Jump to content
I Forge Iron

Charles R. Stevens

Members
  • Posts

    9,374
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Charles R. Stevens

  1. A 55 talon drum layed on its side and cut in 1/2 for 2/3 of its length, and the cut off used to make the beginnings of a side draft hood works very well, as dose a drum set up on 24” legs (4 deep cement blocks) with this you cut out the side , to leave an 8” deep fire pan and a fire place looking opening that goes just a bit past 1/2 way around (let’s you put long stock all the way threw the fire) and swept in a bit of a curve. tho lots of things work, anything deep enough you can get enough insulation (dirt) to keep from burning out the bottom and large enough to hold the work and a few tools. Fit, I put the blower on the right and reach over it, so I can crank wile manipulating my tongs. Most blowers were for ricotta forges, were you threw the rivet to the riveters to catch in a bucket with your tongs in the right hand
  2. Silica sand will melt at forge temp. We call it slag. Sawdust and fire clay in a 1 part to 2 part ratio then fired after completely drying makes a passable fire brick. The sawdust will burn out leaving voids. Otherwise commercial grog. now there are 3 types of fire bricks. Hard non insulitive, soft insulitive and hard insulitive. All take a different grog (non expansive material) for the first one wants ground fired fire clay, the second somthing heat resistant and airy like per light, vermiculite or expanded clay. The last somthing that leaves voids like saw dust or soap bubbles.
  3. Jerry, if you wert so dang top heavy you wouldnt land on your head! Binks, 3 sided is a PITA as your not able to poke long stock threw the fire. be aware, I melt hard fire bricks on occasion with charcoal…
  4. this may have slipped threw the cracks because we see this or a variation of this question so often. All clays are refractory, some are more resistant to heat than others. almost any clay you dig up, find in a road cut, River bank or other formation where you can see the stratification of the soil will work. you can also go to a building supply and buy a bag of fire clay and a bag of builders sand. Mix 2 parts powdered clay to one part sand (there are other grogs that will work well such as ground fire brick, grog from a pottery supply, volcanic ash and diatomic earth to name a few) the sand cuts down on cracks. Wet it, and trow it in a bucket or tub. You want it stuff but evenly moist. It shouldn’t stick to your hands. now fill the forge with clay to with in 2” of the top. This is the hearth. Dig out a bowl about the size of your two fists (cereal bowl) over the tuyere and form a 1” rim around it. mince dry (or close) fill the forge with coal to level. The 2” shallow space holds extra fuel. Now pull the extra fuel in to form a mound over the bowl as you need as much fuel over the material as you do under it. understand that is is for coal, charcoal is a different animal and takes a different hearth shape as the extra fuel will all light. a watering can is recommended to dampen the coal to keep the fire from growing to large and help stick the coke together. hope that helped. refractory cements are expensive and slag sticks like glue to it. man alternative is to fill the forge with fly ash (coal ash) and clinker and reform the bowl as needed. You will still want to keep the ash about 2” below the rim (you will have to remove some ash from time to time to as you form more in the forge. clinker will stick to citified clay as well cut a little wood ash creeps that to a minimum.
  5. Hazel and other similar woods are actually twisted to separate the fibers and make it flexible. Infact it can be used as rough cordage. TMI, as pointed out hot stones to boil water pre pottery or metal cooking vessel were most likely handled with just such primitive tongs. The idea that copper was handled just that way is reasonable. Buy the time iron hit the seen , bronze tongs would be in common usage. TP may know what bronze tongs looked like. Many bronze tools looked different than iron tools wile others look much the same.
  6. Welcome to the madhouse. Medication on the right, straitjackets on the left.
  7. Have you tried Daniel Moss? He makes tools in the UK and have a pretty good YouTube Chanel.
  8. To much air can lead to scaling, scale collects and adds to the clinker (as dose old nails in charcoal made from pallets and other scrap, lol)
  9. A lot of creative people here that are more than happy to brainstorm up adaptive solutions to over come our shortcomings. not a fan of vice grips for forging, I have never got them to hold right. Welding on rods and good fitting tongs are my friends, as is calling the wife to hold the stock wile I sledge. Forge thralls are so useful. nothing like tendinitis in the the tong arm to make you smarter, lol.
  10. What is the British equivalent to schedule 80 pipe? Same OD but smaller ID (PDC to 1/8”) it is used in higher pressure applications like air compressors between the tank and pressure switch. Hot Rodders have used schedule 80 pipe for frame bosses for years (1/2, 3/8, and 1/4” being the most common as standard bolts fit threw them with out slop).
  11. The pot has held up fine to both andracite and charcoal. I would use a larger tuyere for the hair dryer necked down just before it enters the pot. The 5deg down slope pushes the center of the fire away from the tuyere. The wall gets hot otherwise. what hasn’t held up is the bricks, which melt them acasinaly
  12. Let’s make sure we are on the same page, you are using the factory edge lengthwise of the joint? If this is the case then as frosty daisy champ her the edge (and the bit if your doing a tomahawk or battle axe)
  13. I have one of those in my Samurai. Now just need a cursive font, rotary dial and a round face clock to secure my iPhone.
  14. “Blacksmiths use files” to quote a story TP tells. have you tried grinding out the surface weld seams? Grinding wheels have been in use for centuries. Now like the pattern welded blades you make, if you use a different steel for the eye and bit you will see the difference in appearance between finishes. you can always grind before you finish drawing out or before you begin normalizing in preparation to heat treat for that “rustic” look.
  15. Being raised buy an Item Okie, “Sweet heart, Honey and Dear come all to easy to the tung and will get you slapped north east and west… Strawberry is generally said in one breathe with Pine, as in Pine-Strawberry, lol
  16. I lived in Payson Az once alone a time, and when travelers asked for directions to Phoenix or Scottsdale I would tell them to head south and turn right at the next stop light. The next stop light was just about 100 miles down the road ;-). Payson has grown some, I think it’s now the third stop light. I find that most age and still have southern and southwestern sensibilities. You can still be lovingly told “Well bless your little heart” which is Southern for “Your bat **** crazy”.
  17. This shows the styles of charcoal forge I know of. I find the trench forge 4” wide to be the most efficient. I have melted hard fire bricks and burnt up steel with one.
  18. If I remember Mike came from the glass blowing end of things, Jerry. Furnace, forge same animal.
  19. It’s not so much the flame color for a given temp. Neutral or slightly reducing flame is what we want for forging or welding. It’s the tempeture the walls glow at that are important otherwise. I generally run at a very bright orange to forge. It takes longer for the steel to come up to temp but you don’t make sparklers of it. Some alloys like low to high yellow (H13 comes to mind to forge. high carbon steels will weld at high orange to low yellow wile low carbon will weld at high yellow. wrought is a PITA to weld in a gasser and forges like butter at high yellow. their is an ap that makes your smart phone into a thermometer that reads the emissive color at tells you the temp. nice thing about temp color is you can work multiple irons with out burning them up or conversely you won’t burn the tip off a knife if your forge is just a couple of hundred biter that the critical temp for the steel.
  20. The new material is certainly a better choice for a farriers forge. As we generally work out of a trailer work truck and not a stationery shop the fragile material used before was vibration sensitive. as to cost, the cost I got mine at was very reasonable but I think the MSRP is over the top. Kiln shelf, rigidizer and kook wool (now that you can find it in small lots) would have cost 1/2 as much as I payed and a 1/4 what MSRP is. Cost and the raw ceramic wool used to seal the door and under the floor are always a concern so I did buy some. I am very satisfied with the hard facing and kiln wash upgrade as well. being able to run the forge at 2.5 psi as opposed to 5 for general forging and 5 for welding (still a neutral flame) saves fuel and frustration. I need to order a bit of wool and build a single burner both to use up the rigidizer, hard facing and kiln wash. the pro forge has handled 2” rounds heating them over a foot, but frankly for most work it is overkill. A stack of 4 keg shoes is what it is optimized for and will go from cold to ready to shape in less time than it takes to trim the feet. but it will handle a Bowie or a largish scroll with equal aplomb
  21. Got ya. I was just trying to find a way for you convert non flat stock to usable knife blanks. I have seen smiths forge under or behind a canvas fly, or in enclosed trailers or one of a hundred other unconventional spaces. So good quality old files, if you anele them when you can are a good source of high carbon simple steels. Saw blades are generally good medium carbon steels, tho some with carbide teeth won’t harden well. lawnmower and edger blades are generally medium carbon steels as are many AG (agricultural) steels jointer and planer blades are generally good, as are hedge clippers and old machetes. as mentioned before chainsaw bars work well as well.
  22. Do you have access to an outside cooking/grilling area? Here in the US we have permanent grills in the city parks.
  23. Parenting is stressful. I have come to realize if you think you’re doing it right you probably aren’t. If you worry you are doing it wrong, you’re in the right track. lot corse buy the time you figure it out your out of a job, lol then again, I have found that the first 18 years were the easy part. to quote my mother, “pregnancy is an illness you catch from men, it lasts for 9 months but the complications go on for ever…” a wise woman
  24. Now sa to the right hand blower on rivet forges. As the rivet was heated then thrown to the riveters who caught it in a bucket, turning the blower with the left and trhrowing the rivet with your right made sense. However, for most right hand smiths, moving the blower to the right and reaching over it makes more sense as we hold the tongs in our left hands, this saves us fumbling around changing hands befor going to the anvil. Rivet forges are st up the way they are for a reason, not for continence of a smith forging out of one…
  25. The above two photos are what I based my all steel side blast on. Take 1/4” + square of steal and cut it in half on the diagonal. Cut a strip of the same stock 4x12” and bend to a 90 so you have 2-6” legs. Weld to getter to form a troff. Weld a 1” wide flange around he opening. Measure up from one 90d corner 1-1/2” and drill a 7/8” hole. Weld on a piece of 3/4” scheduled 40 block pipe a 5d down slope for a tuyere. The hearth can be as small as 18”up to 32” ( mine is 32x60 wine the tuyere centered in one half) 4“ high walls 16” long on the sides of the trench can be brick, angle iron, or place welded directly to the fire pot. Note, cut the rim on the hearth so the stock lays flat for charcoal… Le me go down and tack pictures as my loving wife erased my photos…
×
×
  • Create New...