Designing and building my second forge - need advice

[Simon Wicks]

Hi there! First poster here. I'll say a little about myself and my setup. I'm Simon from the UK. I've always harboured a desire to get into smithing - weaponsmithing in particular. The beginning scene of conan was a big influence! By the time i hit 18 i was at a crossroads - either i was going to university to study chemistry or i was going to try and apprentice myself at the Raven Armoury in Essex. I chose the former and ended up becoming a fairly good chemist. I still loved the idea of smithing and surfed many forums like the Arador armour archive and Swordforum back in the day. I even managed to make an XXXX of myself by trying to tell Jim Hrisoulas that katanas could cut gun barrels! Fortunately he among others educated me enough to realise i was talking rubbish and i threw myself into wanting to learn to make blades. Well now i'm older and a lot wiser and after stumbling across a vid on youtube i took the plunge.

 

A few weeks ago i built my first forge using the video by Swallow Forge on youtube. Pretty basic - a wooden frame holding a roasting tin and a blower (for pumping up air beds) but it worked fine for burning charcoal.

 

 

I made a small fire raker and a pretty shoddy looking pair of tongs (the tongs work, they look aweful though!) I currently have a rather nasty ASO, though tomorrow i am off to pickup an anvil i won on ebay. The forge gets pretty hot and i can get stock up to forging heat fairly easily now. They key i realised is building the fire correctly so the heat doesnt escape. I guess this will become vital once i want to start trying to tackle forge welding. Anyways, i am in need of a better forge - one that doesnt set on fire! I work with a guy who helps run a scrapyard in his spare time and can get all the materials i need. I was going to base my next forge on the one Dan from modernblacksmith channel on youtube. His small forge looks pretty nice.

 

However, i was wondering where the best place for the tuyere is? Side or bottom? I've looked up a fair few forges and they seem to be of both types. Ones i've seen in the UK go for a tuyere in the side whilst US forges seem to have their tuyere's in the bottom. How much of a difference does it make? I guess if its at the bottom there is less hassle getting larger work pieces into place in the fire. Is that pretty much it? I basically want to construct something that i can use with charcoal or maybe coke if i can use it elsewhere other than the rear of my garage. I want to be able to forge blades eventually - knives and small axes but i need to learn the ways of moving metal before i can attempt something like blades. I also need tools so learning to make them kills two birds with one stone.

 

 

Welcome, but please watch the language.

[Gromgor]

Honestly, it really doesn't matter. Forget everything you've ever learned about how important this or that aspect of building a forge is and keep one thing in mind: Does it get my metal hot enough to forge?

 

After that the rest is details. When I first started, not so very long ago, I was obsessed with making a bottom blast forge using an old grill, a brake drum/rotor, some steel pipe, etc.

 

Then, when I was having problems getting air one day, I just dug a hole in the ground, slid some scrap exhaust pipe in it that had a 45 degree bend (so it could be aimed downward, and then level out before it reached the coals) and I found this to be 100 times better. Since then I've built the sides up. 

 

However, I did recently find a potential coal supplier. I'm likely going to be using my bottom blast brake drum forge for playing around with that.

 

TL;DR: Use whatever you have available that gets the job done properly.

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Simon, glad to have you. Don't sweat falling for the "superiority of the katana myth, happens to lots of folks nor Jim's reaction, he's a good guy and hears it all the time. We do here too, not many of the folk starting their relations here have burned bridges. We all say something silly now and then, some of us have a good time doing so. <grin>

 

Another little trap you're flirting with is the whole mistake of thinking a tool or piece of equipment is "perfect", you can waste years looking for the perfect . . . whatever. We all entertained that myth when we were starting okay, most of us. What you'll find is the secret is YOU, none of what we use is anything but highly refined dirt, inanimate things without the mind and hand of humans to make them do our bidding.

 

A forge/hearth is just that, a fire holder. That you're looking for one that won't catch fire is a straight line I'm having to use superhuman restraint to NOT take up as the outstanding joke it represents. Heck I won't even suggest an induction forge they don't use fire. Oops, did it anyway didn't I? You are of course referring to the table the fire pot is resting on. I suppose that's not unreasonable, ram a layer of dampened dirt under it. Fixed.

 

Side blast, bottom blast doesn't really matter. Sure there ARE differences in performance but neither is the "right" blast. Pick one, use it and give the other type a try, no rule about how many forges you can have. Use them all, try fiddling with them, I kind of like a duck's nest for solid fuel, no fire pot, just an air grate in a shallow depression 1-2" deep in a rammed clay bed. I shape and size the fire by stacking fire bricks around the air grate, as deep or wide or long or whatever as I need.

 

Anyway, as you develop skills and practice on different types of forge you will discover the forge isn't perfect unless it's the one you're using. The better you get the less you'll find it makes a difference unless it's a gross defect, even then you'll know enough to either adjust yourself or improvise a solution.

 

You the blacksmith make the forge perfect. Need to weld? Build a welding fire in whatever forge you're using with whatever fuel is on hand. Dried corn makes a fearsome hot fire, welds easily and doesn't generate clinker unless it's dirty to start. Dirt? No surprise because you automatically look at it before you charge the forge and correct or adapt.

 

Blacksmithing is analyzing and problem solving, especially failures. Failures are school, take notes, pictures and remember what you did, what happened and how it turned out, even if it is a mistake THIS time it may be PERFECT for something else.

 

This is a life long learning curve, enjoy the ride.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[the iron dwarf]

hi and welcome

I prefer a bottom blast, if you are traveling up my way anytime come and have a play ( NN14 1QF )

[Simon Wicks]

Cheers for the replies guys. Just got my anvil so need to get a stand of some sort to support it and i can be away.

[Gromgor]

Need a stand? Make one with 2x12's, a cut log, weld one from steel. Dig a hole to stand in and have the anvil on the ground. I've found simple might not be best, but it's better than complicated. 

 

I took up blacksmithing for a couple of reasons: A) to have a skill I can pass down to, and participate in with my kid and B) so if the world collapses, I can have a useful skill to call upon. 

 

So I'm trying to go as simple as possible, and learning to make items as simple as possible.

[ThomasPowers]

Weaponsmithing, the first scene in Conan and katanaphilia all in the first post!  Are you sure you were not at the Albuquerque medieval faire last Saturday?  Perhaps they were your doppelgangers...

 

Looking at the one you built I would say that the working end needed to be about twice as deep---with a way to get the metal into the proper zone.  Also are you using compressed air?  That looks like a quite small pipe leading to it.  Charcoal doesn't require much pressure and a fan of some sort will generally work much better than a compressor.  (I've always wondered about the folks that want to put hours on expensive machinery rather than cheap stuff---when the cheap stuff will do a better job)

 

Far more important than set up are skills---I once welded up a billet using charcoal sieved from desert bonfires in a sheet steel fire pot using a hand crank blower and a piece of RR rail for the anvil and a carpenter's claw hammer---showing a person how it was done.  Too many people waste time waiting for the perfect set up never realizing its the time spent working with what they have that will help them improve the most---and learn what needs to be improved rather than what they guess would be perfect.

[Simon Wicks]

Hehehehe, I remember you from my sword forum days Mr Powers :D I have thankfully grown up (a bit at least!). So i do want to make a few blades but i need to learn to smith first and thats proving to be great fun in itself. My blower is a small air pump for inflating air beds. I might have been running it rather hard. I'm controlling the flow with a gate valve and using 15mm copper piping at the moment. From what i can gather its perhaps too much flow and not enough volume. You're right about the depth issue. I have a pretty small hotspot and getting my work piece hot where i want it is a bit of a problem. My next forge is going to be a bit better i hope. I plan to get a 24" square box about 5" deep with a brake drum sunk into the middle. I will cut some hemispheres from front and back to allow longer worpieces to be heated. I quite like Frosty's suggestion of using firebricks to adjust the depth of the forge aswell. I'll try and pick a few of those up then i guess i'll have a forge that i can adjust to my specific needs. That and it wont set on fire like my wooden framed forge!