Jobtiel1

Yeah I'd love to try one sometime as well, but in Europe these things are nearly impossible to find. In about 2 years of looking for them I have managed to find or see none. I think that in most shops bellows were replaced with electric blowers. There are however a lot of foot crank blower forges around. They're called "veldsmidse" or field forge, so were mostly used to be easily moved and independently usable. I guess that's the payoff for having a lot of anvils for sale everywhere. ~Jobtiel

Fun stuff testing out the new shop. Did some forge welding practice, messed it up a bit, but it was good practice. I'm practicing forge welding edge steel for a wood chisel. I also did heavy modification to my forge and replaced a 10cm tube by a 7.5cm pipe which is the exact same diameter as my forge blower outlet. I also made and installed a new air gate. All in al the performance is way better now. I also finished up my first hammer! A straight peen of about 1 kg. It works well, but it lacks the punch of my main hammer which is 1.25 kg. But it is nice to finally have a straight peen for certain applications. ~Jobtiel

That is actually a great idea! I haven't thought of that yet. The hood is indeed not attached to the forge and the forge is light enough to have two wheels in the back and tilt it to get it into position. Thanks for the tip! ~Jobtiel

Yes, it is not optimal, but the space is quite long and narrow, so I use the forge from the side and then it's about 1-2 steps to the anvil. So the anvil and vise are kind of next to the forge. I have to share the space with my stepdad also working in the shed. It was also requested to not have the chimney pipe block the window, so having the chimney on the other side was also not an option. And thanks! I'll be sure to enjoy the hotter and dry forging area now. Luckily we have a mild winter here in the Netherlands this year so forging outside was also still doable. ~Jobtiel

After being confined to good weather conditions to forge for about two years, I finally finished everything for the inside shop. A concrete slab is poured to support the anvil and vise, and an insulated chimney pipe with ample clearance is going through the roof. Only thing left to do is install a fire proof plate to the wall behind the forge. Very excited to finally forge inside! ~Jobtiel

I finished the forging and hardening and tempering of my first hammer today! A 1kg straight peen. Mystery steel from a hammer blank from a thrift shop, it even had the eye punched and drifted already! Now to wire brush it and grind the face and peen a bit more. Then stick a handle on it! I've been busy with a whole lot of other things, including finishing the inside smithy, only the chimney hood left now! I also got a wood lathe and I've been practicing with that a bit. The chisels the guy gave with them are made of poor steel, so soon I'm going to have to forge my own ones. ~Jobtiel

Townsends makes great content! They have more videos where they use these bellows, my only concern is that the bottom lung might be too small compared to the top lung, as they seem to have trouble keeping constant airflow by filling up the top lung. ~Jobtiel

Merry Christmas everyone! My gifts were blacksmithing books! Ready to learn and practice more stuff! ~Jobtiel

What JHCC said. When I started, I was discouraged by trying to make tongs without tongs without knowing a good way to do that. I bought a pair of wolf jaw tongs, and they are still one of my most used pairs! As soon as you have a tong that can hold stock for making more tongs, the rest come naturally when you need them. ~Jobtiel

Good tongs make working so much easier, when I forged my first hatchets without proper tongs they ended up all kinds of warped. Now with proper axe eye tongs it makes working them straight so much easier. Don't forget proper tongs! ~Jobtiel

How do you plan to reface it?

I forged another hatchet head today, this time to sell it! Instead of an old file I have now forge welded a 1095 bit in. So the hatchet is completely known steel now. I'm very happy with how the hatchet turned out! ~Jobtiel

Hi, I fabricated my own fire pot as well, I used 2 cm thick plate for the bottom of the firepot, and roughly 7-8 mm plate for the sides of the firepot. I have been practicing forge welding a lot, and my blower is as of currently constantly on while forging. I have noticed no degradation as of yet. I followed this design: http://www.bamsite.org/firepot.html Hope this helps. ~Jobtiel

I think it depends on what you *like* to do. For example, if you like to do projects and don't care how you do them, using modern tools is no problem. If you like the sentiment of only using traditional/ hand tools, go for that. If you like to do a mix of them, do that. What I'm trying to say is, just do you. *Edit* Davor just beat me to it, but I agree with what he said! ~Jobtiel

Goods, can I keep the rest of the measurements equal? Or should I scale everything down proportionally? Anvil, I assumed the same, but I wanted to know for sure before investing time and energy in a design that wouldn't work like I wanted to. The stack will be run quite high, it will stick out about 3 meter from the roof and another 2 meters from the roof to the hood. ~Jobtiel

Thanks Daswulf, I will certainly be doing that before I use them, I indeed wouldn't like them to fly apart while in use. ~Jobtiel

I tried out my stick welder for the first time today. First time welding as well. I made a V block, and also a guillotine tool that accepts the smaller sized leaf spring, for which I picked up a full size 10 or 11 leaf spring for 20 euro's yesterday. It's not the best welding, far from it actually, but it's stuck together. I think it will take some pounding too. Both have 1 inch shanks. I'm still deciding if I make a bigger opening or even take a part of the middle put completely for the guillotine tool. I guess I'll try it out for it's intended use first. ~Jobtiel

Hi all, I have a piece of insulated ten inch i.d. pipe that I'm going to use for the inside shop, and I need a suitable hood to use it with. I was thinking about the super sucker side draft design, as a full chimney hood above my forge is not suitable for me at the moment. Can I use a downscaled design, as the super sucker plans call for 12 inch i.d. pipe, or is there another design that is more suitable to use with 10 inch i.d. pipe? Thanks for your replies. ~Jobtiel

Yes I can reiterate what TW said, my first weld was far from perfect but it gave me confidence to try it more, now I haven't found the need to do more complex welds but I am able to do forge welded bits for axes and my own tools and such. Once I get the inside shop up and running I'm going to practice lap welds. To join in on the discussion, I have some friend who instantly start talking about wanting to forge a knife as soon as they knew that I was getting into blacksmithing, now, two year later I still say that I haven't forged one and don't think I could forge a good one. whenever I invite someone over to do some forging or strike for me I always show them how to do a leaf if they want to try out forging. If they don't want to I say that's what we're doing and that I want to prevent damage to my tools by them just whacking it randomly. No point in trying to learn someone something if they don't want to listen to you. Luckily that has never happened before and they always learn that it looks easier than it is to forge something. ~Jobtiel

Outside of the hot cut, punches and chisels, it is definitely soapstone and a ruler. I do nearly all my measurements on hot steel with soapstone and a centre punch or by marking the required length on the anvil. Also a good contender for a beginner is and angle grinder, it does so much stuff in a single machine. ~Jobtiel

I have made a hot cut from 4140 a while back, but it dulls quickly and I was wanting for an upgrade with a bit of a harder edge. However, I don't have any higher carbon steel in that big of a size. So, I went the traditional way to practice my forge welding, and welded a bit of spring steel in a mild steels body for the hot cut! It's nice to see I'm getting better with forge welding. I like making my tools this way a lot, and saves me some money on buying new steel by using what I have lying around. Close up of the worst weld line, the ones one the faces and the other side are nearly invisible. Also forged some J-hooks for the first time, I plan on forging these whenever I'm working on something else, saving me fuel and hopefully making a bit of extra money by selling them. ~Jobtiel

Making minions out of your students seems worthwhile Thomas, especially to rearrange your whole shop. Today I finished hardening and tempering of the hatchet I was busy with, as wel as fitting the handle, I consider it done! Tried it out and it's a really good splitter! Final weight is about half a kilogram, which I believe is a bit more than a pound. I plan making a few to sell soon. ~Jobtiel

Finished some filing and sanding on the drawknife and hatchet. Tomorrow I will harden and temper the hatchet, thinking about tempering to dark straw to keep the edge nice and hard, since the whole body is mild. Before I can harden and temper the draw knife I will need a bigger quench tank. I will normalise it in preparation. ~Jobtiel

It depends on the blower if you would limit the air intake right? I've heard that its not good for the blower to limit air intake, mine will start turning faster if you limit the air intake, possibly leading to burnout. I'm definitely not an expert, so is it possible to break your blower like this? ~Jobtiel

I recently bought an old Hase file, thinking it was a good one but it is already dulling when I file spring steel, I do make sure to remove scale first, which makes your files last much longer. I am considering buying a completely new set of Pferd files as soon as I have an annealing set up. ~Jobtiel