Micah Burgin

The bucket was more expensive than the bag of concrete, that's why!

That's structural, sorry, should've cleared that up. Just going to be used to make the water cooling basin and the base, bricks and sand/mud/clay are the only things that will be near the heat.

Actually, I have a tub of kitty litter that I'm going to be using for the next one. XD

I have a bag of sand, a bag of concrete, some bricks, and a proper tuyere with a valve on it, so the next one will actually come out pretty permanent.

Good to know! I'm going to be buying the stuff to make myself a slip-on horn and getting another sledge so I don't have to use our only one, along with a cross pein hammer, today, so I should be able to get the stuff all put together and mounted to a log today. I think I'm going to do a temporary mounting first, just to test out the system and make myself a horn, then I'll move to something more permanent afterwards.

Yeah I figured as much!

I have no clay, and as far as mud, it dried before I fired up the forge, just FYI. I realized that I should have mentioned it before, XD

Yeah, that just about sums it up. 

2 minutes ago, Frosty said:

Too complicated Micah, all you need is a hole or V trench in the ground or rammed soil. Mixing the "clay" or equivalent into mud will only cause shrink checking as it dries. See dry pond or mud hole.

Damp clayey soil and a shovel and mallet will allow you to make virtually any size or shape forge you might need. Seriously you can just pile dirt on a kitchen table and scoop it to shape, a little ramming and it's ready to rock.

No need for cinder blocks, bricks, etc. you REALLY need to be careful of rocks, they can contain moisture internally in voids or fissures. You can get a real rude surprise when one explodes. They don't all explode of course but it's not worth taking a chance on being anywhere near a steam explosion and stone shrapnel. There've been procedures to dry stones posted here before, it's common sense but you have to know what to apply sense to.

Frosty The Lucky.

Oh the cinder blocks were just because I didn't have a big enough pile of mud. Here's a picture to show you why I used them:

The tuyere only protrudes like half an inch on the other side of the mud, and it was pretty fluid when I was making this, so I needed a form of sorts. The cinder blocks are exclusively to act as a shelf and stiffener.

I even took the front one off.

Also a lot of the things that look like rocks in the pic are actually bits of slag or charcoal.

Anyway I need to make more charcoal for next time, so that's what I'll be doing tomorrow.

Haha! Yeah, well, I'm young and my knees will survive fine!

Seeing as this is my first forge, take everything with a grain of salt. I'd say that, since it heated up metal fast and easy, it works. Not much else.

How I made my forge: Mud, square of cinder blocks, chunk of non-galv steel (Zinc is bad juju) that is tubular in nature, and then poured the mud into the hole in the middle of the cinder block square, made a hole in the middle of it, and pushed the chunk of no bad juju steel through to the hole. You could use rocks to make your circle too, though, so this is really a good on the go forge. I'd highly recommend pairing it with a splitting maul anvil!

Keep in mind this design is not good by any measure, it gets steel hot well enough, but it does not hold in the heat all too well. That said, for the grand sum of anything from 0 to 5 dollars to make, it's incredibly effective for its cost. of course, I'm going to be making a new forge with some better materials and a nicer shelf, as well as putting it higher off of the ground and gating my air in.

Pictures shall come tomorrow, it's kind of dark right now and I didn't have the camera out during the burn because I don't want to accidentally leave it somewhere it'll get destroyed.

It lived. Then dinner called.

So, the mix of mud side blast forge and splitting maul anvil worked great! I'm going to need a proper air gate for regulating temp but that thing was cooking hot enough for welding and if I wanted to, maybe even melting! I got a nice charcoal mover and a knife blank in need of some serious post-forge dressing up, but it's only a quench and an oven away from being heat treated!

So anyway, made myself a nice side blast mud forge and it's dry enough for the first go, so I'll start a new thread with some pics and my first day's work.

Well, OF course, maybe asians are a better example!

1 hour ago, ThomasPowers said:

The ones where they set their old folks adrift on an ice flow?   Have you read about soaking cloth aprons in a borax solution to fire proof it---non-toxic and when it gets dirty you throw it in the wash and the borax actually helps clean it!  Might work for your blue jean chaps...

Good to know! We've got a box of 20 mule team in the laundry already, just staked a claim on some of it for flux purposes.

And I meant the plains indians, they had a better idea of it, lol

Thanks man! And in my expirience, the indians had it right with their old people. Best resource on earth!

Oh, good idea! I'll buy some of those cheap harbor freight ball peen hammers and make a reverse doming block too, should work pretty well.

Thanks for all the ideas guys!

10 hours ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

Chaps and aprins will keep you out of hawk with mom on singed clothes, but for most things are not nessisay, now as 4 1/2 grinders are mean nasty tools, leather chaps/aprin, gloves and face shild are in order (most of us dont go that far, but then again your mother might want grandchildren and a wayward grinder can end that real fast). 

KISS, you only need to protect parts you want to keep, but some "safety" items build contempt and bad habits, gloves being an example. Many times they are a hinderence, even a safty hazard, wile others they are a nessiesity. Geting complacent and grabing hot steel with a glove and you will find you cant get it off fast enug, do it once with your bare hand and you wont do it twice. Hint, black is hot!

everuthing we do is hot, sharp and heavy, and that peice of hot, heavy sharp steel has right of way. If you drop it, move your feet...

Yeah, I'm good with my mom as far as safety glasses, a sweater, and leaving the gaurd on as far as angle grinders go. I've gotten myself good on some hot steel already (Grinder hot, not forge hot, thank goodness) and I've had a third degree burn, not something I'm going to be repeating. I'll keep a wet rag around for grabbing and moving medium hot stuff, and my bucket is indeed big enough for the foot to fit in. 

and yeah, I've got a good bit in general shop, I know to dance when the metal falls!

9 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

I have a set of real leather upper sneakers I wear, demonstrated why to a class last Saturday.  After explaining that most people will drop hot steel at some point and it's important to not over react; I dropped the piece I was holding on my shoe, calmly dumped it off my shoe and picked it up with tongs.  I may have to research non-leather fireproof spats for the vegan no-leather crowd

Not for me, I buy leather by the two pound bag of remnants whenever it's on sale. Nothing beats the real deal. But fiberglass welding blankets might be something to look into.

Also, just grew out of a pair of jeans, I think I'll be turning those into some sort of chaps (Second skin over another pair of jeans, of course) and for the boots I'll just tie some leather to the top with a bit of paracord.

Yeah! I'm going to be working with an eight pounder with a hickory handle on it, and I'll be trying a log and some other mounting methods. I'll add a new topic on its viability after a few hours knocking around with it!

Electroplating may be your best bet. Problem is you need to make certain jumps, and electro is fundamentally limited to elemental things. I.E. no alloy electroplating.

One interesting and easy way to copper-coat steel though is to quench hot steel in a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and vinegar that's had copper sitting in it. you can also dry out that mix to get a concentrated crystal of copper oxide-y gunk, but I'm not sure if mixing that into water will have the same affect as mixing the afformentioned stuff with water.

You get a leaf-thick coating of copper, and it's usually free of oxidization. Certainly looks nice though!

Yeah I'll check them, they're pretty similar to suede as far as the outside, but if they're no go on the synthetics, I have leather that I can make some chaps out of to cover over the tops and make sure they'll take the hot metal treatment in stride.

OH okay wasn't sure if it was a typo or an unfarmiliar term.

I don't have an apron, but I do have combat boots, which are the only boots I trust with averting hot metal for long enough for me to get it off of said foot, a nice pair of leather gloves, safety glasses, etc. I'm going to get some sort of face-shield soon. As far as pants, are jeans good enough or are there some sort of chaps I should be looking at? 

Also, fire retardant aprons... I have leather to make myself one, going to knock that out before the whole hot metal hitting thing starts.

3 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

We have a desert out here made from plaster of paris---White Sands.  Where people build a hot fire on it it activates it so that the next (if infrequent) rain makes it set up hard making it easy for the archaeologists to find where people have been as the loose sand blows away leaving these mushrooms of hardened plaster of paris sticking up.  (another reason why it's not a good refractory...pouring water on your system after it's been to forging heat will re-work it.)

Ooh, that's very interesting. So just to be clear, the area is made out of gypsum dust, and when fires were burned on it, it would dry it to the point that water would cause it to harden?

And yeah, water screws everything up. (Cue image from The Waters Of Mars Dr. Who episode)

FPE?

For now, I just have a quench bucket that I can move so I can easily throw a couple gallons of water onto the coals. Last time I needed to use it it put them out nicely. I'll probably also keep a tarp of dirt for choking a fire.

The charcoal that I made light easy but it also goes out easy.

34 minutes ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

Personaly I don't want you winning the Darwin Awards, or even geting an honerable mention. 

Smart kids are all to rare 

I greatly prefer laughing at those people, yeah!

10 minutes ago, jumbojak said:

Something to keep in mind about that video you posted is that Grant Thompson puts up videos about a random weekend project. He's also the guy who popped a piece of dry ice in his mouth to see what would happen, knowing full well that it could be extremely dangerous. Lots of his videos are very interesting, like the spot welder he slapped together, while some are the stuff of nightmares, like his "scariac."

While plaster might work for a flower pot foundry he probably never intended to use his creation repeatedly and for a long period of time. He moves from one project to another and creates some really interesting stuff. Some of it probably shouldn't be replicated though and all of it should be regarded as a working concept at the most, at least until serious testing has taken place.

Yeah, I actually made his spot welder. The bits on the thing suck, if you're ever looking at making one, replace them with 1/2 inch copper pipe and end caps. Much more even heating and much less resistance.

And some of it is just a version of an already-known working theory (His stick welder, rocket motors) and others are, indeed, completely conceptual. From what I've found, following his directions exactly is a good way to get burned.