Nobody Special

I absolutely agree, vegetable or olive oil goes nasty after too long......but my stuff doesn't usually sit that long, my treasured carbon steel knives especially (and first real knife I made was one). While I like beeswax (out of the comb, better than chewing gum any day of the week), not sure I'd like to experience the flavor of mineral oil. I try not to use anything I wouldn't want in my food. If it goes bitter, I just wash and reoil. Some chefs (my cousin for one) won't even use a carbon knife on the day it's been washed and re-oiled, says it affects the flavor. On the other hand, if I was selling it, I might use something else. Big difference between something I want to sit on display, get handled by customers, or take to a show, and something that's gonna get greasy, hot, wet, washed and reoiled in my kitchen three or four times a week.

Probably, there's a video somewhere of him and a few others making a huge bloom on a tatara type furnace, and i think it was mostly clay lining firebrick.

All my forks and spoons are stainless, but the carbon steel knives in my kitchen usually get olive oil. If low on that, I use a little bit of heated shortening, like I use on my cast iron dutch oven. Wipe off the excess on either. If you're trying to sell 'em, some of the common kitchen oils give them a slightly yellow or green tinge.

Some, but more like specks and trickles here and there in the black/grey of the bloom rather than looking like a piece of ground metal. I think Steve's right and it didn't cook hot enough/long enough, and only partially extracted the iron. Looked like...i dunno, when you get veins of impurities running in small lines in a rock? There was definitely shiny metal, but it wasn't the main body of the ground bits. Sigh..........chalk it up to a learning experience, and know that I won't have to look for as much ore for next time. Still was fun, and a cool way to waste a lot of man-hours/charcoal. Gotta find someone close that's done it and get with them. Think I'll do something simple today. Nails, or twists on bottle openers or something. Keep my hand in, but something that's easy enough i feel like i did something successfully.

Or maybe I'm completely wrong. Consolidating not going well. Very crumbly. Powers that be think I may not have cooked it hot enough, long enough. Spark test gave very short sparks, mostly orange, some pieces with a few yellow. Little to no forking. Might be not doing it right, might be didn't extract enough and needs to be saved and rerun in next batch. Sigh............I need a drink.

Don't they rain from the heavens in pennsylvania anyways? If you really want them coming down, you have to go to an anvil firing competition. :P

I'm military, and I don't like Micarta..........prefer, wood, leather, antler, metal, even 550 cord. But then, I'm not buying mine! The person who pays is often right, right? Anyways, love the knife.

If I ever find one for that price......you'll be the second person I tell. (first will be "honey! you'll never believe the deal I got on this anvil!!!). I recommend saving, earning, and eventually pass the word to EVERYONE that you're looking. Sucks to wait, but 20 bucks a month would still get you a 100 lb anvil in less than a year. My wife makes me set limits and put a little aside every month. I can earn more for my hobbies, but it has to be honest profit. So....say, if I make a knife and sell it for 100 bucks, I still have to subtract the coal. And the gas I spent picking up the scrap metal. And the belt I bought for the grinding. Darn her and her realistic goals. Don't know where she got it from.....not like I made her do the same thing with her chicken hatchery when she started it...... :D Also, if we're buying amphibious, pink, A10s, why not make it a convertible? Or sit on a foldout hovercraft instead of floaties. With a T-72 on a hovercraft for a lifeboat!

Hook the hair dryer up to a rheostat. (get a dimmer switch at hardware store). Get someone more electrically inclined than me to help. Cheap fix for now. Looks nice, I'd say, deeper pot for charcoal, and if you're just starting and using mostly that 4 lb hammer, consider switching to something lighter, otherwise you'll get tired out, won't move as much iron, and get tennis elbow. (not that I did exactly the same thing or something........) You could start with something like a 1.5 or 2 lb ballpein, or tractor supply has a 2 lb crosspein for around 10 bucks. If you're looking for forging equipment, send me a message, I've run into a couple of tool hoarders....I mean sellers up in Acworth or on the south side of Atlanta (I'm over in Marietta), and I'll pass you their contact info. They're not super cheap, but it beats looking on craigslist to find people selling 4 inch post vices for 200 dollars (got mine for 40). There's also a farrier supply up in Jasper that's about the best deal on bitumous coal I've found for the area. Burns well, good control of the fire. Don't even bother fooling around with anthracite. You'd be better off with the charcoal. Good luck! If I can ever get off on the right weekend, hope I'll see you at one of the Alex Bealer meetings.

Still haven't spark tested or cut one open (work plus household stuff), but did run through with a magnet, and learned a little I think. One - some of the heavy black stuff I thought was iron, ain't. Slag. Doesn't look like the stuff I tapped, but definitely much weaker magnetic attraction than the "good iron". Sure they've got wrought iron bits stuck in them, and I'll recycle them. Some of the slag....well, looks like slag. Like a clinker does sometimes, or a piece left over from casting copper. Runny. Two - The wrought iron looks like one of two things, either like coral, or like the extra cement you get around the edge of foundations. I think part of the variance comes from the size of the ore I crushed, and some, by how much slag is helping hold it together. You can definitely tell the stuff that was fines in the ore (cement looking) from what was the larger pieces (coral). I generally tried to crush about the size of a dime or smaller, but since I wasn't sifting, some the pieces were about up to the size of a nickel. Three - What I think is cast iron. Hard to describe......more solid than the wrought, but tended to be in small chunks. Some of it looks very much like the thick, solid slag, but has more of a grain, and definitely has a strong attraction to the magnet. Four - Even after sorting out the non-magnetic slaggy bits, got a lot yield for a first. I don't think it's anything I did right, I think it was due to using the nice, hi-yield red/brown hematite that brought iron mining to this area rather than something like bog ore or a lower yielding limonite. I know. Descriptions without pics. Well, tonight I plan to spark it and start playing with it on the fire. Not necessarily in that order. Pics to follow. Really. No dealing with chickens or home maintenance tonight. Also, Frosty, I've seen several documentaries on the subject. Beautiful and mind boggling. The one's I've seen claim they can grade the bloom pieces' carbon content, with a very high degree of accuracy just by looking at them. I was also impressed by the level of specialization and teamwork used for every aspect of the sword making process. Not there yet. Analogy? I'm to them like a 13th century guy who's read a couple of books by Galen and the other Greeks, and wants to cut up cadavers to see how the body works next to a modern neurosurgeon. Just feeling my way along.

Never had good luck in casting with borax. But I was using it mostly for flux. Got better results with silica sand, a little charcoal (shortly before casting), or my personal favorite, crushed oyster shell from the feed store (used to give chickens calcium).

I used to use cut down fire extinguishers (the thin ones) for low temp stuff. Fair warning, steel will oxidize, eventually leading to failure, getting occaisional rust flakes in your stuff, and you should always be uber cautious about cutting into the walls of anything that's been pressurized or held chemicals. I think you would have a much greater fail rate in a forge rather than a furnace because temp control would be harder, and there would be a more oxidizing flame on the steel. I heard they used to use thick walled cast iron for brass? Dunno. Ceramic like fused silica is definitely a good way to go. I've had really bad luck with homemade ceramic or refractory ones, and you absolutely DON'T want one to break at a crucial moment. Burns from aluminum at 1400 degrees makes for bad owies. What kind of forge are you using? If propane, probably great for this, if coal, you might be better off making a "coffee can" furnace. Also, hi from Marietta. :D

Paper, or maybe pine straw, then charcoal, turn on air. As charcoal catches well, add coal. Important what kind of coal you're using. Much easier with coke or bitumous than anthracite.

So final results? Dunno, 30 lbs or so bloom. Not sure in some cases where slag ends and bloom begins. Wife's chicken customers showed up unannounced at exactly the climatic moment. Drove my dog insane, so had to deal with them. Struck the bloom too cold after they left, and broke it into pieces. Got some good bits left. Letting cool, and wait until tommorow to play with bits and pieces. Might have been more solid if I'd recycled slag more, but got a thunderstorm in the middle, and the thermal shock of the cold rain on the hot clay damaged the walls to the point where it was held together with duct tape, jb weld, and silly string, so only recycled once. Here's some pics. Also posted video on my youtube channel, benbaker1976. Thanks for help, advice, and comments! http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37338-bloom1/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37339-bloom2/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37340-bloom3/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37341-bloom4/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37342-bloom5/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37343-bloom6/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37344-bloom7/

Tuyere is definitely too small, unblocking at every charge now or it won't keep at yellow heat. Still, going well, and looks like I'll run out of ore before I run out of charcoal. About 1.5 hrs in, and used up about 3 gallons of ore out of the 8 or nine I have.

Smelt in progress!!!!!!!! Awesome! Pics to follow. Going well so far, although I think the tuyere's too small, had to unblock it by third charge of ore. Smoothed as best I could, but still pretty rough and tended to crack after it was fired. I think having the narrower mouth tapering to a wider base is making a big difference. About every 5 minutes or so, the ore/charcoal visibly drops a little.

I will look doc, thanks! Would tonight but just staying up long enough to fire up the half of the furnace I got done today. The inevitable chicken based emergency came up before I could finish, and it's supposed to rain tommorow, possibly while I'm at work, so thought I'd fire what I had and harden it up some for what it's worth before the rain and try to cover it if I can tommorow. Here's some pics, rock and earth base. Built on a box-wire frame. About 14 inches i.d. at bottom, gonna be about 12 at the top, 30 inches tall, and tuyere is black pipe set at 10 inches, at around a 20 degree angle. Filled the slag hole while forming with a bit of log so that if it got stuck I could burn it out. Also a short video of the fire on my youtube channel, benbaker1976. http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37333-furnace1/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37334-furnace2/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37335-furnace3/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37336-furnace4/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37337-furnace5/