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I Forge Iron

Jon Kerr

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Everything posted by Jon Kerr

  1. Frosty- thanks, I think I'll copy you on both fronts- cut a thicker disk of "armour" to protect the bottom from dropped sharp objects, and also find a larger tank for it to sit in to act as containment in case of a disaster. That makes me happier as my £25 lovely 30litre, sealed lid, shiny blue quench tank isnt a waste of cash!!! (I did TRY to find something cheap/free but struggled!!!)
  2. Similar to our conversation in the other thread, Thomas....... Ammo containers are a little hard to find in the UK!!!!!
  3. Sorry 2.5litres was yet another typo..... my quench tank is 25 litres! Blacksmithing is an expensive hobby at the best of times- but worse when I make mistakes like this. I only recently bought the quench tank so its a shame to hear its probably a risky option. Its fairly thin metal but has a nice sealing lid which I thought would be good for keeping the oil from going off. I probably better look to replace though if its that easy to pierce with hot steel.
  4. Whoops! Realistically, how big a lump of steel does it take to heat that much oil? Seems like a lot of oil to warm up! Mutliple heats of the steel? How hot to get the steel? Red, Orange or not that hot? Any worries about the hot steel resting against the side/bottom of a thin guage can? I see a disaster in the future caused by my own stupidity.
  5. Interesting thanks. Any tips on the best method for heating 25litres of steel in a can?
  6. Ah.... thats a shame. Well, sorry to rub-in how fortunate I am then! (I didnt realise!)
  7. Thomas- No, I didnt preheat the oil. Is that necessary or is it dependant on the grade of steel? This was EN19. Pnut- Wow, I really feel for you grinding with a dremel! Its bad enough with an angle grinder. I havent tried a grinding disc- perhaps thats what I should do. Interesting that part of your family is called Kerr. It's not a common name outside Scotland. I've met very few people in my life with the same name, given that I've lived in England all my life.
  8. Good luck Pnut, look forward to seeing some pics of yours too (and stealing the ideas). Yes, hoping this turns out to be useful. Its taking some serious grinding effort and I'm going through a fair few flap discs (albeit, cheap ebay ones.). I do a little bit of grinding on it between forging while I wait for my steel to heat
  9. When I was forging with charcoal, I found the vast majority of larger pieces could be broken easiest with a twisting motion. That generally made the piece break up into a load of smaller pieces. Each time I added fuel from the bag to the forge, I placed it next to the fire, twisted/broke the larger bits, before raking it into the fire. If a stubborn piece would break, it went onto the fire whole and eventually it would break with a light tap of my rake. I've since switch to coke though and I really cant recommend it enough.... infinitely easier IMO and less time managing the fire is more time forging.
  10. Especially since the detectors are so cheap! Even the ones with an LCD display are dirt cheap on eBay (£5-12) from known brands. I highly recommended the LCD display, as it allows you to keep an eye on the levels all the time. My coke forge seems to be variable on what I can get away with. Some days, I can forge with just the two windows open in my shed (at 0PPM) which will keep my neighbours happy by reducing the noise. Other days, I watch the level creep up and have to forge with the door open to keep it at 0 PPM. Perhaps depends on the atmospheric conditions, draw on flue, etc etc. Looks like the OP has this all covered with a decent detector. Forge looks great (though I know nothing re/ gas forges).
  11. Bit of an update here after a couple of forging sessions over the past fortnight. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I had a few very frustrating forging sessions in a row. Friday: I decided to have a go at something else and go back to some basic toolmaking and heat treating and surprisingly it went great! I felt much happier about my forging after this week. First up I forged a new pair of punches; one round and one square. My original round punch was rebar, and the second (pictured earlier in this thread) had cracks from quenching in water, so both needed replacing. I tried to focus on clean forging, not burning the steel (while ensuring the heat was soaked through to the middle), and making sure my square was.... square. It seemed to go well. The heat treatment (as per the advice from everyone earlier in this thread) went well. I know you guys love the details so.... : I quenched the tip (1"-2" depending on up/down motion) in oil (rapeseed aka/ canola) and then used the residual heat in the shank to temper the tip. This tip quench> polish> run colours method was repeated until the colours stopped running, then it was allowed to cool fully in air. I also spent some time working on by rail track anvil. Since I have a decent block-anvil, I just want the rail track to be a kind of swiss-army-knife anvil seen in the Improvised Anvils thread. I'm gradually grinding the main section of rail into a domed section which might be useful in future for sheet metal etc. I'm planning to turn the middle bit (web?) into a fuller. I need to do a lot more grinding to finish this off. I've started trying to cut the base section into a mini-horn but had some trouble getting through neatly and safely so gave up for now- might return to this in future. Finally I started forging a horn/bicker for my portable hardy anvil, so we'll see how that goes. Won't show pictures till its done. I've also been working on another hammer to axe conversion for fun. Sunday: I was invited over by Neal the Smith who lives just a few minutes away. He was working with his friend to forge weld a high carbon bit into a bearded axe. This was a fascinating intro to forge welding (I've seen it done lots online but never in person). Neal had even very kindly made up some sample bits of stock ready for me to try a couple of basic types of forge welding. He showed me how to wire up some plates to forge weld together, and also how to do a scarf weld and make a basic animal head.Thanks Neal! Using a propane forge as opposed to a coke forge was new to me and interesting too. Getting to welding temperature was much easier in the propane forge than in my coal forge so I need to go home and practice I think. Attached is a picture of my (terrible) horse, which started life as a ram before I burned both horns off.
  12. I agree with everyone above, for what its worth. I've only very recently started out myself. Don't get drawn into spending lots of money early on until you're SURE its the hobby for you. Dont bother buying an expensive anvil or forge early on. Listen to Charles' advice re/ building a simple solid fuel forge (burning charcoal, coal or coke). Look up "JABOD" here, the "Just a Box of Dirt" forge. You'll want to be forging outdoors initially anyway. A gas forge is not any safer indoors than a coal forge- in fact its worse in terms of Carbon Monoxide. Focus on safety- buy PPE (glasses at a bare minimum) and research the dangers of Carbon monoxide and burning scrap steel (watch out for platings on scrap metal which can kill you when burned!) If you wanted to spend a little money when getting started- my advice would be to buy one or two decent pairs of TONGS! Making tongs is actually a fairly advanced and labour intensive process which would be difficult for a beginner. In the UK a set of tongs can cost around £35 a pair easily. You want to buy tongs specific to the stock you are working with. A really good starting point would be: - A visit to a scrap yard or similar to buy a nice cheap solid lump of steel to act as an anvil. Alternatively, look at railway track anvils but use it ON END not sideways. Don't look to pay more than £20 or so. - Car Boot sales or markets will be good for finding a hammer. A simple ball-peen engineers hammer is easy to find- don't start with one too heavy. 1lb to 1.5lb will be ideal especially if you're young. A small hand sledge might also be handy for abusing (stirking tools such as punches or chisels). -Build a JABOD outdoors. Buy a suitable blower. See the forum posts here. This will be a significant challenge early on! Especially if you're not familiar with forging and what a good fire should look like. If you know a blacksmith, get them to help and advise. - Buy a pair of tongs online- ideally ones set up for small square stock (5-8mm?). This will be a perfect size for forging some hooks to begin with which are fantastic practice. -Buy some steel of an appropriate size. Avoid rebar, and avoid scrap where you're not sure what it is. If its rusty scrap its probably safe, otherwise leave well alone until you know how to identify dangerous coatings. - Take a course! If you really want to spend your $300- find a beginners course or experience day nearby. Perhaps ask them to learn some basics and make some tools (chisels, punches, tongs, etc). Thats the absolute best way to spend your cash. ..... I just googled "Blacksmith Course Topeka Kansas". link removed per TOS Looks like theres one this weekend! Probably nearby? ( I know nothing of US geography). (Hope I havent broken any rules with the link!)
  13. Well, now I know I went wrong in far more places than I thought. I'm off for a walk to see if I can find Sagebrush growing in england....
  14. Thanks Glenn- as always a really informative post. I'll have another go at welding as you decribe (both your method and description of fire bowl). Thanks for that.
  15. Hi Pnut, thanks for your reply. This forge design doesnt have a grate- it just has a single hole (15 or 20mm diameter?) as an inlet in the bottom of the forge. I make sure its clear before I build a fire each time, and I make sure its clear if I have to clear away clinker during a forging session. The blower behaviour isnt new- its always been this way. The blower has a huge outlet (10cm x 10cm square) for which I have had to 3D print an adapter nozzle to fit with the 35mm air hose which came with the forge.
  16. Last night's forging session was, again, incredibly frustrating. I should be happy because, at least, the source of my frustration is changing which means I'm learning and the things I struggled with before are no longer a problem. I constantly wish I had someone experienced to look over my shoulder and be able to point out the things I'm obviously missing and doing wrong. My issue last night was trying to achieve a welding heat. I simply can't get the metal hot enough without pushing it down into what I suspect is the oxidising zone. Furthermore, I started to get some sparks above the fire last night without any steel in the fire at all, which I guess means I'm actually burning the bottom of my forge. I'm using an Iron Dwarf bottom blast forge. As per the instructions (for using with coke) I have a shovel full of builders sand in the bottom (around 3/8 inch or 10mm) I wonder whether my blower isn't up to scratch? its a proper forge blower but the back pressure of driving air through the small pipe and inlet hole seems to have it struggling, and you can feel a distinct breeze in the wrong direction if you hold your hand near the blower inlet. The pipe I'm using is the standard size supplied by Mr Iron Dwarf so it must be tried and tested. I got down on the ground afterwards and had a look under the forge- theres definitely some buckling occuring from the thermal expansion and I can see what appears to be paint bubbling off (hope its this rather than burnt through already!). Everything was hot so I couldn't look properly. Tonight I will clean it out and inspect for damage. Any ideas what might be going on? Are there any dangers that flux/sand could cause to the bottom of my forge? I tried some welding. Following Joey Van Der Steegs video with fluxless forging. I tried just bending a bar back on itself, getting up to heat (albeit, probably in the axidising region) and I think I managed one very short section of weld, twice. I couldnt get it to take further away from the bend. I did try fluxing too but it didnt help. I tried a snail. Got the the forge welding step, messed it up, again, and broke it in half, again. I now have a total of 5 half-snails. I then started working on another hammer-to-axe conversion, just to have some fun beating steel. Getting a large piece of stock up to forging heat was a challenge, again perhaps a lack of air?
  17. Thanks Les! Yeh I won't give up entirely on the hammer rack. It's a little hard to explain without photos but the issues are fairly clear to me but also, unfortunately, pretty fundamental to my planned design and choice of stock. Simply- I need to mount my new leg vice as my old one isn't good enough. I also need to use thicker stock for the piece with the mortise in (relative to the tenon), as I was mangling the thin mortised piece while trying to heat and peen the tenon. I might do a combined wood and metal rack to serve the purpose for now, but I definitely have plans to revisit mortise and tenon joints in future and put what I learned into action. As for the snail, I'll definitely make more. Considering trying a design with a long spike on the bottom which could be stuck on a houseplant pot or such as a cool little ornament.
  18. Last night I got back into the forge for a couple of hours which was great. Things have been busy lately and honestly, for a little while after getting the workshop and forge built I was a little burned out on shop-stuff! I turned my attention to some other hobbies/activities for a few weeks and my enthusiasm for forging has slowly and surely crept back in. I never reported my progress from a few weeks back on my hammer rack. I was trying to achieve an all metal wall mountable hammer rack, and tried my hand at some mortise and tenon joins to hold it together. It was a bit of a disaster but I learned a lot.... In the end I think I'm going to give up. Last night I didnt even think about trying the hammer rack again, and decided to have a go at a snail as a practice excercise. My first 3 attempts were failures. I started with 8mm mild steel bar. Forging the taper, flat secton and antennas was all fine. My problems started when I wanted to bend the flat section over onto itself to create the tail. On my first try, I marked out the bend on the edge of the anvil, bent it, and then proceeded to try and work the tail out to a taper. Pretty soon the bent section snapped off as I had thinned the metal in that region so much. I realised that it was likely I'd need to forge weld it.... I started again, and this time tried a forge weld. I failed. The metal was clean (albeit with a coarse flap disk), fluxed, but perhaps not hot enough? Was trying to avoid sparks but following a little research it seems that you need to be right on the borderline of sparkling heat in order to weld? Anyone have any other beginner tips? Eventually the one I was trying to forge weld broke at the same position. Third one failed as I snapped off an antenna while rushing and forging too cold. By this point my piece of stock was getting pretty short from all the lopped off bits from each failure.... so I wanted to try one more time at forge welding. I skipped the antenas and went straight the the bend and weld step. I failed again, but this time I managed to get a bit of a taper forged on the tail without it breaking... so I finished him off with the spiral shell and did my best to hot cut and twist some very short little antennaes as the last step (which was awkward!). Fun and games.... I learned a lot (dont rush! dont skip steps! dont forge cold!) and even failing to forge weld was an experience in itself I suppose. I can do some research to improve my chances next time.
  19. Absolutely amazing, even down to the colours on the scrap. I hope you're charging a fortune for these, Das, because they're worth it! Speaking of different guitar types- have you considered a "flying V"? Very recognisable guitar and would look cool in scrap.
  20. Is anyone planning to attend this? I'm seriously tempted as I've never been to a meet before. I'm very new though so I'd not be much use in terms of forging scythes and billhooks!
  21. I'm almost ashamed to say, I had to google framblewurtzer JUST to make sure it wasn't a real thing!
  22. I've been struggling to find a nice (cheap/free) quench bucket for a while (with a lid, to stop the canola oil going rancid so fast). Fortunately, I just sold the first axe I made, for £50! So I've treated myself to a very nice 25L (6 gallon) quench bucket with lid and handles (for £17. Gulp!).... and ordered 20L of oil to pour into it. I'll definitely be making more bits to sell to fund my new habit....
  23. Hi Goods- that's essentially exactly what I did (with the depths and movements exactly as you describe). What I definitely got wrong was that I heated the material way beyond critical temp before quenching (I forgot the "non magnetic" bit.). I also didn't do any normalising after forging to relieve any stresses/ improve grain structure. It does seem from online research that 4140 requires oil, also. I'm going to repeat my try; but this time, I will do a normalising cycle, quench in OIL at the proper critical temperature, and polish and run the colour repeatedly until the material has cooled. Hopefully this will result in no cracks! I'd really like to get this right so I can work on a set of long lasting punches to give myself some options in future.
  24. Thanks everyone for the advice. Think I'll go with Lattucino and Anvil's advice as, as Anvil says, I need to learn to heat treat anyway. Anvil- So, for a 4140 punch- you are quenching only half inch on the tip? Do you use Water or Oil? Then quickly polishing and watch the colours run to straw at the tip? I guess best practice is still to do as JHCC says and repeat the quench/polish/colour run until the colours stop running, to ensure the shank never gets hardened?
  25. Hi Jenny, Looks like you've possibly signed up to the forum just the work out the value of your bed frame. If you intend to stick around then please READ THIS FIRST and add a location into your profile. As for your bed frame. Are you SURE its wrought-iron? Many people call items "wrought iron": gates, fences, bed frames, etc, but more often than not is actually steel which has been hot worked into a pleasing aesthetic and welded together. These items are not made from real "wrought iron". Wrought Iron is a material which (generally) pre-dates the invention of the Bessamer Converter allowing mass production of modern day steel. Wrought Iron is close to pure iron but has slag/silica/glass inclusions which give it a grainy structure. The material is highly prized by blacksmiths due to its workability, forge weld-ability, historical value and rarity (since there hasn't been much made in the past hundred years or so). So.... do you have any reason think your bed is made from real wrought iron rather than steel? If it is wrought iron then its probably very valuable in material-weight alone, never mind its value as an artistic piece of furniture. Regards, Jon
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