Ramsberg

Hey Dave, Your through bolts should work OK. Especially if they are near the corners of the bottom of the firepot. My firepots always seemed to get hottest near the center of the vertical(ish) firepot walls. The bottom and vertical corners of the firepot seemed to stay much cooler. How are you going to support the clinker breaker? Are you planning on having holes in the side of the ash dump pipe and small rod extension on each end of the clinker breaker to support it? A lot of people seem to favor triangularly shaped clinker breakers. I have always wondered how one bent up out of sheet metal would hold up. One could cut out some sheet metal in a triangular shape to make the ends of it with say 3/8" or 1/2" holes in each end cap, so that a round control rod could pass through the clinker breaker. If you had two ears coming off of one side of the clinker breaker that stradled one of the holes and had small holes drilled in them(prefably before they were welded on) say 1/8" dia. Then a 1/8" hole in the control rod, one could use a 1/8" pin to connect the movement of the control rod with the clinker breaker. Then all you would have to do to remove the clinker breaker would be to remove the pin, hold on to the clinker breaker with one hand or tongs pull out the control rod and they would be seperated. This is of course assuming that they didn't rust together or burn apart. The incoming air does a great deal to keep the clinker breaker cool, I have made a grate from nothing more then 1/4" round stock and never had it burn up. If you have some sheet metal laying around you can also make the ash dump from that, just form it into a rectangular or square shape, any shape that you want. Lots of options out there! Caleb Ramsby

Hey Dave, How large is the open slot in the bottom of the fire pot? I have found that the best type of clinker breaker to make is one that is easily removable so that another experimental one can be put in. Sometimes they can really restrict the air flow if they aren't the right size or in the right place. Their shape can also alter the air flow pattern around them and into the fire so that the fire takes a different shape depending on the clinker breakers position. Another tip, don't weld the fire pot to the table. I have never found it to be necessary. The weight of the fire pot and its plumbing is enough to keep it in place. The fire pot will also expand and contract with the heat a lot more then the table that it is in. If you think about it are you going to be pushing around the fire pot or just basically setting stuff in it? Another reason not to attach the fire pot is so that it is easy to replace if and when it ever burns up or you want to have two fire pots say one for coal and one for charcoal. They require different depths of fuel so a deeper fire pot for charcoal will keep the heart of the fire at the same height and being able to switch them is nice but not by any means necessary. In regards to your sister, I am the second youngest of 7 with four sisters and two brothers so I learned early on that if I was to tease one of my sisters I had better have a clear path to run for my life. . . Caleb Ramsby

The first blower that I used was a cenrifugal fan from an old oil furnace, with the fuel nozzles and sparker removed. It had plenty of ummph for charcoal. I once also rigged up a blower from a cloths drier to be cranked by hand using the pullys that were in the drier and maybe a few others, I can't recall as of now. One option is to get the Gingerly book on centrifugal fans, here is a link: http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/found/index.html Humm, aparently they are out, maybe a call would get you one, who knows. As Phil said though, a bellows would work just as well and if you can scrounge some plywood then it can be made for real cheap. Caleb Ramsby

Hey Brian, Are those pinecones in the bucket used to start the fire? Caleb Ramsby

Hey Dave, Nice looking welding there, when the angles of the plate meet like that it is like having a natural angle ground into the edge to penetration of the weld is much easier. Is the angle iron lip going to be going up or down? If it is up then that would raise the long stock that would go through the pile of fire. Just something to keep in mind. Caleb Ramsby

Say that could become addictive! First 5.14 187.8 Second 3.7 210.6 Third 4.09 139.2 Funny when I tried it really fast it was either bellow 1 for that one or above 7! Caleb Ramsby

Hey Greebe, Real nice work, especially for being away from it for so long! Did you play "Back in the Saddle Again" while you were hammering away? Caleb Ramsby

The following is quoted from "The Gas Engineers Handbook" by Henry O'Connor 1898. The gas referenced in the title is gas produced from wood or coal and used in furnaces, boilers etc. and for lighting. "Coal when exposed to the air changes in character, the change consisting in a dimunition of agglomerating as well as of lighting power, and probably also of heating power. The change is more rapid the higher the temperature and the more divided the coal. In the small pieces the change in the character of the coal is greater on the surface than in the interior. In heaps of coal permeated by the air the change is greater in the centre then on the surface. When the air cannot penetrate to the centre the surface undergoes the greatest change. Small coal washed is less liable to change then unwashed. Large pieces of coal are only liable to change after a certain number of years' exposure o the air. The small coal is affected very quickly if it happens to be under conditions likely to raise its temperature. In a few months it is capable of entirely losing its agglomerating and lighting power. Heaps of small coal become heated, but stacks of large coal do not heat to an appreciable degree. Small coal should not be stacked in too large heaps. Coal stacked in low heaps does not become heated. Heat increases with the height of the stack, and at about the height of 3 or 4 metres the temperature rises progressively and then descends without having exceeded 60 deg C. or 70 deg C. The inner temperature of a stack 2 metres high does not usually exceed 40 deg C. to 50 deg C. (M. de Lachomette.) Storing coal in the open may cause a loss of from 30 to 40 percent in the quantity of gas to be obtained from it. North Wales coals and certain cannels are said not to depreciate appreciably through exposure when stored in the open, while certain Scotch coals have been known to lose 50 percent in value in 3 months. All coals exposed to the air absorb oxygen, the volume of which may be 100 times that of the coal. The loss and increase of weight are produced more slowly the larger the pieces of coal. (M. de Lachomette.) The yield of gas from coal before exposure being equal o 26.36 fell to 6.60 after being subjected for 4 days to 400 deg C. and at 8 days nil. The illuminating power also diminished very quickly. (M. de Lachomette.) Powdered coal containing from 1.6 o 8.3 percent oxygen when subjected to prolonged action of air and of stagnent and running water is not appreciably affected with regard to composition, yield of coke or calorific power. (M. de Lachomette.) The drier the coal when stacked the less liability to heat, and all trampling or compression should be avoided. The only thing to be done with heated coal is to open it out and allow it to cool, or the heating will spread. M. Moring suggests connecting the two ends of a thin platinum wire, about .0008 inch diameter, laid through the thermometer to a battery and galvanometer, when the carrying resistance due to the rise and fall of mercury will be shown upon the galvonometer, and the temperature of anything may be observed at a distance, such as in a heap of coals. Another form of indicator for showing when coals are heated above a certain temperature might be made by means of two wires from a battery covered with gutta-percha and the one wound round the other, so that when a sufficient heat was formed to melt the covering the two wires would be in contact, and could be made to ring an electric bell. When large Stocks of Coke are stored in the open an increase in weight of 15 to 20 percent due to weather, has at times been found. Stacking coke in large quantities deteriorates the quality. 100 lbs of coke can absorb 50 lbs of water. Increased quantity of breeze due to use of coke breaker only about 5 percent of coke broken, or 1 cwt per ton of broken coke for sale. Less when broken while warm (say 1 1/2 bushel per ton.) Oils flashing below 73 deg F are not allowed to be stored in warehouses or shops in England." Hopefully some of you will find this information as fascinating as I do. Caleb Ramsby Edit: my T button is having issues and a few were left out. the spelling of the words in the quote are as printed in the book.

Hey Hangman, Coal does slowly oxidize when it is sitting around, the larger the chunks the slower the oxidation. Remember that the coal hasn't been sitting around outside for thousands of years, it was underground exposed to virtually no oxygen. Having said that the coal won't loose any significant heat energy sitting around outside. Coal spontaniously combusts when it is in a big deep pile and there is nothing to take away the heat developes inside the pile. Some of the large storage yards use pipes that circulate air through the pile to vent the heat or pipes with water running through them to cool the piles. As long as its not deeper then you are tall you shouldnt' have any problem. Really though, I would suggest that you ask the guys at the place that you buy it from the best way to store it. Caleb Ramsby

Hey Dave, The easiest way to tell the use of a chisel is to look along the length of the cutting edge. The wider and thicker the edge is, such as the edge being close to a 90 degree angle, the more robust it is. Ones like that are made for cold work. Also the shorter and more chunky looking taper from the chisel shaft to the cutting edge is the better is it able to take hard hammer blows. Chisels made for fine work, soft metal or hot metal have a much longer taper from the shaft to the cutting edge and a much sharper edge so that the edge glides into and through the cut easier. A book with a lot of information on chisels is Haslucks "Metal Work" which includes almost all the forms of metal work that you can imagine. You can get it from Lindsay Publications, they also have his "Smiths Work" book which is basically just the blacksmithing section from the "Metal Work" book. I have his "Metal Work" book and although it was written 100 some years ago I have found a lot of usefull knowledge in it for sure! Cutting sheet metal with a chisel is almost a lost art and I believe that a lot of people would save a lot of time and money if they researched and developed that skill. Caleb Ramsby

Hey Dave, One option to cutting wheels is to use a cold chisel to cut the sheetmetal. It looks to be 1/8" thick or so, once you get a cut going with a cold chisel it all goes pretty quick. The chisel will leave somewhat sharp edge that will need to be cleaned up with a grinder or file. Personaly I have found that I can cut sheet metal as quick or quicker with a chisel then with a cutoff wheel or a sawzall, the big upside is that you don't have to buy all of those blades and grinding wheels! Another thing to think about is that chisels are a lot safer to operate then very rapidly spinning grinding wheels. Caleb Ramsby

Bill, Try looking for an engineers cap, such as used by locomotive engineers. http://hat.villagehatshop.com/search?w=engineers+cap&asug= Caleb Ramsby

My first hot cut was made from a semis leaf spring. I just heated up the tapered end, straightened it out, pounded it down a bit and then ground it sharp, I left it normalized and didn't bother with hardening it. If you go to a big truck depo/gas stations repair shop they sometimes have broken leaf springs, cracked wheels, brake drums and other odd bits laying around from semis that they have repaired. They usually sell them to scrap guys so if you offer them what they are usually getting then it will be yours! Those leaf springs are really big, from memory 1" thick and 4" wide. They are usually in a bolted together stack with just one of them broken. The leaf spring was long enough that I just leaned it up against a stout post and made an angle on the spring so that the sharp bit was straight up, it worked fine and was easier to make then a real hot cut hardie, but I didn't have an anvil at the time so that would have been pointless anyways. Caleb Ramsby

Holy crap! What impresses me the most are the dead branch knobs that are jutting out of the trunk, well done indeed! Caleb Ramsby

Wesley, I have done a little charcoal making with drums and thought about nocking out a bunch of their ends and welding a bunch of them together end to end to make a long cylinder laying on its side on supports with the outlet end higher then the inlet end. The idea I had was to be able to chuck the thing full of wood, then with a blower supplying air to the bottem closed end light the upper outlet end(preferably with one of the ends that was punched out used as a dampner on the outlet end). I have done it both with just using the wood inside the barrel to supply the heat to char the wood and using the barrel as a retort with the heat supplied from other fuel and some of the gas escaping. Of the two I prefer the method of just charing the fuel inside the barrels with the heat from said wood burning. If it burns from the top down then it consumes its own smoke as it burns and you can see the fire by the glowing sides of the barrel as it burns down. Caleb Ramsby

You might want to try and get a hold of "A Charcoal Kiln: Made of Cinder-Concrete Blocks" by A. Richard Olson and Henry W. Hicock reprinted by Lindsay Publications. ISBN # 1-55918-106-X I have it sitting beside me, it describes making a 1 cord or a 2 cord kiln in which to convert wood into charcoal. Most of the firing work appears to take 6 hours, after that it just sits around simmering a bit and then later cooling off. I havn't made and used one of the kilns that it describes, but they appear to be very easy to scale up or down. From seasoned mixed hardwoods they got 46 bushels and 920 lbs of charcoal per cord, the worst they got was from unseasoned Scotch pine with a moisture content of over 150% and hat was 19 bushels at a total of 380 lbs from one cord. I don't know if Lindsay is printing this book anymore but they usually have some laying around if you ask. Wesley. . . uh what happened to that guys eye? LOL sorry couldn't help it. Neat design by the way. Caleb Ramsby

Hey Stewart, That is some impressive prodution you got going on there! I really like your heavy duty T shaped pipe blacksmiths helper next to your forge. Is that toothed "rack" on the front of your power hammer used as a sizing gauge for stock that you are forging? One solution to the rust "problem" that you are having would be to heat the shop up enough year round so that the metal in there never gets down to the dew point. As you pointed out that would be a rather pointless endever, as long as the moving parts of the machines stay well lubed that is really all that matters. Caleb Ramsby

Chia, The only way to know for sure is to burn it. Power plants almost always burn a bituminous coal. Even really bad coal will work in a forge, you will just have to clean out a lot of clinkers, the clinkers are the silica, ashes and other bits melting into a mass that clogs the air supply of the forge and can influence the ability to get a clean welding heat in a forge. One way to tell if you don't have a forge is just to get a good wood fire going, with a solid bed of coals and toss on a handful or two of coal, if it is anthracite it will burn with almost no smoke, if it is bituminous it will emit a greenish smoke and smell like charcoal briquettes(which have powdered bituminous coal in them). The main difference between good blacksmithing coal and bad is how many clinkers they make, anthracite and coke will make almost none. I don't know about the legal issues involved with using coal fallen from trains, but when my grandfather was a kid he picked it up for his father who was a blacksmith. Here is a piece of advice that I wish I had gotten when I first started out, don't worry about if something will work or not, just give it a try. If it doesn't work, so what, one way to figure out what will work for you is to figure out what won't work for you. On these forums there is a lot of knit-picking that is often counterproductive, but there is also a lot of solid advice and experiences(good and bad) that a LOT can be learned from. Have fun and stay safe! Caleb Ramsby

Another aspect in the porous nature of the fuel. Bituminous coal "grows" a bit as the volatiles are burned off and transforms into a porous sponge of fuel. Also the "impurities" of bituminous coal help to glue it together so it is easier to form a cave to weld in inside the fuel. Just for the curious, when I ran a cam grinder, which I ground formed multi diameter drill bits with, I used a diamond faced tool to face the grinding wheel with. To make a long story short the track of the facing tool was no good and before I really got the hang of that tool I faced half of a grinding wheel off. Then I began to smell urine! I had to check my self to see if there was any "leakage", there was none, then a bit later thinking that I was loosing it I asked a guy working at a station beside mine if he could smell it too. He could, so it was definitely real. When the day was done I started asking around and an old hand told me that what I was smelling was the diamond burning! Some how that makes all the sense in the world. . . Caleb Ramsby

Nice work CV, ever think about making a finjan and zarf? Caleb Ramsby

Hey Fiery, Glad to hear that the forge is working out well. It is always a pleasure to revive an old tool to working order. From reading a few of your posts I know that you take advice and criticism very well(many twice or even three times your age do not!), so here is some welding advice. I am generally not one for hard and fast rules, but here are a few. 1: Unless it is freshly ground, steel is always rusty. Rust is oxidation, oxidation inside a weld is no good. It causes nothing but trouble and weakens the weld to the point of it being useless. Solution, clean the metal with sand paper, a wire brush, a grinder or anything else that will espose the clean metal. You only need to clean the metal that you are welding. 2: Welds are all about penetration. If you have two sheets of metal 1/2" thick that you are welding end to end(a butt weld) and don't grind a notch into the weld joint then the weld will only be skin deep. Thusly a weld that looks nice on the surface might be very weak and you will only find out when it fails. For rather thin stuff with a powerfull welder, depending on the orientation of the metals to eachother, you may not have to grind an angle on the metal joints, but rest assured that you will have to clean the surface of the weld if you want one that will hold. I can not suggest greatly enough that you scrounge around you area for some welding how to books, most second hand book stores have a bunch of them from the 50's which will show you everything you need to know about how to prep the metal. All libraries have books on welding(or at least they should). Welding with a torch, stick, mig or tig is all basically the same, just a little different tools. Having said all of that, your long bead that joins the 3/8" and 3/8" looks good, running out of gas in the middle of a project always sucks! Caleb Ramsby

A goatee here, ranging from one to two fists long, I have had it for 5 or six years now and haven't shaved it yet. If I ever do I will be tempted to glue it to the top of my head. . . should look fine right? Has anyone else noticed that when a goatee is trimmed short, say under 1" everyone calls it a goatee, but if it is long everyone calls it a beard? I just find that to be rather amusing. When it was rather long I would on occasion split it into two and wrap one end around each ear, holding it in place to look like a rather curious full beard! It's fun to have fun. Caleb Ramsby

Ulric, My experience with bolting down anvils is that the vibration of the hammering loosens the nuts constantly, I was using 1" threaded rods to bolt the anvil to two brake drums from a semi that I had welded together. None of the above worked all that greatly. The best all around anvil stand that I have used was a tree stump with the anvil held down with L shaped spikes, forged of course. The best of the best would be to have a log buried at least as much into the ground as is exposed. Then to use the anvil somewhere else, just have a "mobile" stump and un-spike the anvil from the main stump. Concrete isn't a bad idea, but really hard packed sand inside the same box would also give you the ability to adjust the height of the anvil stand, the box would of course need to be a bit more sturdy in that case. I hope that some of these ideas are of some use. Caleb Ramsby

I should also mention that I have a long goutee beard and he is clean shaven, so that is a huge factor, I also have less hair up top then he does(a lot less). Hummm, maybe the more important question is, "Does blacksmithing make one go bald(and grow a beard)!" Caleb Ramsby

I have a brother that is eight years older than me and we share very similar features, both the body structure and the face. When I was 18 and he was 26 we were thought to be twins, now he is 38 and I am 30, people believe me to be rather older them him and nobody believes that he has 13 year old kids, most every one in my family has a very young face. Not always as blacksmithing, but I have worked with fire a lot(as well as welding fumes and grinding fumes/floating bits) AND I smoke and have done so for many years. I really don't think that it is the smoke touching your skin, it is inhaling the smoke and ones body having to deal with it. The moral of this story is that they still card my older brother and they don't card me. . . no wait it's that clean air is healthy air! One thing that helps a lot are negative ions and their production by spraying water into water, that is a waterfall effect. I would also like to second the importance of ventilation! Caleb Ramsby