HaywardForge

What do you guys think about this one?

Anvil M&H Armitage - $450 marked 1-0-0

Craigslist link removed

Looking good to me!

Just wanted to say, I bought these two hammers off of Richard.  The  workmanship on the 2.5lb diagonal hammer is fantastic.  Can't wait to start hitting some steel with them.  Gonna get a full set from him next.

Thanks a bunch Richard!

Get a race car.... you have a lot of parts left over after you break them.....  springs, axels, control arms, shock mounts ect

As for searching around, i have found a few items in alleys so far.  And I am making friends with a local 4x4 shop as well to see what I cna snag from their takeoff bins.  Lots of springs/axels at car shops.

Amazing!

Lookin good!

Ya the prices in my area are crazy.  most 150lb peter wrights are going for 700-900 dollars. 

found some NC 100 lbs anvils for like 400 as well

Thanks, I contacted them.  If they get back to me I am going to go pick it up.  Its in such great shape, can't pass up on it.

I should rephrase, 21" from the tip of the horn to the opposite side of the face.

Hey Guys,

Just saw this anvil pop up, but the guy posted almost no info.  Any ideas before I go take a look?  21" face, 11" high... i think thats the Vulcan logo.  But the only other marking seems to be "10"

craigslist link removed

Thanks,

35 minutes ago, Frosty said:

If you want to make swords down the road, about where I put a 36" blade you'll really want more than one forge. You can't realistically forge more than about 6" at a time and keeping a 36" forge going for that is pretty silly. A 10-12" long chamber for forging and one say 40"+ for heat treat makes a lot more sense.

You can armor up the short forge to withstand welding and the mechanical wear of repeatedly inserting and removing billets. By armor: 2" of rigidized  ceramic blanket outer liner, (backer) 1/2" hard refractory inner liner, (flame face) and an IR reradiating kiln wash like ITC-100. Most blades are perfectly happy in a forge say 5" wide or so though if you want to do axes a little wider but it doesn't need to be very high.

A forge lined like this is tough and the kiln wash couldn't care less about getting some HOT borax on it. This is the forge to use to forge blades, paring knives to swords.

Heat treating doesn't involve fluxes and you'll be inserting a blade once with maybe a little back and forth to make sure heating is even, NOR does it need to be nearly so hot. The liner doesn't need to be tough just efficient so 2" rigidized blanket and a good kiln wash will be efficient inexpensive and easy to rebuild.

One tool that does everything does no thing well.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Hey Frosty,

Thanks I went with Ebay user  parkerpickensataol  forge.  Chamber size is 9” long 4” wide and 4 1/2” tall, single burner. Entire chamber is lined with 2” thick ceramic fiber insulation which has been rigidized, then coated and sealed with refractory cement.

Can't wait to get it and get up and forging.

Thanks for all the advice!

5 minutes ago, Lou L said:

Solid arguments Fiveohmike!  Getting forging as quickly as possible is the highest priority.  Once again, take my input about propane forges worth a grain of salt....but, when I researched them heavily before deciding to go with coal I learned a bit about burners and decided that having the flexibility to change burners would have been a must in a propane forge.  I'm not certain if any of the makers you listed made forges with integral burners but, if they did, I would avoid them.  Once again, I'm propane stupid...and integral burners could not even exist.  It's just that some of the pictures I saw of forges online didn't look like changing a burner would be easy.

Hey Lou,

Thanks!  Yep thats part of my thinking as well.   The commercial ones do seem to be have the ability to change burners.  Most ship with the burners not in place and use set screws on the burner shafts to set the height of them.

Also that leads me to ... if/when down the road I do build a forge, if the burners are working great I already have them and can take them off the commercial forge body and put them to use on something I make tailored to myself.

6 minutes ago, Gold Country Forger said:

One thing I would suggest is taking advantage of some of the local resources to sample different forges. I know the The Crucible in Oakland offers short classes where you can use the equipment, and there may be other local classes as well (if you check the California Blacksmith Assc site or the sublink on the forum for them here some stuff may pop up) as there are many smiths in the bay area. At the very least you may find out more about what you do not want and pick up a few tricks to boot.

I ended up doing 20 or so hours of classes in various shops up here in the foothills before buying any equipment due to the fact I had nowhere to put it. When I did go to get equipment I decided to buy something I knew worked right off the bat but had no trouble pulling the trigger since I already knew what I liked.

Good luck and happy forging!

Hey Gold, 

Yep I am taking classes at the Crucible next month, 16 hours of general blacksmithing over two days and I am on the wait list for the next bladesmithing class.  I also signed up for our  www.calsmith.org/ association   Sage advice.  I will finish roughly setting up my garage "shop" before than so I can practice anything I learn there.  Also the calsmith guys I have already been in contact with have a line on a nice sized anvil for me that i should be picking up next weekend.  Awesome guys and super helpful.

Nice to see a fellow Californian floating around

2 hours ago, jmccustomknives said:

Here's some things to look at.  Are you planning on forge welding?  If so understand that the borax will destroy the lining, floors and just about anything it comes in contact with eventually.  Because of that some things to take into consideration is how easy it is to re line.

While you can forge a sword with a single burner you will never be able to h/t it.  I used a Diamondback for a couple of years before I melted down the case.  Still use the burners though.

That is one thing I worry about so ease of replacing the lining is important.  The blacksmith who makes the round single burner forge on ebay that I listed above, who has been mentioned on the forum before, his is easy to replace and thats the way I was leaning last night before posting.  The Majestic/DF type square forges do not look to be all that easy to replace the lining.  

On the other hand I will not be forge welding some time while I am working through more basic knives.  The ability to grow is nice, the ability to run 1 - 3 burners at a time would be nice.

On the other point of building a forge, after researching the site for the last two months, I have come to the honest conclusion that for a someone newer who is building their forge they run into a lot of problems with the setup, they run into problems with assembly, and they are not forging ... they are tinkering with their forges trying to get it up and running in a stable fashion.  Then they get it up and running and are not happy with it so they build another one. 

Having not worked with gas before I would rather have something on hand that A) can work reasonably well out of the box even if its inefficient 2) get me hammering metal as quick as possible.  With those two I can then understand what I like and do not like when I build a forge that suits me down the road.

I love this site and love the amount of knowledge here.  My grandpa, who was a farrier for a long time for the middle third of his life, was blown away by this site.  Wish I would have snagged his tools when I was younger

So a question, as I have been researching for a while on this, is if you had a choice of any of the commercial forge manufacturers who would you go with?

The requirements for the forge would be:

1.  Bladesmithing focused

2.  Forging and Welding

3.  Blades between 4" and 36"

4.  Sub $800.00 USD

5. Venturi based atmospheric, no blower

6.  Not homebuilt

I have looked into Chili, Atlas, Majestic, Devil Forge, NC Tools and the ebay.  The ideas I have kicked around so far are the Majestic and Devil 2/3 burners, but relining them to suit my needs ( I am conscientious of hot spots, so would work the metal back and forth..take a bit more attention but not tobad) , and using firebrick at the openings if need to retain heat.  Gas consumption is not "too" much of a concern as this is a  hobby, not a business.  I will be looking into larger than 25# propane systems as well.

I was 3 seconds from placing my order tonight but I keep going around in circles on this.  I want to be beating metal soon, instead of just grinding stock.

If you had to do it with the above requirements what would you go with? 

Sorry for the random first post, I have been chatting with all the chat guys for a couple weeks now