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I Forge Iron

Late night forging!!!


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Please use caution when forging after dark. The intensity of the fire is MUCH brighter at night than in the daytime. At night your pupils open up to let in more light so you can see and then you look at the forge and blast the eye with intense light.

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That's a fair dinkum spoon. Looks about right for ice tea or flux, of course that's just me.

Don't stare into the fire, keep an eye on your steels and the fuel but do NOT stare into it. It can cause IR cataracts. Glenn's warning is too true pupils are open wide so more IR is doing it's thing. Also looking at the flame will really throw your night vision off and you may trip.

Forging in dim light is good, dark not so.

Frosty The Lucky.

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I never look into the brightest parts of the fire beause it is uncomfortable and that is nature's way of telling me "Don't do it!" Besides, I always keep my fire "black". Meaning that I always keep the glow covered by coal/charcoal that is not actively burning. If I am not using too much blast, the fire is confined below the black layer. If I need to look at the steel I pull it out and then back or scrape the layer away very briefly and then back again.

I may be wrong but I believe that I limit heat loss by radiation and that this is a good thing not so much because of fuel saving as because the steel heats up better. I notice that I sometimes have blue flames above the fire which I attribute to burning carbonmonoxide. Carbonmonoxide not only prevents scaling, it even to some extent gives off carbon to the steel even if the amount is negligible in a normal forge.

I use a Swedish "field forge" field meaning used by cavalry farriers when out near the battle field. It is an approximately 2'x2' steel plate with a cast iron pot in the middle and blowing through an easily adjustable valve from below.

Comments would be welcome

Göte

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I probably looked strange to my neighbors. I was wearing a pair of tented safety glasses. I grew up around welding and cutting torches so i learned the hard way about eye protection when working in low light condition. Thanks for the tips. I will use it for flux. I just started out and an trying to develop some kind of skill, hammer control, and how to tend the forge to be more efficient at it. Any other simple projects i can do to learn these things im all ears. 

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I know I'm a firewatcher (along with other primitive tendencies) so I always wear shade 3 safety glasses when I'm manning the forge,  I haven't afforded myself the opportunity to forge at night, but I have my own forge now, and the days are getting shorter, so I guess I'll have to wear 5s for that.  Boy won't I look weird...er?

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  That's why I wear the shade 3.  Found out that the ones I was wearing took the brightness down, but the spec sheet said they didn't do much for IR, whereas the welder shade 3s take out a lot of the IR and I can still see what I'm doing fairly well.  The only thing I've found with a better spec sheet for IR reduction is higher shade welding lenses, but after about 7 (and that's on a very bright day) you can't see a darned thing.

  I have a pair of 5 safety glasses laying around, but I don't wear them as I prefer the "Mad Bomber Goggles", as my buddies started calling them, strapped to my hardhat with shade 5 lenses.  I guess I could use the glasses for forging at night when the days start getting short, but I hope I can see what I'm doing in them.  Funny thing though, a lot of the welding suppliers around here don't carry the round lenses, but they do carry the goggles themselves.  Same with the banded earplugs I like.  A lot of places carry the bands, but not the refills.

  On a tangent (forgive me), for the past few months they've been enforcing the requirement (CFR 30 "Mineral Resources" for any miners in the USA that are as ignorant as I was) for full goggles and/or faceshield for any grinding/molten metal work (torchwork/welding/etc).  Once word came down about that, we all went out and got hardhat adapters for faceshields, so now when I'm torching on some rusty, wet, piece of future scrap that's liable to pop all over the place, I don't hesitate to snap a faceshield onto the bracket.  I look absolutely ridiculous, but the spots in my eyebrows are finally going away.  If it's good steel though, I usually just stick with the goggles, and still try not to lean on anything I'm not 100% sure is safe to touch (but it still happens every now and again).

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Some day I will Frosty but under ”Solid fuel forges”. I have difficulties in finding good coal too. I have some dying trees that must go down and cannot be sold as fuel. A bonfire of mixed branches and logs yields a surprising amount of charcoal.   

I think the spoon is nice but I can buy stainless spoons of that type in the nearest shop for cutlery etc. They are not free but so cheap that for me forging one would not be  a rational decision but something done for the love of forging.

Göte  

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  I think I remember reading somewhere that didymium is not sufficient for IR, and that it was originally only intended for sodium flare, a common cause of cataracts in glassblowers.  I also remember reading that the gold coated (?) safety glasses are good, until you scratch them, at which point they become a liability, as the scratches don't even have to be big enough to see to degrade the performance beyond acceptable levels.

  That's all just food for thought.  YMMV.  I'll stick to appropriately shaded lenses, which weldors have been using pretty much as long as torches (more intense version of the same hazards as a forge) and arc welders have been around.

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I have didymium glasses I'd be happy to give someone if it didn't maybe give them the idea they were serious eye protection. They filter sodium yellow light bands and the tint if more hinderance to judging temp. That is this pair though others are different I'm sure.

The gold shields are excellent but fragile. If you buy the flat or single curve safety glasses you can buy clear plastic "tear offs" to protect them from physical damage. Or just wear them inside a face shield.

I don't stare into the fire so I don't worry about IR damage and it works for me. If it didn't I think near 60 years playing with forges would've had an effect.

Of course all that's my opinion YMMV and I could just be wrong and lucky.

Frosty The Lucky.

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I have didymium glasses I'd be happy to give someone if it didn't maybe give them the idea they were serious eye protection. They filter sodium yellow light bands and the tint if more hinderance to judging temp. That is this pair though others are different I'm sure.

The gold shields are excellent but fragile. If you buy the flat or single curve safety glasses you can buy clear plastic "tear offs" to protect them from physical damage. Or just wear them inside a face shield.

I don't stare into the fire so I don't worry about IR damage and it works for me. If it didn't I think near 60 years playing with forges would've had an effect.

Of course all that's my opinion YMMV and I could just be wrong and lucky.

Frosty The Lucky.

Hear hear

Göte

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  The tint is the one downside I find with shaded lenses.  It's not so bad though.  It took me about 5 hours of forging over 2 sessions for my eyes to get calibrated for the "greenscale".  Now I don't have a problem with it.  It probably doesn't hurt matters that I can now watch the flux as it melts and not see spots or have a headache later.

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  I figure I ought to throw in a disclaimer on what I've said so far.  I still try and not look right at the fire unless I have a reason.  I just know that I have a tendency to forget to look away until I'm ready to come out of the fire.  I'm not saying that my way is "safe", just that I've taken what appropriate measures I can to protect myself as well as I can, given my tendencies.

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Quarry Dog,

I picked up a set of shade 3 safety glasses.  The spots and headaches you mentioned are gone for me as well.  They do take some getting used to.  I like your term "Greenscale" it's very accurate!  I found a pair that are wraparound lenses with a sweat bumper.  It keeps all the junk outta my eyes without getting fogged up or leading to sweat drips on the lenses.

I had lasik  a year ago and I was pretty worried about messing up my eyes.  None of my eye doctors knew what protection was required for forging, I found some reference material here identifying the IR hazard.  It's worth mentioning that the green tint for IR is doing nothing for UV protection.  They're dark but they don't work as sunglasses.

My forge is outside, so I wear a wide brimmed hat and work in whatever shade I can get. 

 

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  You would be very surprised about their value in UV protection.  If you look up a spec sheet (google search "UVEX tinted lens brochure" for a good example), you will find that all their welding  "shade" lenses have a UV absorption of greater than 99.9%.  A good thing to keep in mind is that this particular color green, although a darker shade,  is very commonly used for electric arc welding, which has EXTREMELY intense UV radiation that can cause permanent damage to your eyes in seconds without a filter lens.

  As it is, even the shade 2 lenses are recommended for welder's helpers by UVEX, although I haven't the slightest idea what you'd use them for around an electric arc, since it is so intense and their shade is so light.  I know I wouldn't trust them for that, but as sunglasses I wouldn't see a problem, except if you're driving, because they do affect color perception.

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Makes sense.  A couple months ago we were running .065 wire inside a galvanized culvert and the flash was bouncing everywhere.  It wasn't long before I decided I'd just work with my torch goggles on and string out our 400 watt equivalent LED worklight.  Now that you mention it, If I would have had my shade 3s at hand, or a pair of shade 2s, they probably would have sufficed and I wouldn't have needed the extra light.

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