Paul TIKI

the popping of hedge is why we never ever burned it in the open fireplace and only in the closed wood stove in the basement. It heated the house to 75-80 degrees when it was -10 degrees outside. The half of the basement the wood stove was in got up to 105 degrees. The cast iron plates inside the wood stove that held the wood in place would consistently glow dull red. I learned later that those plates were removable and were there to actually burn coal. They were about 5/8 thick. That's why I'm curious about it's use in a forge. does the popping and all get worse with extra air applied in a forge and does the resins and residue cause problems.

Well, my improvised pig iron anvil are now ready. This week, building the forge! After reading a lot on the JABOD forges I have an idea on how to make it work.

Well, I now have an anvil setup. I used my circular thing of cement, then packed it with logs and the stump of an old cedar tree we cut down a while back. It's all wedged in tight and won't move. Then I removed all the extra branches and cut a channel through the stumps to hold the slab of pig iron in place. Then I shimmed it in place. I also drove a 4 foot long, 2 1/2 bar into the soil for extra support next to the slab. A while back, my son brought home a large chunk of I beam home and mounted a vise he got from his Grandpa on it. It's made of 1/4 inch steel, so may not be great as a hammering surface, but it's really heavy an wedged solidly in place. Then I took an angle grinder to the face of the anvil to clean it up. For the record it threw 4 foot long straight sparks. Now to make a place for a really hot fire

Well those could build a heckuva earthbag house There was a nice subterranean place here in Kansas for sale. A former Atlas Missile silo, only half a million. What you might call a fixer upper. It only needs, everything... It would be great in case of the Zombie Apocalypse. The downside is that my wife doesn't do subterranean. She needs big windows. So the search goes on. It'll be a few years until I get the savings back up for a cash purchase on the next house. Paid cash for this one and I do not miss the mortgage at all. The goal is to be as off grid as possible when I retire. It doesn't have to be in the middle of nowhere, but energy independence is a must.

In Kansas I'm about as far north as I want to be I'd like to be in a place where If I want snow, I can drive to where it is and then go home when I'm tired of it. Sadly, that becomes more of a problem with more altitude. That's why I have been looking in NM and AZ. though I will say that no personal income tax in WY is pretty darned attractive. How is Sheridan? Thinking about applying for work with Weatherby

Earthbags should have similar characteristics to Adobe. High thermal mass. You can do things like double layer and infill or even fill the bags with scorite or rice hulls or a number of other fillings. I have even thought of using it as part of building a hobbit house. Doesn't matter, I want to be above 6k feet anyway. Preferably with some trees around to shade the compound I have in mind. A rocket mass stove for heating and then the modern AC and heat as backups for when I feel too lazy to cut firewood. Fleur de lis, I'm new to this whole beating on hot metal thing, but I hope you are getting back on your feet quickly!

I've been watching house prices in areas like Edgewood and Tijeras, Even Belen and Socorro. I found a great one that was totally off grid, Solar, well, and everything else on 42 acres. I'm just lacking the nearly half a million to buy it. Oh well. No too fussed about the distances involved. I currently live in a pretty small town 45 minutes from the nearest Wal Mart. Farms as far as the eye can see. What I'd love to do is get a spot in the mountains and build some earthbag houses. Maybe talk to UNM's Architecture school and convince students to come out and fill the earthbags up for credit in a sustainable building class of some sort. Roof it with Catalan vaulting tiles. It's a fun little fantasy and who knows, it might pan out. Incidentally, Eathbag construction is really fascinating. You could build a heck of a forge workshop really cheap that way and it would be sturdy as heck.

I have 2 nom de web I use. The one here is because of a computer repair biz that never went anywhere. I just used that old email to set up forum id's. been that way for several years now. My other is based on one of my favorite characters from my favorite authors. I use that one for all the more personal stuff. I always kind of likened the made up name since CB handles were a thing.

I miss Las Vegas, NM. Actually, I miss my Uncle's cabin that was in that area of the Sangre de Cristos up the road from Camp Blue Haven. Grew up in ABQ and spent a lot of summers up there.

True that

Do Ya'll mean to tell me I'm going to start twitching when watching some of my old fantasy favorites?

All of this reminds me of some things I got from my late father. Most are well known, and all worth sharing. "Keep It Simple, Stupid" and "Keep It Stupid, Simple" "Work Smarter, Not Harder" "If 'We've always done it that way' is the answer, you need to ask more questions" "Sometimes you spend twice the effort to avoid doing half the work" "Ask Questions, you may learn something if you shut up long enough for the answer" and my personal favorite "Think" The older I get, the smarter my dad was

I know I'm new to all this and your new shop looks fantastic. Have you looked in to a Rocket mass heating stove. they can be made very inexpensively, retain and re-radiate heat well and are very efficient. I find a lot of information about them from permaculture and off grid living sites. Not too sure about the volume you would be heating, but who knows. A couple of 55 gal drums, some bricks and some sand and you could be toasty all winter long. Here is a wikipedia article on them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_mass_heater If I ever get around to building my Earthbag House, definitely going to use one of these for heat.

That stump idea was what I was originally thinking (In fact it looks exactly like what I had in mind, fantastic!), but the only stump I have is squared and I'm concerned with stability. I may just do that anyway, if the chainsaw still has any cutting power left on the chain. I can see this turning into one of those "well first I need to get the chain sharpened, then I get that done and next I need to find the bar oil and the local hardware store is closed, then there is a problem with....." You know the kind of project I'm talking about. That would be my luck, anyway. We'll see in the next week or so. Certainly will post pictures when I'm done

Cutting Hedgewood is not something to be taken lightly. I had to cut one down in my back yard and I had to sharpen the chain on my chainsaw twice and then replace it to get the darn thing cut down. Kind of wishing I still had the stump because that stuff just does not rot and is tough as heck. It would have made a fantastic stump to mount my anvil to. I'm sort of thinking of getting some to use for the fire to heat up a container to convert some mixed woods in to charcoal at some point. A rick of mixed firewood out here is fairly cheap, but a rick of hedge can get pricey. so a small amount of hedge for the heat to convert a lot of cheaper mixed woods is what I'm thinking. Frankly that's more based on wishful thinking than anything else. That and I know Hedge burns really hot.

My normal source would be a nearby Menards. Is there something I should look for or is there somewhere else I should try to source from. I need a few cubic feet, not an entire yard, like I would get froma landscaping supply place I know about (They only sell by the yard or more) I saw leveling sand for pavers, is that what you mean by a sharp sand? I'm guessing sandbag sand or play sand is going to be more rounded

OK, so I was looking at the cement cylinder I use as a fire pit and the Slab anvil should fit just fine in it if I fill it up with something. If I have it sticking up about 4 inches it'll be at the right height according to the knuckle test. Actually I measured up to my wrist. So now on to fill materials. It's a cement surround. The anvil will not be resting directly on the cement. What should I use as fill to support and stabilize. I'm thinking sand and pea gravel. for additional stability I found a solid 2 1/2 inch (maybe 3, didn't have a tape measure on me) solid round steel bar that is around 4 foot long that I'll drive into to the ground, position the anvil right up against it and fill the rest. That way I get a little extra surface area and a circular surface to bend stuff around. So does anyone have thoughts on the fill material? Am I on the right track. Would just pea gravel work or do I need to blend it with sand, or do I use something else?

Who knows. I do know that Dad got it before I turned 10 (I'm almost 50). It seems reasonable that he got it when he worked at a Gas Plant in West Texas for a summer job in 1954, but it could have been at just about any time during a 23 year Army career after that. Outside of that, I don't know any more of it's history other than it was useful enough for him to lug it around during at least 3 moves across country.

Looks like I got some reading to do

So is there any thoughts on Osage Orange, or Hedge wood. I know it produces monster amounts of heat when burned in a wood stove to heat the house. does that kind of heat output carry over when converted into charcoal? I just know that it heated some of the cast iron in our wood stove to a dull red glow and it did that regularly.

Out here the big trend is a horse drawn plow fixed in place and with a mailbox on top. I just don't get it. I also remember several years ago, toilets were being used as planters. Just goes to show.

Cool. Thanks!

Thanks! I have an old propane grill on legs I was thinking of using. I was thinking of using cat litter mixed with sand to line the heck out of it, insert a chunk of steel water pipe through the bottom the full length, drilling several holes in it so the air can move evenly through it and hook that up to a big hand crank bellow my son brought home, and angle some fire brick at about 45 degrees on either side as a place to put wood chunks or charcoal. That should get me a forge big enough for me to do a variety of stuff since I already have the bits I need to do it and all it would cost me is time. Here is the first thing I swung a hammer at. Just a chunk of rebar that we were able to get to a good red color in a cement fire pit that used to be a water meter surround, about 16 inches around and 18 inches tall with cutouts on either side. I put a screen set on some bricks to hold the wood off the ground and hooked the bellows tub to one of the inlets. I blocked the other inlet with a brick and some dirt. It didn't get hot enough, but the heat we did get was enough to start cracking the cement itself. It's just a shape I was able to pound out. Oh, By the Way, Thanks for splitting this off of the Improvised Anvil Thread. I'll have to break out the angle grinder and clean it up. what kind of spark characteristics should I look for? Long sparks, complex sparks, bright sparks? I'm not sure what I should look for.

So here is a couple of pics of the slab. Hard to tell if any pits in the surface are from impact or just the fact that I know that for at least 25 years the thing sat outside. I have no idea how to get it reliably set on edge. I was thinking I could use a piece of timber my son brought home that is about a foot square and 4 foot long, carve out a channel and pack it with silicone. I worry about stability though. I remember dad using it as a weight in the back of his truck in the winter months. Also as a device to use to pin down things he was gluing with JB weld. A place to smash recalcitrant circuit boards on (he was an electrical engineer) and occasionally as a temporary ground plane when no alternative presented itself. It even spent a brief amount of time as a bullet stop, angled downward of course, in a target box made from an old dishwasher. A creative man was me dad, so this old lump of metal actually has some sentimental value for me.

It'll probably be tomorrow before I can get some pics up. BTW, thanks for the explanation about the depth of the anvil helping with shaping the hot metal! I never would have thought of standing it on end. For some reason I thought a broad striking surface would be more important. My son and I played around with just banging on some rebar heated in a fire pit on the broad surface. It kind of sort of worked and was kind of therapeutic, so I decided to do some more research before spending money. Thanks a ton. Now over to the forge topics to see how I can best build one with what I have on hand.