Frosty

Six? (6) lb. head? Out works a 50lb hammer? Are you including the weight of the helve and attachment hardware? REALLY curious. Frosty

That's quite the kelly bar. Oil rig? I have a kelly bar off one of our rigs but it's 2" sq. Frosty

This is a pic of my large coal forge. The angle is a little odd but I wanted to show the ash dump which is a truck exhaust cap. The tuyere is welded up from 4" exhaust pipe. The table is 3' x 3' fire brick on 12ga sheet, angle iron frame. No fire pot, I like a duck's nest and fire brick stacked to make whatever size or shape "pot" I need. The big hood is only marginally effective, I made it years before I knew what would work. When I move it into the new shop it'll get a side draft hood. I also have a cast iron Buffalo rivet forge and hand crank blower but no pics. Frosty

I'll get a couple once the camera's charged up again. Seems the plug slipped out of the dock while we weren't looking. Frosty

M- There are better ways to make charcoal. What you're doing is called the direct method and you'd be farther ahead to just fish the burning coals out of a campfire and douse them, your hair driers are wasting quite a bit. The indirect method is easy to do and is the most efficient for the backyard collier. Find a 5gl steel bucket with a removable lid, the kind that clamps on with the metal tabs. Pack it as tightly as you can with split dry wood no thicker than 3". It can be the full length of the interior of the bucket. Remove the cap or make a hole about 1" in dia. in the lid to vent smoke and hot gasses. Dig a pit a little larger than the bucket laying on it's side, build a fire and lay the bucket in the fire. Keep an eye on it and when it stops smoking fish it out of the fire and block the vent hole with a wad of fiberglass insulation or similar non-flamable, non-melting material. You need to block the air but not seal the bucket. If you seal the bucket the vacuum formed as it cools will crush it. Another method is to stand the bucket vent side down in dry sand. Once the bucket is cool to the touch, NOT warm, COOL, open it up and remove your charcoal. Don't worry if a little is uncharred, it can go into the next batch. This method scales up to 55gl. drums and larger quite easily though it will take all day or longer rather than a few hours. If you graduate to larger batches you'll want to pipe the vented gasses into the combustion chamber and save on wood. The gasses released charcoaling are flamable, largely wood alcohol, creosote and other various hydrocarbons are a shame to waste. Plumbing them back under the retort (55gl. drum, bucket or RR car) to finish burning makes for a self supporting process for the best efficiency. For a backyard operation anyway. No accelerants, gas, kerosene, etc. If you can't build a fire without them take up something safer. :cool: Frosty

They're not. You want to be a blacksmith don't you? Swages are easy to make. The scale can be large but the technique is simplicity itself. Method 1. Cut two pieces of steel plate to match, say 2" x 3" or whatever you prefer. The plate's thickness must be the same as the dia of the swage you're making at a minimum. Clamp both pieces of plate together with a piece of pasteboard between them. (playing cards, shirt cardboard, etc.) Put them in the drill press and carefully drill down the boundry between the plates. Remember, if you exceed the thickness of the plate with the dia of the drill you will severely weaken the swage. You can also drill a number of swages in the same set. Clean up the edges of the (slightly less than) half round swages with a grinder, sander, etc. so it doesn't cut. Weld a shank to match your hardy on one and a striking post and handle eye, rodding groove, etc. on the other and you have a matched set. Method 2. Cut a pair of matching plates and weld your hardy shank to one. Heat them both to high yellow and carefully place a piece of round, hex, oct, or whatever shape steel you want a swage for between the heated plates. Now whale the xxxx out of them to impress the shape into the swage blanks. Care must be taken to keep both swage halves flat and dressing as with the drilled swages needs to be done as well. Weld your striking face and handle eye, rodding groove, or whatever you like to it and you're ready to go. You'll need a sledge hammer and at least one friend you trust to swing it or who trusts you to swing it without anyone getting hurt. What Glenn said too! Frosty

Ditto, RR spikes are too low carbon for most tools. They were intended to be tough with low fatigue characteristics. Jack hammer bits are a decent choice, another is 5160 leaf spring stock. There are ups and downs to either steel. Jack hammer bits will take the heat and impact better but are a bear to forge if you need to reshape them. There are also heat treating issues with some jack hammer bit steels. 5160 is a lot more forgiving, easier to forge and heat treat and is easy to aquire. The downside is it isn't very heat resistant and if you don't exhibit care the heat from the stock being cut will damage the hardy's heat treatment. Use the RR spikes for tong handles and other applications where a little springy toughness is desirable. Frosty

Another thought is to make a sheet metal anvil shaped stove. If you've seen Roger Degner's, "Peter Wrong" anvil you know what I mean. Then you'd be able to make it into a BBQ, stove with gridle or whatever. It's a cool or should I say "cooking with gas" idea. While this isn't really on topic, it's close. Last summer I found a 36" dia wok at a garage sale and intend to make an outdoor setup for it in the summer kitchen. Well, while a club member was out welding up his home built anvil the wok got noticed and now I'll be taking it to our next meeting to cook a potluck lunch. We'll be using the casting furnace for the burner. Like I say, similar but not quite the same. Frosty

MIxing a little graphite with black paint will give a nice "steel" finish as well. Frosty

I can think of another real bonus to taking an anvil stove tailgating at a game, it's unlikely anyone will JUST walk off with it. Frosty

Also, a punch, drift, chisel, etc. can jam as the metal being penetrated cools and shrinks while the punch, etc. heats and expands. With experience a person will know when to stop driving and knock the penetrator out of the work. A good lube makes removal more forgiving in addition to making the whole process more efficient. Frosty

Yes, ditto thanks for posting the URL. Frosty

Are you talking about the oil port above the gears? It's just one of the little spring flap covered oil posts you see on machinery everywhere. Hmmmm, come to think of it I don't recall if mine has the little flap on it. I just put a little (half dozen or so drops) 30wt motor oil in the hole and it works fine. Chainsaw bar oil works well but gets stiff if you live in cold country, say teens and below. Frosty

M- There's nothing wrong with planning for the future, even if it's a fantasy future. Make your drawings and plans, keep them in notebooks and keep them handy. I've been doing it since I was 9-10 and still do it. Every once in a while I'll browse back through my old notebooks, sometimes laughing at the grandiose plans I had "way" back then, other times I wonder than my plans and desires haven't changed in 40 years or more. The best though is when I happen on something I wrote or drew decades ago and the lightbulb goes on. HEY! That wasn't a bad idea! I didn't know how to do it then or couldn't afford it then but now I do and can. So, don't stop dreaming, life itself will do enough to keep you from them and every once in a while it'll allow you the opportunity to realize one so it's best to keep a goodly trunkful of dreams handy so you can take advantage. Frosty

What ARE you talking about? Separating the solids from the volatiles would eliminate the flamability and wonderfuly delightful flash! Next thing you'll say is you want to eliminate the sound. What IS the world coming to? A smith who doesn't want flames bursting forth from the project! I think I'll go morn a dying art now. Frosty

Hey Ralph! Good to see you posting here. It's a picture of two goats, one baby, one old. I fell asleep playing with baby goats once and woke up at the bottom of a pile of sleeping goats and one great pyreneese mountain dog. Fortunately I woke up and got out before Deb saw me or there'd be pics all over the web. Frosty

Not quite Glenn. Yur recent aquisition looks like the fire pot, not the whole forge. I'd say the entire forge would have to be based on the end of a 500 gl fuel tank rather than a 55gl. drum. (size wise. Don't actually use a fuel tank unless you REALLY know what you're doing!) I'd say it looks like a fire pot for forging anvils. Large anvils and other large stuff. Frosty

Thanks but you should be thaning Brian Gilbert. He's the one who spurred me into cleaning it up enough to print, spend a lot of time helping as well. He also provided the process pics and references so you can compare. I've been sending versions of it for years, finally saving a copy and cutting and pasting with revisions as needed. It must've finally gotten close enough to okay for Brian to try to save it. Well, sending it to a newsletter editor's list we both belong to might have had something to do with it. The tongs were a real pleasant surprise, Brian had already sent me a copy of the pattern issue of the Blow which was more than I expected. Finding the tongs at the P.O. was a day maker for sure. heck, it was a week maker at least. Tunnel Mill was a good time, the first real hammer in I'd ever been to. AK is pretty isolated. I remember meeting lots of people but I don't remember a Skunkriv in the house and your Avatar pic is too small for me to recognize. I hope to get back for sure. Deb and I plan on doing some traveling but it'll be a bit yet. Frosty

I've heard of this, it's a method of case hardening and needs to be done at near welding heat. I've never tried it either, I can afford a little tool steel if I can't scrounge it honestly. Frosty

I begin by breaking any lump coal to around 3/4", about acorn size but I don't get too fussy if it's a little larger, 1" or walnut's fine. Depending on how much I'm prepping I'll screen out the fines with hardware cloth 1/4" mesh or roll it down a piece of plywood to separate it out. I start the coal with a strip of cardboard about 1 1/2" - 2" wide and 12-18" long. I roll it into a tight coil and place it over the grate. My grate is a piece of 3/4" plate with a pattern of 14, 5/16" holes tapered wider on the underside so junk pokes out easily. I've never tried a slotted air grate but will. I'll also say 14 holes is more fire than I usually need but dropping flattish round headed rivets in the excess holes works nicely to reduce the grate and it's easy to lift them out if I want a larger fire. Anyway, I place the coil of cardboard over the air grate and pile coal around it then allow the coil to open slightly. You want a little space between layers of cardboard 1/16" is plenty. This is to allow the air to blow through the coil making a flame like a torch. I then continue piling coal around and on the coil till all that's left is an inch or so visible in the center. The first layer of coal is all pretty clean so air can pass through it easily. Around and over the initial mound of coal I pack my wetted fines, leaving the crater in the center open. When the mound is ready I light a couple stick matches and with the gentlest of blast, just enough to keep the matches lit I drop them into the center of the coil. There's nothing wrong with giving it a LITTLE squirt of charcoal lighter fluid, kerosene or diesel but don't tell any traditionalists I said so. Once the cardboard is burning I slowly increase the blast till I have a torchlike flame showing. At that point I fill the crater with clean 3/4" coal and increase the blast a little. In a minute or less there'll be a healthy plume of smoke and the center may slump a little as the cardboard burns away, time to increase the blast again. Once the mound flares off I cover all but a little bit of the center for a vent with wetted fines and let it have the blast. Don't go crazy, use a little judgement eh? Once the smoke dies down the fire is ready for use. Or if you have good coking coal you can do what I do and just coke up a bucket's worth for a smoke free rest of the day. Coking a 5gl bucket takes about 15 mins and is rather smokey to start with. I prep the mound the same but it's considerably larger being around 5gl. of 3/4" coal. Covering the outside of the mound with wetted fines really helps, especially coking a larger quantity because it contains the heat better and lets me control where it goes. For instance if one side of the mound isn't heating, you can tell because the whole mound should be seeping smoke evenly, even after it flares. If one side isn't seeping smoke it isn't coking so, poke a hole through the fines there and close the top vent a bit to force the fire to the part of the mound that isn't coking. After a bit the mound will start sticking together and after a bit longer it'll start to slump like hot asphault. At this time I take a sharp shovel (that's one with a sq point. Yeah, and I call a spade a spade too;) ) and turn the mound over for a couple more minutes of blast. You'll get a goodly flare of orange and yellow flame and black smoke when you turn it but it won't last long. When this last flare dies down it's ready. Using your shovel and rake spread the breeze (forge coked coal) and extinguish it with water. There'll be plenty of fire left in the pot to rebuild the dome and start forging. I prefer coking up the day's coal in the morning to get the smokey part over with. Also, if you do it at 0'dark:30 in the morning the neighbors are less likely to notice and complain. Outside of prepping the coal this takes way longer to read than to get a good fire going with this method. One last thing, I don't hold my methods as being superior to anyone elses, they're just what work best for me. There are other ways of doing almost everything and some work better some not. Coal differs place to place, it's age, your altitude and the day's weather all contribute to it's burning characteristics. So, keep an open mind, try new things, even when what you're doing works fine and have fun. Play safe but have fun. Frosty

If you're making the drive get a couple bags of each, sometimes one just isn't enough for a fair trial. You can mix them as well just for a third option. Frosty

Attractive knocker PT. Nicely done, it'll make someone happy for sure. Frosty

I just looked and didn't see any wrought iron, turned up no results on a search as well. You might want to double check before you order John. If they do have wrought on the page you pull up, please post THAT URL, I'd like to find a supplier of small quantities of wrought. Axles make fine hammers, it's a very forgiving steel so you don't have to get your heat treatment perfect. Frosty

Good point Thomas. It wouldn't take too long to adze the side of a log flat. Still, having tried to forge on a piece of plate I'd rather use a sledge hammer head or proper stump anvil. My list: Stump anvil and bickern. 3 hammers, sledge, 2lb+/- and 10 to 16 oz finisher. A chisel, couple files and hacksaw blades. Draw knife to make handles. Appropriate stock to replace items I couldn't repair. A horse can carry the farrier's supplies. Frosty

I've done a lot of campfire forging and unless it's really out of true I hardly notice. The only time I can think a really true anvil would be important would be if you have an Oliver mounted to work on it. Solid is FAR more important, to me anyway. Frosty