Nobody Special

Two weeks? Even without a forge....get a map torch and get busy man!

Well, it was. Finally gave in and stopped busting up cheap anthracite heating coal. Drove just left of the middle of nowhere, paid twice as much for bitumous, drove it home and fired it up.

I think I'm in love.

Very different animal. I hadn't played with it in yrs, and forgot how it clumps together.  My normal fan setting was way, way too much air, and after I turned it down, I used less than half as much coal to get the same amount of work done.

Much cooler fire, but it gave me way more control, and I could get it going strong just by moving the coke around, didn't really have to change the air speed.

The only real down side was that my tuyere screen melted. I've been using a piece of stainless steel sawblade cut to shape and drilled with a bunch of 1/4" holes for over two years.  I guess the lower air speeds allowed it to heat up more. Maybe I'll just put some rod through the pipe. Hmmmm.

Anyway, I thought while I got used to the new stuff, I'd try to make something that would be hard to mess up. So, when I finished messing that up, I made this. Sorta Dubliners/Dropkick Murphys' St. Patricks Day theme.  It's just an old triangle, goes jingle jangle, all along the banks of the Royal Canal. :)  :)

I'll definitely grab them next chance I get. Guess some depends on what you define as medieval. Post-Roman? Frankish? Charles Martel period? I would have thought of it as running later than the Norse invasions. Say, maybe til third crusade plus about 100 yrs?

Besides, aside from switching to wedge rivets, I thought this stuff stayed pretty well in use with or without plate until they started going to brigandines and such with the advancements made in arquebusses. Could be wrong, I think I remember that more from research while looking to make an matchlock than reading on armor. Wanted to make a matchlock......rifled to fire minie balls as a joke. Gave it up as beyond my engineering skills after looking at how hard hand cutting the rifling would be.

Think I'm going to start looking more up on logistics of medieval mining/metal trade.

Probably not. But who would they be working for? Set up under a patron? Have a factorage? I would think if you went back to the Romans they'd have military artisans doing it, but not really sure about how the logistics worked later.

Also don't really know, what was the medieval process for obtaining an order of ingots/billets/rod? Would have to be mine to nearby bloomery, maybe then milled with water powered drop hammers? Did they use factors to arrange sales?  Started reading De res metallica about a million years ago, must be around here somewhere.......

Thanks for the post, had to run last night. I know I'll be using this.

It's better than mine, and mine gets me by. Wouldn't know about prices down yonder.

Ended up at Georgia Farrier Supply in Jasper, Ga.  Supposed to be 39 cents a lb, for metallurgical bitumous, which is a little high for the area, but not a lot, and I'm pretty sure I ended up with more weight than I was charged for. Nice folks. Found coal for as low as 15$ per 50# in Dalton, but would have cost me as much or more in gas.

Oh, too that one post, the welding supply had it for 17, 16 if you buy a 1000 lbs, but even though the drive was only 10 miles further, the route would have added too much time round trip, and didn't have time today.  May hit them next time if I'm headed that way for something.

Kid's birthday tommorow, looking forward to trying this stuff out Friday. Looks great, and I don't have to bust it up for once.

I like the square one, and probably could cobble something out of duct work. Might be a bit thin, but would be cheap. On the other hand, washers/dryers/wheelbarrows goes with the home tools/appliance theme. :)

Calling them in the morning. Not that far in distance, but supposed to be about an hour and a half away. I can run pretty small material, I used a cutdown piece of stainless skillsaw blade for a grate with a bunch of 1/4" holes in them.

Might have to rivet instead of weld, but I could probably do this. Not sure about shade though.

Thank God I'd only have to make a bazillion rings and rivet them. Get to skip the really hard steps, mine iron, make bloom. Hammer bloom into ingots, forge weld to billet, draw out to rod. Draw rod to wire annealing about a bazillion times. Yeesh.

Used to draw halfnium/zirc/nickel ti with modern machines at a metal plant in Huntsville and that was passing hard.

My one experience with a guy trying to draw it from rod, nightmarish. I've heard, may be urban legend, that making wire then clipping and shaping to make individual nails used to be so bad that when people moved, they'd burn down buildings to get them back.

Lovely, lovely. I'm insanely jealous. Heavier than I can swing for extended periods though. Last time I swung a 10# for long I was breaking up a concrete porch and had to stop every 15 minutes or so. 12# would kill me.

So, this is my small, portable forge in an upside down lawnmower. Laugh all you want, it was meant to be funny and its worked for the last two years. However I'm tired of breathing smoke and sneezing black, and since I work outside a lot, I'd like some shade to tell the color of the metal by when it's sunny.

I'm thinking of a hood as a possible project this weekend. Since it's outside and moved about from time to time, it'll probably have to set on the refractory surface. Any ideas? Suggestions?

1) Name - Ben Baker
2) Location - Marietta, Ga.
3) What type blacksmithing do you do, what do you make?  Hobby level stuff, tongs, knives, hooks, parts for a crossbow I made, sometimes stuff for people I work with in Army, like spearhead as part of going away present.
4) How and when did you get started in blacksmithing? I did casting for a few years, then lost my furnace in a move to a new duty station.  When I started back in metal working, I decided to final give forging a try.  I collect trivia, history, and shiny interesting hobbies, distance running, cross-stitch, brewing, old cars, beekeeping, more brewing, knitting, casting, still more brewing......
5) What object or thing did you use as your first anvil? Erm, an anvil? Got a chinese knockoff at a flea market, 55#s, steel hardened face welded to it.  Want to get a new one, but I've been using it for a couple of years and it works fine. Just not very big.
6) Tell us about your first forge, hole in the ground, camp fire, brake drum, stacked bricks.  Definite hole in the ground, with coal and a blow dryer running through a steel pipe.  Now I'm using a modified upside down lawnmower, with a brake disc for a firepot, 3 inch pipe for the blower and ash dump, and homemade refractory.
7) Who assisted you or encouraged you in the craft?  Mostly youtube. Lots and lots of youtube, plus reading everything I could find on the subject. Self taught, so I occaisionally mess up. 
8) What event changed your attitude about blacksmithing?  Well.......breaking the tang off of my first try at a gladius darkened my attitude for awhile, but mostly I've always thought it's awesome, besides,  I shouldn't have lost my temper and thrown it, even if my dog WAS tearing up my entire crop of corn for the season. I swear I'd kill that dog if I didn't love him so darn much. 
9) What tool has changed or made your life easier in the shop? The internet.  Also, switching to a lighter hammer made all the difference in the world.  I tried starting off with a 4# farrier hammer. Ouch. Found a 2.5# at a yardsale and have been loving life ever since.
10) What advice would you give those starting out in blacksmithing?  Be open to advice....from people that have experience. Don't worry so much about messing up, it's a chance to learn. Even if it hurts. Have fun.
11) What advice would you give those already involved in blacksmithing? I know and recognize that you are the mighty Vulcan, smith of the gods, re-incarnate on Earth. You have been there, and done that. You have the t-shirt. Almighty One, please help without crushing my ego too much.
12) What are some of the interesting things that have happened to you in your life as a blacksmith?   Watching my kids get interested in it. Impressing my friends. Going to church and hearing a crunching noise while walking and realizing that the night before I had melted hot coals or slag into the soles of my shoes by stepping on them......
 

Every time I try to get to that con, the army gets in the way. Seen a few demonstrations. Gambesons and boiled leather seams to spread the load out well and prevent penetration. A lot of the time, there was a half inch or so of penetration, but the rings trapped any points small enough to penetrate.

Mostly just wanted some kind of quantitative data on strength. Its talked about a lot, but little in the way of numbers. Wanted something like the icepick tests on the boron silicate plates in the iba flack jackets.

Also, I know a 60 lb bow is not light for this day and age, and yes, doing the rivets is horribly time consuming.

Ouch. Looks like my first try at a cutoff hardy. Good luck!


Well, looks like a hammer. But you get what I mean.

So, about two weekends ago, I got stuck at home with a bunch of sick kids. So, no going outside to play with fire and iron. Picture sad emoticon here.  Having that limitation decided to try my hand at making chainmail.

The process seemed simple enough, once I found a couple of youtube flicks and an Instructables. Take wire, wrap it on a mandrel, cut, anneal, punch little tiny holes.....without losing your temper, and rivet.

But aha!!! Contraversy between diehard recreationist fanatics, and semi-lazy fantasy builders (I mean, you really, really can't call someone who puts together 15,000 rings completely lazy, even if they're butted, pre-made, or plastic).  Also, I've been annoyed for years by tv shows whacking a butted mail shirt with an axe/bodkin arrowhead/sword/war hammer and saying they were worthless after they opened huge rents in the mail.

So, after seeing lots of hearsay about it being 10-20 times stronger when rivetted, with no supporting data, I decided to test individual rings to failure to find out what they'd do.

My rings, less the butted, unflattened wire. (well, overlapped, but still)

I suspended the rings from 550 cord, with the overlap centered on the side (90 degrees from the cords).  On the bottom, another piece of 550 cord, going to a bucket. Bucket was to be filled until the ring was open, but all of them were destroyed when it finally did open.

Results?

Butted wire -16 gauge black wire, wrapped around a 9/16 inch mandrel, cut with mild overlap, no annealing

Came apart at 6 lbs, 1 oz. (didn't have to get past using pennies for weight)

Rivetted wire - same as butted, then annealed and flattened, 1/2" I.D. give or take a sixteenth.  Punched/pierced to 16 gauge, then rivetted with round rivet, not wedge.

90 lbs. That's right, 90 lbs.  I had to use two 5 gallon buckets full of hematite.  And when it broke, it ripped the side of the ring from around the rivet, then bent til it broke most of the way through on the opposite side from the rivet.

A surprising runner up was the same ring, flattened, but unrivetted.  Held to around 30 lbs. ish.  (I wasn't as careful with this one, but it took a full lp container for the grill as weight for a few seconds before it cut loose.) I guess flattening work hardened it enough to toughen it up. Color me happy as the worlds most boring Mythbuster. Oh yeah, and the kids are doing fine.

I would love bitumous, figured it would be easier to light, it's just harder/more expensive to get. 

Is there a time you would want larger coals? Once I finally figured things out (and it took me a long while) I can light with up to about 1.5 inch, but the big stuff is nigh on impossible, at least without that initial fire. Maybe I could burn bigger stuff after it's started. I'm pretty sure I saw the larger stuff burned in a historical/celtic forge.

What I usually do is this, break up anthracite from 4-5 inches across down to 1 inch, give or take, with a hammer.  Light with paper with a handful or two of my homemade lump charcoal tossed in. Turn on the blower, and as the flames in the charcoal turn all the way up to 11, toss in my coal/leftover coke. 

It works great and rarely misses, but I swear I spend as much time breaking coal as forging. I even tried busting it up with the end of an axle, but nothing used to hold the coal/bust it against, held up to the axle.  I may just have to give in and pay more/ship the stuff, or do the driving.  If anyone knows a better way to break coal, I'm open for ideas.

I'm a hobby level smith in North Georgia, with a small brake disc forge I made by modifying a lawnmower. It works great, but I have trouble getting coal.  The closest blacksmith coal, (pea size anthracite) takes around a 3 hour trip, and is around 20 bucks for a fifty lb sack. Or I can go 25 minutes away and get a 40 lb bag of heating coal (also anthracite) for less than 7 bucks.

First thing I learned about lighting coal, is that it's hard as all get out to light heating coal and keep it going. So, I usually end up buying the heating stuff and busting it up with a hammer and a boulder.  Grant you, I've learned tricks to get faster, but this sucks.

I've played with making charcoal, but it's time intensive, and burns up a lot more quickly (although I love to use it to start the fire).  I've made gas burners, (mostly for casting) but had trouble getting past 2200 degrees.

What do you do? Does the bigger stuff work for you?

2.5lb engineers for most things, 4 lb farriers hammer for the big stuff