Frosty

Hi Friends,

Any of you good folks know where we could buy some HC RR spikes for our high school blacksmithing class out here in Hawaii? Need about 30.

Thanks, Phil

Do they need to be RR spikes? I'm sure you could buy 9/16" or 5/8" sq. stock a lot cheaper. Even in Hawaii.

Heck it might be fun to make a header, have the kids forge their own RR spike, then make whatever you have in mind from them.

Frosty

Take a magnet to it. If it sticks it'll work, if not it's probably something other than iron.

If the black sand is blasting media it's probably slag or something similar. Not all black sand is iron and not all iron ore is a high enough concentration to work.

Frosty

Sounds like a wether rather than a buck to me Ted. Nobody with working nasal apparatus would allow an intact buck in the cab of their truck unless it was a real emergency.

Of course there's no accounting for taste so. . .

Pygmies have great personalities and if they don't have goat buddies will bond to people like a puppy. Among the many metaphors used to describe them, "puppy dogs with hooves" is a common one.

A pasture full of pygmy kids spronking around will put a smile on anybody's face.

Frosty

It also looks like he's getting plenty of heat from charcoal briquettes without unreasonable oxidation.

Nice use of an old BBQ too with the additional upside of not spoiling it for making dinner by using charcoal.

Frosty

We have used ironsand "mined" that way to good effect; just be sure you don't get any from gold panners that have used Hg to extract gold from it!

Bloomeries and cupolas are not that similiar in their running and heat balance---if you get cast iron you're doing it wrong in a bloomery!

We'll avoid the gold mines or maybe I'll just test it and see what I find. If I were to start finding a decent amount of HG I'd have to consider mining and selling it. Heck the greenies would probably finance me even if it were a natural deposite.

Yes, a bloomery and a cupola (per se) operate differently but structurally they're very similar.

If we manage to get liquid iron I'm not going to complain! Maybe rethink the set up a little but no complaints. :cool:

Frosty

Sure though it wouldn't be the most efficient design.

Some 15-18 years ago I made a forge on a similar pattern on a sand bar on the banks of the Resurrection River outside of Seward AK.

The base of the forge was rocks and sand reinforced with salvaged rebar driven into the ground in a circle. The air blast was a damaged section of drill casing facing into the prevailing wind with sheet metal as a funnel.

I started out with rebar sticking out of the top in a circle to hold the wood as it burned into charcoal but the heat was unendurable. I found a 15gl. grease barrel, cut the ends out of it and made openings on opposite sides at one end. I stood the grease barrel over the air grate with the doors at the bottom and filled it with wood.

The barrel kept enough of the heat off me I was able to work the forge. I adjusted the air blast by opening or closing the sheet metal funnel.

My anvil was an axel I fished out of the Resurrection River and buried flange up near the forge. The axel shaft was close to 3" dia. x around 3' long, the flange was about 12" in dia X 1 1/4" thick with 7/8" holes around it. The center of the flange was pretty flat. It made a really sweet anvil and I wish I'd packed it home with me.

Why I didn't is another story though.

So, anyway, a bloom furnace certainly could be used as a forge, just as a forge could be used as a bloom furnace. It's just that neither is intended for such.

Frosty

Hey Goatman:

Where do you live?

Frosty who raises Pygmies in Ak.

I'm not sure what the final plan will be but for now we'll probably mine the creeks for black sand using magnets. There are a few within reasonable distance cutting through heavily mineralized hills.

There is also bog iron around though I don't know anyone who's collected any as such. One friend of mine, long since moved out of state, had a large lump he collected as a curiosity though he doesn't recall from which bog now, nearly 20 years after the fact.

I'm not sure what construction tech we'll use, possibly fire brick possibly fire clay cob. Might as well use fire clay, it's reasonably cheap. We could dig our own clay at the coal mines but it's so full of coal flecks it's pretty unpredictable when fired. If you consider how much time and effort's involved in cleaning the clay it makes buying fire clay cheap.

What I'm mainly interested in is the general nuts and bolts of it. I understand the specifics change with all the variables of different locations, materials, etc. etc.

We also have an accomplished caster in the group who has experience with cupolas. In fact he and a local artist group will be hosting an iron pour just down the road from me next june. They're going to do three pours, one above the arctic circle, one in Fairbanks and one here in Wasilla. At least those are the plans, some locations may change as it develops but Wasilla is pretty well locked in.

The point of that little digression is I'm leaving the refractory mix to Pat as he has the experience. He can also fine tune the cupola and fuel, ore, flux mix. Still, he hasn't done this himself so I'm sponging all the info available.

Frosty

Cob?

A few of the guys in our group have been talking about trying to make a bloomery. Any tips?

Frosty

Hey M,
I posted up some pics in my members gallery of my tool chest on wheels.

the_sandy_creek_forge Gallery - Blacksmith Picture Gallery

Nothing fancy, but it works.

One other tip would be to put the hammer section over the WHEELS and NOT back by the handles. Keep the heaviest stuff up over the pivot point (in this case the wheels). One of these days I'll fix that. The nicest thing with this box is I can load up all my hand tools for a weekend demo, and roll it right up the ramps into the back of my truck (with a little help of course).


-Aaron @ the SCF

Nice chest Aaron.

A couple more thoughts come to mind.

Making wheels like those aren't too difficult and are excellent learning projects. If they're not quite perfectly round or centered the wobble won't be too bad. Unless a person were to run really REALLY fast with the trunk of course. See option three.

The wheels and handles can be mounted on receivers like a trailer hitch. This will do a couple things for you:

First it makes it easier to stand the chest on end for a handy table with a front loading door.

Secondly it lets you use the same wheels and handles on other things like chests, tables, forges, anvil stands, etc.

And lastly (though I'm sure there are lots of other good ideas) it makes it much harder for the unscrupulous, sticky fingered types to run off with it. Not having wheels and handles attached that is.

Frosty

hide the oven mitts

Oven mits. . .

Frosty

At first I thought it had been cut, but when I got it home today, I looked closely and you can tell it has snapped. Very jaged, and signs of a bend on one edge.

I do have a piece of 1 1/4 solid hex in the shop that I could weld on. Wont be FACTORY, but will work.

Hex bar is high carbon and not so good a match for what's almost certainly wrought. Either weld mild bar or find heavy wall pipe that'll socket over the remaining stub and sweat on for an interference fit before welding.

The upside of using pipe will be not relying entirely on a weld to keep it secure. The down side is the looks.

Nice score. I have some of Father's tools and a badly beated anvil from a great great grand someone or other's farm. It's very cool having some family history you can touch.

Frosty

get to pilfer cookies in exchange for removing the cookie sheet when the oven mitts go missing

HIDE the cookie sheet I believe you meant to say?

Frosty

I have to chip in with my thanks too. A site like this is a tremendous amount of work, even if it were just cleaning up the internet traffic jams. It's a lot more than that though. A LOT more.

Thanks Glenn. You be de man.

Frosty

Welcome aboard Brad.

Nice looking work.

Frosty

Ian:

I've never heard of custard powder, the stuff is really easy to make without powder. At a guess I'd bet "custard powder is corn starch.

There's all kinds of Youtube videos about the stuff. Some call it "Ooblect" (I think) or (non-newtonian) fluids. (I think)

Funny stuff.

So's custard of course.

Frosty

I typically run 7018 and 6011 for "field" welds on cruddy steels or when I need a fast freeze for filling holes. I run stick and flux core wire with my Lincoln Ranger 9 portable.

I run whatever the mild steel wire they had on the shelf in my Hobart 120 Handler with 75/25.

And lastly I run whatever the book or guys at the welding supply recommend for the more oddball things I run into on occasion.

Frosty

Looking good.

It makes me feel good to see someone NOT overbuilding a thing to a fare-thee-well.

You look happy covered in soot and grime. Making steel do my bidding usually does a similar thing for me.

Frosty

Lots of differences, even amongst SS types. Some are not forgable at all, some are but not by human muscle power. Metal suppliers have spec lists that will let you know what to expect.

In general though, SS has a narrow work range, 2-300 degree or so, from hot enough to too cold and you don't want to get it too hot. SS doesn't conduct heat very well either so it'll spend more time in the fire soaking for less time on your anvil. It's not only harder to move it doesn't let you work it as long.

You'll probably be happiest using a 300 series, say 304. It's been a long time since I worked SS but as I recall 304 worked best at a high orange, just shy of yellow heat. 300 series SS is pretty common and not too expensive. Be sure to pick up enough to experiment with and make some mistakes with.

Once you're done you'll need to passivate it or have it passivated or it'll rust. This can be done at home if you don't mind handling nitric acid or want to set up an electropolishing machine.

If you're bidding this project; figure it'll take you about 5x as long to forge and finish, the SS will cost 3-4x as much as mild and shop around to see what passivation will cost.

SS will make you work for it but it's plenty forgable and the results are excellent.

Frosty

Nicely done. It's been my experience most people don't build enough table space onto their forges. I like your set up a lot.

Frosty

(this is going off topic a bit now but- I had an elderly lady come to visit me in the summer,

(she also went around the village and let everyone know how she was reunited with her long lost pony's shoes!)

anyway, I digress!

Oh no, that's no digression, It's a taste of history.

It lets us know how the village smith was thought of and their place in the society. That you could return such a terrific memory to your visitor is something rather wonderous.

Not to mention being almost as good P.R. as saving the mayor's kid from drowning.

Excellent story, thanks for sharing.

Frosty

I gotta toss in here.

Zinc isn't nearly as toxic as popularly believed. Don't misconstrue me here, I'm not saying ignore it, take proper precautions, just don't freak out if you get a whiff.

And YES, drinking milk most certainly will help where some inhalation hazards are concerned, zinc being one. Milk stimulates mucus production which helps your lungs flush the zinc oxide fumes out.

One nail make you sick? I doubt it but won't say no way, you could be particularly sensitive to zinc oxide. Unlikely but possible.

I'd almost say a psychosomatic reaction is more likely.

Paw Paw exposed himself to a huge amount of zinc oxide and suffered from COPD. Even so, had he sought medical attention sooner he may well have pulled through. As it was, by the time he relented and went to the doctor the pneumonia (I don't recall what the proper name is) had him well and truly in it's grip.

And yes, I've torched and welded lots of galvy myself. I've "enjoyed" the Blue flue many times in the past and gotten over it every time. Never mass dosed myself though and don't intend to.

Other platings are not the same story though. Electro plated zinc is NOT pure zinc and tends to have much more toxic metals included. Do NOT under any circumstances, weld or grind CAD plated steel it is very toxic. These are the gold colored bolts.

Chrome is also very toxic, especially when heated.

All in all, stay away from breathing metal fumes of any kind, steel and iron included.

Frosty

Okay, so I'll make a contribution to the thread.

At 2lbs + I doubt it's a chipping hammer. I have one like that and it's only around 10oz.

A stone cutter's hammer is a good possibility, especially if the faces are beveled to be sharp.

Another possibility is a forming hammer, I have a couple though not in the 2lb range, they're just like the one you show.

Frosty

I was just looking at someone's anvil and noticed they have a metal bucket for a slack tub.

This is a fine choice, better than a plastic bucket which is okay.

I have half a whiskey barrel for one but my favorite is a SS mop bucket. It has a mop wringer that's nothing more than a cone made of perforated SS sheet. The wringer is perfect for tossing small pieces of steel into and not losing them.

No pics though.

So, what're your favorites, least favorites, disaster stories, etc.?

Frosty

Shall we move half of this thread to the forum on Linguistics.com ?

Linguisticks?

Aren't those the things you boil to make linguini?

Frosty