Frosty

Welcome aboard Sparky. Enjoy the journey. Frosty

This is probably a bit late for the event but I ran across a couple Youtube videos of ground forges. The first is a middle video in this guy's knife making series. Please do NOT build fires like this guy! At least clear the leaves away first. YouTube - Greenpete's Knife Making pt3of4 This one is a Laotian smith and is part 1/2 it's short but shows his forge. 2/2 shows his anvil and power hammer. YouTube - Laotian blacksmiths part 1/2 Notice his smithy seems to be a family shop, grandpa feeding the forge out front and baby sitting in the rear. Frosty

It's getting to the point where holding out for an old anvil at a good price is a waste of time. In most areas anyway. Oh sure, you can still find good deals on old tools but it's getting to where you're farther ahead buying new. By the time you find a decent anvil and pay antique shop prices for it, then maybe have to put many hours and additional cash into refinishing it you might've spent a year or two you could've spent learning or practicing the craft. The last anvil I bought I spent around $3/lb for a Trenton in good shape. Then I had to get the thing to Alaska from N. Dakota. If Deb and I hadn't been trucking her stuff from the UP already it would've cost at least another $200 in shipping. At the time $1,000 would've gotten me a new 250lb shipped here. A lot of what you're going to have to spend depends on where you live. If you live in the mid-west you have a pretty good chance of finding good smithing tools for a reasonable price. If you live on the west coast it's going to cost you a lot more. If you live in Alaska you might consider just making your own because shipping is going to add at least a $1/lb to anything old or new. Frosty

That's probably 0-3-3 not 0-8-3. The first number is CWT (hundredweights) = 112lbs. The second number is quarter CWT = 28lbs. The last number is lbs. So, while the first number could be anything, the second won't be more than 3 and the last won't be more than 27. A 0-3-3 anvil is 87lbs, give or take a lb. A 0-8-3 properly written would be 2-0-3 and weigh 227lbs. Give or take a lb. So, what's your back say when you pick it up? Good score regardless, congratulations. Frosty

I wasn't referring to the texture but the color. The picture looked like it was badly oxidized on my screen. Some pics come in clear as a bell others don't. Anyway, seeing as it isn't oxidized then disregard what I said. Frosty

Good supply run Aprenticeman: I've always gotten on well with the local spring shops, good guys all round. Frosty

It's a sad but temporary thing I hope. Except for the checking here of course! I've had to do the same thing several times though and lived through it. Heck, most of my stuff is still waiting for the new shop to get finished. I only have a couple hours work left to finish the new section of roof on the barn and it'll be leak proofed for years to come or till I decide to finish adding on. Lets see, Then all I have to do is build the new wood shed, get the season's wood in, cut, split and stacked for next winter; this winter's wood is ready to go. Oh yeah, I need to do some repairs on the snow plow and get things picked up before the snow flies. All that's left then is get the last wall, garage door and roof on the shop and I'm home free!! :cool: Ah, just another summer on the last frontier. Frosty

Looks cool. If you don't want to repeat the effect don't get it quite so hot next time, 1,100f is plenty. In high school we got our best results when the pour looked bright silver and was almost chunky. I don't recall what we used for flux but it was pink; I believe borax will work but check before you try it. Stir the flux in gently and scrape off the dross but don't get crazy you'll never get it all, Al oxidizes on contact with air. Frosty

I have a pair I picked up about 12 years ago thinking they'd work for smithing. They're intended to filter out the light from the sodium yellow part of the spectrum. This is a very common frequency for glass blowers. I discovered they're of minimal use for smithing, VERY minimal. You get a little bit of benefit filtering glare from borax and that's about it. Mike Porter is currently researching for his next couple books and color filtering for welding, cutting and smithing is either a chapter or a book in the works. Didymium glasses aren't worth the expense for smithing in my experience. A good pair of tinted glasses work better. Gold lenses around #4-5 are even better, they maintain the natural color while filtering out excess glare and eliminating IR. UV radiation from a forge is so negligible you can disregard it unless you're operating way above 3,000f. On the other hand didymium glasses don't hurt if you have the disposable income. Of course that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. Frosty

As Thomas says wet rawhide works well for lashing though sinew is maybe more often used. Alaskan natives and many others use glue as well. Hide and sinew glues have been around a LONG time. Otsie the Ice man; a bronze age man found frozen in the Alps between Italy and Switzerland had several hafted tools attached with raw hide and hide glue. In other circumstances pitch or asphalt was used. Egg and milk glues are less common as they're not as strong and stable in high humidity conditions. A local butcher shop will give or sell (cheap) tendons, etc. Hide, hooves, tendons, bones or other tissues containing collogen; boil down to make "hide" glue. Once it's biled to a thick broth you then evaporate it till it's a thick goop. It's extremely strong and durable but you need to melt it to use it. And I'll bet you thought HOT glue was something new. Okay, so I should've done the search before I sent the original message off. Anyway here's a couple links for making hide glue and attaching tool handles, shafts, etc. A quick Google search will net you more info than you need or want. I'd follow the directions on this site myself as (s)he seems to have a good idea of what's going on. Hide Glue Production Glue Troubled Times: Hides Earth Connection Product 2 (If you want to take a class) A Note on Indian Bow Making or the Secrets of Sinew Revealed (arguments for using sinew for lashings) Urban Resources for Your Primitive Technology and Modern Projects (Interesting site and discusses using commercial gelatin "Knox" to make hide glue. I don't know how well this will work as modern gelatins are made from fruit pectin rather than animal collogen) Glue FAQ (add salt to keep it liquid at room temp but lose some properties) Frosty

First Irnsrgn now YOU! You guys are killin me! From the land of no old equipment, Frosty

Sweet machine, Irnsrgn. It almost makes me wish I were a wood worker. Then again I wouldn't find good antique wood working tools around here any more than I find smithing tools. Frosty

Set a piece of RR tie on end long enough to be a comfortable working height and spike the fish plate to it for a dandy chisel plate. Frosty

Powdered graphite works well. Frosty

One last step is setting the shoulder. Do this by heating the newly drawn tool and set it in the hardy hole, then drive it down with a sledge like you were heading a nail. Do this before you forge the hardy, swage, etc. of course. Frosty

This is a decent how to except for one thing. Don't use cinder blocks for the retort enclosure, they can't take the heat for long. Frosty

I'm not sure what you're asking so I must not've been very clear. In the indirect method the fire on the outside of the container cooks the volatiles out of the wood leaving relatively pure carbon. Charcoal. In the semi-direct method you're burning the wood to generate the heat that will drive the volatiles off and produce the charcoal. Once the wood gets burning well you can close it up and it'll continue to cook off. In the direct method you just burn the wood and pull the coals out of the fire and extinguish them or use them right then. In short, yes the fire is converting the wood to charcoal. You will need to break it up if the pieces are too large. I recommend doing a web search for charcoal making. Looking a few over and reading some and we'll have a better frame of reference for discussion. Frosty

I moved to Alaska. It was 71 today positively searing. Frosty

Sure. Softwood charcoal burns hotter but faster than hardwood charcoal. The best way to make charcoal is in a retort. Basically it's a sealed (with a vent) fireproof container like a 55gl drum. You pack it full of wood. It can be full length but more than about 3" thick will mean incomplete carbonization. Once the drum if filled, close it up leaving a small opening for a vent, the 2" bung is perfect. Place the drum on a fire till it stops smoking and take it off the fire. Block the bung with something that prevents oxy from entering but won't create a vacuum, fiberglass insulation works very well. Once the drum is cool you can open it up and remove the charcoal. This is the Indirect method. There are other interesting and useful tips for charcoaling: First, the smoke coming out of the vent is flammable so if you plumb it back under the drum you can burn it to continue the charcoaling process without additional fuel. Second, putting the drum in an enclosure traps heat and makes it much more efficient. There are other methods as well: The Direct method is just picking the charcoal out of a fire and either using it or putting it out for later. The Semi-direct method means you load your container and light it on fire. Once it's going good you put the cover on and wait till it stops smoking, block and let cool. The direct method is the least efficient, semi-direct is better and indirect is the best. Frosty

This is pretty much what's being discussed, Bruce. Typically though the air blast is through a side draft rather than a bottom draft. (the pipe with holes under the fire) A bottom draft tends to eat up tueyere irons faster and a person packing their smithy on their back isn't likely to want to haul extras with them. The air blast is another thing that is easy to produce without anything more special than a sack. If you slip a sack over the end of the tueyere iron you can open the sack, inflate it then clamp the open end down and squeeze the air out through the tueyere iron. A sack can be hide, stomach or any number of woven fabrics (a tight flexible basket falling within my definition of fabric for this discussion) and can be used to carry more stuff when it's not being your bellows of course. Using a sack bellows the smith doesn't need a lot of equipment. A stump anvil and bick, tongs, hammers, (If a smith were particularly limited for weight wooden handles could be made on site and not packed along) chisels, saw, files, tueyere iron and stock. I call it a tueyere "iron" but a thin walled copper/bronze tube with a clay nozzle will serve perfectly well. In fact a piece of rolled birch bark or large reed and clay nozzle will work fine. Then there are any number of more advanced bellows like feather, box, single and double acting, etc. The actual minimum equipment list for a blacksmith is really short. A hot fire, something heavy to beat against, something to beat with, something to beat on and if the beaten upon thing is too short, tongs to hold it. A person doesn't really need much more and can make most of the rest including the iron. Frosty

Yeah, those stories kill me. Seriously if they WERE friends, what's packing a couple anvils, forges and related tools out of the woods for you? I mean really, what are friends for? Frosty

You have six (6) classes under your belt? Wow! While I love getting together with other smiths and would LOVE to take a couple classes, both situations are pretty rare around here. I had to teach myself, not than I'm putting that up as better, there are definate disadvantages. I reinvented so many wheels over the years I could supply Firestone. What I'm saying is what I tell the folk I've taught over the years. Smithing is a combination of knowledge and practice, nothing more. No magic, no big secrets, just knowledge and practice. Perhaps after 3 years and 6 classes you actually have enough knowledge and practice to start selling your work? Almost every skilled smith I've met who doesn't sell much work either doesn't want to or just doesn't market properly. Good to see you delurking and I'm looking foreward to discussing whatever has you held up, got you going or just swapping good recipes. Frosty

That is a good question and like so many it depends. Ceramic wool refractories like Kaowol, Insulwool and such are fragile. Even with the use of rigidizers and reflectors like ITC-100 they will degrade, especially in the area the burner flame impinges. A properly made and tuned jet ejector type burner like Mike Porter's a Rex, a Side Arm or my "T" will easily exceed the max rating of ceramic blanket refractories. Another aspect of ceramic blankets is bridging strength. If you build a box forge blanket won't stay on the roof very well if it's more than a couple inches across. There are a number of hangers you can use including running SS screws in through the lid. So, while ceramic blankets are fragile they are good insulators though it will show in absolute temp and fuel consumption. Oh yeah, there is the potential for ceramic fibers escaping and causing a breathing hazard though application of a rigidizer will go a long way towards mitigating the hazard. Insulating castable refractories don't insulate as well but they're orders of magnitude tougher. Lately Mikey has been recommending Kastolite 3000 or bubble alumina. Bubble alumina insulates quite well but is expensive. Kastolite 3000 is according to Mike around 85% as efficient an insulator as Kaowool, Durablanket, etc. Before I had access to the internet I built a little gasser for a friend using a hard rammable refractory inner liner with 1" of 8oz. Kaowool for insulation. I should've used 2" of Kaowool but this little forge has stood up well for about 13 years now. Anyway, there are lots of options and which you choose will depend on what you need it to do for you. Frosty

I'd say one pair per foot, depending on how large a pair you need. Frosty

Well, that answers that. If they were form stakes they wouldn't let you have them as they cost several $ ea. even bought in quantity. Frosty