Irondragon Forge ClayWorks

Welcome aboard... Have you read this yet? READ THIS FIRST It will help in getting the best out of the forum. We won't remember your location once leaving this post, hence the suggestion to edit your profile to show your location. There are a bunch of great folks down your way, even have a thread OZ Roll Call. OZ roll call - Everything Else - I Forge Iron

How close are you to Nixa MO? L&R Specialties has just about everything you need.

Doesn't look crude to me, should be fine when you get it dressed & handled. What steel is it made out of?

I'll keep trying and my wife found another picture from another angle. I imagine the problem uploading has something to do with the recent problems with the forum.

Looks like your welding is improving.and the fullering tool should work very well.

Took a while but found one picture. You can see the blower which is mounted to a manifold and sends air to both ends of the forge which blows the dragons breath up making it cooler to get stock in and out of the forge. Got a message "Problem uploading the file" several times will try later.

All but one of the propane forges at ESSA have air curtains on them, mounted to a manifold so both ends of the forge is cooled. I'll see if I have a picture of one.

If I remember from my automotive days, the light off temperature of a catalytic converter is 400-600 degrees F and operating temperature is 1200-1600 degrees F. so I doubt an ox sensor would survive very long in a forge.

One of the hardest things for me to remember to do, is to brush the piece with a wire brush when taking it out of the fire taking the scale off for a smother finish.

Ike Doss always would say to me, are you going to look at it or hit it.

I think that's spot on. In the 43 years my wife & I have been together, I can't name all the different hobbies we have been involved in. She is accomplished in so many things it staggers my mind. Leather work, show rabbits which led to fiber arts spinning & weaving, pottery, Karate (second degree black belt) slowed down by injuries & now blacksmithing. Myself it's mostly restoring old stuff like firearms primarily muzzleloaders which involve metal & wood work, old oil lamps mostly Aladdin lamps, Jeeps & old tractors and of course blacksmithing.

The imgr file will not open without signing in.

A country boy can survive, not so much for city folks though.

The first problem I see is the hair dryer. Hooked up like that it will supply way too much air for charcoal. You need to have a way to lower the air blast to the fire. There are some ways documented in the forges section. One of the easiest is to have the dryer outlet about an inch from the tuyere pipe and only aim it at about half the pipe opening. You could also build an air gate to bleed off some of the air one of the neatest I've seen was made by jasent (I think) using an electric conduit elbow where he just rotated the cover to open up the air or close it for more air.

Pictures of your set up and fire will help. You may not have a deep enough fire.

That's what I was thinking but couldn't come up with punch press.

It's not a power hammer, although it is interesting. Looks like it was used for stamping, like coins with the proper dies or possibly leather work. Are there any name's or name plates on it? Looks like a name cast into the front crankshaft wheel but I can't make it out.

Welcome aboard Bernie. Have you read this yet? READ THIS FIRST It will help in getting the best out of the forum.

Have you searched IFI for bosh side blast forge? If I remember correctly several members have built one JHCC comes to mind. Here is just one thread of his build. https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/55407-new-side-blast-with-water-tuyere-bosh-pic-heavy/

We are doing fine here. Carroll County only has one confirmed case and three possibles (unconfirmed). Today we left the mountain for the first time in several weeks to go grocery shopping (ran out of Cheerios), wearing our masks just to be on the safe side. The store is well stocked, with the exception of paper and cleaning products. Pretty much everyone there was practicing physical distancing and the store has set up one way isles. We were able to get everything on the list with the exception of Bisquick and spent $161.37 which is a little high for us but considering we haven't shopped in several weeks, can't complain. One thing the store is doing, one person is sanitizing the shopping carts an doing a very through job of it. After each person has checked out the cashier sanitizes the whole check out station. I thought that was remarkable. The one way isles really messed with our regular way we shop. It's funny how we develop habits like going a certain way when shopping. My wife kept saying this is just wrong.

No forging but I thought this was cute. mother feeding her hatchling's. sent from Facebook.

Do you have a welder? If you do weld some scrap (like rebar) to the work for an extension to keep it farther from the forge opening. Cut it off when done.

You might want to read this about using the @tag. Using the @ name on the forum

One way to loosen up the bellows is to rub candle wax or paraffin on all the rod/piston wood to wood friction parts.

You might try Kayne & Sons Blacksmith Depot. I understand they are (or were) Iron Kiss dealers. You can google iron kiss hammers LLC they have a facebook page and lot of sites on google.