Pointy_Things

that is a beauty of a knife! Excellent work on that one sir, I like that hudson bay style (that's what I call it anyway, I really like that shape).

I have made quite a few longbows, and I use heat all the time to straighten out kinks and put curves into staves. And, heat is used to straighten shafts just like you said. Note that heat is also used to plasticize the wood fibers in the belly (shooter side) of wooden bows to make them stronger/more resistent to compression damage. I can imagine that a properly charred handle would make it a little harder, but it has the potential to make it more brittle, prone to breaking in thin cross sections.

No worries man. I will finish up the working on the forge this week, and get some heating and hammering done this coming weekend. I will follow all y'all's advice as well. Going to do a little more tweaking, I think I'm gonna out a shelf under it for cold metal, and maybe paint it with some deck paint I got laying around. And, I need bigger wheels on the front, it's a pain to roll around right now. But, I honestly haven't spent more than 100 bucks in it this far, still using wood and stuff from previous home improvement projects and junk. The fire pot is an old school desk and the wheels are training wheels from my youngest girls old bike. It's been a fun build, and going to be more fun heating steel in it. I did make a folded steel cross from 1/2 stock in it prior to these tweaks, so I got something to compare to for next time. If it heats faster and generally better then I'm going to be happier than a mosquito in a nudist colony.

Yeah, there is a lot of joke material in my bellows design and choice of words. I will let y'all hit those softballs if you want, I will keep lobbing them.

My forge is hand pumped with an Asian style bellows. That's what the big bowl with the stick poking out is. So, turning off the air is easy, just quit pumping . But it can move a surprising amount of air, and I can blow charcoal and sparks right out of it if I get spastic. So, I guess I just need to quit jack hammering the bellows.

I figured it was, but I have a pint of it I'm not going to use for anything else, and my morter this time is pretty sand and grog heavy. I ran out of fire clay, so I hammered some red brick and mixed it with sand, some ashes, charcoal fines, and the brick and hammered it in there. But, it's grainy and gritty, so I figured that refractory I had would firm it up a little bit. But, if you think it will harm anything, please let me know. I also stuck a smaller pipe in the opening and clayed around it, so it's got a 1" air pipe now vs the 2.5 ish one it had before. Oh, I had another question. I had an ember/spark adhere itself to my forehead and leave a nice little burn. Anyone have any ideas for knocking some of the firefleas down, some form of arrestor?

Ok, reconfigured. Narrowed the pit to 1 brick wide, but it's about 3 bricks deep and about 1.5 bricks long. It's a brick long at it's deepest point. I think it's going to work a lot better. I burned some wood in there just to set the clay up, and I will cost the whole thing with some refractory cement later. I can tell for sure it will use less fuel to get hot, I'm thinking it will get there faster and stay there longer to.

Got it, going to reconfigure it a little and I will take some pics of the result. Thank y'all so much for the help, I really appreciate it and I look forward to learning more from you as I walk this path!!

So, something like this perhaps, but reduce the size of the turyere down to about 1 inch, and don't use redbrick? If I reduce the size, I can maybe angle it up a bit, I can just stick a reducer in the hole and point it up a bit. Y'all think that would work?

So, maybe I'm overthinking this (which I do a lot). Maybe if I just put bricks on either side of the trench, and just out the fuel in there so it's above the hole, then that's all I need to do? Right now I have to poke the material down in the trench, and then hold it to keep it steady and keep it in the fireball.

Hi all! I'm just getting into blacksmithing, and I have a question about fuel. I'm using charcoal because I have access to lots of it and I wanted to use something traditional (I also hunt with stick bows and muzzle loaders). Anyway, I built a forge and my clay firepot is about 12 inches long x 4 to 5 inchs deep. The airsupply is a 2 inch pipe coming in from the side, with a hand pumped bellows. I get a lot of air. But, I'm not sure how much fuel to use. Should it be mounded up in the pot? I can get it hot, but I'm still trying to figure stuff out.