Crazy Ivan

So as many of you know, my blacksmithing travels are at a temporary hold. I fell in love with a girl, blah blah blah. We just moved into a place in Lancaster PA and I am setting up a new shop here from the ground up. I'm making this post to show how cheap it can be to get a shop set up if you look outside of conventional thinking. Hopefully within a month (even with all the hardship associated with a couple living completely broke in a new town) I will have a fully functional shop space. I will document all the money and materials I'm putting into the set up. This is aimed mainley at the hobbiest and not include my regular expenses such as rent and such so assuming a backyard set up. Let's see how this goes. 

I will be using someone else's anvil to start, but I went to the scrapyard today and spent $40 on stock. Included in that was a section of rail which could be used as an anvil (gave it to my girl for her jewelry exploits but you get the idea). I'll be using a different anvil and forge, but nonetheless. There are blueprints on this site (55 Forge and other forges) which show you how to make a free or nearly free coal/charcoal forge so look there for that. Those costs will come up later on when I build my own. My $40 got me 130 lbs of scrap to start with. I got RR spikes and clips and a 12" section of rail (legally from an approved dealer), 2 5/8" coil springs, 2 axle shafts, and a 3' bar of 5/8" round bar. Later this week I will post what tools I make to work with AND the trinkets i make to sell to put money back into my shop. This is a systematic process from which you may consider me starting from just a forge and an anvil. Current shop expenses, US $40 maybe $50 but I am not including the cost of whiskey in my shop expenses lol

My problem with devils forge is that I saw a video that led me to believe that they are a dishonest company. There was a YouTube video where they showed a comparison of their burner to another burner in which they lit both forges and times the time it took to heat equal size stock in similar forge bodies. The devils forge burner heated faster but this is where the dishonest part cane to my notice. I say that the "competitors" burner was choked out and the devils forge burner was wide open on the choke. Now, I noticed the difference when I saw the video but any inexperienced folks looking for their first forge would likely not notice this and be swayed into buying their product. This is manipulative and misleading advertising. That's why I  will not do business with them. I guess I'll never know how they actually preform, but I'm happy with the burners I build/ buy from more honest salesmen. No sweat off my steel. 

In my experience, sparks jumping before welding will make fluxless welding (coal forge) exponentially easier for mild steel or wrought iron. However, if you are working with HC steel, you will be drastically reducing the carbon content of the steel, making its purpose either useless or drastically less effective. If you are fluxing mild or wrought to weld you will find that high of a temperature excessive as it is much easier to weld at a lower heat with particular fluxes. Iirc Brian Brazeal has a video of him welding mild steel with iron mountain flux at an extremely low heat. The strength of that weld is obviously debateable but the point is that you can get steel to tack at low heats but it would still take more subsequent welding cycles to ensure a strong weld. What steels were being welded and to what purpose in the videos you are talking about? 

Use a handle that is right for you. When I sell hammers I commonly sell only the head unless otherwise noted by the customer because everybody has a preference for handle size, shape and length. Find what works for you. I have learned for myself that I cannot use common store bought handles because the profile is too slim for my hands. That makes me feel the handle too tightly which leaves me fatigued and often times in pain at the end of the day. Instead, I make my own to my own. 

After I made my 45* diagonal cross pein (3.5 lbs) it is all I use for general forging. They are awesome. 

I used to work in a shop welding autoclaves which are pressure vessels. The steels we used were 316L 304L and 51670. I'm guessing you have 51670 boiler plate steel. 

My immediate thought was a Badger as well. Good anvils from what I'm told but I have never used one personally. 

Aluminum kegs with the top cut off are great and so far, my favorite. No rusting problems because aluminum and there are handles built into them to easily shuffle them around as needed. 

To avoid all the questions, tell us your entire process start to finish and what temps you quench at and with what quench medium. Also, how are you gauging temperature?

I had the same fears as Thomas. As you probably know, if the bars were stacked flat you would have a 400 lb anvil entirely delamated through and through. You probably wont have that problem with the bars vertical. Let us know how it turns out! 

Any repetitive motion isolates and strengthens/damages muscles, tendons, and joints. To maintain "balance" in your hammer hand I find it very useful to exercise your extensor muscles and tendons in your off time. I used to get "the claw" when I was younger and the best fix I ever found was this: no death grip....ever and also regular (before and after) stretching and strengthening. Stretches are self explanatory but it is also important to strengthen your extensor muscles/tendons. Do this by putting one or a few elastic bands around your fingers and slowly opening and closing your fingers. Resistance and control is key here. It has helped exponentially in any discomfort. Also, add plenty of onion, garlic and tumeric to your diet. They help with anti inflammatory benefits and also make you seem like a better chef with the propper amounts  

I'm thinking the same as Biggundocter. First thing that came to mind was a zinc annode. The ones I've seen on bridges are similarly sized and shaped. 

Do you absolutely need the exact bolt, or can you just drill it out and tap it to the next size up? That's a common method for quick repairs if finding the hardware becomes a problem. 

Definitely looks like wrought to me. 

8 hours ago, NickOHH said:

Me and Marcy are probably about an hour from Lancaster depending where exactly but we grab coal not far from jws's place, and try and make the PABA meetings when we can .  Always cool meetin people from the forum. 

Ya, he mentioned y'all weren't too far away. I'm sure we will cross paths soon enough. Looking forward to it! 

So here's my last update on this for a while. So as I mentioned before (and as some of you have probably predicted lol) my travels are on hold for a while. Meeting my new girlfriend and getting all my money stolen have put things on a hiatus. I have been living in Pittsburgh and suprizingly enough I haven't been able to find any good welding jobs here so I am moving to Lancaster PA with my girl and our litter of puppies. I got a good welding job lined up there and a place to live. We will be living there come January to work and save up money. JWS has offered me shop space so we will be sharing a space. I'm very excited about this and am looking forward to it. It's going to be very cool sharing a space with a bladesmith and with both our skill sets in one building it will be very interesting. I'll be joining the PABA when I move out there and I look forward to meeting more of the folks from the area. I have no intention of stopping my travels all together but they will definitely be on hold at the very least until May. Nothing ever goes according to plan but they can still work out in a positive way. It has sure been interesting to say the least. 

Yup, that's a Trenton. The diamond stamp on the side has the word "Trenton" written inside it. 

I'm also into both the music and the medium as well.   Pittsburgh PA here. Welcome to the forum and congrats on your new addiction. 

If that was made from the same axle shaft we used for the hammer eye drift and the two hot cuts, (on of the hot cuts got small stress fractures in it iirc) there may well be excessive strain/pre existing stress fractures in the axle. While some tools we made from it already may have worked out fine, the cracks may be sporadic in the axle already. It could also be to excessive heats and grain growth. Try normalizing every 6-10 heats to avoid that. That MIGHT help avoid it. As to that hammer, grind out that crack fully and weld it up. It should work fine after that since its a body hammer for personal use. Remember to pre and post heat the weld and you should be fine. 

I am absolutely obsessed with fallout. Unfortunately I won't be able to get it since I don't have an x box or a TV. Lol. Time to make some new friends with modern livingroom furnishings methinks. Lol 

I almost forgot to mention something. In the picture of the drift running the temper you will notice the pein is in the vice, not the drift. I do that because on a cross pein I have found that the colors will run out to the pein faster than they will to the face. So I am using the vise as a heat sink on the tip of the pein until the face just barely shows color, then I take the hammer out and let the face comes to the right temp and at the same time. The heat runs to the pein evenly. It works great for me for even temper on each face. 

This past Saturday and Sunday I made two 3lb hammers from 4130. One is a cross pein I will be keeping for myself and the 45*diagonal cross pein is one I made to sell since I had the stock at hand anyways. Daswulf was striking for me on both hammers. Josh was around Saturday and got some pictures and a video or two and maybe he will post them here too. Here's what I got picture wise. 

I think in the case of a pattern welded blade, there is something to be said about forging over stock removal. If you forge a pattern welded blade as close to finished shape as possible, the pattern will flow with the contours of the blade where as stock reduction of a billet will cut out some of the patterns. As to grain though, that is controlled through HT and not  the method you profile the blade. So yes, its is wrong but there is slight relevance as a reach into pattern welded blades. (Not suggesting it would make a pattern welded blade any stronger or weaker however)