Alan Evans

I will send you some photos of my Mk. 3 hearth. It is now used mainly to support my gas furnace. It has hinged flaps hanging off the hood which reduce heat and fumes from big fire. I was always on the lookout for a glass oven door to hang off it so I could see through. A tinted one would be best if it could cut down the glare. I will sketch a really handy stand which I copied from Ivan Smith's hearth. it hinged up off the hearth with a loosely atached prop  which could take up any height, great for longer bars. The only thing I would do with your hearth is to lift the tuyere so the hot spot of the fire is in line with the  top edge of the tray so you can heat the middle of the bar without taking out those beatifully made but horribly impractical panels on either side. You will need either some castable /fire bricks or my earth and ash mix under the fire. Whatever you go for you will need something to create a "swans nest" to contain the fire. You can imagine if the tray is just full of coke the fire will just keep moving around and spreading out across the whole hearth.

 

Alan

I have just revisited your earlier images and note the direct bosh tueyere connection I managed to overlook before, sorry.

Every time you put a bend in the pipe you restrict the flow so the slower the curve the better.

For very similar lack of space reasons to yours I mounted my fan on the back of the hearth with the motor tucked underneath and the air delivery pointing up which meant only a 90 degree bend if I remember correctly. The slide valve was bolted to the delivery flange of the fan with an extension handle to bring it out to the side of the hearth, and I made a sheet metal funnel reducer to the diameter of my flexible pipe and another to reduce down to the air pipe.

My first forge was in a 3.8 x 2.8 metres (12' x 9') od shed which was extended to 3.8 x 4.4 (12' x 14') when I put in my second power hammer. Talk about tight squeeze, it finally had three power hammers a treadle hammer which could be swung over the 3cwt anvil a hulking great 5+cwt anvil and an old cast iron pillar drill apart from the leg vice tool racks and hearth! On the 50kg Reiter and the 1cwt Alldays I was standing out in the rain if I was forging anything over a metre. Happy days!

Looking very professional...almost like a real one!

 

You could just mount the fan directly onto the bosh, either just bolts through the tank wall and cut off the pipe flush or weld on a plate to the end of the air pipe, any particular reason why you are thinking of rubber?

 

The advantage of having a slide valve somewhere between the fan and air pipe is well worth the time to make one up.

 

I have one of those lovely old rheostats as well, identical, I make up electronic controllers now, but it is still in the shop as a standby. The only things I have done to my F20M over the 35years I have had it (bought second hand from a school) is about ten sets of brushes and a pair of bearings. Be careful that you do not over grease the bearings, I had to have my 35hp hammer motor rewound due to over zealous greasing! £600 of Ouch!

 

The big advantage of using a bit of flexible tube for your air would be to put the fan in a box to cut down the noise. Makes a huge difference. I now use my F20M for my gas furnace and have put it in a box with an offset air inlet and connect to the burner with a vacuum cleaner hose.

 

I just happened to have a bit of 25mm plate offcut which I propped up for the fire back. but I think that arrived a couple of years after I had started using the hearth. The Alcosa cast "cape" was higher and narrower than yours, but they were only fitted to the 36'' square hearths AFAIK.

 

We had a saying around here along the lines of "anything'll do, nuthing wunt" go with what you have!

 

Alan

I've nearly finished the forge now so I've started work on the shed.  I've been looking at how to seal the flue where it punctures the roof and come across these silicone flashing/ gators;

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130793372020?var=430103232927&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

 

My ceiling height is around eight foot so it's a good few feet above the hood of the forge.  What do people reckon, do I need the high temp one or the low temp?  I'm running a very tight budget so if I don't need the more expensive one I'd rather not buy it.

Definitely the high temp one out of those, but I certainly would not buy one. I have always made my own out of aluminium sheet (reclaimed from a caravan)... cut out a 25mm undersized hole and turned up the flange with a mallet. You can also make or buy a clamp on rain-collar but given the open shelter it is in it is probably not necessary.

 

Alan

PS>  Also, is there any reason why I can't join the blower to the air pipe at the rear of the bosch with some radiator/ water hose from a car? 

 

Ha Ha! I don't believe it!

 

I started reading your thread this morning and thought Blimey! deja vu! You have been reproducing my first hearth building history to the weld fillet!

 

The only thing I thought I could add was to tell you that I had a remote bosh made up from a 25 litre oil drum with some Morris 1000 1/2inch bore heater hose connected to a blanking plate on the back of the tue and the air blast was connected with a bit of vacuum cleaner hose....and then I read your afternoon post`!

 

The answer to your question is there is no reason why you can't, it works okay-ish.

 

I have not understood how you are making the bosh / tue connection. If you do that with rubber hoses like mine....the water flow went from the bottom of the drum to the lower connector on the tue and the return went from the upper tue connector to a copper tube which hooked over the top of the drum. It used to boil like crazy on a good day but I found I could unhook the return and drain a bit of hot water out and refill with cold.

 

I tried anti freeze to start with but it got expensive when it boiled away. I did have the pipes freeze a couple of times, the first time I only realised that had happened after the tue water boiled and blew the pipes off! I used to unhook the return pipe and drain it out if I remembered in the winter.

 

My tube and hosepipe tue lasted for a good few years. I think the tinplate oil drum bosh lasted as long, five or six years at least of full time operation. I eventually replaced it with a bottom blast hearth which I built with a long bed so I could heat 600mm lengths when I got my power hammers.

 

The sheet work of the hearth lasted over ten years and I eventually rebuilt it with stainless steel and that is still going on 20 odd years later...still using the old original Alcosa back frame angle irons!

 

The fire back I use is a bit of 25mm mild steel plate. I would not waste time with the castable.

 

The tue was set high so its air pipe was at the level of the hearth sides. The bed of the hearth was a mix of earth and ash the whole box was filled to within an inch of the top edge but formed a mound above the level of the air pipe in the centre, with a "swans nest" bowl scooped out to contain the fire. An arc of wagon tyre was laid across the front to create a removeable coke retainer and was a solid rest for hearth tools.

 

If you have the tue set low it means you have to have an unecessarily huge fire to heat the middle of a long bar. Setting it high obviates the need for the removable side plates...which if used invariably mean half your coke goes on the floor!

 

As others have said the tue only needs to poke into the hearth enough to keep the fire a bit forward of the back plate say 150mm at most on that size of hearth.

 

I was looking for a drawing of the configuration of the hearth that I copied originally, have not found it yet, I will do a sketch for you if it is not clear from my description. 

 

Alan

I hold the punch with fingers or tongs or snap clamps...whatever is required or comes to hand

What I find a problem is to align the characters.

I usually clamp a piece of bar under the line of characters as a guide rail and rest the punch tip against that. It does two jobs; keeps / puts them in line and keeps their orientation (twist) correct. If you still had problems with the spacing you could always mark the guide bar up.

Sometimes I like the higgledypiggledy look though!

Hi all,
I was wondering if there is a formula that can be used to determine how much stock you need if you are going to be drawing out to a certain length.
For example, If I were making tongs out of 3/4" round stock, what length of bar would I need to draw out the reins to a given length and a given diameter?
I'd greatly appreciate some help with this matter, I'd like to better be able to predict how my metal will move.

Thanks,
RidgewayForge

I always calculate the volume of the finished piece and divide that by the cross sectional area of the parent bar like most of those above.

There are fudges and nuances of course.

I find that the 5% allowance for scale can often be compensated for by just running the hammer along the arris to create a chamfer.

If I am towards the limit of my hammer capacity I will allow a bit more to compensate for the extra number of heats.

When forging tapers I calculate for a straight line taper using a formula for calculating the frustrum of a cone or pyramid and then make an allowance either way if I want a full sided (cigar shaped) or hollow sided taper. I rarely forge tapers to a point so this formula calculates for a frustrum (flat topped/truncated) rather than a full cone or pyramid. It also usefully works on hexagonal, octagonal, rectangular or any other polygon that you can calculate the top and base area of and even gives a great starting point on combination tapers. Start square run into octagon for instance. I just enter the top and base surface areas and the length and it gives the base bar length.

I tried to upload my Excel Frustrum volume calculator spreadsheet to iforgeiron.com a few months ago but the system only allowed for image files. You should be able to do a search for the thread and see the images. Let me know if you can't find it and I will email it to you.
This is the operative cell equation:-

=B3*(B1+SQRT(B1*B2)+B2)/3

B1 = top area
B2 = base area
B3 = height

I have this formula in all my digital devices though nowadays in the forge it is mainly used from my mobile phone. You can probably find a similar on online.

While on the subject, I have also found it useful to remember the basics when dealing with volumes:-

Halving the linear measurement will quadruple the length, true for round or square.

In your example above for instance if you wanted the reins to be 3/8 diameter you would use a quarter their final length of 3/4 diameter.

There are four 1/2 inch bars contained in a 1 inch bar!

Alan

 Okay, so forget a tire, use a rubber wheel with a taper (truncated cone) of largish dia and the powered one an appropriately smaller cone. 

 

A potter friend had a cone drive/clutch/speed control on her wheel that would vaguely fit your description.

Oh yeah, progress pics are much appreciated, that way we can just copy yours instead of having to figure it out our selves. <grin>

 

Frosty The Lucky.

 Bill Gichner told me to "always buy the first one" and then modify design your own if you must! Along the lines "of a wise man learns by his mistakes...a lucky man learns by the mistakes of others"

 

Be lucky!.... Ah I see you already are!

It needs to be upright so a helve is out of the question. I want a small footprint.

 I am looking fro almost exactly the hammer that Murray has except that I want a slimmer profile for it.

 I will try and throw some plans together this weekend.

 I do have another hammer that may fit the bill but the footprint is massive.

 

What do you need that is different to a Goliath type? They have a small footprint and would appear to run at about the same speed as the one on the video. Or is it that you just fancy making your own?

 

If you do a Google image search on Federhammer, the one I saw at Matthias' was similar to the smallest one of those shown but even so they are quarter or semi elliptic leaf springs / helve style so the anvil is about as far away from the wall as a small air hammer. The Goliath and similar Little Giant format have the smallest footprint front to back that I have seen.

 

Could you have the helve off to the side? 

 

I often wondered about mounting a motor and crank on top of a fly press and using the ready made frame and slides for the tup guides...

Next year I am planning on making a small power hammer specifically for doing final forging to shape on kitchen knives .

 

 loosely based upon the japanese blade smiths hammers.

 

 My inclination is towards low tup weight about 10 to15lb  and high full speed .300 to 400 bpm.

 

 I have anvil material, die material,l tup material, and tup bearing surface. and the pulley shaft to act as a crank/ bearing. 

 

 I have lots of spring material and am familiar with the manufacture of bow springs being a maker of crossbow prods.

 

I recently saw a power hammer in belgium that was run from an inverter motor controller with no clutch and it seemed to work very well for what it was , especially at low speed.

I have owned 3 mechanical hammers and am familiar with how they work and their limitations.

 

 one of my main requirements is a small foot print and that leads me to thinking about the possibility of running air as opposed to mechanical.

 

my other thoughts are to have a throwing arm that has two in line coil spring in it as opposed to a bow spring.....

 

I have some questions about exactly how fast air valving can be and what kind of valving set up I would need to get an air cylinder reciprocating at 400 bpm.

 

Am I better off sticking to mechanical...

 

I will update this thread with ideas and designs as I progress.

 

and would be interested in any thoughts any of you have about the idea.

 

 All the best Owen

Years ago I remember visiting Matthias Peters in Stolberg, Aachen he had a feder hammer (toggling leaf spring) in his forge that his blokes all preferred over the Rieter/Kuhn style because of the speed.

 

You might try him for info...

Ok, first question for on here, and I hope it's in the right forum! I'm looking at some holiday themed items, and would like to be able to "stain" the steel with a greenish tint before waxing. I'm not a fan of actual paint, and do want to see the steel through the tint. Are there any ways to accomplish such a color stain? Where's the green Dykem when I need it?

I'm going to experiment with some inks and such, but figured somebody on here had already done this. I wouldn't be surprised if it's already in a post - but I've yet to find it searching.

Thank you,
Jason

 

 

Green shoe polish, it will wax and colour in one operation.

Here in Colorado there's a dangerous lack of humidity, especially when operating a gas forge

Here in England there is a dangerous surfeit of humidity, especially when using a gas forge :) I always understood that for every kilo of propane you burnt you put a kilo of water vapour into the atmosphere....

.....The added humidity in the shop atmosphere from the noisy, hi tec contraption keeps my sinuses and skin from drying out too severely

"because your worth it!"

I trust you get the same Jennifer Aniston cosmetic adverts over there....

I realised a few days after I posted about making a mister back in March that I already had one...I had stuck a bit of 10mm (3/8") plastic tube onto the draw pipe of a cheapo sand blaster in order to suck the water out of the hold down bolt tubes of 150kg hammer, works fine as a mister. Was able to lift the water well over a metre.

Alan

Spinning is also mis-represented according to my wife in books as well as movies. A common example is the type of wheel used in "Sleeping Beauty" where modern books generally show a wheel with an orifice and flyer rather than a wheel with a spindle that wears needle sharp in use---easy to prick your finger on compare to a round hole of an orifice and flyer set up!

Obviously they must be referring to the origins of the hypodermic needle!

You can work all the way around my 500lb. Bradley but it does not require a driver either. Still no pictures... <_<

Funnily enough as soon as I pressed "post" on post 13 I thought of the image of you forging your sculpture and you were presenting from the left. But I was actually thinking of hammers which have hand controls used by a team of smiths.

My 250kg Massey (not yet installed) for instance has a "J" shaped foot treadle and a hand control, my 150kg and 50kg Alldays have "U" shaped foot treadles and hand controls, all the hand levers and the "J" are on the right hand side.

On a few occasions I could have done with a hammer driver, after almost doing the splits to keep my foot on the treadle I ended up resting a plank on it and standing on that, effective but a trifle Heath Robinson! Talk about an analog remote control!

Edit 20.Nov (I have just had another look at your Aileron forging images and see that you employed a similar remote control there!)

Ah pictures, I did look some out to illustrate my theories but got sidetracked doing presentations for the French Conference in Provence. I will have another go. But don't hold your breath!

I will have to mull over your comment before responding

Right, the one who likes to heat and beat a beautifully hafted and polished blade.... Somehow that never sat right with me

See my post no. 32 on page two of this thread. They just make that same mistake over and over!

May be they only get their blacksmithing imagery and techniques from other films and the first one got it wrong.

Given the number of films where the art of the blacksmith is so badly portrayed, I wonder what other crafts /disciplines are equally trashed or misrepresented or is it just us metalworkers?

I can advise you that over here in the UK we only call them Leg Vices. The other name I believe is post colonial. But who needs or wants (or vise versa) my advice?

I would argue the toss but I don't have a leg to stand on...

Get a grip

Does anyone know if copper and soldier are foodgrade safe? I saw a syrup making pan today made from copper and was soldiered very heavely. I just wondered if it is safe.

As stated above it appears that like a lot of things we can cope with it in small quantities, and it is the acidic foods dissolving the copper in a cooking pot that will maybe mean we have too much.

To put the toxicity of copper in perspective, all of the water pipework in my house is made of copper and that has soft soldered joints. Soft Solder for potable water connections is lead free, unlike that multicore stuff I used to use for electrical joints.

The vessel you saw may have been soft or hard (silver) soldered. The hard solder comes in different grades relating to the varying percentages of silver. The industrial ones (non silver hall mark standard) over here were called Easy Flo and Easy Flo 2 they have slightly different melting points. They have recently been taken off the market and replaced with a cadmium free version, I still have metres of the old version :(

What is not going to be found carcinogenic/toxic/lethal/hazardous I wonder?

Of course some apparent cooking pots are modern antique reproductions used to hang on the wall and look jolly. The genuine ones will have tin interiors.

Ah well, I am off to stand by an intense heat source and hold onto a piece of metal which is white hot at one end...must remember that the white hot bit is dangerous to health....

Perhaps he outgrew the piddly little 3" stuff....

:) we all do eventually :)

Early in my career, I watched Clifton Ralph do his wonders with flat dies and slap tooling so I set out to emulate his example. My Beaudry has tall 4x7 dies and a clamp saddle to hold all sorts of spring tooling and I do not have any other dies.

He certainly gave me a few pointers! Wonderful man!

With that said, if all I was doing was drawing out and cleaning up fullered stock, then a set of half & half dies would probably be just fine but I make a wide variety of forms similar to what might come across an industrial smith's table so this setup is much easier for me than having a bunch of dedicated die sets.

The only part I disagree with is the half and half dies. I think they are awful. A set came with my Reiter hammer and after an hours use and much cursing they have been on the shelf for the last 30 years! I hand ground my cheese fullers and they have not been off the hammer for the same period of time!

Spring tools are good but they are never going to be the same as a set of dies

I guess it very much depends on the work and what size and sort of hammer you are using.

It is true the ideal would be to have a different hammer for each form of dies, to certain extent that is what I do, but the advantage of flat pallets and spring tools means that mid-heat you can swap to a different tool, you can't do that with fixed dies. On balance I find the flat pallets and loose tools more flexible/versatile.

On my 50kg Reiter I have only ever used a pair of cheese fullers with a drop on table. Could be dropped on and taken off mid heat. I used that system for ten years for virtually everything I forged. On the Alldays hammers 50kg and 150kg I have flat pallets and use either fixed spring or hand held tools in conjunction. I have made up some drop on specials which combine a series of tools and spacers for specific projects.

With flat dies, what do people do for working stock down? I have seen one hammer with flat dies which used a "wedge" with a slight taper, set on the bottom die to facilitate making tapers.

To work stock down with flat dies you use just the edge of the die and starting from the tip feed inwards taking a little bit at a time so a taper ends up stepped, or ziggurat style. The die edges must always have a radius and it is this radius which has a fullering action. A light dressing pass will take out most of the steps and if you like the texture you can leave it at that or use a half round section flatter to smooth it further. The flat of the half round conforms to the taper and the half round top allows a straight blow. You use the flatter again starting from the tip of the taper up towards the thicker section, from thick to thin will always attempt to parallel the taper.

If you are in production making a lot of the same rate tapers you could have a fixed wedge, the half round flatter enables you to smooth any rate of taper.

I have also made up a series of fixed top tool taper flatters for small runs. I measure them by millimetres per 100mm so I have 4.5mm 6mm 7mm 10 mm and etc. the 6mm gives about 1/4" per 4" for instance.

I understand that flat dies are easier to use with spring dies, which makes sense. Some people have some provision for having spring dies drop into a square hole, so the spring die stays in place without one having to hold it.

I made up a frame which clamps around the bottom pallet and had a piece of 50mm (2") square tube which formed the socket and all the spring tools have a corresponding piece of 40mm (11/2"+) which drops in.

I think that I have seen some examples of people using flat dies and then bolting on home made dies. The examples I have seen have the bolt holes on the top of the die, which means that the flat die has holes in it. I was thinking of putting the bolt holes on the side, but I imagine that there would be some disadvantages of that. Do people have hammers with flat dies and no provision to bolt on dies?

I also made up some fullers which were held on top and bottom pallets with bolted lugs on the sides. The first couple of blows sheared off the bolts! so for 'mark two' I drilled the lugs out to 25mm (1") and cut off a slightly overlength piece of rubber hose which was compressed by the 12mm (1/2") bolt and washer and expanded out to fill the 25mm hole. This gave a shock absorption system and acted as an anti-vibration loosening system and works fine.

As an aside, what do people do to keep the bolts on their hammers from coming apart with vibration? Locktite? Wired bolts like on an old motorcycle? Tack weld the heads?

The only bolts I have had which kept shaking loose were on my 50kg Reiter (Kuhn) the hold down bolts and the access panel bolts would always be loose despite spring washers and nylocks, As per Dave H's advice just check them regularly.

I have another remedy that you could try. Here in Moz if we step on a poisonous thorn or a sea urchin while bare foot. We draw out the splinters using a paw paw (papaya) skin. snip

Aha! Now I know why it is called paw paw, getting thorns out of paws! Have to try and grow some in the polytunnel.

A small Victorinox (or Wenger) knife with scissors and tweezers/toothpick is an essential thing on my keyring for 25 years anyway. The tweezers are for any splinters from pallet to metal and normally the knife stays sharp enough to drag accross and free the splinter to pick it.

20 years ago a friend took me into a vast outdoor equipment warehouse near Berkeley in Cal... about 5 acres of camping gear! The reason he took me in and the only thing I came out with was tiny, an "Uncle Bill's Sliver Gripper", I carried it in the car until I lost it last year, absolutely brilliant device. Precise sharp points and a broad hinge/spring which keeps the points aligned. Enabled me to dig out hundreds of mine, my assistants' and family members' splinters!

Happily I managed to locate a source for them here in the UK so I have replaced them. They have improved them with a key ring clip, the only thing that failed (after ten years) was the plastic bottle of the first set! Thoroughly recommended. Best fiver you could spend.

I assume you are blacksmithing by the Braille method now?

Yes, he has got a real feel for it!

For a long time, I have been trying to forge weld using a one burner gas forge. I've tried many methods but without success. I have successfully forge welded in a coal forge. I now have my 50 lb Little Giant working and thought I'd try welding again using the hammer. I used 3/8" round stock and made a simple lap joint. To my surprise, I was successful. I made the first pass with light taps, returned it to the forge, and hammered down on the second and 3rd passes. Even the toe was welded and I could not see where it had been. So, is the moral of the story, I wasn't hitting hard enough when trying it by hand?

Now you have achieved it under the Little Giant, got your eye in so to speak, have you tried doing it by hand again?

We used to weld up to 3" round this way, actually the bigger the round the easier as it keeps it's heat longer. just need to be patient when getting it hot so as you dont burn the outside before the core is up to temp. 3" used to take 2 fires and 2 smiths who knew what they were doing, and a good hammer driver, but it was quicker than arc welding 3" dia, we also used to fire weld large chain links under the hammer in a set of tools, by much the same method, tack on the anvil, back in the fire, then to the hammer.

When you say "used to" do you mean you have a different joining system for 3" now or that you just haven't had to do it recently?