middle-aged nerd and son with love of fire

[clinker breaker]

I've played with smithing for years, but now that I have a 9-year-old son, I have someone to entertain with it. We mostly make sharp things (marshmallow sticks, nails, spikes) or melt soft metals in the forge and make ingots that end up cluttering our house. Probably my greatest smithing achievement was getting five kids and their parents in the backyard and teaching them all to point round stock, which we then used to roast marshmallows over a campfire. (This included a 10-year-old girl and two moms.)

I figure every experience I create for my son and his friends where they interact with real materials is a huge deal since they spend most of their time looking at screens. We play a lot with fire. I let them watch some stuff burn (wood, leaves, garbage) and other stuff melt (solder, scrap aluminum or glass). They learn about real matter in a way that most kids don't, so even if our hooks are skewed and our handles are lopsided, I think it's a good thing (if not the safest.)

Personally, I want to get more controlled with my smithing. I only have a handful of successful forgewelds under my belt, and thirty times as many failed welds. And I often lose heats before I manage to get the right grip with my tongs and move any metal the way I intended to. I don't have a shop, just a back yard setup, but I've decided to leave it set up and risk rust/theft in order to have it at the ready so I can forge on short notice when I have a bit of time rather than making a huge production of it just a few times a year. Now we're forging every couple of weekends, and I'm getting decidedly better. I'm not coordinated or strong to begin with, so repetition helps.

It's late and I'm rambling. Thanks for hosting this forum. I hope to learn a lot from everyone.

[bigfootnampa]

My forge is under a roof... but just barely, and rain drifts in and wets the fire pot. So when I lay a fresh fire and don't want to light it right away I will cover the forge with a plastic mortar tub turned upside sown (these are available at Lowes or Home Depot). It keeps my kindling dry and ready to light. Note that I only do this when the forge is cold and I have just cleaned out the clinkers... not a good idea over a forge with any retained heat. It might help you in your situation to do something similar.

[Glenn]

CB go to http://www.iforgeiron.com/page/index.html and find what you can build. Make a couple on your own first to understand the technique then show the kids.

If you are concerned about leaving stuff outside, then bring anything you consider valuable inside each night. If your tongs are not gripping correctly, then purchase a pair of vise grips, locking pliers. You can get better with each time at the forge, and in short order can have a fire built and be forging in about 15 minutes.

[ThomasPowers]

Now post election there are lots of abandoned election signs on the public right-away. The ones that look like a square C of about 1/8" wire make great roasters and toasters! Take a length and double it over from the middle, then leaving a 4" or so "handle", hot twist the length of it to about 4-6" from the "open" end. Then bend the legs out 90 deg and square and taper them, then bend them into a fork and you're done.

I've worked an entire cub scout pack through making these before on a one by one basis. They then proved them in by cooking hot dogs and marshmallows. A lot of work on my point making sure they didn't do anything wrong; but the results were great!

(And as you have already learned *practice* is the greatest way to improve your skills; especially when you are *trying* to improve!)