Nobody Special

A lot prettier than my first. (pretty sure I burned that one to hide my shame, didn't I? I must of.....) Story behind the webhandle? (I saw it and that song knock 3 times on the pipes has been running through my head for the last 10 minutes). Keep up the good work! B)

Had a nice weekend and got some hours in on the forge. Amongst the projects: - fixed the parts for a messed up dragon doorknocker - forged some copper wings for it. (one part will take soldering) - toyed with forging aluminum for the first time - modified a hammer into a diagonal peen - just barely began a knife from a little chunk of file (got tired, didn't finish) - made an oogly nail header and a few nails - couple of new punches - did some hammer and hardy tool holders for my stump, - straightened and started grinding/filing a ballpeen tomahawk. (yeah, it's got some fuller marks to take out, but hey, it's a first.) - worked on my bulldog bottle openers, definitely better. They ain't perfect, but they're mine. Also spent some time with the umm, whatta ya call 'em....wife and kids? I'll can always sleep when I'm dead. How was your weekend?

Incas supposedly cast an alloy of platinum and gold by grinding up platinum to a near powder and casting gold around it or sintering the two together. I've had other metals embedded in castings before, but never on purpose. Sounds fun.

Would it help if we sang it through our nose whilst playing open chord harmonica?

I like light paper, add a handful of lump charcoal (homemade, naturally :) ), turn on blower, add coked material. Ready to forge in about a minute or two. I asked for coal for Christmas too.....and a bigger anvil, and a welder, and a ..........

Sure ya can, you just go to the hardware store and look for a 30 gallon metal trash can. The tricky part is finding one that's not so wide it doesn't leave space inside your 55 gallon barrel................

http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/36989-cam00121/ 's a purple hairdryer now instead of blue, but ya get the idea. Also added a rheostat since. http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37339-bloom2/ Also got used in my first bloomery attempt. http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37666-furnace2/ And my casting furnace. It's silly, but it pushes more than enough air, (too much before added the rheostat really) and cost all of 10 bucks, so why not?

Maybe he saw an American anvil marked with weight and doesn't know the difference?

Good luck with blademaking. First diclaimer, I am NOT anywhere in the league of Rich, Steve Sells, or a real, professional type, nor can I say things better than they already have a hundred times. Strictly a hobbiest..... That said, old spring leads to heartbreak. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't, it's inevitably after you've got entirely too much time and emotional investment in it. The cracks are already there. During normal use and abuse? Takes a long time to find 'em or for complete failure. Heat, cooling, whacking it with a hammer? It might be softer if annealed or normalized, but they'll still come out to play. And it sucks....Think of a cracked porcelein piece. It's still cohesive, still hard, but when it takes a whack or a drop a new one would survive.... Short version, have some fun, stay safe, "new" springs are less likely to put a crimp in your day, and don't be afraid to make a pile of knife shaped objects. (stop looking at mine, those early letter openener type things are embarrasing!) For hobby guys, failure is an option and a learning opportunity. Read up, in the knife making lessons on here and elsewhere.

Whee! Casting furnace worked GREAT! Fired it up low for about 10 minutes to see if the refractory was gonna pop, then decided forget it. Turned the air off, put in a gallon or so of lump charcoal, looked around.....crap. Didn't make a crucible. One quick improvised steel crucible later, added a pound or so of aluminum, turned the air back up........and two or three minutes later I saw aluminum running out the drain on bottom. Whoops. Bottom of the steel crucible melted away. Guess it was a a little warmer than I thought........ :D I'm thinking maybe tommorow a better crucible, turn the air down a little and melt some copper or brass.

Sigh, next year I hope. Still was awesome meeting Stan and Griley on the pre-hammer tour. Any pics?

Well, I've got a perfectly good anvil. No homemade jobbies, but if you wanna count all the things I've beat metal on, there's: Rocks - Large, igneous, and plenty of 'em in the backyard RR track - Got a bit, and it's convenient sometime when you want a bend a certain way Worthless engine block - cast iron, but better than nuttin', and some unique shapes. Vise - Bench vise has a little table and horn on the back, why not? Doesn't take a beating, but okay for little stuff. Logs - Used 'em for swaging, bending, like 'em sometimes for punching. Nice when you don't want to put hammer marks in the work Hammerhead - weld a spike onto a broken sledge, and gotta kinda of a stake anvil.....ish. guess you could use one that's not broken. Usual cautions about whacking a hammer with a hammer. Basically, whatever fits the purpose and the shape I needed at the time.

Don't know if this helps much, but....flip a chalice over and you've got a bell shape, so it might. Saw it a month or so back.

Starting with some of my homemade lump charcoal and forced air (you guessed it, a hairdryer on a rheostat). Next month probably build a naturally aspirated propane burner. Had built one before, but my ex-wife "misplaced" it. S'alright, after reading some of Frosty's posts on them,I think I can do a better one this time. I'll make a couple of steel crucibles to start and will be ordering some fused silica. (money's tight the last six weeks, ac went out, minor wreck, tire went, septic stopped up......and on and on.......)

Well, Lionel's recipe was take, by volume, 1.5 parts portland, 2 parts sand, 1.5 parts perlite, mix well dry, then mix in another 2 parts fireclay, then add water a little at a time until well mixed into mixture, not a lot of water, you don't want it soupy. I've tried it and it worked fine for casting. Definitely not as well as an industrial refractory, but it had the distinct advantage of being cheap and the parts coming in 100 lb bags, so patching, if needed (rarely in my case) was also cheap. Most of my casting was aluminum temps or lower, but it worked fine with brass or bronze........but if you let it go much hotter than needed for that, the portland starts to slag out of it a little, and it eventually will need patching. Definitely wouldn't recommend it for playing much with steel. It also eventually got crumbly and had to be replaced after a couple of years, but again, was cheap and easy. I'm certain it's less efficient than industrial stuff and kaowool overall, but I can always go thicker (of course the mix takes longer than kaowool to heat up and cool down), and I only do occaisional casting, not using it on a consistent basis. Basically it's a backyard hobby furnace, it works pretty good, and it can afford not to work perfectly. If I was doing a lot of casting, or going big, I'd probably spring for the good stuff. Only bad experience was failure to ram the mix properly the very first time I tried it, left a little pocket that water pooled in, fired it up nice and slow after it had cured four or five days......and BAM!!!!!! blew a small hole in the side. (it was covered, and i had put a little distance so no harm done except for the heart attack) Easily patched and back up and running. My version (ran out of dang perlite so tried this) was to take out the perlite, and add back in around 1 part sawdust or very small wood shavings. (I read in a couple of homemade versions that you could do this and it would burn out, leaving it honeycombed and the miniscules holes/air pockets served to insulate the mix somewhat. I have no idea if it worked the way it was explained, but it didn't blow up and the refractory worked okay the last time i tried it. Way too long of a response, but I anticipate the "you can't use the cheap crud" comments coming out of the woodwork.

Got the casting bug again this weekend. Thought I'd throw together a little "coffee can" furnace in a little metal drum, about 7 gallons. Using lump charcoal to start, then probably build a naturally aspirated burner when cash flow improves. (Wish I'd read frosty's forum comments on them before my last one. It worked but bet I could have done a lot better.) Mud goes in tommorow. Variation on the backyard metal caster recipe that has worked well for me in the past. I know, could spend the money on satanite and kaowool, but I LIKE this one, and it worked fine without much patching. In fact, it's my forge liner now. Refractory's thick, about 2.5 or 3 inches, haven't decided, so the chamber will be 8 inches across by 10 high. Big enough for my level of casting. Also a picture of my dog, Charlie, who was unimpressed by all of this.

Umm, Thomas Powers' second line. It's hard trying to pick it up on your own. Not all ore is magnetic before roasting. Can try historical mining areas. They used to mine bog iron around Lake Massapoag and around Boston.

Trouble in Marietta? Nope. Like searching for anvils. Took me awhile to find it, then when I did finally find a source, suddenly it was everywhere. I buy mine at a farrier supply about 40 minutes north of here in Jasper, Ga. I don't buy it by the half-ton/ton, so about 120 bucks to fill a 55 gallon drum. I can get anthracite heating coal at feed and seed around 7 bucks for a 50 lb bag and bust it up, but it's tougher to get lit, takes more oxygen, and burns a lot hotter and faster, so the "more expensive" bitumous is far cheaper in the long run. Plus the anthracite doesn't really coke, so it moves differently, like can't really form a "cave" when you're forge welding and with the extra air it seems more oxidizing, less reducing so more scale, etc. Works if you've got nothing else going. I've also found bitumous at some heating supply places and welding supplies around Atlanta, even occaisionally guys that buy several tons up north and haul it back to sell on craigslist up around Ringgold, Ga. I would bet somebody has to have it in Pennsacola. I've played a bit with charcoal, it's really not that much effort, 'cept for busting up the wood, and breaking up large charcoal chunks, and everything I've put in the drum I got for free. (well, in a couple of cases less the cost of the used chainsaw I used to cut up the free firewood from a tree someone cut down and wanted hauled off plus a little gas.) Watching it burn and drinking a cold one's a nice way to spend an evening, and if you're not in a uber-urban area, you can burn off several barrels at once!

Turning a common piece of scrap or trash into something different, and unique. Trying something new and knowing that it's okay, if not even expected for me to screw it up the first time.. If it comes out okay, even better.

If all else fails, you can always make charcoal. Lots and lots and lots of charcoal. Put some holes on bottom of a 55 gal drum, stand on cinderblocks, light a fire in the bottom. Add wood. Add more wood. (preferably hardwood, but scrap wood'll work, just less dense.) Prop lid open a couple of inches with a brick, a rock, or as the side of the MRE wrapper famously says, "or something". When the smoke (and there's a lot of it at first) dramatically changes color/more or less goes away in about an hour- ish....., shut top, take off of cinderblocks. Put cinderblocks on lid. Don't get burned by hot can or flames shooting out of bottom, especially while taking off the cinderblocks. (alternately, can dig a hole under it instead of propping up, then cover edges later). Spread sand around the bottom edged to prevent air getting in. And wait a day to open. If it relights on opening, soak it with water. Even if you only end up with around 15 gallons, it's easy to do, and adds up fast. Made around 90 gallons that way this summer for a bloom. Easy peasy. Very little smoke in da forge. Even in a coal fire, I like to toss in a handful over the paper when I light it to get it started easier. Don't like my way, lots of other fun ones floating around the site and the interweb. Retorts are fun too.

Even if they managed drilling, still would have lost more of what would have been an extremely rare material, no? This way would have lost some to scale, but not as much I would think. Remind me to try it with "period" tools and see, if I ever get that incredibly bored and need something that tedious to do.

Flattening and rivetting the rings makes a stronger maille, and looks cool. Tedious, but fun. Good luck!

Very cool. I'm not used to thinking of a hammer as a fine, finished piece with decoration. May have to upgrade the looks on some of my tools now. Is there an advantage of having a downturned peen?