DennisCA

I bought this cheap smithing hammer, there wasn't much choice in my local stores really, there was an 800g but I felt the face of it was too small and the head too long. So I bought this ugly thing with a 1500g head for 7€ with the intention of modifying it The fiberglass shaft was removed first, then I started shaping the head to reduce the weight: It's now down to 1390g. I would like it lighter still but my beltgrinder isn't the best and my 2x72 project isn't yet begun. I am consdering putting in my mill and using a face mill at an angle to make deeper scalloped cuts, to lighten the hammer without touching the faces, sort of imitating a swedish pattern cross peen hammer. Would like a finished weight around 1000-1200g or so. But it's still a big improvement from my 2000g sledge hammer that I have been using, feels light and easy.

I am quoting this because of the latet exchange of messages above this one. Is this suggestion made with regards to using coke or charcoal? -- Oh and my tuyere is a pipe that ends at the side of the firepot. I could push the pipe into the center of the fire, but I understood the point of a side blast is for the air to enter the firepot from the side.

I don't have any hammer-experience but when it comes to axes I prefer the traditional finnish material of arctic birch. Certainly not as durable as hickory, but transmits much less vibration back to you. And it can stand extreme cold better than hickory I have read. I am not sure if birch would be a good hammer material, the axes I use with birch handles have long collars made with birch in mind, hammers would not. Rowan wood is a traditional shafting material though, as is ash.

I have a followup question, I am wondering if my tuyere pipe is on the smaller side. I have read 3/4" pipe, but I am not sure if this refers to the actual ID of the pipe, or if it's just a name and has no connection to size. I have some half inch pipe clamps at home and I realized, nothing anywhere on these pipes was half an inch, so maybe it's a misstake to think this refers to the ID. I double checked and it's 18-19mm ID on my pipe so below 3/4", I also watched this video, he seems to say you need a much bigger firepot and I reduced mine to be even smaller, but he is talking bottom blast only, not a mention of side blasts. Well I guess the only way to see if to test it out. I have this old cabin space heater for my car, it gives quite a lot of air but not a lot of pressure and the heating can be turned off, I wonder if it is more suitable for the forge than the dryer, but less pressure and a small pipe might not work as well either, so again I wonder if I need a bigger pipe and lower pressure but more volume.

Rebuilt it last night. It's now 7-8cm deep, used to be 13cm deep (5") and the tuyere was moved upwards so the top of the pipe now sits 1" below the rim of the firepot instead of 2". Based on asking around and looking at others I really thought I had the tuyere in the right place. But it's smaller in diameter than most.

I did some smithing today and brought out the anvil too. I would say you are correct, the pit is too deep, or rather the air intake is too far down. I think it would be OK if I had the same overall depth but the intake was higher. But that would probably be wasteful. I am gonna reshape the bowl to move the intake higher up and make it shallower. I think I have designed this forge a bit too much like a charcoal forge rather than a coke forge. A charcoal forge wants a deeper firepit as I understand it. Once it's up and going coke has no smoke at all, so I think this coke is neighbor friendly. Anvil doesn't ring much either anymore though I think it can be improved. I was going to make this poker thing for moving the coals about in the forge I was thinning out the other side and was intending to draw it out and fold it back over itself to make a handle and hook to hang it from, but it suddenly went from sunny to a downpour. I had to put the fire out (removed the air source, closed the lid and put the chimney roof back on) and get the anvil back indoors and wipe it down and oil it. I need a proper smithing hammer, this one I used is 4.3 lbs small one handed sledge hammer, not really ideal. I found a smaller ball peen hammer that felt like it was a bit heavier than an ordinary 16oz hammer and I used this towards the end. Felt it was too light, but easier to work with.

I think my fire was too small because it shrank quite a lot and fast, with more coals I think it would have been ok. Still I got a good ash layer on the bottom now.

I have a pipe that I packed the clay mix around, I just hung my SOs hair dryer on that, most of the air went elsewhere but enough went into the pipe to provide a good enough flow. I took your suggestion and I put back the opening I cut out on hinges. So now I have a door. I had to give it another burn today because it rained during the night and I had forgotten the chimney cover so the inside was all soggy wet again.

I was only using natural aspiration for the wood burn in. Haven't yet figured out what I should do about an air source. Last night I just hooked the hair drier over the tube and tried with coke, it did seem to work I probably should have added more coke, there was a lot of charcoal mixed in and it went away quickly so the pile shrank. But this was only a short experimental burn, it was getting kinda late so I only ran it 20 minutes or so. But I managed to beat a small hook on that piece of flat bar to scrape coals with. But a hair dryer certainly seemed to be able to provide enough air flow

Giving it an initial burn with firewood, pretty good draft (supercharger style) The firepit got pretty solid and didn't crack.

My methodology for determening this was simply that I google searched this site and looked at picture after picture of fire pits and forges and tried to find references to fire pit depth and then I made mine to resemble what I found. I figured that's the best way to find a jumping off point rather than random chance. It's probably 5 inches deep now, tuyere sits the short dimension of one house brick above the bottom.

I already went and added more clay/sand mix so now it's all level with the cut and the fire pit is a little deeper. This way I don't have cut out any metal to lay a piece flat into the fire.

Heh, she is actually a he, and he's got a tabby brother.

I mixed up sand and some bentonite powder today, maybe it was 1 part clay to 3 parts sand. It made a moldable mess however, and I covered the bricks I got in there and then started building up the sides and then I formed the fire pit using a small bowl. I rammed down the sand with a piece of wood to help pack it down. I could yet add more mixture to bring more of the inside up so it's even with the edge I cut, that would give me a deeper fire pit too, current depth is 3 inches. The pipe is an OD of 20mm and ID of maybe 18mm. It's a bit on the thin side I think but I have lots of pipe like this laying around. I figure once the sand and clay sets up I can withdraw the pipe a bit .

Here's one of mine:

Almost 50 euros for this bag 25kg or 50lbs, 35 + 12.90 in shipping. Actually it's less than 25kg, the post office label specified the weight and it was 23 kilos with an additional packaging box so obviously not filling them as much as he should.... But it's the sole place in Finland that sells coke in small quantities. Does the quality look good at least to the experts here?

I'm not really following any precise dimensions here, I just went with what I thought looked "right" and sorta like the pictures, that's the level of precision I was working with. I was mostly concerned that the bottom part would be deep enough to work with the additional bricks put in there, that's why everything got moved upwards. But I liked the idea of bricks on the floor of the pit. All edges were deburred too

Well got some progress today, cut open one of the drums. Filled the bottom with bricks and tried to imagine roughly how the pit should be formed. The air blast should be located on the side and not in the back like in the picture though. I might make the opening taller yet. Also got my coke today:

Just purely theoretical pondering here, but couldn't TIG welding be a suitable process here. You'd still need to preheat and post-heat the anvil, but it seems for this type of damage, do you even need filler, tig fusion welding could make those marks flow back together again, though a little filler rod seems like it wouldn't hurt then you could grind it down flat. But it seems like TIG would input minimal heat from the welding process.

OK I think I will experiment a bit with chimney sizes first, I have some pipes in various sizes. You said bigger is not always better so if I took the implication of that to mean there is a more optimal size than the 24", but that doing this is the simplest way. Not that it matters that much that I get the last ounce of performance I can squeeze out of this setup, but more for curiositys sake. It's an experimenting platform as you said. Today I am going and getting some bricks, found someone giving them away and what's better than free. The SO wants them too for making raised gardening beds. Hope there are some left.

Yeah I believe most of these axes where iron with a forge welded on steel for edge. They made them for quite a long time though and the method of construction changed over time though, the latter ones I think where all steel, think they stopped making them around the 70s.

Ooh right now I got you. Kinda difficult to keep the snow and rain out though

OK here's how the axe head turned out: Brand is Kellokoski, they where the 2nd most popular finnish axe makers, Billnäs was always the market leader, but this axe looked so much like a Billnäs I thought it was one until I got it cleaned up. Kellokoski copied the Billnäs look since they where no.1 in peoples minds. The eye looks like maybe it was forge welded together? Or how to interpret those edges at the front and back, looks like two seams meeting, maybe just the drift that was like that?

If I understand you correctly, there is a 16 inch constriction before the 24 inch chimney portion? Is this to help create a better draft?

Yes I thought the opening looked too big on the first link, the 2nd link has a design with a smaller opening and a small chimney, the chimney looks a bit small on that one, but otherwise it seems a lot like what I had imagined. That's a big chimney, don't think I will go quite that big, the chimney in the 2nd link looks a bit too small to do much good on the other hand.