Paul TIKI

Excellent advice. Hadn't thought about keeping gloves in a sealed container. Hearing protection, yes, because those foam buds just sitting out...er yuck!

Not a lot of predators out here in KS that will give a human any real problems. Occasional black widows, but they are kept in check by wolf spiders. Brown Recluse spiders can turn up in your shed or basement from time to time, but those are kept in check by exterminators. The worst things we seem to have in any quantity here are coyotes and birds of prey. They don't trouble humans too much, but they have been known to find small dogs and cats to be a fine snack. When I lived in GA the mosquitos, though not as bad as Alaskan ones, wore gang colors and would not only bite you, but hit you in the head and try to take your wallet. Or maybe that was more to do with living in the middle of the state.

Snakes don't waddle and give away their delicate condition like mammals

In fetching the Christmas ornaments from the basement I found a couple of presents from our outdoor cat, Gabby. We now have fewer birds chattering outside our window in the morning. Unfortunately they are in no fit state to do anything with except tossing them in the trash bin. They tend to be missing...bits....

Welcome. Lots of fantastic info here. Many rabbit holes to run down. Good luck!

Hey there and welcome. Remember the really dumb question is the one you didn't ask. I'm a total n00b and the guys here are great and have put up with my pestering and gave me really solid, useful information. More than once it lead me to things I hadn't even thought of. Do your research first, then ask if something doesn't make sense. Good luck!

On the note of spending. I've managed to get going by spending almost nothing except on fuel, and lump charcoal is pretty darn cheap. To give you an idea on what I am currently using: Forge, the shell is an old propane grill my son scavenged. ripped out the guts, covered the holes. used some bricks to make a firepot and filled the rest with sand. It's a version of something called a JABOD (Just a box of dirt). There is a whole thread on those here https://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/267-jabod-just-a-box-of-dirt/ . The air supply is a chunk of pipe (if galvanized clean the zinc off first!) then to a length of steel tubing that came from a dead treadmill. the blower is an exhaust fan you would find in a bathroom. All of this was junk lying around the house, leftovers from improvement projects, and so on. You can pretty much MacGuyver it. Plenty of people use Mattress pumps, old hair driers, on a you tube video, I saw a guy using an old vacuum. This is for a solid fuel forge, and I use Charcoal. For my Anvil, I have a simple chunk of unknown metal that dad called "pig Iron" that he had in his garage when he passed. Lots of other folks use chunks of Railroad Track, sections of forklift tines, counterweights for various things. There is a huge thread on Improvised anvils here https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/52308-a-collection-of-improvised-anvils/ . I didn't need to, but a lot of really good stuff can be found at local scrapyards. Until I found this site, I was hesitating because I was thinking I would either have to find a source for coal, or spend a couple hundred on a propane forge and then shell out big bucks for an anvil. All of that was not true. I'm still very new to all of this but I have been able to get going for pocket change. A small bit of ingenuity is all it takes. I got wrapped around the axle about spending and I shouldn't have, otherwise I would have started doing this a few years ago.

BillyBones CONGRATULATIONS!!!

I miss Hatch Chile. Christmas on the enchiladas please. Next weekend I'll be making some Green Chile Stew. I attempted a green chile turkey soup with the leftovers from Thanksgiving, but it didn't turn out like I wanted. I forgot Cilantro, and didn't add enough Green Chile. For those who were not blessed enough to live in the Land of Enchantment, Chile is not the meat based thing associated with Cowboys. It's a wonderful Chile Pepper with an amazing balance of heat and flavor. And the stuff grown in Colorado is NOT real green chile!!!!

The mallet would just get in the way, either that or they'd hit each other with it. add the chaos of a dog whose waggy tail is the perfect height to sweep things off the coffee table.....Well, we just couldn't have nice things.

So far the total spend on my wood box JABOD has been $0.00. My son has spent some of his cash on things like the IFB and his hand crank blower. All the IFB in the wood box JABOD has been replaced after that first fire with clay brick from a pile in the basement. We moved the IFB over to the grill forge when we built that up. I don't know how much my son spent on his hand crank blower or the IFB, but everything else in the grill forge is likewise from scraps. It's a source of fascination for me that all of this can be done so cheaply.

Small earthquakes and the magma bubble got nothing on the destructive power of small children and medium sized dogs

Change one thing at a time is sound advice for problem solving in any arena. I often have to do that at my day job dealing with finicky databases. The soft firebrick is readily available On amazon. A little pricey though. Hard firebrick is available at the big box store I prefer (Menards)

Buzzkill, I'm using the soft firebrick because that's what I have to hand. My son brought some home for the purpose so I'm using it. I know it will fail eventually, but it'll do for now. I figure everything inside the shell is consumable and am prepared to replace whatever as needed. Heck, even the shell is consumable.

Apologies for reviving an old thread, but has anyone tried converting mulch or the contents from a wood chipper into usable charcoal in a retort of some sort? Since I don't necessarily have the room to set up a 55 gal drum retort and I may be able to score some free wood chips (maybe) I was thinking that it might produce workable fuel for the forge without all the smoke and sparks I would get from just the wood chips. Or would I just end up with a pile of unusable charcoal that is too small to work?

Have no idea about polish. I always thought of it in terms of surface prep for painting, not as a final finish. I suppose there is no reason why a clear coat would not adhere once the solvent was washed off. If the bolts are not rusted though, the ospho shouldn't change their color much. I believe it will etch the metal making it ready for a coating. T'were me, I'd just paint the screws with enamel, sand, then clearcoat with as low a gloss polyurethane as I could find. Maybe treat the other metal with Ospho if there was any other rust to contend with.

I just haven't had the time to try that one scrapyard I found. At .20 per pound that would be maybe 2 to 4 bucks for a good grill. I'll take that price. Maybe I could even find a good hunk o steel for another anvil for the boys. Now, we did get a chance to got start unloading some stuff one of my boys had in a storage unit 2 55 gal drums and some really heavy chocks they use for those 20,000 lb rolls of steel. If I could figure a way to mount them it may make some sort of anvil. He also has a couple hundred lbs of scrap ends from his work out there as well I think I have a handle on my airflow problems now. Got a lot more airflow and therefore hotter temps, but without eating up too much fuel thanks to the miracle of duct tape. I was able to spend about 3 hours forging yesterday on maybe 2 to 4 lbs of charcoal. A few more tweeks and I may be good on that score. I used the tuyere from my wooden box and attached it to the smaller tuyere on the grill forge. If I drill the holes I'll have even more fine control. I have some ideas on more future improvements but I'll wait until I get good with what I have

If I remember right, Ospho is a solution of phosphoric acid and it converts rust into Iron Phosphate (I think) which makes a hard protective and black coating. We sold it for rust prep for painting when I worked at Sherwin Williams.

This weekend I got to make stuff. Saturday it was rainy and nasty out so I spent some time rewiring and completing a bench power supply dad was working on before he passed. It's based on a small PC power supply. He isolated the different voltage circuits coming out from it. He mounted everything in the case from one of those old travelling martini bars. The ones that had a small shaker, a bottle of gin, measuring jigger and a slot of a small jar of olives . He also hooked in a small multimeter, and had plans to mount a car cigarette lighter and some USB charging ports. I got everything hooked up, mounted, and tidied up, and it all seems to work. Sunday it was nice enough out and so I got to play with fire. I got the air supply problems sorted and was able to get the fire very hot without chewing through tons of charcoal. I made a couple of brackets for a gate bar and I made a hook to hold a closet door closed. I experimented with a punch to make holes. I played around with some other chunks of scrap to see how each heated. looks pretty rough and simple, but I'm learning and trying to figure out what kind of hammer works best for me. Pretty clear I need to practice hammer control. I read somewhere on here to get a bunch of nails and just practice knocking them into a hunk of wood. Baby steps indeed.

that was my son in that pic. I hadn't noticed he was barefoot and fussed at him when I noticed. There is a reason why males under 25 have much higher insurance rates. Good luck on your build. It's easier than I thought. The Grill is actually better for me right now because wind and rain get blocked by the lid. Looking for another gas grill to make another and keep the wood box on standby for larger projects since there is more area to work with.

I often want to meet certain programmers and greet them warmly by the throat. Or failing that finding them in a dark alley with a length of 2x4.

Oh god, apps. is there an emoji for spitting in disgust?

I deal with that every darn day. I build and maintain MS Access databases. I started as a plain old excel number cruncher where I worked and after about 6 months I pitched to my employer that we could do more faster if we ported everything over to a database. We were also trying to filter the useful 20 or 30 lines out of a several thousand line report spewed out by SAP every day. Well, now I have 6 different databases built for most of our tasks that I get to maintain and improve and that has become my full time job. our grand poobahs have decreed that we already had Access so that is what we will use and we shall not deviate from it. Oh, and we can't spend any money at all to have SAP do anything to make their own product better. I don't think that's too bad for someone who can't code their way out of a wet paper sack. And frankly, I forgive Microsoft every Friday, when my paycheck comes in.

That is some astonishing work. Absolutely beautiful. congrats on the shop.

I feel for ya on that score. I have one windows machine in the house, but only because I get paid by my employer to have it there. I'm of a later generation. I remember Dad telling me about programing in octal, using punch cards and paper tape. I played with telnet on some terminals during my first attempt at college at NMSU. I wish I could remember more about it, but an 18 year old in close proximity to Mexico.... Let's just say I was not too attentive. When I went back to school after a 5 year "semester off" I tried CS as a major and found out that I don't have the true knack that makes a programmer. Machine language 1 showed me that I could not code my way out of a paper bag. I was still pretty good with higher level stuff and switched to Information Systems. For my advanced Networking class I set up a Linux server with Slackware (I got an A) and have been using Linux ever since. Outside of video games, I have not come across a task that I cannot accomplish in Linux with free software.