Deep Forest Tinker

wow, thanks for the advice. I'll keep trying wtih my O1 stock but what's an 'easier' steel? I have a Grainger supply 1/2 mile from my work so I can get a few options pretty easily. 

1 hour ago, Buzzkill said:

This is one of those questions that sounds really specific, but there are so many variables to take into account that it's hard to give it an accurate answer.  What steel are we talking about?  High carbon or stainless tend to not move as well under the hammer as mild steel and can have significantly different forging temperatures.

What hammer are you using?  An 8 oz. ball pein hammer is generally going to take longer than a 3 lb. drilling hammer.

How is your hammer control?  Are you able to consistently hit where you want to hit on the rod?

What temperature (color) are you forging at?  Most steels are going to move significantly different at a yellow heat compared to a dull red.

All of these things (and possibly a few others) can impact how many heats it takes to get the steel into the shape you want it. 

If at all possible for you I'd recommend getting involved with a person or organization that can help you.  This is where you can learn more in an afternoon with someone else than you can in several weeks of trial and error on your own.  Both ways work.  One is just a whole lot faster and a lot less frustration.

Yeah, i'm just trying to get a bead on what should be reasonable if it is being done right. So the color of the temperature doesnt matter since I'm only looking for how long when it's being done correctly i.e. yellow hot. 

That said, the other factors are O1 steel, and a 3lb hammer. 
 

I should get involved with an organization, I just don't have much access. I think there's a guild within 30 miles, even one day of watching soemone more experienced work would probably teach me more than i know now. 

Yeah, I've seen that one before but I wasn't sure if it applies for charcoal. I wish I could find a diagram of how a charcoal fire is supposed to be built and where the workpiece goes. My forge is quite a bit like this (but i built it for $70) 

Anybody know how deep I should have the fuel? i usually have about 4 inches with my workpiece laying on top. now i'll try to make it more of a mound with 4 inches under and maybe 2 over and see how that goes.

Other newb questions if anyone's willing to keep humoring me:
1) say I want to flatten a rod of 5/8" thats a foot long down to about 1/4" bar. how many heatings should that take? it takes me a LOT so i dont know if thats normal or my technique sucks

2) i guess lots of heatings is bad for the metal, so how many times can something realistically be heated before it's a problem. all I've heard is "too many" is bad, but i have no reference for what's normal or a lot of heatings. any guideline anybody can give me?

So do you have to brush all the stuff that gets stuck to it off every time you hammer it?

Also

Thomas, that's a very fair point, I was starting from 31F since the stock was sitting in my garage.

I'm going to try burying the rod in the charcoal. I'll try coal at some point, but my forge is based on a charcoal design and I want to stick with that for the immediate project. 

C-1, thanks for the info. I actually have access to coal from a farrier's shop a town over. Charcoal is just much easier to get.

I've read they burn at the same temperature so i can't figure out what the difference would be. is it the density of the heat? I lay my workpiece on the top, should it be stuffed down in? I never know if that ends up making ash stick to it.

This stuff seems harder to find in a youtube video, you know?

Hey all, 

I'm self-teaching so i don't have a great reference point for how heating times should work because i cant really watch anyone do it live

I built a charcoal forge of my own design and i think it works pretty well, seems to get plenty hot because it's started melting the firebricks and it can get steel rod up to pretty hot (i'm forging outdoors without a hood so i figure dark orange in daylight is pretty hot?)

I -think- my forge works pretty well but I want to know how long metal should take to heat up. i feel like with the 5/8" rod i was trying today, it took about 10 minutes to get to first hammering temp, then it seems like several minutes in between. 

Is that reasonable? how much time hammering vs. heating do you spend? 

I just got the backyard blacksmith for Christmas, it's good but doesnt have a lot of detail about anything but the way she does it. 

I'd be very interested in that book if it talks about several options, I'll probably just buy a copy of it if it's that good.

22 hours ago, Frosty said:

Glad you chimed in Charles you have a lot more experience with side draft forges.

No, an air hose isn't a good air blast, you want low velocity and moderate volume. All the gleaties (fire flies) are a result of too much or too fast a blast. Charcoal will throw sparks normally, quantity depends on a couple factors, type of wood and air volume.

A charcoal fire needs to be deep and as narrow as practical. It WILL grow as wide as the fuel pile so keep the fire pot, trench, etc. as narrow as possible. Deep is good for a couple reasons, first it shields the steel from atmospheric oxy, the fire has consumed all the oxy and positive presure through the pile keeps the ambient out. Second is insulation, it helps hold the heat in a controlled volume and not heat the room instead of your stock.

Frosty The Lucky.

Huh, interesting, thanks. I'll dig around the solid fuel forum. google image search for charcoal forge doesnt turn up anything but coal forges :\

10 hours ago, Frosty said:

I love the forge, sort of an Angry Forge look. It's not a very good charcoal forge design though, better ratios have been mentioned already. NO the fire pot should NOT be as wide as it is deep, especially not for charcoal.

I'm sure someone will chime in with a side draft forge and how much better it is for charcoal.

Your blower is WAY more than you'd need to burn charcoal by the pickup truck full at a time, a blow drier typically needs to be choked down. With that one the blast is strong enough to blow the heat right out of the fire without much more than warming the steels.

Pull up a comfy chair, pack a lunch and beverages and settle down for some serious reading. Yo bet Iforge has a solid forge section that contains designs, plans, discussion and arguments pro and con for different ones. There's in depth discussions abut fuels, what and why one is preferred over another. Etc. etc. Figure a couple days of reading, take notes and don't be afraid to check books out of the library even if you have to ILL them. Yeah, there's a reading suggestion section too.

I'm not sure how long IFI has been online, Glenn's told me, us several times but I don't remember lots of things well. Anyway it's been online more than a decade and yakky guys like Me have been posting. A lot of the guys contributing are world known names in the craft many published authors. Anyway, virtually anything you can think of to ask has not only been asked but answered many times.

Reading up may not tell you what you need to know at any given moment but it will give you a handle on the craft and more importantly a handle on the language. It REALLY helps to know what a thing or process is called so you can ask good questions and better still understand the answers.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Thanks for the comments! I don't use the shop vac anymore, i had been using a toe switch to pulse it, which worked ok. Now I use an air compressor hose with an air gap before it hits the intake to suck more air in. it actually seems to work pretty well, but I run out of air fairly quickly.

I'll spend time in the solid fuel forums. 

How long should it take to heat a piece of 1/2" steel from cold to orange? I still don't have any idea if my forge is working reasonably or not.

8 minutes ago, Glenn said:

Make the depth of the fire pot about 9 to 12 inches deep and FILL it with charcoal. Fuel does not make the fire hot, air makes the fire hot. Do not blow the fuel out of the fire pot, just add enough air to get things hot.

The metal should be yellow (mild steel) to high orange when you start hitting it with a hammer. When it gets into red, put it back into the fire.

Read the solid fuel forge section and the anvil section of the site for more details and ideas.

Thanks for the reply. So to have a firepot that deep, does it need to be like a foot wide as well? Are there design ideas in the solid fuel forge section? I feel like I'm pretty off the beaten path with charcoal - does it require a different forge design?

8 minutes ago, Jim Coke said:

Greetings and welcome Jordan,

You have a lot of work to do to be successful at forging . First I would suggest alot of research on this sight for forge design. For starters move the cars out of harms way. Next your anvil height is way to high.. Others will chime in but a lot of reading is in order.. Take your time and you will do well .. 

Forge on and make beautiful things

Jim

Thanks, Jim!

Hi everybody,

I did a quick search and didnt see anything about this so here goes. I built myself a small forge for working with charcoal. Since the charcoal sparks a lot, i built a hood for it and it seems to work fairly well (it just has a mesh grate at the top of the stack). However, I feel like i'm spending a lot of time heating my material and maybe its not getting hot enough. It seems like it takes several minutes to heat a chunk of 1/2" steel to I'd say about a dull orange. 

I have a lot of open ended questions and would just like advice. Questions:

- main question - how the heck long should it take to heat material?
- is it just the design of my forge?
- is it that charcoal sucks?
- is it my material? (hot rolled steel)
- is the blowing I"m doing not good enough? (ive used a shop vac and an air compressor and both seem ok but how would i know?)

I attached a picture of my evil little forge. the firepot is about 2.5 inches deep, has about a 2.5 inch perforated section for blowing, and maybe 8 inches across at teh top, 5 at the bottom. 

I greatly appreciate any advice 

Hi everyone,

I'm a new to blacksmithing guy from Minnesota. I built my first forge when i got my first welder a few months ago and have been trying to figure this whole thing out. I'm using a 6" chunk of railroad track for an anvil. I finally broke down and decided to join an internet forum when I realized I couldnt find an easy youtube video about managing a charcoal fire correctly. Hopefully I can find some help here and make a few new friends

Jordan