Nobody Special

http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37293-roastingfire1/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37292-postroast/ One's from last night while roasting, the other is after roasting. Mostly very friable. Lightweight, breaks apart easy, even just using your hands.. Turned about the color of a brick. Some of it when it breaks still dark in the center, and has metallic glints. Don't think it got hot enough to be melty in places, but who knows. Some of it definitely didn't roast enough, probably needed stirring while roasting. That little bit I'll do again. Got a few vids on my youtube channel, benbaker1976. More to follow as smelt goes further. Tickled pink that it worked.

Welcome, I'm in Marietta, Ga. Come on in, cruise the site, stay awhile.

Sure, I know the bridge.....it's in Brooklyn. Like the skewer thing. Think I'm gonna make one for the next time I go camping. Makes a nice excuse for bragging rights/maybe scare up a commission. "Oh, where did you get that?" "Really? You made it?..........

http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37237-roasting/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/37236-ore/ So, sitting in the backyard, happy full of waffle house porkchops, sipping a cold one, and watching the side of my burn barrel glow as I roast about 10 gallons of hematite I picked up in North Georgia. Major iron mining area up until the War xxxxxxxxx. Then some XXXX named Grant or something apparantly burned the mining areas near Atlanta to the ground. Probably a pewter caster or something and got jealous....... Getting it ready for a first time solo iron bloom. Next step, let it cool, and bust it up tommorow. I'll post pics for that too so you can see how this part turns out.

It's a gorgeous piece of work.......provided I don't have to help you move it to a new campsite. :rolleyes:

If you take out the wife in said new convertible.......and she doesn't realize the old one is gonna be cannabilized for scrap.

Ft. Richardson maybe? Mmmm.....beats ft. drum, kinda. Bet ya got welders somewhere on post. Find the mechanics shop or the engineers. Seabees will do in a pinch. Steel scrap abounds if you look in the right places. At the very least, you can probably get bits of tie-rods and leaf spring, stuff like that. Avoid rebar. Also, make sure someone friendly in your nco support chain knows what you're doing. Unless you're fairly isolated, they can be very touchy about mucking about with fire, electricity, or......lets say trying to build a full size ballista on the back side of Taji near the boat graveyard without their knowledge. Not that I would have any experience with that..... :D

I remember seeing something in Andrew Weyger's book where he modified a wood bandsaw to cut metal by regearing it to run slow. Haven't tried it.

It's a lovely knife, but how exactly do you skin a ball bearing? :)

I worked with anthracite at the beginning because it was all i could get. Takes a lot more air than bitumous, harder to get started, and yes, it doesn't coke really or form the "cave". Air control was a big issue, too little and it went out or wouldn't start, too much and it stayed around welding heat all the time, which made for short reheats, but used up a lot of fuel and would burn the steel in a minute if you let it. Smaller anthracite is definitely easier (aside from breaking it up, which is a pain), no more than around an inch and a half across. For my money though, much better control with bitumous, and I use so much less fuel that that alone made up for the extra expense. For starting it, I like to use wadded up paper with some lump charcoal mixed in. Light, wait for the paper to catch good, turn on blower, add the charcoal, wait for it to catch good, add coal over the top. Should be ready to go in 1-2 minutes. Good luck!

Mmmm....Little fuzzy on what's going on with your furnace.....A tuyere is used to introduce gas to a furnace (in this case air). It slows the entry of the gases (if it's conical), and can affect how much oxygen is going into the blast, which in turn affects how much carbon is in the iron. Also, without a tuyere the entry of oxygen can create cool or hot spots. Also also.....You want something between whatever you're blowing from and your fire that doesn't melt. You should roast your ore prior to smelting, break it up, and pick out any obvious impurities. Alternate charges of charcoal and ore. (and it takes a LOT of charcoal). Basically, the slag melts and runs off, and the iron that's left falls down to the bottom and sinters (think of it like mini-spot welding from heat and pressure) sticking together into a big spongy mass. You let it sit in the slag for a bit, then tap the slag out of a drain hole and let it run out the side. Then pull apart the furnace and beat the bloom so that it welds into a nice solid piece, and so the remaining bits of slag and what not are beaten out of it. Get help, this part is doable alone, almost, but much more user friendly with.....well, friends. If you end up actually melting the iron, by getting it too hot, say especially by using something like coal, then the carbon in whatever you're burning will act as a flux, and when the ore melts, you'll have lots of carbon in the metal, ending up with good old cast iron. Hard, but very very brittle....basically not forgable

Much as it hurts me to use stock removal alone, why not just cut down a leaf spring? You should be able to easily get at least 150-200 lbs of pull depending on what you're using and the length of your draw, which'll probably be 8 inches or so. (Note the crossbow in my avatar pic, I think there's some more pics in my gallery). That should be sufficient to the point you'll darn near nead a goat's foot lever or cranequin to pull it. If you're just getting to spring tempering, this is NOT what you want to start on. Imagine what could happen if it cracked and split while you're tensioning it.....or worse yet, while under tension with a bodkin headed bolt in it ready to fire. They don't always just bend. Trust me on this one. The multi-part prod suggested by Charles works well too. Additionally, you might want a weaker bow while you're sorting out the technical bits. The really heavy ones can cause all kinds of additional problems, such as.....say, the nut splitting in two and flying apart, whilst and at the same time even, the string releases throwing your bolt forward when you're not ready for it.........not that I've experienced such a thing........... :)

I used ta could tell you for metal colors when I used the color to tell temps for casting. I THINK it was around 450-500 dark red, 500 to 850 or so med red, around 900 for cherry. orange at around 1200, moving to yellow at around 17 or 1800, white hot at around 21, 2200 and up. Also, color interpretation varies alot from person to person and depending on background light/shade.

Yurts are fun. Cordwood sheds are kinda cool too, and "relatively" cheap, but I don't know how much building experience you have.

It's a coal rake, the second thing I made, and looks a lot like mine. Good job on it and the hammer, and welcome to IFI.

I think it looks awesome....and I would need a nice fluffy cushion. If those are the ones I think they are, I like those trucks, saw them at a copper mine in Utah. One of the publicity picks showed an extended Dodge Ram parked sideways in the wheelwell.

Got something like tennis elbow using a hammer trying to use a 4 lb hammer first few months I tried forging. Lighter hammer and fixing the anvil height helped a lot.

Typical airman overcompensation. Just think, if he'd joined the Marines, all you'd have to make was a k-bar. Go Army. Beat Navy.

New crucible's cheaper then a trip to the doc . Don't muck about with 'em, Don't make em out of refractory and don't get cheap. Molten metal hurts. Not that I tried something like this.......... To some extent, if you're not melting high temp stuff like steel, you can make a steel crucible, works nicely for aluminum, but the walls have to be fairly thick, they eventually rust through, and you'll get a little bit of iron scale in whatever you melt. If you do try this, don't use them for too long, don't take it too hot, and don't try something with thin walls, no matter how many times you've seen some schmuck on youtube with a cutdown propane can or soup can.