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I Forge Iron

Forges and Fires


Glenn

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Many grades of flint and obsidian knap better after tempering in a fire, not to mention getting those clay cups to stop reverting to mud. 

I'd love to see Mammoth clones, heck taste one. I'll bet that'd be a manly MAN fillet. Roast one at Quad State on the spit forged at the previous Q.S.?

Frosty The Lucky.

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Thomas:  This is more a story for your spinster wife but I once purchased a packet of mammoth wool (from a frozen Siberian critter) at a gem/mineral/fossil show and my late wife would pass it around at various fiber meetings and ask, "What fiber animal do you think this is from?"  A few times someone actually guessed correctly but they knew that both she and I were geologists and jokers and would be the kind of people who would come up with something like that.

I always wanted to get enough mammoth wool for her to spin enough yarn to knit me a scarf or mittens.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand." 

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Now *that* would be a great Mother's Day gift! (A sample of Mammoth wool).   My wife has spun Arctic Fox before. We were taking a walk around the neighborhood around 32 years ago and someone had a large cage enclosure in their yard and we were trying to figure out what it was for. So we went and rang the doorbell and asked.  Arctic Foxes and they had been collecting their brushings hoping for a spinner or spinster to use them. Gorgeous blue-white when clean and spun---much like arctic ice...

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Thomas:  I know a place in the high Colorado Rockies where the mountain goats rub on the bushes to lose their winter wool.  We have gathered several grocery bags of it at a time.  If your wife is interested and if we are able to get up there this summer would she want some?

G.

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I would love to touch mammoth fur!  They have captured my imagination. The greatest beast of another age. I have some mammoth ivory. When I was a boy a family friend had a wonderful collection of Indian artifacts. He lived older stuff paleo percussion flaked. He had an axe that in profile was shaped like a mammoths head and back. It gave me chills when he shined a light and it cast a mammoth shadow !  He called it an effigy axe. 

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Frosty:  Yes, the sample we had was about 50% each and was kind of a brownish blonde in color.  Th guard hairs were a bit brittle but the undercoat was still soft and Martha said that it was spinable.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Also, I see that there is some for sale on ebay.  It could get kind of pricey to get enough to turn into something usable.

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  • 3 weeks later...

UPDATE: So today had a chance with some coke to try forging and I’m thinking I need a better air supply and to shallow out my forge a bit. The 6” of depth seemed to be too much for my hair dryer to handle and either burnt itself out or the heat from the coke over temped and roasted it.

Either way, I’ve got a new fan/ducting I’m going to modify in so it’s not so close to the heat and hoping it’ll be a bit better at supplying air. Will try to have a better air gating/bleed system to not over tax it too.

Will look at forming in some clay or litter mix to shallow out the pot with a sized brick or tile (unless you think a Steel plate would be better.).

Reasoning: I was finding it would get hot in the heart of the forge but not where my stock is laying across. Thinking just not enough air getting up to the top for coke where I need to heat stock. 

In the mean time I got to work building my very own JABOD for charcoal with everyone’s encouragement! Got rained out... need to finish digging up clay and building legs to raise up the forge to a reasonable height. Either going to use a Double-Action Mattress Pump or a controllable mattress inflator/bleed system, I’ll experiment and see what works best!

Figured this has now evolved to be better suited for this thread over the other thread.

 

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  • 7 months later...

Not forging because my little shop is occupied with a different project. So here is my forge. The table is old riveted together, my grandmothers uncle bought the table, bellows and anvil in 1938, unfortunately he was killed by the Nacis in WW2. So my grandparents bought it all from his widow. We still have it all, but I took just the table for now. The fire was side blast with the firepot made from clay. I put a cast firepot in it. The hood is made so I can easily take parts of it off or the whole hood. It is enclosed for my piece of mind, so I can close it and leave without worrying about fire hazard.

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  • 11 months later...

I attempted to do some forging yesterday. Spent the better part of 2 hours trying to get the fire going. Wasn't going to start so I gave up.  Later I went to clean the forge up and it sorta fell apart. The cement and cinderblocks just couldn't take it any more and now they're gone. Would be a tragedy except this year I not only know how to weld but have a flux welder. I can now make it according to my initial design. My step son likes to leave car parts out by the forge so a couple skid plates have now been cut to shape.  I even have a 1/4 inch thick plate I cut 2 inches of 1/4 inch holes into for a grate. Much softer than the piece of truck bumper I had been using. Therefore instead of a single 1 inch hole in the middle of my forge I'll have a decent grate that lets air through without allowing the pipe to fill up with cinders and coal. 

 

The vacuum cleaner I have been trying to use as a blower is dying quickly. My step son gave me a car jumper/power outlet/tire pump thing because it quit working. The battery is beyond charging. I took the thing apart and it has a nice little squirrel cage fan. Puts out the same amount of air as the vacuum used to. And since it's 12 volt DC I can simply add a rheostat and control the amount of air instead of the poorly working blocks I put in to keep from burning all my coal up in 10 minutes. 

Unfortunately tennis elbow has now affected both of my arms. So it's looking like it's time to find a way to construct a power hammer and a hydraulic press. Got a 12 pound short handle sledge hammer, a 5 hp tiller engine and some plywood. So something seems possible.  

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So I rebuilt my forge using steel. I had no choice but to use the steel I had lying around. I had not read that you need thick steel. I reckon it won't last long. I have been trying to get to the local scrapyard for a year and a half now. Starting to think if I ever get to go I'll have to drive my lawnmower to it. They quit taking cans and are blaming it on covid. Yet I can't for the life of me figure why. Makes about as much sense as any of this covid nonsense they've been pushing. 

I'm beginning to think it's not worth fighting reality for any more. Been begging the wife to give me just $20 a month to spend and it's falling on deaf ears. I just don't have the funds to do any of this right. Physically it's torture using a hammer lately. I spent a week scraping up skid plates and the like for the forge and 2 days welding only to learn the only part thick enough to use is the grate. I'm not used to being defeated. I don't like it. And it's not helping my Christmas at all.  I'd go back to turning bowls if only I could get the wood I need. It's getting to be too much for this stroke survivor.  Who would have thought that only 7 strokes would beat me?  

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Open up the air supply to the forge.  I use 2 ea 3/8 inch bolts across a 2-1/2 inch opening, or 2 ea 1/2 inch bolts across a 3 inch opening.  I often use fines or coal dust with this set up and have no problems.

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You may need to sut slots in the forge walls in order to get the metal down into the sweet spot of the fire ball.

Fill in the open spaces of the sides of your forge with clay.

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This what glenn say is 100% accurate u used to weld firepot complicate  for weeks and I ended up using clay molding firepot, If I waited for forge to be build I would not forge for long time.

 

Lets build firepot lets build ash dumper and you end up complicating stuff.

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On 12/21/2021 at 12:30 PM, Glenn said:

Open up the air supply to the forge.  I use 2 ea 3/8 inch bolts across a 2-1/2 inch opening, or 2 ea 1/2 inch bolts across a 3 inch opening. 

So the grate I made wasn't great. I had been using one that just had one hole a little over an inch wide. All those 1/4 inch holes add up to much more than just one inch. There's 25 of them. My logic had it working better. But then...7 strokes. Logic is no longer my forte. It's welded on and everything else is welded onto it. 

Edited by Mod30
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I made a fire grate just like yours and found that the small holes clogged up with clinker and coke. Had to use a pointed pick to clear them about every ten minutes. I switched to a round fire grate with larger slots and solved the problem, a grate like Glenn's will also cure the problem.

If you have a way to cut the steel, modify your grate with slots, I think you will find they work better.

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  • 8 months later...
On 6/9/2016 at 6:02 PM, Charles R. Stevens said:

I love bellows, I burn up stuff with a blower if I'm not carful if you have a deep enugh fire a bullet grate is nice for a smaller fire. 

I sometimes blow with bellows too , what about air gate for bellow?

One advantage of bellows is that you can hear fire roaring, while in electric blower you can, and on bellows you have like more control 

Disadvantages are that they take space, you got occupied with both hands, fire poker and bellows es handle, and it's easier to light forge with electric fan.

Ian lazier now with blower at first when I started using them I didn't know what to do with hands , had more free time instead pumping bellows.

And Ian not sure can bellows work at bottom blast so they need some kind gate 

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