MattBower

I was surprised about the pure O2 in glass furnaces, so I did some reading. It looks like oxy-fuel reduces NOx emissions (which is a cost savings for industry) and can improve efficiency in a number of ways (e.g., you can use smaller furnaces, or pack more material into existing furnaces and still achieve the target temp, and you can eliminate regenerators and recuperators). On the down side, O2 is expensive, more difficult to handle, and requires higher quality refractories. Unfortunately, most of those benefits aren't obviously applicable to a small-time smith, and most of the disadvantages probably are..

Can I make a suggestion for an alternative to seeds and sawdust? I know some mad scientist types who use ceramics to line casting furnaces, and they like to add styrofoam beads to the mix for insulation. Styrofoam is very low in density, so the beads burn out quickly and don't offgas nearly as much as the denser stuff. And they don't leave fluxes behind. Some guys shred styrofoam with a wire wheel, in a trash bag. I've tried it, and it was extremely messy.

I assume it's mild. I've never looked at one up close. The insides of water heaters definitely aren't stainless in my experience, so I assume the tube won't be, either.

Well, if you stick with a design that's already working for Jesus, I doubt you'll go far wrong. The tube down the center will probably work. (And it could have an advantage -- you can stuff some charcoal down it to maintain a nice reducing atmosphere around the blade as it heats.) Expect that tube to eventually burn out; i.e., don't make it too difficult for yourself to get back inside the furnace later and make repairs.

As far as I know, Jesus's HT forge is based on Don Fogg's drum design. (It looks very similar, and I think Don's came first, so . . . ) The reason for the horizontal orientation is that if you make it vertical, you set up thermal gradients in the forge -- hotter at the top, cooler at the bottom. (Salt pots are vertical, of course, but salts conduct heat so well that this isn't really a problem.) You want the whole blade at an even temp for the quench, and that pretty much dictates a horizontal orientation. If you look at Don's page on his HT forge, you can see that he put in internal supports for the blade to rest on while it's heating. These forges are not designed to get terribly hot; they're designed to achieve an even, controllable, relatively low temperature. (1500ish degrees F) That's why they only use one burner. And the orientation of that burner -- firing down the length of the forge, coming in along the bottom -- is an important feature. You'll also note that Don and Jesus both use only one layer of Kaowool. Again, this thing isn't designed to weld -- it's designed to maintain a nice, even temperature around 1500 degrees F. This type of forge -- furnace would be a better word -- isn't expected to encounter the abuse that a normal forge does. Temperatures will be relatively low and there should be no flux or mechanical wear to speak of. So the sealing coat over the blanket only needs to keep in the fibers -- nothing more. I'd suggest keeping any coating on the wool to an absolute minimum. If you add thermal mass in the form of dense refractories (even "lightweight" refractories like Kast-O-Lite), initial heat-up and subsequent temperature adjustments will only take longer. If you aren't planning on doing big blades for a while, you might want to start with a scaled-down version that's appropriate for the work you're currently doing. It'd be less expensive to build and run, and it'd be a much cheaper way to make any mistakes that you may end up making.

BEARING bronze, perhaps?

Swage blocks typically are cast iron, which make sense since casting is an easy way to reproduce all those odd shapes. Swage blocks also aren't expected to take the heavy beating that's dished out to anvils. Even so, I've seen quite a few old swage blocks that were riddled with the sort of chipping you see on cast iron ASOs. Ductile iron would probably give better service.

There aren't many books that i know of that are solely about building forges. It tends to be covered, if at all, in more general books on blacksmithing. (And of course there's a ton of information on the Internet, including this site.) But this one is about building naturally aspirated burners, and it includes detailed plans for building several types of forges and furnaces with those burners. http://www.amazon.co...s/dp/1879535203

Ah, now I can see it. I think you said the SS flare at the end doesn't come standard; is that right? If so, what's at the end of the tube?

If you're just doing stock removal, one or two normalizing cycles to relieve stress are probably all you need, since you won't have grain growth issues. "Heat to bright red" is way too subjective. Use a magnet for normalizing and hardening, as Steve suggests. Color perception is very individual and extremely dependent on ambient light. No need to wait a day between temper cycles. Just cool to ambient in between.

Phil's question is apt. A propane forge based on a wood stove would be huge, and would require a large investment in fuel and in materials. Are you certain you need it? I'd stay away from O2. It's expensive, unnecessary, complicates things, adds a bit of a danger factor, and won't necessarily be good for your steel or your refractory.

I've admitted this before, but I throw it out there again just for the record. WIth the relatively simple steels I work with, I don't bother annealing before doing stock removal. I just normalize a few times at the end of forging. Yes, I know I could get them softer if I annealed, But I also know that in some steels, my simple annealing methods could cause more problems than they solve.

I've always been interested in handcrafts from earlier days, starting with a fascination with the American frontier and colonial period when I was a boy. I used to read the Foxfire books, DC Waldorf's book on flintknapping, that sort of thing. But as a kid I just didn't have the discipline to follow up and really apply myself. I thought it was all neat stuff, but it all seemed way out of reach to me at the time. A few years ago those interests resurfaced, and I started flintknapping. Then I figured I ought to do something with the points I was making, so I made a few arrows. But what good are arrows by themselves? So pretty soon I was making selfbows (poorly). Then I thought about casting some bronze arrowheads, which in very short order led to forging knives, and then to some general blacksmithing. More than anything, what helped me get started was the Internet, which has made information on all those topics vastly more accessible than it was when I was a kid. I remember, at the age of 11 or so, trying to figure out knapping with a small piece of flint from a Boy Scout firestarting kit, an antler tine, and D.C. Waldorf's book. I didn't get it, and I didn't know anyone I could ask to clarify things for me. Today that wouldn't happen, because I have Internet access. There are YouTube videos, pay downloads, forums, read-only websites, you name it. The same goes for blacksmithing -- and tanning, spinning, weaving, and just about any other craft you can think of. There aren't a lot of people who know how to do most of those things by hand anymore, but it's much easier now for those who have the knowledge to share it with those who want it. The Internet facilitates diffuse groups of individuals with unusual interests finding one another to share those interests, whereas doing that in the real world could be much more difficult. That's a bad thing as applied to, say, "lone wolf" al Qaeda wannabes, but I it's a good thing for this craft. That's not to say that the Internet is responsible for all of it. Some of the guys above were in at the ground floor of the resurgence of smithing in this country, and it started well before the Internet became a force. But I suspect they are the lucky ones. My guess is that there are quite a few folks in their generation who would've taken up smithing under the right circumstances, but never did because they weren't exposed to it or couldn't easily find guidance. Books helped me too, of course. My local bookstore had The Complete Modern Blacksmith by Alexander Weygers, and a used bookstore had Alex Bealer's The Art of Blacksmithing. I learned a lot from those, and I've bought others since. But I learned even more by applying things I read in books to discussions with others. Over the past couple years I've also joined a local smithing guild, and I've learned a lot from those guys, too. But that happened well after I had already built a couple forges, improvised an anvil, and started banging on steel.

I agree. I still think it's a bad habit, though, because it creates confusion -- especially among new guys. There's wrought iron, cast iron, "iron" (the element, Fe), and "iron" (a more or less slang term for steel which, as you suggest, probably came down to us from the days when smiths forged wrought iron). When I was starting out, it took me months to figure out what all those terms refer to. And they can sometimes cause confusion even among folks who know the differences! Then there's also the fact that some wrought iron is quite "steely." There's no standard carbon content for wrought iron, and some contains enough carbon to qualify as medium or high carbon steel in modern parlance! :)

This is a matter of terminology. Pandrol calls what they make "e-clips." Among manufacturers, the term "rail anchor" seems to refer to these: A while back I emailed one of the manufacturers of those things. According to that manufacturer, there are only two companies in the U.S. currently making them. The "1040-1060" comment, above, refers to these. That info fits with the two anchors (both of the general style shown above) that I have had analyzed. YMMV.

It is all part of the greater societal movement toward specialization, industrialization, and automation. Skilled labor became less and less cost effective. Smithing was formerly a necessary trade to produce the basic necessities of civilized life. Since its resurgence it has been a somewhat different animal. Those who make a living at it serve high end niche markets, mostly. For most, like me, it is just a hobby.

No, sorry, I do see those pictures. I was looking for a different angle. I'm wondering about the shape of the mixing tube. Straight, or flared? It looks straight, but I can't be sure.

I cast some brass ingots in a thin steel muffin tin. Sure enough, the brass brazed itself to the steel tin quite nicely.

They do, Grant? I can't find the darned thing there. I don't plan to buy it, but I wouldn't mind a good look at it.

I love DIY solutions, sometimes even when they don't really make financial sense. But a pair of LARGE pillow block bearings from Surplus Center will cost you about $25 plus shipping. That's $25 total, for two bearings -- not $25 each. Compared to the cost of getting yourself set up to cast brass or bronze, and all the failures you're likely to experience learning to successfully cast decent bearings, $25 is a steal. You'd be hard pressed to buy a decent crucible of sufficient size for $25. (And for brass and bronze you really should be using a proper ceramic crucible, not a homemade steel job. It's possible to make your own ceramic crucibles, but there's an initial cost and learning curve in doing that, too.) Just my $0.02. :)

Say, on your press there, what's the distance from the bottom of the jack to the bottom surface of the upper cross-member?

Welcome. Smithing is alive and well in Virginia, so you're in a pretty good spot for a beginner. I'm about 90 minutes north of you, and I know quite a few smiths in this area. There's also a pretty active guild in the Richmond area.

The way I do that is to wrap the wrought to form the eye, then start welding in front of the eye and moving toward the bit. Leave sufficient unwelded wrought to form "flaps" that will totally envelop your bit. Shape the bit. Clean the bit, wire brush the wrought "flaps," heat and flux them both with borax. Heat the "flaps" good and hot, then quickly slip the bit in place and close up the fronts of the flaps to mechanically hold the bit in place. They should wrap around the front of the bit, so it's completely encased in wrought iron except at the very ends. That, plus a lot of flux, will help protect the bit at welding heat. (Remember, this is just one way to do it.) Flux it some more, then stick it back in the fire, get the whole bit end up to a smoky yellow, and start welding. Work from the center of the bit toward the edges to drive the flux out the open ends. Finish forging the bit end of the hawk. After you're done, trim or grind back the end of the hawk to expose the steel bit. The lower the carbon content of your bit, the closer the welding temp will be to that of wrought iron. So it wouldn't hurt to use something in, say, the 60 point carbon range for the bit.

Yeah, it depends on what you're trying to make. I have welded high carbon bits into wrought iron tomahawk heads, and have made san mai laminate with wrought iron on the outside and HC in the center. It's even possible to carburize your wrought iron to make it steely. There are many different techniques.

It's common for single burner forges to have a hot spot in front of the burner. Some people bring the burner in on a tangent to create a swirling action and distribute the heat better. But most seem to just go ahead and use them with the hot spot. I'm not sure I understand why you can't weld in it as-is. If you're melting steel, you're definitely getting it hot enough to weld. What exactly is the problem? With that said, I do have a few questions about your forge. First, it looks like it's lined with castable refractory alone -- no wool of any kind. Second, it looks like there's no hole in the back to pass long work through. Am I correct about both of those observations? Third, are you using some kind of door on the front?