cckemm

That statement reminds me of my oldest son. I keep telling him, "the more I learn, the dumber I feel". Someday, if he is lucky, he will understand that statement.

My father has an older army gasoline burner meant for large portable kitchens so I did a quick search on the net and came up with this.

Gas Forge Blower

Much easier to use technology that already exists than to reinvent the wheel.

Try putting your tongue between your teeth when you go to the anvil, it might make you more aware of the clenching and help you to remember to relax. Or, of course, it could help you make your tongue shorter :p

I used an old oil burner gun, stripped the pump, transformer, cad cell, and primary relay off. That left me with a housing with a motor and fan. A little time and a bit of sheet metal to close up where the parts were pulled and away ya go.

Still need to do a bit of work to my forge, need to add a switch to turn it on and off, pulling the cord is a pain. And a bit more work on the air intake gate to control it better.

Chris

Yes we have one like that here, what goes in, never comes back out. Is a shame sometimes to see what is in the piles.

Please also remember fire proof!! All that sound proofing will do you no good if your smithy is a smokey pile of rubble because it burned down.

Chris

ok, that is kinda what i thought, really just cleaned the rust off to the point I can see the steel again.

Thanks,

Chris

After much time and looking scored 2 anvils in 1 month.

One of them had spent quite a bit of time outside and had a real good thick layer of rust on it. I cleaned up the rust on the top with the angle grinder and still have loads of pits, should I worry about that at all or just leave them go?

Chris

Well since I will have the OA torch out just to cut a piece off of the beam, and it is well within my skill lvl to use the torch to heat it and bend it.....Think that would be the easiest option for me.

Chris

Born and raised in Pine Grove out by Flat Hill. Could not find a house I could afford so soon before our wedding, ended up in Heckscherville and been here ever since. Funny didn't really know there was anybody blacksmithing down home, or I might have ended up at their shop to learn.

Chris

this is definitely not a light piece of I beam I am looking to use, at the very outside edges of the I it has to be about 3/8" thick.

I was working on ideas today on how to roll the one end into a horn. I am pretty sure I can do it, just not sure i can get it hot enough with the OA torch.

I have been asking people for the last few weeks if anybody knows where I can get an anvil and may have hit gold today, we have to go check to see if it is still where it was left or if a scrapper got a hold of it.

I did find a nice cross pein hammer head in one of the drawers of my truck today, must have been in there for 10 years or more, no idea where I got it from but all I have to do is make a handle for it and I got a nice hammer to start with. This head is probably 50+ years old, I love old tools

In response to the query where East Central is for me, I am rather close to Pottsville, about an hour away from Reading or Harrisburg, sit about right in the middle of the two. Right at the bottom of the Anthracite coal belt here in Schuylkill county. Like I said I can see the strip mine from my back yard, the old pit, reclaimed quite a while ago actually came right up to my back yard.

Another coke question: you make coke by getting the coal hot but giving it no or little air so it outgasses correct?

Chris

Thanks for all the replies, I will be working on putting together the parts for a small forge and see where it goes from there.

Chris

Some beginner questions.

1. Can i use a hunk of steel I-beam as a starter anvil? I have been looking but haven't been able to find an anvil yet, but I do have a hunk of I-beam that looks promising. I don't remember off the top of my head how heavy the beam is but it took us about 8 guys to get a 12' piece of it off the truck when it came here.

2. Will be using anthracite coal (sorry have a strip mine within sight of my home, would be stupid to pay for coal when i can walk over the bank and pick it up) Is there a best size of coal to use? I can get anywhere from rice up to the big hunks of handfire coal. From looking at pictures it seems they are using somewhere around pea or nut coal size for soft coal.

3. We have very high quality coal here, do I need to try to coke it before moving it to the center of the fire?

Thats all for the moment, am sure I will have more stupid questions later.

Thanks,
Chris

Hello all, Chris from east central PA.

Plumber by trade, volunteer firefighter, jack of all trades kind of person.

Looking for a new hobby and found this place.

Doing lots of reading before I try to build something. Really informative site, have learned many things in the past few weeks here but still have lots of questions.

Chris