Buzzkill

I will be using my grinder to do as much of additional shaping and sharpening as possible. I don't have any attachments right now which will allow me to grind in the channel though. I don't have a roughing gouge to lay eyes on while working. All I really have is pictures and videos I've seen to estimate the dimensions and approximate shape. I'd have to create a bottom swage to do that, but I do have a combination straight and cross pein hammer with fairly large radii that I can use to at least get the shape close. I might have to switch to a smaller pein or fuller to get deep enough though.

Love the overall shape of the blade. I'm not sure what you're planning to do with the tang/handle. Right now it looks like it's in the middle of hidden tang and an exposed full tang. Since the shape of the blade says "chopper" to me I'd want to see the "spike" you refer to bent the other way a bit if that was where a person would grip. The other concerning thing for me is all the potential points of origin for cracks created by the teeth of the rasp. The texture looks good, and I don't think it's as bad as a file which has teeth (and grooves) running the full width of the blade, but with a chopping style of knife you really don't want any good places for cracks/breaks to develop due to the impacts the blade will most likely receive in use. Again though, I love the shape of the blade and it's better than my first attempt.

You were ready as soon as you had a hot fire, some metal to hit, a hammer to hit it with, and something solid under the hot metal. You have more than a starter kit and fairly soon you should be able to make any hand tools you lack. Start with fire management tools and learn the basics, then take on whatever your needs and desires dictate. Between that book (and others out there), this site, and especially if you can get some face time with a practicing smith you will progress rapidly.

A little background first. Until a few weeks ago I had never turned wood on a lathe. I built a makeshift lathe from parts I had and of course about a week later someone gave me a Shopsmith 10e - the oldest model made I believe. I spent a couple weekends resurrecting it from the dead and making a tool rest and drive center for the lathe function. I've also made a skew chisel and now I'm planning to make a roughing gouge, parting tool, and probably a bowl gouge. My potential starting materials are coil spring, leaf spring, old files, or some O1 drill rod. I don't have a press or power hammer, so I'm looking for a good way to form the roughing gouge. My thinking is using the leaf spring for this, but pounding it into the deep "U" shape needed using the step and horn will definitely be time consuming and it may be difficult for me to get a uniform shape six to eight inches long. I've considered fabricating a tool that will support the edges and a top fuller that I can use to create the channel, but I thought I'd ask if anyone has a better idea before I get started down that road.

Personally I'm rather pragmatic about these things. If it does what you want it to do then it's good in my opinion. If it doesn't then it needs modification. If having the exhaust port open gives you the characteristics inside your forge that you want I'd say leave it open. Nearly everything is a balancing act. I have a pass through at the back of my forge. I lose some heat through it, but I wouldn't build a forge without one.

My first drive wheel was one I made from a couple pieces of oak 2x6 glued together. Since then I bought an aluminum wheel, but frankly I can't say there's a big improvement. I didn't have a lathe to make it so I got it close to round and then installed it on the motor to finish it up and put a slight crown on it. My first platen wheels were skateboard wheels too and they did ok for a while, but those smaller bearings don't hold up in the long run. I probably got around 50 hours of use out of the machine before I had to change the first set. I had way more in my first build than you do. Well done! Someone gave me a functional treadmill with a 2.9 hp motor in it and I'm considering building another grinder using as much of the frame and electronics from it as possible, but it may be a while before I can get to that project. Always seems I have more ideas and things I want to do than time.

Not bad at all, especially since you have minimal money involved. One thing I noticed that you probably will as well with some use is the design of your flat platen. When you're facing it you can easily move pieces around the right side to grind in some tough to get to spots or odd shapes. However on the left side the support structure holding your platen in place prevents you from the same type of access. You might be able to weld some tabs or a couple pieces of horizontal tubing (top and bottom) on the support tube to bring the wheels out further to help, but that will also require moving the platen itself forward to match. Other designs you have probably seen use a piece of flat plate with a portion cut out between the wheels to minimize the issue. Variable speed or step pulleys to give you different belt speed options is also highly desirable, but that's a pretty darn good build on the cheap overall.

I must have missed the discussions on here about using the combination of perlite and sodium silicate together. I've seen talks about the use of sodium silicate by itself as a rigidizer for ceramic fiber blanket, and I've seen discussions about using perlite in clay based home brew refractories to add insulating properties though. Keep in mind that perlite is a highly porous material. If you have it saturated in a water based mixture it will retain a lot of water that has to be driven off without turning to steam to avoid bubbling,cracking, or even small steam explosions taking chunks out of the lining. That translates into a long drying time and slowly and uniformly bringing the temperature up inside the forge. I'd say at least a week of drying without additional heat and then some time using a light bulb or some other relatively low temperature method before thinking about introducing an open flame. Of course all that is dependent on the ambient temperature and humidity in your location. Beyond all that, as Latticino said, it's still not a very good choice for a propane forge lining. There are lots of threads on here regarding building good propane forges and what to use for insulation and lining. Pull up a chair, a drink, and something to eat and read for an hour or twelve on the topic and by the end of it you'll have a decent understanding of making a good propane forge. I know the temptation to try to use cheap and easily available materials for your own home brew refractory, but the reality is that road will usually result in you spending far more money on propane in the long run due to the lower insulating properties of nearly all home brew mixtures.

Good point. I was visualizing using scales on both sides of a full tang hawk. I would not use micarta by itself in a partial tang type of handle. Brian923, Stormcrow has far more experience in this area than I do, so I'd give his recommendations serious consideration.

The hot water heater in my basement is fueled with propane and has been since before I moved in. The potential problem is leaks not the use of propane itself IMO. A hand held torch cylinder or bbq tank forge system checked for leaks and not stored in the basement when not in use should not present any kind of explosion hazard. If the tank in the space is a concern then the tank could be kept outside and copper line with a shutoff valve could be run through a small opening for other pipes or vents or a window that most basements have. No one should ever be leaving a running forge unattended, so there shouldn't be any risk of a flameout and any troubling amount of unburned propane collecting in the low spots. There is always a risk when using a highly flammable gas, but to me it can be handled properly, much like the risk of fire from hot sparks given off while forging.

To me it looks like the pot has already been repaired at least once and has a pretty good gap of missing material on one side of the lip. That would be tough to fill in with a good repair (at least for me), but you could maybe drill some holes and put a strap over the missing material. I have no experience welding cast iron, so if I were trying to repair it brazing would be what I would try.

I'd suggest running micarta past the customer. It's highly durable, impervious to water, heat resistant for any "normal" conditions, has a variety of patterns and colors to choose from, and you can shape it similar to how you would work with wood. I'm not sure how planing would work on it, but as for sawing, sanding, routing and those types of operations wood working tools handle the material fine in my experience. As a bonus you can make it yourself fairly easily.

Andy, Freon tanks are the same size (and probably from the same manufacturer) as the disposable helium tanks used for blowing up party balloons. That's what I used for my latest forge. A single T burner is more than enough for that size of forge with a couple layers of 1 inch thick kaowool lining it. Assuming you put a pass through opening at the rear it's enough for forging fairly large blades. If used for heat treating, ten inches should be no problem for a simple steel. You may have to do a minor amount of pumping in and out to get an even heat before quenching, but nearly the entire blade will be heated with that size forge. I hammered out, and brought to critical for quenching, a kukri style blade with a cutting edge around 15 inches long and an overall length around 23 inches in my forge. If you wanted to ensure a more even heat then use more burners of smaller diameter (evenly spaced in the forge) and/or place a piece of pipe in the forge then put the blade inside that to bring it up to critical. If you don't have access to a tank then use something to make roughly the size you want. Sheet metal rolled up to the diameter you want and cut to length, stove pipe, etc. will work just fine. The nice thing about tanks is they are round, light, and usually thick enough (if only barely) to weld on things like burner mounts and legs, but there is more than one way to fasten those things in place. If you have something that is slightly bigger in diameter than you want and you have some spare kaowool you can always decrease the diameter 2 inches at a time by adding another layer of kaowool. There are lots of ways to get what you want once you figure out what that is.

I usually forge with my setup between 6 and 10 psi. With all naturally aspirated burners there is a minimum threshold where the velocity of the propane from the jet is too low to induce enough air to function properly regardless of anything else. With my burner in my forge around 2.5 psi is the lowest I can go and still have the burner function correctly. Yours may be different. In any case I don't think that has as much to do with the regulator as it does burner design and back pressure due to forge design. The regulator shows outlet pressure from 0 to about 45 psi IIRC, so that should be plenty for most of the burners I've seen in small propane forges.

I went with a regulator that has gauges for both tank pressure and outlet pressure. It's not necessary, but the price was decent and the POL is already installed on it. https://www.amazon.com/Devardi-Glass-Propane-Regulator-Beadmaking/dp/B0108FI4M2/ref=pd_sim_sbs_236_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=51Ge09vU4FL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=21YQVN4473XFHZZ6QACW So far so good with it.

Another thing you can do to help a little is use a piece of pipe laid on your fire which you will pass the blade through when bringing the blade up to critical. That will help even out the temperature a bit to reduce the likelihood of overheating the steel before quenching. Thin blades and small points are very easy to burn in a coal fire. Try to keep the meatier parts of the blade closer to the center of the fire and save heating up the tip until just before you quench. I'll echo jm here. You probably won't have to burn many blades in coal before deciding that propane might be a better option. Obviously people can and do make great blades with coal and charcoal, but a few seconds of inattention at the wrong time can destroy hours of work put into a blade. It is a disheartening feeling. Of course it's possible to destroy a blade with a propane forge as well, but once you get your temperature set where you want it, a minute or two of distraction is no longer disastrous.

Since you are using mild steel it might be easier to cool the areas you don't want to bend by pouring water on those areas after removing the bar from the fire.

Good deal! I'm looking forward to seeing them finished.

What Frosty said. I've experimented a little with something like you show and the flame burns inside it. The way that is held to your forge means most of the actual flame is burning before it enters your forge and is wasting energy heating that thing up and dumping some of that heat into the open air. I'm guessing that you can actually see part of that piece glow outside the forge when you get your forge up to temp. I defer to Mike and Frosty on all things NA burner, but I will share a short story here. I had trouble with a T burner I built blowing the flame away from the end of the burner tube until I got up to a good temp. This was to the point that it was annoying. Finally I took the tube over to the anvil and used the horn and light blows to gently and slightly flare the end of the burner tube that sticks into the forge. Hopefully I'm not making Frosty or Mike cringe too much here. The bottom line is that improved my flame stability significantly and I'm able to light the burner and bring the propane up to operating pressure immediately without any flameout after making that modification. Of course it's highly imprecise compared to other methods of adding flares and possibly decreased maximum performance a little, but for me the gain in flame stability was worth it. Any time I've tried to use a bell reducer or any other fitting on the end as a flare that has an abrupt change in diameter I've always ended up with the flame burning inside the fitting and experienced a decrease in performance (strangely enough just as Frosty and Mike said I would).

My 2 cents: If you have "slight" cracking before heat treat you will probably have more than slight cracking after the heat treatment. If it is possible to file or grind away all the cracked parts before heat treating I would recommend that strongly. Cracks don't get smaller when more stress is introduced. If you have already heat treated the blade that has cracks I would still recommend grinding out the cracks if possible unless you don't intend to actually use the blade. If it's just a reference point as your skill progresses then the crack is not as big of a deal. Since the pictures don't clearly show the cracking I can't offer any more suggestions than that at this time.

Ouch! I can't tell if the referee is doubled over from laughter or signalling a low blow on that one.

If your bowie doesn't win the challenge I want to see pics of the one that does. Identifiable repurposed materials always makes something more interesting to me. Fantastic work!

Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it.

Harry, another thing to keep in mind with O1 is that thin sections can air harden. I had one quickly dull a drill bit after forging and rough grind with no heat treat at all. I had to heat it back up to a dull glow and move it back through the dragon's breath and then just outside the flames a little bit at a time over 20 minutes or so to get it soft enough to drill. Also, if hardened correctly it will not drop below 60 hardness until about 500F or more when tempering.

Insulation is a key element of a propane forge. You need as much of the heat as possible to stay inside. Anything that allows heat to escape or to transfer to the outer shell is costing you money. Obviously you have to have enough of an opening to get stock in and let exhaust out, but beyond that it's money into the open air. You can look up the R value of clay vs. ceramic fiber blanket and make up your own mind on what makes sense there. The refractory liners typically used as hot face material inside a gas forge do not provide nearly the insulation of the fiber blanket. That's why the blankets are only coated internally with a thin layer of the harder materials. If the blanket could stand up better to the heat, mechanical damage, and if it didn't send lung-damaging particles into the air we probably wouldn't bother lining it with anything - just an IR reflective coating. Typically natural gas has far too low pressure to be used in a naturally aspirated burner. It can be used at low pressure, but some kind of forced air will be required. There are some threads on that topic as well.