Gromgor

Gold would serve you as a better conductor anyway. You'd likely be best served with a gilded, ornamental blade that has engravings that are gilded with gold that would create the actual channel of conductivity.

I was just about to say the same thing. I learned the hard way with a forge that if you have a hot piece of anything drop down and it has no clearance between the bottom and the air pathway, the heat will back up into your pipe and melt your blow dryer....

Fun times!

Seriously, like Glenn said, 12-18 inches

Now you're thinking Mitch. Are brass knuckles legal in your neighborhood? I can load up every available concealed spot on my body with a fire arm, no problem but get caught carrying brass knuckles?

 

Vaughn: A window breaker is something everybody should have in their vehicle. You may have to GET OUT and the doors may be jammed. Or you may come on an accident scene and get somebody OUT of their vehicle or watch them die. Each of our vehicles have a seat belt slicer, window breaker, flashlight. The only things missing are a bottle opener and flint striker.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

I've never owned a single set of brass knuckles.

I have owned dozens of brass knuckle shaped paper weights however.

Just to throw this out there, but all bourbons, whiskeys and other brown liquors are, by design, supposed to be ever so slightly watered down...like from a melting ice cube. It creates a change in the chemical makeup of the liquor and releases a flavor that is subtle, yet, distinct, if you're not just drinking to get drunk. 

Don't forego the ice cubes! They are literally meant to be flavor enhancers for your drink.

People need some culture when it comes to their drinks.

in a pinch, don't even make charcoal. Just throw some chopped up wood into your forge and go. It might not get up to welding heat, but you can forge with it. You might go through twice as much wood to do the same job, but wood is basically free. Only cost is a borrowed chainsaw and some time (and labor).

Iron doesn't care HOW it gets hot, it just wants to be hot. 

Before there was charcoal, there was just plain old wood and it worked well enough to get civilization to the point of charcoal.

Smiths have used every type of building material possible to build shelters. The only thing you need to do to a dirt floor is kick it off your boots before you go into the house.

Something smells a lot like a sales pitch and not an honest question. Not sure exactly what. Might just be me.

Get it. Trade it later if you find you don't use it, but with a proper lathe you can manufacture all the pieces you need to make all the pieces you need to make all the pieces you need for an entire shop.

Wanting to stick to forge work is great, but I don't know a single carpenter that doesn't also have tools to work on a vehicle. Nor a mechanic that doesn't own a hammer, some nails and screws and a few tape measures.

Hi guys,

   I'm just curious and wondering what the first items you sold for profit was that got the thought of blacksmithing for an income as something that might be viable.I recently did a small job for a buddy that had a new house built. He had a wood fireplace installed and wanted a set of tongs to grab hot logs with, a poke and a shovel. Figuring it would be a fun little exercise, I took up the job. He bought some stock I made him what seemed to decent enough pieces. I wasn't planning to charge him for it, but he flipped me $25.00. My first paying commission.

   So what was it for the rest of you guys?

Unless you have extremely good ventilation, and this likely means a pretty serious air moving fan pulling smoke out of the barn (not just pushing it around inside) you will need a hood and chimney. 

If you don't have a hood and chimney, I would recommend having a portable forge and moving it outside when you need to use it.

It's smoke. It's bad for your lungs. 

Need a stand? Make one with 2x12's, a cut log, weld one from steel. Dig a hole to stand in and have the anvil on the ground. I've found simple might not be best, but it's better than complicated. 

I took up blacksmithing for a couple of reasons: A) to have a skill I can pass down to, and participate in with my kid and B) so if the world collapses, I can have a useful skill to call upon. 

So I'm trying to go as simple as possible, and learning to make items as simple as possible.

Honestly, it really doesn't matter. Forget everything you've ever learned about how important this or that aspect of building a forge is and keep one thing in mind: Does it get my metal hot enough to forge?

After that the rest is details. When I first started, not so very long ago, I was obsessed with making a bottom blast forge using an old grill, a brake drum/rotor, some steel pipe, etc.

Then, when I was having problems getting air one day, I just dug a hole in the ground, slid some scrap exhaust pipe in it that had a 45 degree bend (so it could be aimed downward, and then level out before it reached the coals) and I found this to be 100 times better. Since then I've built the sides up. 

However, I did recently find a potential coal supplier. I'm likely going to be using my bottom blast brake drum forge for playing around with that.

TL;DR: Use whatever you have available that gets the job done properly.

Blacksmithing: Taking whatever you can find and making it work.

200 lbs. of free coal that works 90% as well as what you use now, versus $45 for 50 lbs. at 100%.

Let's do some math here. You'll get  180 lbs. worth of the effectiveness for free. 

yeah, take the coal and even if it's so crappy you can't use it in a forge, it's free, and already packaged. Keep it "just in case".

Charcoal requires a much deeper pot than coal. The reason you can't get heat is because your fireball doesn't have room to exist because there's not enough fuel depth. Try dropping that brake drum down into a hole in that, what looks like the bottom of a 55 gallon drum, so that the bottom of the drum is "flush" (I know it won't be perfectly flush) with the top lip of the drum. When viewed from the side it should look something like this: 

    |        /     |     <--What you currently have
    |____ ====_____ |



    |               |                      }
    |_____     _____|   <--Barrel          }   What you want
             /        <--Brake Drum       }
           ===                             }  

This will give you a container to pile fuel on top of the brake drum, giving you more fuel depth. The actual depth of the fire pot isn't the important factor. The pot is just something to hold your fuel. Increase the depth of the fuel, apply some air (and charcoal requires very, very little).

Another method is to take a 55 gallon drum with a bung on the side near the bottom and trace a piece of 2x12 on the inner curve of the open top and cut it to fit inside and lag bolt it in place.  Fill the barrel with water and you have about 400 pounds of weight.  Need to move it? Remove the bung and empty it.  I've used this for a travelling set up as it's light and easy to move empty and site owners *like* all that water in the smithy for some reason.

 

Not so good in an inside smithy where 50+ gallows of water on the floor when you empty it might be a problem...

 

(I learned this set up from a travelling lady smith who did very nice hand forged labrys for radical feminists; great blade work, interesting niche market.)

 

 

Just fill it 1/4 of the way and it should still be plenty sturdy.

I have one mounted to one of those big wooden spools that electrical cable comes on. It's my all in one work bench. Seems to work fine for me. I don't do any hammering on it for more than obvious reasons, so it seems to be heavy enough. Of course most of what I make are tools for the farm and some of those supposed viking style knives. So my vice gets used mostly to hold hot blades while I run the file over them to shape them up.

So, I've been using charcoal for a while mostly because I never found a coal supplier in the area, until now. 

So I want to try out some coal and see how it compares. Which I like better, etc.

So first question: Are there any things I need to know about coal that makes it function differently than charcoal? I know it smokes a lot more, but are there any specific properties I need to be aware of?

Do I need to soak it in water? Does it need to be a certain size? I've read on this site that coal sticks to itself. I'm assuming it gets tacky when heated and bonds. Is this accurate and if so, how does that affect your work?

So a guy I was talking to said something about using charcoal soaked in water to make his fuel last longer. I'd never heard of this, and I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned on these forums. Has anyone ever heard of this? 

I would think bearded would be best. If it's to be used for a walking stick, it has to serve first as a place to grip it while walking and second as a defense tool. With a bearded axe you can thin the are the hand would grasp it at while not sacrificing the size of the cutting edge.

Function over form

 it seems he only wants to chew on things that i use.  i threw out a radio and he didnt even touch the power cord on that.  makes me wonder what's going on in his head.

He's attacking the electrical current. He can hear it's hum. 

They were likely more common in a bronze form than an iron or steel form. With that said, I enjoy making them and giving them away. They're fast, simple and with a few twists here and there can have a primitive beauty to them. 

You know, I've seen on this site a lot about brake drum forges and 55 drum forges and such, but I want to know from what and from where can someone acquire a more professional firepot?

Also, while I know the old saying of "use what you have until you can get what you want" is applicable to blacksmithing, I have to ask, if you could have what you wanted, what would your perfect firepot shape, size and fuel type and material composition be?

The concern with galvanized anything is when it reaches a certain temperature, it produces toxic fumes. The good thing is that the temperature this occurs at is pretty high. Magnitudes higher than the chimney should ever reach. Galvanized is fine, so long as a piece never falls into your forge and sits there long enough to change color.

I'd love to just have a cube that size. Nice clean edges, perfectly flat face and maybe, MAYBE a notch cut, horizontally on two opposing sides, just so I could strap it down to whatever base I made for it. The stuff I tend to make, I don't really use a horn too much.

All you need is some 2 x 4's, some nuts and bolts and an old projection tv.