begginer needs some advice

[78star]

 So i made my forge(pics coming), i got my anvil, made a stand, using a shop vac and a pipe clamp for air control, got tongs, got 50 pounds of coke for my birthday, best gift ever, made a drift, cut off for my hardy hole, a hand knife, part of a kichen knife(from a 1 1/2 X 1 1/2 inch piece of 1060,, that took a lot of drawing out), tons of S hooks for plants, some rivets(really need to work on that), but i am having some problems that i just can't seem to get over or find a answer to.

 

 1. That film that comes off of the metal when u are forging, it seems to be making little holes on my metal, am i not doing something right do i need to brush my metal more, i saw one video that said to put down some water first and it will stop that ???

 

 2. the coke i am using becomes really sticky and glass like after a like one forge, is this just becuase of the quality of it, do i have to clean my forge more, am i burning it to hot.

 

 3. My metal is only workable for like 10 seconds, i am working out side, and i am in vancouver washington, is it the ambient temperature of the air, do i have to heat the metal at a lower temp for longer befor bring it up, I watched a few videos and they didn't seem to have any problem and could work it for a good while.

 

 4. Air controll, now i just am clamping the pipe from the shop vac, and this thing puts out the air hard, i melted through my first kichen knife in like 10 seconds, should i just macgyver together a better air clamp or is it just that touchy, or should i just make/buy one of those blowers every one uses?

 

 5. making the holes, so i made a little drift shaped like this on the tip

 

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 That is if it was cut in half, but from videos of people making holes it usually pops out and mine kinda ,,, smooshess out, usually i have to flatten that part, and i saw that some drifts go all the way throe and out, mine is to long should i cut it down???  if some one could post picks of what there drifts/drift tips look like that would be nice

 

 6. using the drift, so agian from videos i saw that people hold the tongs with there legs and then hamer and hold the drift, I most say i don't have this trick down yet,, and it might have gone flying once, thank god for safty stuff, am i just doing it wrong is there a better tool, like a vice?

 

7. and this is the last one for now, rivets,,, i tried to heat it up, put it in a vice and hit the top, but one of 3 things happen, it cools down befor i really can do anything, it doesn't shape right, or it twistes in the vice, is there a easyer way, and or tools that i need to make.

 

 sorry for the spelling, for some reason my auto correct isn't working ??? i will fix it later, have to go make 3d printers so i don't have the time.

[Dan C]

#1 sounds like scale or hot rust, wire brush it off and you may want to make your fire deeper by adding more coke, turning down your air will help as well.

 

#2 are clinkers you get when using coal and coke, drag these out with your fire rake

 

#3 depends on the size of the metal you're working and the ambient temperature, colder it is and the smaller the piece of steel the less time you have between heats

 

#4 my squirrel cage or blower is hinged and I adjust the angle at which it blow air into the tuyere

 

 

I'm not following what you're doing with the drift & rivet, many things you need to stop between heats and figure out what you're going to do next before heating the metal.

[the iron dwarf]

the glass like stuff is clinker, you get that when you burn metal, when you heat the metal and it is giving off little sparks that shows it is too hot and you have burnt it, it is the cause of the holes you have.

 

you need to remove any clinker as it will make a mess of your work.

 

in your forge there are different zones, assuming it is a bottom blast, close to the bottom the fire is mostly oxidizing ( more air than fuel ) here metal will burn away easily, above that the fire is more neutral and near the top it is more carburising ( more fuel than air ).

you should be using the upper parts of the fire more and watch for the metal getting too hot

[ThomasPowers]

Faster/harder you hammer the hotter the work stays; also you can pre-warm the anvil, also you can learn not to place the piece on the anvil but slightly over it so the hammer pushes it into contact does the work and then it lifts up out of contact.

 

How are you judging heat?  Are you working in a shaded area?.

 

A punch shiould have a flat bottom to shear out the metal.  A drift can be pointed as it's designed to pust the metal aside.  The only tools like the one you showed I know of is an eye punch for making faces NOT for making holes.

 

The "film" is called scale and is an iron oxide.  It is caused by exposure to oxygen at elevated temperatures so: too much air in the fire, or too much time out of the fire.  The water on the anvil technique is to help remove the scale from the piece it has no effect on preventing scale formation.

 

Vacs generally produce WAY TOO MUCH AIR which tends to scale up your work as well as to burn it up.  (and are generally very noisy!)  Figure a way to waste air till you get a reasonable amount in the forge and look for a quieter more efficient electric blower.  (For coke I recomend an electric blower over a hand crank or bellows)

 

Holding tongs between you legs works better if you use a rein clip and practice of course.  There are a large number of different hold downs made for anvils to use whan you don't have help---traditionally you would expect 3-5 people in a blacksmiths shop and so holding and striking jobs were much simplier than doing things on your own.

 

Rivets: not enough details: what are you trying to rivet?----did you trim your rivets to the correct height first?  Making a rivet header for your anvil's hardy hole might help only time I use my postvise for rivetting is when I hold a rivet set in it.

 

And Finally get to a couple of meetings of your local blacksmithing group and learn directly!  (To put it another way "I didn't want to spend $20 in gas and half a day's time so I spent hundreds of dollars in time, fuel and steel learning to do it wrong instead---look how much I saved!")

[Chinobi]

1. get a steel brush and brush off the scale frequently, personally I like the flat wide bristled ones that look like they are made of strips of thin sheet rather than the round wire variety. scale is harder than the raw steel, so as you hammer without removing it you are in effect driving the scale into the surface like a stamp, creating those marks.  don't forget to clean the face of your anvil between heats as well, scale there will be forced into the underside of your work.  use the backside of your hand if barehanded to prevent injury to the palm.

 

2. sounds like clinker, but im a gas forge man, so cant offer much there

 

3. you could conceivably preheat your anvil if you think its a problem, look up the thread about forging in cold temperatures, I think its still active.  otherwise, make a conscious effort to NOT let your work rest on the anvil if you ever stop to think, or to turn the bar.  watch some of the videos of Brian Brazeal, and Mark Aspery (to name a few) working, and see if you can spot them rocking/lifting/rolling the stock in time with their hits so only the absolute minimum surface area of the work is in contact with the anvil until their hammer blow lands

 

4.  look up 'air gates' or sliding air gates, if you cant control the air flow output or speed at which your fan turns you have the option of mechanically diverting the blast by means of restricting the output orifice (sliding gate type), diverting the direction of the air blast to no longer be directly in line with the inlet (as dan suggested above), or similarly sliding the connection so the outlet from your shop vac is offset from the forge inlet pipe, which effectively wastes a percentage of the blast by allowing it to escape past the forge instead of going straight into the fire.

 

5.  that looks like a hole punch for leather or paper, where you have a cutting ring and a void inside for the cut hole to be captured and ejected on the other side, not ideal for metal.  im having trouble finding it now but there have been a few really good detailed threads about punching and slitting tool geometry in the tools section.  one of them is supposed to be 'slitting geometry' but I cant seem to find it.  well worth the time to skim through the tool section and chase it down.

 

im not sure how accurate your cross section is but if the tool is tapered in the way that you drew it im not surprised you are seeing the metal 'smoosh' out of the bottom.  that big taper is just pushing the metal along with it as it penetrates, and the actual hole you create at the tip is significantly smaller than the body of the punch immediately following it.  you want the tip to have a little taper, but not much, and the actual removal of the slug/cookie happens when you flip the piece over and back punch, which overstresses the metal at the thin spot (the edges of the slug) and causes it to fail in shear and get popped out.  not the best description I know, but its detailed very well elsewhere already, just wanted to give you an overview of the process.

 

6. crotch tongs do take some practice :) the height of your anvil face, size of the piece you are working, and elevation of your crotch will all play a factor in how well or poorly that technique works for you.  try to make sure the workpiece sits flat on the anvil face and your strikes are perpendicular to the face, this will help avoid forcing the piece in any direction other than straight down when you actually strike the punch.

 

7. lot of things could be happening here, for starters hot metal expands, so if you clamp red hot metal in your vice no matter how tight you crank it down the second it makes contact with the jaws it starts to cool, and therefore shrink.  so the longer it is in the vice the colder it gets, the smaller it gets, which will allow it to slid through and be immensely frustrating.  quench off (NON high carbon steel only) the lower portion that you will be clamping in the vice so it doesn't shrink on you and you will have an easier time of it.  look up also rivet headers, rivet matrix and nail headers, because trying to hold a circle between two flat planes (round rod in the vice jaws) provides only two very small contact points to resist all that downward force of upsetting the rivet head, which will tend to drive your rod through the vice more than upset the end and put some really ugly gouges in the side of the bar known as galling.

 

if you find that the rivet head you are attempting to form is bending over and collapsing rather than mushrooming I would guess you have too long a heat.  don't try to upset more than 1.5 times the diameter of the parent rod (I think that's the right number) or the metal will tend to bend rather than upset.

 

good luck :)

[Eddie Mullins]

It looks like you have a V shape in your drift, it should be more blunt. You actually want to punch the hole and the drift it. Search on here for a thread by Brian Brazeal on punches, you should find good pics.

 

I think I sort of understand what your saying with holding the tongs between your legs in order to hold the drift and hammer. I have opted to make an avil helper, a small support to hold stock. Search on here or anvilfire and you will find directions.

 

As far as the rivets go, I quit heading them first. This probably isn’t feasible in all applications, but for tongs I rivet cold without heading first.

 

I'm not sure how many hours... days .. weeks you have spent reading IFI, but its all here. Pull up a chair and spend a while : ) . BTW I'm a rookie myself, about 8 months at the forge, so I understand all the questions (I ask my share still). You will get answers, but they will want you to do your research as well. My best advise, if at all possible, find an experienced smith you can go vist. A few hours with them will be more beneficial than days or weeks on your own.

[78star]

wou thanks for all the replies this helps a ton.
 
  i never thought of keeping the work off the anvil so thanks.
 
  "ThomasPowers" the vac is really noisy, but for 5$ it was a steal, and i might have built my forge 3 feet long with with slits running a pipe with a sliding steel to cover the holes that i am not using, agian i will take pics later.
 
  "Chinobi" on 7 i never even thought about the fact that it would be srinking once it hits the cold, lol i always was like "XXX how did u get less tight", and my dad did have a book on metal welding and if i remember corectly it had a part about making nails which i will look for tonight.
 
  "eddie mullins" I have done about 2 years off and on reading and waching videos, more videos i am a slow reader, and i haven't looked for some one to help me becuase i haven't wanted to wiast some ones time with learning the basics, and last some times it is really hard to go through all the advanced metals talk, diffrent opinions, and types of metal, to find the basics that some times can be becuase of 5 diffrent things.

[JME1149]

Don't look at it as wasting someones time when you ask for help. I haven't been doing this too long either, but what I've found is that the blacksmithing community is an incredibly helpful bunch. All that I have encountered so far, both online and in person, have been very generous with information and have shown a genuine interest in teaching the skills to those who want to learn.

As was mentioned above, find a group or a smith close to you and make contact. I'll bet that you'll get an invite to visit and possibly learn a few tricks. Once you get a little further along and want to get a little more serious, there are several members here that offer classes, as do some of the tool supply places. Your best bet would be to find a local blacksmithing organization to join.

Good luck with the quest for knowledge.

[billyO]

And Finally get to a couple of meetings of your local blacksmithing group and learn directly!  (To put it another way "I didn't want to spend $20 in gas and half a day's time so I spent hundreds of dollars in time, fuel and steel learning to do it wrong instead---look how much I saved!")

If you're in Vancouver, check out the NWBA site at Blacksmith.org.  We have almost monthly meetings just up the road from you in Longview.

Here's a link to info about the December meeting the weekend after next: http://blacksmith.org/events/december-2013-nwba-mentoring-center/

[zachsmithjohnson]

There are a few answers to your questions hidden in this video link 

[Richardcor]

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