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Beginner - And a bit confused about what I've got...


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3 minutes ago, SLAG said:

Let us not mince words. Chrome and especially zinc are POISONOUS when heated. The fumes can injure your health and in some cases kill you. A friend of mine died burning the zinc off of galvanized metal 11 years ago. Read up, be cautious, and stay healthy.

SLAG.

Oh wow. Thanks for the heads up. I knew galvanized was bad, but I made the mistake of assuming the chrome plate would just be hammered into the steel and maybe slake off as slag. I will definitely check the piston rods for chrome plating. 

29 minutes ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

Any heavy metal coating is bad. The old adige is "if it rusts" tho stainless is an exception, as is titanium. 

Side blast will be happy with coal as well, but as we have a bottom blast to deal with, let's see, what we can do, re shaping the bowl is a good idea, but the clay will vitrify and the clinker will stick to it like glue, sand and ash will help with that, think Adobe with ash added, again a 8" bowl is probably plenty wide , as we can only work about 6" by hand. If the bowl proves to deep consider a bullet grate (2" pipe cap with a 3/4" hole drilled in the center) a table is really convenient, especially for keeping hot coals from falling when you are moving stock in and out, so that 1/8" might be better used making a 24-30" table. That way you can better manage your fire, and coal needs to be herded like cats...

And so a table and some fencing are on the menu for tomorrow. I think I'll have enough material. If not I'll have to find some more scrap... Hard to do around "The Hood" as scrappers are ravenous around here.

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Welcome aboard Angryscrapper, glad to have you. Thanks for serving, you guys rock.

Looks like the gang has you well on the way. I'd maybe suggest a blow drier over the fan blower you're using now, you can pick them up plenty cheap at yard, garage, etc. sales. The biggest problem with a brake drum/rotor forge is the lack of a table. It doesn't need to be heavy duty, a lid off a dumped washing machine is perfect, just cut a hole in it so the drum rests on the ridge running around it. Then I like packing damp sandy clay into the table top about to the top of the rim. That makes for an easy peasy forge table you can lay long stock on at the perfect level in the fire, you can keep fuel in reserve where it's easy to just rake what you need into the fire. Lastly it gives you a nice level surface you can build up with fire brick if you need a big honking fire or a long one, etc.

Using a dirt bed forge table lets you use anything for a stand, saw horses work a treat but anything that'll take a couple hundred degrees, plastic milk crates might get iffy. Oh if you need to pack your forge anywhere you can just dump the dirt out, it's only dirt and almost everywhere I've ever been has dirt.

That steel isn't going to make you a wood chisel, nobody is going to make a barbell out of steel suitable for chisels. You'd have better luck with the axle, not GOOD luck but better. Talk to the guys in one of the vehicle shops about an old coil spring. Coil spring makes fine wood chisels and heck chisels in general. Leaf spring might look better if it's closer to what you want for a finished shape but forging flat bar has it's own tricks. Starting with round stock is actually easier to predict and control.

Frosty The Lucky,

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4 hours ago, TheAngryScrapsmith said:

I'll have to find some more scrap... Hard to do around "The Hood" as scrappers are ravenous around here.

You just need to get ahead of the scrappers and go to the source, the fellows producing the scrap, and ask them nicely to set aside any coil or leaf spring, steering linkages, hanger bolts for the leaf spring and other solid metal items for you. "Ask nicely" is to get their scrap material and leave a cold 6 pack (or a dozen cookies) as a thank you. Next time out you will need a duce and a half to carry the scrap home.

Mechanics always need chisels, punches, etc which are easy to make  and cheaper than a 6 pack. Look at the discussion on making a dog's head from flat bar, or bottle openers, on the site. Both easy and then can now see what you are doing with the metal. It then becomes a pickers dream as you get first choice and ahead of the scrappers. Only take what you can use and the scrappers will never know you were there first. (grin)

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I found an old unplated wrench and made a bottle opener from it and gave it to my Mechanic---don't know if it ever got used as he has it on display in the office and has thrown open his scrap pile for me in return.  As high carbon steel is more expensive to make and work with it tends to be used only where absolutely necessary so knowing what it was is a good start on knowing what it may be made from.

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Here's a bottle opener I made for my mechanic from part of a collapsible steering column. He now calls me whenever he has something he thinks I'd like, and I have more scrap than I know what to do with.

IMG_20150918_201706719.jpg

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Table dosnt have to be as big as your first sergeants desk, 24" is good, 30" is great. 12-18" will work. The bigger the table the smaller the lip needs to be, and then you need to notch the sides to pas a long bar threw the heart of the fire. If you only tack, or bolt the lip down (angle works great) you can forge the notches when you know where the hot spot is.

oh, bed frame tends to be fairly high carbon...

the nerwer bathroom fans work just fine in most cases.   

Mas way of a disclaimer, my spelling sucks, my typing isn't much better and adaptive text dosnt help, lol. I try, but some times I think faster than I type...

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Another excellent source of good forgable tool steel for chisels, punches, etc. is garage, yard, etc. sales you see old chisels, punches, allen wrenches, etc. selling for dirt cheap. I also pick up old crow bars and speed bars for medium carbon stock when I want something tough rather than edge holding hard.

Charles' posts are on my to read list. I read anything he submits even if it's really hard not to razz him about some of his spellings and typos. His posts are always worth reading,especially when we're poking silly at each other. :rolleyes:

Frosty The Lucky,

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Charles has never been the same since his Alien Abduction, (What did you finally end up doing with that Alien Charles?).  Frosty has never been the same since he played Irish Stand Down with a tree.  We greatly hope he doesn't go for 2 out of 3...My excuse?  I just do what my collection of singing potato chips tell me to---as long as the voices don't disagree...."I talk to the trees, that's why they put me away!" (credit to the Goon Show)

that box of grungy cold chisels at a yard or boot sale is a great source of stock---though check carbon content with the spark test and triage them for future uses. (also remove any mushroomed ends and a bit more to get to "clean steel".  Jackhammer bits tend to be around 1050 and tool rental places may have a pile of used and abused ones they will sell cheap.

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Angryscraps,

So far nobody mentioned that higher carbon steels are generally harder under the hammer than mild steel.  I started off with some mangy rebar and truck springs.  It took me an awfully long time to move the metal which led me to trying to working at higher heats.  It's here that I learned that high carbon's burning point is lower than mild steel's. 

The reason experienced smiths advise beginners to work with mild steel is because it works with less effort, it has a wider range of forging temperatures, and it's less prone to burning in half.  You could forge the bulk of your chisel out of mild and weld on a high carbon tip.  That was a very common practice historically, and it's still used in "laminated" chisels like the Japanese.

As an added plus, the laminated chisel retains the best of both steels.  It's tough and shock resistant everywhere but the edge, which is hard and able to hold a fine edge.

I think you'll find that a bar of simple carbon steel sufficient for making a whole lot of chisels would be very affordable.

Another tip I was reluctant to accept was to start with stock that was close to my project's needs.  Forging down a honking round bar is a ton of work.  It's difficult to develop hammer control when most of your time is sunk in brute-force drawing out processes.  I found that I was much more efficient moving larger stock, when I spent more time developing fundamentals on smaller stock. 

Just eyeballing your chunk O' bar there, I'm guessing that it weighs about even with most blacksmith hammers.  Watching youtube video's you might get the impression that a smith and striker can knock out a hammer in about twenty minutes.  At a recent hammer-in a smith and striker took the better part of half a day to forge out a 2 lb rounding hammer.  They did a nice job and they were doing it forge-to-finish.  My point is that most of the youtube video's are edited for time.  Stuff takes a lot longer, especially when you're a rookie.

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Heavily mushroomed chisel heads are a known health hazard.  Pieces can break, or spall off, and go flying. A piece can end up in our eye.

 Those pieces can be can be ground down. But that takes time and wears the grind stone down.

I use a rotary tool, such as a Dremel, together with the thinnest cut off wheel that is sold to cut the piece off The thicker wheels take much longer to work.

I run a score line at the base of the mushroomed portion and grind through, or grind down some and break the piece off. Then I grind the rough edges smooth.

Works like a charm

Just my two cents worth.

Regards to all,

SLAG.

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Let me say thanks to all the gents here who offered up there wisdom! This forum is A LOT more active than I had imagined and I am very grateful for it! I joined a number of smithing pages on FB, but it seems most of them are just grinders hocking their wares. I am working on the plate fence and then the table today. I haven't found any good local clay though, so I'm still searching for that.....

Again, thank you gents so much. I look forward to someday being able to contribute to the next new guy!

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1 minute ago, TheAngryScrapsmith said:

I haven't found any good local clay though, so I'm still searching for that.....

Just use whatever dirt is under your feet. The big problem with clay is that clinker sticks to it; I have to cut the heavy clay soil I have around here about 50/50 with sand and ash.

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real cheap cat litter is often straight clay.  Takes a while to rehydrate though.  Strongly suggest you use *NEW* stuff!    Might want to search out the Tim Lively washtub forge info from the old Neo-Tribal Metalsmiths forums as it covers lining a forge with clay +.

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Spark tested some of my steel today. It appears (to my untrained eye) that most of what I have is high carbon, but the piece from the barbell was indeed low carbon :( It was the only piece of steel I tested that appeared noticeably different. I took a few pics for show and tell, but I don't want to go spamming them if they are unwanted.

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the more the better! whats the saying.... a picture is worth a thousand words? something like that.

                                                                                  Littleblacksmith

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Cheer up; you learned *early*!   I was once judging a sword made from a piece of scrap that a tanker had blown off a target vehicle on the tank course---he saw the leaf spring fly off and made them stop the tank while he jumped out and retrieved it. (RHIP!)  Very nice job but he had no idea how heat treat worked and had botched it totally.

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sparks.jpg     something I found on google, I didn't take these

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  pictures.

 

                                                                                                              Littleblacksmith

 

you can find a lot more if you go to google and search up "spark test" and go to google images.

                

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