Royal Oak has been the best lump to use for the past few years. Cowboy is starting to improve as a disease is sweeping the US and all of the Ash trees are dying off, so they are switching from the crap they had before to real wood again. Sometimes they even resorted to hardwood flooring. Sometimes I run into beanie weanie cans.
  16. I know it sounded counter-intuitive to mag clean and then add silica. Some ores require the addition and some do not. Some have too much, and some not enough.
  17. I have smelting magnetite ore a dozen times or more. No it does not need to be roasted, but it can be beneficial to drive out moisture. Typically we break it up into pea sized chunks, and mag clean a time or two to up the iron content and decrease silicates. We run two different types of magnetite, and both have to be ran slightly different. I will say however, that magnetite tends to be pretty clean of silicates, so you may need to add a slag source, this can be achieved by adding sand to the mix at low percentages, bellow 10% by weight. Mark Green and I share our smelts on the Iron Smelters of the World group on facebook, I also share some of our smelts on my youtube: www.youtube.com/danielcauble Much of the technology we run derives from Lee Sauder teachings, except for the past year or two where we have branched from it and started focusing on making high carbon steel, as Lee typically shoots for straight Iron. I am at 40 or so smelts and counting.
  18. Thanks. The blade is unassumingly difficult to pull off. The welding temps of 1018 and W2 are wildly different, so you end up overheating W2. It takes very controlled and careful HT to get everything nice and right with the W2, and with the help of one of Kevin Cashen's disciples, I was able to employ such a HT recipe. To my elation, the grain on the break test blade yielded the finest W2 grain I have ever produced. Invisible to the naked eye, and hard yet under 30x. I sharpen on natural japanese stones, and the combination of this fine grain, and the very fine muds that are produced on the various strata of stones, yielded an edge that was scary to simply touch. I have another Gyuto and several Hanesuki from this batch of sanmai I produced earlier last month left to finish. More to come.
  19. I haven't posted blades in here in a long time. So here it goes.... I tend to gravitate towards the japanese in my culinary blades. Recently pounded out 4 big billets of sanmai, all of which were W2/1018. This is the first blade completed from the batch. The handle is stabilized maple burl, stabilized spalted black cherry burl, and a Ti spacer that I cut from a billet that I forged from a rough shaped chunk of Ti that came from a Ti foundry local to me. Saya is curly maple and walnut, with a Ti keeper. 2 more big blades, 2 honesuki and 1 general paring are on the bench still to be finished, and in different states of finish. There was a pair of paring knives, but sacrificed one for a break test as I was testing out a very good HT for W2 that worked wonders for the grain after all that heat. Thanks for looking.
  20. Nobody has come forward with any. Mark Krause is suggesting extrapolate from 3b plans. Shouldnt be too awful.
  21. Recently purchased a Nazel 4b, and am at a loss for foundation plans. plans are available for 3b, but none that I have found for a 4b. Mark Krause also does not have the plans. Anyone have some hidden somewhere they would care to share? Otherwise the plan is to extrapolate from 3b plans. Btw. I will be running a 4b soon! Yea!!!
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