BrittS

Do you guys wipe off the excess or not? The other thing I could be messing up on is not taking the scale off, but I wld think there would be very much if any in the middle of a fire poker and that’s where I get the most rust.

I’ve used beeswax but I must not be doing it right because the pieces I’ve waxed still rust. I try to heat the metal to the point it smokes but I don’t know. What can I do to prevent this from happening?

Actually I made a triangle a while back, I assume that was what was meant by a dinner bell and that makes sense that you used a carbon steel, I made one with mild steel and it didn’t have much ring.

Thank you all so much. I could be wrong but I would assume it will probably all be grilling instead of cooking over a wood fire, but I could be wrong, it tends to be a fairly large spread of different people outside of the farmers and producers that already have beef there. I’ve thought about the hotdog forks but forgot about that when I made the post. The skewers are something that I think would be fairly easy, they could be sold as sets and last time I had a kabob, they were premade on a wooden skewer and all the stuff on them fell off. I’ll have to try one to see, but I could see a twist being extremely helpful, except for trying to skewer the stuff on. Scott, I would like to try to forge steer heads or goat head in, but I’ll have to research a little more as to how. I’ll hopefully be getting a chili forge fairly soon, I’m on a waiting list for one, but I’m in no hurry to get one or even to forge right now as it’s been over 100 for a couple of weeks and it looks like we’ll get a break for the weekend and then it’ll go right back up. Something else I would like to try would be candle holders and make the candles if I could figure out how. Because it’s a 50/50 custom and retail market, there is quite a bit of suet or kidney fat that they have saved for candle makers and soap makers and so I thought it’d be kinda cool to be able to use a byproduct from the same animals they buy meat from and have something a little more elegant as well. (I hope that made at least a little sense, it made sense in my mind but now that I typed it, it doesn’t seem to make much at all) The business card holder is something that I’ll have to think as to how to make it look good but I’m planning to have one. I know this is probably way to optimistic, but I’m hoping to get enough of a business and a shop built up in 15-20 years to eventually quit a regular full time job to eventually do this full time. I know it’s possible, my dad did the same thing with shoeing horses, but I’m just hoping I can really find what style of forging I want to do and make a business out of it.

So, I guess this is the place to post this, I fairly recently got a job working at a small butcher shop that focuses on farm to family meat products. Long story short they offered me a chance to sell small blacksmith made products in their shop on a small rack. They mentioned making fire-pokers and steak turners but I’d like to offer more but I’m drawing a blank as to what to make. I would like to get as good of an idea as I can as to what to make so I can order steel and quit buying steel from farm stores. I was thinking about little trinkets like leaf key-rings as well. If we’re ever able to get electricity back or our shop and we’re able to get a welder, I’ve thought about steak brands and my mom mentioned doing brand sets that had R for rare MR for medium rare and so on and so forth. I’d like to focus on projects related to fire and or grilling and I’ve thought about doing things like spatulas and tongs, but I don’t know. Any more ideas would be helpful.

I have this anvil that my dad bought probably 5-6 years ago. I don’t know how old it is, all I know is that it was used at least a little bit on a farm that used horses. All I know about it is what’s in the pictures. It has 60% or better rebound and the face is in really good condition, so I guess it doesn’t really matter what it is, I’m still going to use it, but it’d be interesting to see if anyone can identify it. All of the pictures were taken after wire brushing it. The last picture is hard to see but is says D38 upside down compared to the “steel”

It’s a factory bottom blast champion forge and I probably wasn’t ready for a project like this but I was able to get consistent faggot welds on a piece of bar stock and thought that maybe I would try it. Thanks everyone for the advice.

I wire brushed it before bending it over, closed it up, and then put a bead of the iron mountain black flux on the top and bottom. I was using an old coal forge and heated it up to a yellow to white heat. I was trying to weld the edge first and it got thin and I burned it lightly a couple of times.

I was messing around yesterday and thought it’d be fun to try a wrapped eye tomahawk. I thought I had it welded up but when I drifted it the weld popped the entire length and only left the very edge welded (I think). I set the weld using a 2ish pound hammer and then really hit it with a 4 pound drill hammer. The top was welded but I barely got the bottom to weld. My question is what did I do wrong with the weld as to have it pop the entire length? Sorry for the blurry picture of the edge itself.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a day or two. The school I go to is going through a reconstruction including the shop. It’s been really nice as I’ve gotten quite a bit of metal for free but most importantly, I was helping my teacher clean out the shop when he asked me if I wanted a crappy drill press. I didn’t think I did but my parents did so long story short, I ended up with a free drill press with the only problem being that the chuck(?) will drop all the way down so you have to tie the handle up but that was the only reason they got rid of it. The only price was I had to have a pickup there at 3:30 to pick it up. Any information on it would be helpful. All I know is there is no name the tag is long gone and I was told it’s old as the hills.

My dad and I never did much. We would run the side of the rasp perpendicular to the crack at the top so as to gouge the wall an 1/8 of an inch or so. It looks ugly but it stopped the back from advancing as to eventually grow out.

They’re John Deere and most are rusty on the surface.

Cylinder bars area parts of the thresher of a combine. They’re about 5 foot long, curved and about 3/8 of an inch on the middle tapering to an 1/8 inch. It’s the piece second from the right.

I’m new to forging and living on a farm, I have a nearly endless supply of random metal. Of that metal, I have 20 or more cylinder bars and I was wondering what I could do with them. I’m trying to make knives using rasps and I’ve been told that cylinder bars are good steel so I was hoping to be able to make knives from them, but what is doable with them and what kind of metal are they? Thank you

If you’re making them to be used, I would recommend a round wooden handle that’s tapered at the sides. My favorite hay hook has a shaft that’s about 18 inches that doesn’t curve back between the hook and the shaft and has a more closed hook. I prefer a round handle because I can let the handle rotate in my glove when I go to stick a bale. I’m glad you made this post though because now you’ve given me a useful project to try to forge.