Ted Ewert

I like all the stuff you make, very creative! Good luck at the fair.

I made these over the last few days. Pretty standard fare for the less experienced, but I learn a lot everytime I make something. I try and spend at least a couple hours everyday at the anvil. Improvement is incremental, but fun is constant. The opener at the right was partially made using a hacksaw and a lathe. Not recommended for the faint of heart... BTW, nice first openers GB!

Contacts will stay good as long as air doesn't get between the surfaces and cause oxidation. I'll give this a try and see how it goes. I made the thing so I can take it apart if I have problems. I got the door built and mounted today. Should be done by this weekend.

Finally got back to this project. I got the box built and part of the frame done. The element is hooked up to the thru bolts.

I've learned that perfect is for machines. People like handmade items because they aren't perfect, they are unique. "Mistakes" make your work human, and leave a little of your imperfect side for people to connect with. I was making a bottle opener today and couldn't seem to get the loop quite symmetrical. Rather than frying the steel I figured it was good enough for today. After using it a few times, the recipient of this bottle opener will be happy just to find it again for the next bottle, and won't care a wit about symmetry as long as it works. I'm happy right where I am in my learning process; I have lots of new things to try and explore.

I further shortened the inner chamber of this forge to 7" long. I'm only using 7 out of the original 13 holes in the ribbon burner. Smaller is better! The cave down at the bottom is a nice place to put something like a leaf when you just want to heat up the stem for further refinement. Whatever is in there gets no color, and no extra scale. I'm trying to get this to be as much like a coal forge as I can as far as being more capable of heating select parts of the work. I can already heat as much of the end as I need to, but the middle has been a little more of a challenge. I also poured the first of two new barn doors. The square thing on top is a handle (I'm tired of getting burned), which is tied into the door with some baling wire connecting it together . The notch is for material to stick through while the doors are shut. I'm starting to reinforce all the cast pieces I make with steel, especially new parts added onto cured material. Kast O'Lite will not stick to the cured material, so a mechanical bond of some sort has to hold it in place. I used two 1/4-20 threaded rods to hold the new addition within the chamber in place. I haven't had any cracking problems since doing this, so I don't think the steel expansion within the material is an issue. I also don't use any thick steel: lots of thin stuff is better.

I decided to put some threads in my Pritchel hole to hold accessories. It was about 7/16ths which is good for 1/2-13 threads. The whole was so beat up I had no trouble starting the threads, which are all in the underlying cast iron. It's such a beat up anvil that I had no qualms about modifying it. I have a lot of 1/2" threaded tools that I use on my small auxiliary anvil that I can now use on this thing.

I've tried to keep it simple, but being a lifelong toolaholic is starting to impact my limited work space. I would love a big old shed on the back 40 where the noise wouldn't bother anyone. My crazy next door neighbor has accused me of operating a pile driver in my garage.

Looks good, the vortex will make a nice hot forge. What's all that stuff in the barrel?

Blacksmith forges are different than kilns as you usually only heat one thing at a time , and most of the time you only want to heat a small portion of your work piece. I've built a couple and I keep going smaller. This is because I can only work on about 6" of material per heat, and I don't want to heat up any more steel than I have to (for a number of reasons you'll come to find out). I built my latest forge with a smaller main chamber, and a hole in the back I can stick longer pieces out of if I need to (which is normally plugged up). Even a small efficient forge uses a lot of fuel since about 99% of the heat is wasted. I often think about investing in a nice induction heater.

A forge only gets hot when you can keep the heat building up. Clay bricks won't cut it as they are poor insulators. An inch or two of kast o lite lining would help a lot. Cast a couple of doors while you're at it. You got a blower, so why not built and fit a ribbon burner to it. That will get things nice and hot.

One thing I didn't understand when it was suggested here at IFI that a rotational gas flow was optimal, is that it works for you in more ways than one. The most important is that it keeps the hot gasses in the forge longer, which significantly increases your heat and efficiency. The normal forge with a burner pointing straight at the floor sprays the hot gasses right out the open end as soon as it is deflected off the floor, wasting heat. It also heats a lot of your work which is close to the opening. A rotational flow travels past your door, not straight at it. I can stick a piece of work into the forge and the only part which gets color is the part sticking past the door. You can heat only as much of your work as you need to, which is nice for a number of reasons. Even though I mentioned it, the amount of heat you can generate in the forge is remarkable. Even at minimal settings my forge remains at a bright yellow heat. Reheating a piece rarely takes over 30 seconds. If it's thinner I just hold it past the door with the tongs for 10 or 15 seconds and it's good to go. Anyone who is thinking about building a forge should consider this type of design. It's a little more difficult to build, but well worth it.

If you construct your burner correctly, mix the air and gas well, and have a well insulated forge you will need surprisingly little air. A hair drier my be overkill. I have my small blower choked off about 80 percent and I get forging temperatures quite easily (with half the outlets in my ribbon burner blocked off). A good design is surprisingly efficient.

If mine starts to form ice, I just put a small fan blowing room air at it. That seems to be enough for my tank. However, since I've built more efficient versions of my forge, I find that my tank isn't icing anymore, even at forging temperatures.

Didn't think of a twisting vise, thanks for the suggestion. I'll name it Chubby Checkers.

A buddy of mine gave this to me as he had no use for it. I don't know that I have much use for it either, but it's a nice old pipe vise. Could use a little cleaning up and maintenance, but it still works.

I use "high temperature" crimp lugs with a nominal 1/4" O ring which attaches to 1/4" stainless threaded rod between 2 nuts. If anyone has a better solution, I'm all ears.

I built this hair clasp because my wife was feeling a little left out of the product flow (too many bottle openers for the guys). I didn't really know what I was doing, but I did manage to cob together a functional piece. If I had to do it again I'd make the leaves a little smaller and the loops a little bigger. I also need to get a decent torch, since the leaves took a beating having to be reheated so many times to get the loops right. I used 3/32" rod with the leaves welded on.

I tried an experiment I've been thinking about for a while. Not a new concept, but I wanted to see how it might work. The jaws are adjustable to fit anything from 1" bar stock on down. I used 1/2" round stock, so they're not quite as strong as they could be. Nevertheless, they do work. I may make a pair with some V jaws.

I finally got the forge cut down and modified more to my liking. I recast the inner tube in a shorter version and made a few other changes. Here is the rear of the forge: The center 2" hole is the exhaust port. I want most, if not all, of the exhaust to exit the rear of the forge. I also added a cutout for longer stock and filled it with wool until I need it. The idea is to keep the forge as much of an enclosed oven as possible. I can completely close up the front and still provide enough room for the hot gasses to exit and not build up much pressure. I made a little cutout in these doors so stock can fit through. I'm going to build new doors with a sliding slot for wider material. My anvil is right in front of these doors so keeping the heat down is a priority. Here's a look with the gas on. I built up the side wall below the burner to protect it from the return flame. The inside length is now 11" instead of the former 17". This version should be quite a bit more efficient. Ted

You only need the tip in the chamber. It's the reaction of the dissimilar metals connected together at the tip which generates a voltage. Make sure you don't run any power wires close to the thermocouple wires, and keep them as short as possible (they're susceptible to interference). Be careful if you're ordering a "1500 watt" element from ebay. They will indeed produce 1500 watts when run in a 230 VAC circuit. Make sure they specify what voltage the power spec is derived from. I wound my own element, which is simple enough. If you have a multi meter you can measure the resistance of the wire and calculate the current draw (and power) based on the voltage you're using. If you want about 18 amps at 115 VAC, you'll need a wire which measures 6.4 ohms from end to end theoretically. That will give you around 2 KW. You will get some loss across your SSR, and the resistance of the wire will increase slightly with temperature, so you could probably get away with a little less resistance. Test it before installation. If it trips your breaker you need a longer element. I would go with as thick a wire as you can, they hold up longer. Also, remember to stretch out the coil before you install it. There has to be some distance between the windings to avoid overheating. Your connections to the element are going to get real hot too. I use a steel crimp connector with no insulation on the end of the element, then I connect that to a threaded rod which travels through the insulation to a convenient point for the external connection. The threaded rod should be made of stainless steel (as well as the nuts and washers). You should figure that the element is going to fail at some point and you'll have to replace it, so design accordingly. I'm securing my top (containing the element) with nuts and bolts so I can remove the whole thing. Ted

They're about an inch long, ribbed and straight. I bought 2 lbs on ebay. I used about half of them on the latest casting.

I have only used Kastolite for testing and drilling so I can't speak for other materials, but as mentioned, it holds up pretty well to drilling. I just got finished recasting my air tank forge, after shortening it 4", and I used the stainless needles as added reinforcement. I don't think that the expansion coefficient of those small needles is going to have much of an impact on the casting. If it's even roughly similar to the Kastolite there should be no discernible effect. I have yet to fire it up, although I also used the needles in some repair work on my other forge and I've had no problems. I wouldn't use them if I planned on drilling out a burner for obvious reasons, but I think they would be good at mitigating any cracking in a ribbon burner.

Buzzkill... all good questions. You don't need any type of coating if you're using high temp insulating bricks. I like to put my thermocouple low as to more accurately represent the temperature close to work They are not particularly delicate devices and easily avoided when putting the piece in to be treated. I put mine in the back. The power in calculation pretty much depends on what type of insulation you have and how long do you want to wait for it to come up to temp. I'm using around 4 Kw, but I haven't tried it yet so I can't give you any direct feedback. My first oven wasn't insulated well, I used 1.5 Kw, and it didn't get close to the heat I needed. I talked to a guy on another forum who was using basically the same setup I'm building right now and he was very happy with it. I'm no expert, so take this info for my opinion. Ted

Thanks for your concern Steve, and you're right, a heat sink is necessary for these SSRs. However, I do have a heat sink (with heat sink compound) although is a little difficult to see in the pictures. It is mounted directly below the SSR, and underneath the enclosure. I also have a fan mounted to cool it off as it tends to get quite warm. I keep meaning to get back and finish this project, but I'm having so much fun at the anvil I haven't got around to it. I'm also running out of room in my garage and don't have a good spot to put it. I need to do some remodeling! Thanks, Ted How is the SCR controlled? The controller I have is a strictly On / Off type. Wouldn't you need a variable voltage for these things?