beginner shop

[Tito]

Hey so I am brand new to this, it is something I have wanted to do for years but I finally decided to just go for it. I have kind of limited space and live in a wetter area. I am looking to make a small portable shop thing I can keep mobile to move inside to store but I will use outside. I am planning to build something like a brake drum forge to start, and I am still looking for an anvil/ASO. Any hints on how to do things?

[ThomasPowers]

I think there are thousands of hints on how to do this on this site.  I suggest some intensive reading. One thing that is generally helpful is to edit your profile and list a general location.  I've posted many times about my local scrapyard selling improvised anvils for 20 cents a pound---but that won't help you if you are in Brasil...

BTW an Anvil Shaped Object is something that looks sort of like an anvil but can't be used as an anvil, generally because it's made from cast iron and so disintegrates in use.  An improvised anvil is something that does not look like a london pattern anvil; but works very well as an anvil.  There is a recent thread on them that you might profit from.  I do not think you want an ASO.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Acualy the moderators pinned it and because of my big mouth, credited it to me.

I am not a fan of the brake drum forge, first it takes moe than $50 just in pipe fittings, then you have to mount the thing, not that they don't work, and many smiths started with them and still use them. 

In his 55 forge series Glenn shows you two setups that are nice, an exaust pipe tuyere and a side blast, we have also explored simple sideblasts using a box of pallet wood and and dirt. Portability almost takes a cart, used gas grill carts are common, but HF sales cheep mechanics carts (steel) or Ike can buy the cheep furniture dolly for the casters ($20 for 4 vs $8 each) 

depending on how ambitious, a $ 10 double action air bed inflator, a simple cart, a peice of 3/4" schedual 40 black pipe and a pile of bricks will get you going for a forge. 

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Tito, glad to have you. As Thomas said, if you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the gang live within visiting distance. A lot of information, especially tools and equipment can be very location dependent and sometimes specific.

An anvil is easy, anything heavy and hard is an anvil as soon as you start beating on it. NO ASOs! What it looks like isn't very important, how it performs IS. An "Anvil Shape Object" ASO is a purely cosmetic marketing ploy to get people to buy cheap junk. Check out the rail anvil threads especially Charles Steven's thread and pictures of a rail anvil mounted on end. I"m also a fan of a largish axle mounted flange up but any decent piece of shaft is excellent. Brian Brazeal has posted excellent pics and reasoning for his version of an expedient anvil. Plate stood on edge with bottom die shapes ground in. Very effective anvil. 

What kind of shop experience do you have; equipment, tools?

Do you have coal available? A brake drum forge isn't so great a way to go, especially if you want a portable set up. It takes time for a fire to go out and more to cool down enough to store, then you have all the other issues coal brings to the table. Charcoal isn't a LOT better though the smoke isn't likely to make enemies of your neighbors, it still has to go out when you're finished and charcoal doesn't go out till ALL the fuel is gone. 

Propane has a lot of advantages for the apartment dweller and worth thinking about, buy or make. 

I highly recommend you do some reading here. Iforge has tens of thousands of posts archived, organized by subject.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Tito]

Thanks for all the replies!

By the way I live in Maryland USA, close to Annapolis. I had thought I put it into my account info. I got the ASO word from this video, I guess I just got the definition wrong. I did check out Charles' thread on the improvised anvils and that does give me some ideas.

Improvised anvil question; a friend offered some brake rotors to me to try to use, They are round and very flat on top as well as solid metal. Would that be a good way to go or would there be risks of the materials they are made of?

On 9/4/2017 at 1:54 PM, Charles R. Stevens said:

I am not a fan of the brake drum forge, first it takes moe than $50 just in pipe fittings, then you have to mount the thing, not that they don't work, and many smiths started with them and still use them. 

In his 55 forge series Glenn shows you two setups that are nice, an exaust pipe tuyere and a side blast, we have also explored simple sideblasts using a box of pallet wood and and dirt. Portability almost takes a cart, used gas grill carts are common, but HF sales cheep mechanics carts (steel) or Ike can buy the cheep furniture dolly for the casters ($20 for 4 vs $8 each) 

depending on how ambitious, a $ 10 double action air bed inflator, a simple cart, a peice of 3/4" schedual 40 black pipe and a pile of bricks will get you going for a forge. 

Thank you!

So I found the plans for them. I think the side blast one would great at this point. What I am really lacking is a fire pot.

On 9/4/2017 at 1:58 PM, Frosty said:

What kind of shop experience do you have; equipment, tools?

Do you have coal available? A brake drum forge isn't so great a way to go, especially if you want a portable set up. It takes time for a fire to go out and more to cool down enough to store, then you have all the other issues coal brings to the table. Charcoal isn't a LOT better though the smoke isn't likely to make enemies of your neighbors, it still has to go out when you're finished and charcoal doesn't go out till ALL the fuel is gone. 

Propane has a lot of advantages for the apartment dweller and worth thinking about, buy or make. 

I highly recommend you do some reading here. Iforge has tens of thousands of posts archived, organized by subject.

Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks!

I could probably do charcoal, coal I don't know about. Propane I could do but I am more worried about acquiring a good enough blowtorch/other implement for it. The shop experience I have is the basics of wood or metal work. Grinders, drill press, saws kind of thing. I own none of those at the moment. I am just trying to get the bare basics of forge, anvil, and hammer first.

[Charles R. Stevens]

An anvil needs mass, break rotors are way to light. If you go back and look you will see that the improvised anvils all are big chunks of steel. A 10-20# sledge hammer head or wood splitting maul are usualy easy to find, machine shops usualy work in bid chunks and may have drops (leftovers cut off of longer bars)  another place to look are shops that cut thick plate, like water jet, laser and CNN torch shops. Eventually all that ends up in a scrap yard, so check their as well. 

As to fire pots, fire pots are an industrial thing, they can just as easily be molded from clayed  soil. Either bottom blast (not particularly charcoal friendly) or side blast, (charcoal friendly) a box to hold it in, a piece of 3/4" schedule 40 black pipe and an air sorce and your off to the races. 

 

So the top of the tuyere is 3-4" below the table, the side mounds just keep the charcoal that's over the steel in place, and help with fuel effecency, the inch under the tuyere gives a place for ash to go and the 2" below that is to insulate the bottom. 

[George Geist]

6 hours ago, Tito said:

 

 I got the ASO word from this video, I guess I just got the definition wrong.

ASO meaning anvil shaped object. Something not good enough to be called an anvil. Is a good term. Synonymous with POS.

Is nothing you need or want.

George

[ThomasPowers]

Can't help folks mis-using it but I was around when it was coined!  Shoot I coined the term "Anvil Envy" and now you can buy it on a T shirt!

[Frosty]

That's because you helped draft English when it was just a bunch of Germanic tribes roaming western Europe.

Tito. you need to put your general location in the HEADER. Telling us in one post isn't going to stick in anybody's memory once we start reading the next post in the thread. You DO want to meet smiths who can give you hands on help learning. Yes? Have other smiths in the area tell you where to find a tool, material, fuel, etc. Yes? Get invited to hammer ins or BBQs among blacksmiths. Yes?

They have to know you're in the area or . . . . <shrug>

Frosty The Lucky.

[Tito]

Yes I would be interested in all of that, I can't find a way to edit the OP in order to add that in though. Is there one?

[JHCC]

2 hours ago, Tito said:

I can't find a way to edit the OP in order to add that in though. Is there one?

You can edit your posts for an hour after you first hit "Submit". After that, you're out of luck. If you missed out on changing something truly egregious, click "Report post" in the upper right hand corner of the post or comment and ask the moderators to change it for you.

[Jasent]

Put your location in your profile. That way it's always there instead of just in the thread no one will remember in a week

 

the brake rotor can be used as a fire pot and so can a brake drum but the drums are often too deep and will need some clay to reshape the inside fire pot. 

[Tito]

Location is now in profile. Is there a way to just cut the fire pot a bit down with a brake drum?

[Charles R. Stevens]

Brake drums are a PITA. A wooden box, one of those cheep fake wastubs from wall mart (the one s they want you to put ice in) for 8$ a drain pan, a 55 gallon drum will work. If you realy want to spend the $ on pipe fittings order an 8" into 2" T it will have a 8" opening on one side of the T, a 2" poise to and a 2" coming out the side. Makes a very solid fire pot, just forge an "S" out of 1/2" and use it for a grate down in the bottom.  I will see if I can get a picture of Gerald's set up next month at the Saltfork annual pow wow. 

[Frosty]

Tito: if you change something in your profile it will appear that way in all your posts.

Don't over think a forge, in essence all they do is hold a fire, think hole at a convenient height. Charcoal really works better with a sideblast and coal works just fine in a sideblast.

I built my big bottom blast as a duck's nest. The table is 14ga sheet steel covered in fire brick scrounged fro the dump run pile when the coal furnace at the big power plant near Fairbanks was relined. The duck's nest is a missing half brick but these are big bricks so the nest is about 6" sq. and 2.5" deep. The air grate is the only sort of thick steel in the forge and it's 3/8" plate with a pattern of 5/16" holes.

My tuyere is exhaust pipe, the vertical is 3" dia. x 10"? long. The horizontal is 2" dia.. mig welded about 3" below the flange that screws to the table under the air grate. The ash dump is an exhaust stack flap cap. They clamp on and the counter weight keeps them closed till you give them a flip with tongs, hammer, project, stick, whatever to reach under the table. OR if you have a serious POP it just opens the flap cap and clears the ash. I keep a bucket with a few inches of water directly under the ash dump just in case. 

Don't be intimidated, nothing on my large coal forge required a welder, I welded it but I have one, it can all be bolted and screwed or riveted together, easy peasy.  Even the exhaust pipe tuyere can be screwed or riveted. I use hole saws to drill matching holes and cut the 2" to match the 3". I just clamped the 2" in my drill vise and used the 3" hole saw to cut it, drilled all the way through and the cuts match the 3" beautifully. It's  a little harder but a saber saw will work a treat. 

Now if a person doesn't have a welder simply cut tabs in the 2" just slits say 3/4" deep and 1/2" apart. Make say 3 or 4 tabs. Bend them out 90*, drill a screw / rivet hole. slip it into the 3" drill matching holes through the tabs and rivet or screw it together. Easy peasy.

Without the welder you can attach the top of the 3" to the bolt flange with tabs too, just cut away most of the 3" that goes through the hole then simply roll the edge out over the flange with a ball pein. It's easy, REALLY. 

The bolt flange simply screws, bolts rivets to the bottom of the forge under the air grate on the outside of the hole in the sheet.

You can do exactly the same thing with plumbing pipe and fittings including the flange, those are called "floor flanges" and come in all sizes. Exhaust flap caps don't care what size you clamp them to so the ash dump is easy.

don't over think this stuff Brother, it's just a fire place.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Егор Бреднев]

May be it will be usefull idea. You need only hairfan, box, metal pipe 1" or little more, some clay. I forge outdoor because have not exhaust pipe, and dont want to broke roof.

[JeepinJoe]

Erop, very nice simple design.  

[Charles R. Stevens]

Now that is taking the JABOD esthetic up a notch. Beer can and McDonald’s coffee cup! Outstanding! Molded clay tuyere fired my the forge fireball very nice. 

Side blasts are easy to build, modify and use. Not particularly finicky about fuel, but can be heavy and hard to move. This looks to be a light unit.

Drop, can you give us a few measurements? Looks to be 1x6 built into an 18” box 1x12 wall and about 30” over all. Nice patina of use as well. Very nice

 

[Meadowgrove]

Egor, you win the most affordable JABOD prize!

[MC Hammer]

That's a first seeing a McDonald's cup incorporated into anything involved in forging 

Tito, I thought just like you when I was getting into forging.  I got the brake drum and even obtained high temp fire bricks to build a coal forge.  I designed what I wanted to build but in the end it was too impractical to move in and out for forging.  I ended up buying a gas forge and am very glad I did to start out.  I think the brake drum set up would not have been a very good thing to start out with.  Like it has bee said, a lot of guys start out with this set-up but it's hard enough to figure out maintaining a coal fire when you are new so why compound it with a brake drum set-up?  When you are done building it you may have spent a $100 less than buying a good used fire pot that you can put into a metal table set-up.  Consider all your options.

[Lou L]

Egos, I love your forge as well.  Question:  How long does your clay last around the air pipe?  I read a while back that smiths in England used to use a clay tuyere but expected it to be replaced sometimes daily.  They would have an apprentice get clay each day, shape a new one, and dry it by the forge overnight.