Food Safe Bronze?

[GandalftheGold]

I meant two halves of a circle. 

[ThomasPowers]

I try to use forge welding to differentiate my stuff from folks that can't/won't. Especially as I do a lot of historical stuff where it would have been  a common method.

That's a lovely trivet example but the thin curls on the feet would erode pretty fast if used in a wood fire; better for stove or brick down hearth.

I tend to "adjust" the legs and body with my screwpress. First I flatten the top to a plane and then I stack some heavy disks to the correct height and adjust the legs till they all make contact with the large disk on the bottom of the stack.  Speeds up making a bunch of them as then flattening and adjustment can be done in one heat.

Riveting the end of a tenon is a common method.  More common than heat shrinking when used for items that may get heated in a fire---you may remember the old ball and ring experiment what when you heat both the ball will pass through the ring...  Now I've used heat shrinking on items that will be kept at ambient---I have a war hammer I made about 25 years ago and heat shrunk the head on as an experiment---holding strong after a LOT of abuse when it was younger, (demolition, scrapped refrigerators/cars, etc)

Now having protruding rivets on the face can be handy if the face of the trivet (or the base of the pan) is not dead flat as a 3 point support won't rock.

[jlpservicesinc]

11 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

I try to use forge welding to differentiate my stuff from folks that can't/won't. Especially as I do a lot of historical stuff where it would have been  a common method.

That's a lovely trivet example but the thin curls on the feet would erode pretty fast if used in a wood fire; better for stove or brick down hearth.

I tend to "adjust" the legs and body with my screwpress. First I flatten the top to a plane and then I stack some heavy disks to the correct height and adjust the legs till they all make contact with the large disk on the bottom of the stack.  Speeds up making a bunch of them as then flattening and adjustment can be done in one heat.

Riveting the end of a tenon is a common method.  More common than heat shrinking when used for items that may get heated in a fire---you may remember the old ball and ring experiment what when you heat both the ball will pass through the ring...  Now I've used heat shrinking on items that will be kept at ambient---I have a war hammer I made about 25 years ago and heat shrunk the head on as an experiment---holding strong after a LOT of abuse when it was younger, (demolition, scrapped refrigerators/cars, etc)

Now having protruding rivets on the face can be handy if the face of the trivet (or the base of the pan) is not dead flat as a 3 point support won't rock.

Thomas, again remember we are talking with people who might not have the ability to forge weld..  The people who are here which are skilled and proficient aren't the ones these comments or instructions are for..   

It's for the people who need help..   By the way if you noticed the trivet is a nestled affair..   And rather short in the legs as well..  This particular one is not intended for use in the fire..   This was made for a friend of mine and her husbands anniversary.. Sadly She passed about a year later to cancer..  This gift was/is a representation of how I felt about her.. 
 

Also this type of foot or finial is period correct and yes they used to fall off.. they had moons, rounds, etc, etc, not all of them were straight rods.  

I'm not clear on what you mean by "Adjust" the legs with my screw press? If you mean leg length to make it even, then perfect..

I just forge them to the same length and then it doesn't matter which finial or twist or what ever is used.. They just get riveted on (heads proud or sunk and smooth)  There are just so many different ways or options when it comes to making or forging these items..  

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Gandalthegold

As for setting the rivets as a shrink fit.. If the object is going to be exposed to heat the shrink fit will only last a little while.. 

What you can do though,,  Is punch a partial hole, slightly less deep than you want the finished hole to be.. (not all the way through).. Then forge out the feet and completely cool off.. With the parent material hot, Orange works well.. Insert the leg into the hole and drive it down only a little bit (just like in punching the hole)..  Now give it a second or 2 to absorb the heat and then give it a few whacks..   This will upset the end of the leg material inside the punched hole (just like using a punch for to long without cooling it) and this will lock the leg in place as the metal upsets inside the hole.. 

It will take a little experimenting to get the results consistent but it will work and you will never get the parts to come apart again..  The feet will eventually loosen but they will not come out.. 

This is one other point..   A Trivet has 3 feet.......    if you make 4 feet for a given object it will never sit flat and will always rock.. 

Trivets are always with 3 feet..    A fire basket or cooking grill or fire cook screen will have 4 ft but these are designed to offer a flat cook surface as the pieces are designed to work together and support each other so offer a flat surface to put your pans or pots on without it being all wobbly. 

 

 

 

[ThomasPowers]

Yours is lovely and a great gift for a friend, I am sorry they didn't get longer to enjoy it.

As mine are made for campfire cooking I don't have peg ends either but the ends are made heavier to resist eroding longer.  I tend to upset or bend full crossection for the ends. If you were cooking on a brick hearth then this wouldn't matter as much...(There is a large historic kitchen in Rothenburg ODT in Germany that used to serve a Convent: it had a raised platform for the cooking fire so you could  cook  without bending over so much and could use it from all 4 sides, the ceiling of that section was a chimney too.)

As the ones I described are forge welded and with practice the ends are close to the same length; I adjust them by adjusting the splay of the legs to  have them sit level on a flat surface---which in use in a campfire will be an unusual occurrence!

Have you seen the campfire cooking equipment show in the Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi! 1570 A.D?  I have a number of books on historical cooking implements "Iron and Brass Implements of the English House" is another one I found interesting.

Do you have any sources to share in this area?

 

[jlpservicesinc]

1 hour ago, ThomasPowers said:

Yours is lovely and a great gift for a friend, I am sorry they didn't get longer to enjoy it.

As mine are made for campfire cooking I don't have peg ends either but the ends are made heavier to resist eroding longer.  I tend to upset or bend full crossection for the ends. If you were cooking on a brick hearth then this wouldn't matter as much...(There is a large historic kitchen in Rothenburg ODT in Germany that used to serve a Convent: it had a raised platform for the cooking fire so you could  cook  without bending over so much and could use it from all 4 sides, the ceiling of that section was a chimney too.)

As the ones I described are forge welded and with practice the ends are close to the same length; I adjust them by adjusting the splay of the legs to  have them sit level on a flat surface---which in use in a campfire will be an unusual occurrence!

Have you seen the campfire cooking equipment show in the Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi! 1570 A.D?  I have a number of books on historical cooking implements "Iron and Brass Implements of the English House" is another one I found interesting.

Do you have any sources to share in this area?

 

No, I don't have any resources in this area of the 1570's Italian.. LOL. I had a book on armor once.  

Good or bad,  I stopped reading anything that was Blacksmithing related when I retired.. I was so burnt out, I wasn't sure I was ever going to pick up a hammer or fire up a forge again on a regular basis.I had no interest.. It was all gone.  I dropped it all and walked away.. Previous to that I had read mostly about colonial American fare (lighting, hardware, wrought iron work, flint lock, knife making, etc, etc.) and spent a huge amount of time driving from place to place looking at how vintage things were made by looking at them and then reverse engineering them as this is what I was interested in the most and was a voracious reader..  All of my  Blacksmithing and metallurgical books are still packed away and some I let people borrow and never got them back.. I do thumb through the NEB journal and the ABANA mags now.. But that is about it.. 

Not to sound like an elitist but eventually I became less interested in theory or what they did 500 or 1000 years ago as my skill set started to mature and I was a full time smith working daily at producing forged items.. You also have to remember I was self taught.. The reason why this is important is because I tried to Make one thing 50 different ways as I had no one to tell me it would or wouldn't work..  I eventually found what worked consistently and the fastest to accomplish the forging task at hand..  I had a 200lbs hammer Which was setup for only a brief time before walking away so nearly 99% of the items produced over the 16 years were hand forged with only a sledge and a hand hammer.. 

Historically with reference material you are the MAN!!!   Besides that you must have a photo graphic memory to be able to pull all the info out like that.. Pretty amazing.. 

I for the most part like to come onto IFI..   Lots of friendly folks and the informational resources are great..  One of the things I do find lacking is that there are a ton of Newbies willing to share their work with no regards other than needing help..  Kudo's to you guys, it's so important..  

But at the same time the guys who have great knowledge or skill sets share very little in terms of pictures.. Pictures speak a thousand words and if all the experienced people never share photo's of their work and all the new guys and gals only see other examples of mediocre forgings how are they to know the difference between a good forging or a bad one? 

Its like the pan video..  It's not a great video but it conveys a technique.. Not the only one but.. 

Someone I had this conversation with said " We don't want to discourage newer people with fancy looking goods".... 



 

[ThomasPowers]

I cover a lot of time periods and always interested in good sources.  I got in the cooking part of things through enabling a friend who was studying historic cooking by doing it in the same manner as it was done---too many folks try to reproduce the recipes using modern methods and we all know that a hamburger cooked over an open fire tastes differently than one cooked on a kitchen stove!  So I have viking era cooking tools, Medieval and renaissance cooking tools and 19th century cooking tools---though often given away to people *doing* historic cooking. (I like to trade for food...)

And yes I seem to have a good memory for niggling details and am willing to invest and read books!  (Just started the Sword and the Crucible at the breakfast table this morning...)

As for pictures; I just don't have many especially from 30+ years ago!  I too was in an information vacuum way back and went through and tried a lot of differing things and so can say "that didn't work well for me".  I often tried out various conjectures I had read about in books---sure wish the experimental archaeology had gotten started earlier as many of the things I tried were obviously WRONG once I had the experience to judge them.  (I was interested in Wootz and tried several of the "guesses" on how it had been made---even some of the 19th century ones. Some of the results were amusing to say the least.)

[GandalftheGold]

19 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

 

As mine are made for campfire cooking I don't have peg ends either but the ends are made heavier to resist eroding longer.  I tend to upset or bend full crossection for the ends. If you were cooking on a brick hearth then this wouldn't matter as much...(There is a large historic kitchen in Rothenburg ODT in Germany that used to serve a Convent: it had a raised platform for the cooking fire so you could  cook  without bending over so much and could use it from all 4 sides, the ceiling of that section was a chimney too.)

I defenitly latched onto the wrong part of this conversation but I absolutely loved Rothenberg.  Probably one of my favorite places I have ever been in my life.  I must have missed that particular kitchen though, or 18 year old me just wasn't paying attention. 

20 hours ago, jlpservicesinc said:

 

Gandalthegold

As for setting the rivets as a shrink fit.. If the object is going to be exposed to heat the shrink fit will only last a little while.. 

What you can do though,,  Is punch a partial hole, slightly less deep than you want the finished hole to be.. (not all the way through).. Then forge out the feet and completely cool off.. With the parent material hot, Orange works well.. Insert the leg into the hole and drive it down only a little bit (just like in punching the hole)..  Now give it a second or 2 to absorb the heat and then give it a few whacks..   This will upset the end of the leg material inside the punched hole (just like using a punch for to long without cooling it) and this will lock the leg in place as the metal upsets inside the hole.. 

It will take a little experimenting to get the results consistent but it will work and you will never get the parts to come apart again..  The feet will eventually loosen but they will not come out.. 

This is one other point..   A Trivet has 3 feet.......    if you make 4 feet for a given object it will never sit flat and will always rock.. 

Trivets are always with 3 feet..    A fire basket or cooking grill or fire cook screen will have 4 ft but these are designed to offer a flat cook surface as the pieces are designed to work together and support each other so offer a flat surface to put your pans or pots on without it being all wobbly. 

I had planned on making the outer ring of the cooking spiral, I cant really call it a trivet, just wider than the base of the largest pan I would use so the pan would never actually touch the rivets.  I do really like the idea of upsetting the piece into a partially punched hole.  I originally planned to use two pieces of steel as cross bars on the underside that the feet would be threaded through before being riveted to add rigidity.  But I may just put a fifth leg in the dead center using the method you mentioned.  What worries me with just the three feet over the fire is I would definitely knock it over and loose whatever I am cooking.  Been there done that and upset a lot of campers. 

Oh wait, if you were saying it would rock because the four feet wouldn't make even contact with the ground, i always have and will always continue to have my first step of setting up a cooking grate be to give it a few good solid thwacks with a log to sink the feet down and give a nice stable base.  Hence the need for cross bars. 

[ThomasPowers]

I've been to Rothenburg ODT several times; I always hit the Medieval Criminal Justice Museum, (liked the earlier configuration from a couple of decades ago better than the more recent one; but have a couple of copies of their book in my "odd metalworking examples" section of my bookcase.  The Convent is now the Imperial City Museum, Reichsstadtmuseum,  and very interesting if you want to see more of the "physical culture"  (referring to items used in the various time periods portrayed.).  We also went on "The Night Watchman's Tour" which we really enjoyed.

[jlpservicesinc]

12 hours ago, GandalftheGold said:

I defenitly latched onto the wrong part of this conversation but I absolutely loved Rothenberg.  Probably one of my favorite places I have ever been in my life.  I must have missed that particular kitchen though, or 18 year old me just wasn't paying attention. 

I had planned on making the outer ring of the cooking spiral, I cant really call it a trivet, just wider than the base of the largest pan I would use so the pan would never actually touch the rivets.  I do really like the idea of upsetting the piece into a partially punched hole.  I originally planned to use two pieces of steel as cross bars on the underside that the feet would be threaded through before being riveted to add rigidity.  But I may just put a fifth leg in the dead center using the method you mentioned.  What worries me with just the three feet over the fire is I would definitely knock it over and loose whatever I am cooking.  Been there done that and upset a lot of campers. 

Oh wait, if you were saying it would rock because the four feet wouldn't make even contact with the ground, i always have and will always continue to have my first step of setting up a cooking grate be to give it a few good solid thwacks with a log to sink the feet down and give a nice stable base.  Hence the need for cross bars. 

Ok, since this was an interesting idea. I spent a little time in the shop today and forged out a camp fire trivet.. It can fold up or it can be taken completely apart.. 

it's made from 1/2" sq steel, the side brackets are 1/4X 1"..   I filmed the making of it so will set down and edit the footage sometime in the next few days.. Tomorrow I have demonstrations to do in town from 10am to 2pm  so I doubt I will get to it tomorrow.. 
 

This could be made extra simple..   The bars could just be round stock or even rebar..((but I remember you saying you had some 1/2" square) I only have brand new rebar and it was buried in the steel pile from the move))  the  swivel brackets could be made from a section of 2" black iron pipe.. then simply collapsed to form the same as what is shown..  To keep it from sliding down a could of wings could be forged just below it verse where I actually forged a round section into the square.. 

The secret on something like this is to keep the hinge areas tight..   It will hole 300lbs on it easily.. 

I would consider this project much easier than the frying pan..  

[GandalftheGold]

 

Oh that is actually really cool. I was trying to figure out how it was supposed to fold in half, I see now that I'd doesn't. In my mind i had the 90* bends parallel to the ground not perpendicular. 
The one you made is quite pretty and is defenitly something i think i can make. I doubt mine will be as pretty, more industrial bushcraft I think. But it looks like a fun project. I would personally say it is collapsible but that is me just being nitpicky for little reason. I don't think i quite have enough square to do that but just maybe.  I def have enough rebar but the square looks really nice.

[jlpservicesinc]

2 hours ago, GandalftheGold said:

 

Oh that is actually really cool. I was trying to figure out how it was supposed to fold in half, I see now that I'd doesn't. In my mind i had the 90* bends parallel to the ground not perpendicular. 
The one you made is quite pretty and is defenitly something i think i can make. I doubt mine will be as pretty, more industrial bushcraft I think. But it looks like a fun project. I would personally say it is collapsible but that is me just being nitpicky for little reason. I don't think i quite have enough square to do that but just maybe.  I def have enough rebar but the square looks really nice.

Thanks..  what is your definition of collapsible?

If you mean nesting.. no it won't nest but it does fold up of comes apart easily to stack..

 

You can also see it will hold something as big as 16" down to just a few inches across.

Fun right..

[ThomasPowers]

I'm going to try a variation of that without the separate swivel brackets. I'm going to bend the end of a length over onto itself and forge weld it for a beefed up leg and then take the shorter section left unwelded and make the loop.  I may get a chance to try it out next weekend. Perhaps with 3/8" sq stock, though now that I'm thinking about it using strap stock might be an interesting way to go about it...and punch and drift the loop and forge the end of the strap into a round to fit into the loop on the next leg.

I've been looking through some of my old iron/kitchen stuff books and have seen a bunch of interesting trivets tonight.

[jlpservicesinc]

8 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

 

I've been looking through some of my old iron/kitchen stuff books and have seen a bunch of interesting trivets tonight.

Nice..  post up a pic or 2-5 when you get it done..

The parameters were no forge welding.. and for ease of making 2" pipe cut the width of the forged slots with the centers forged in would work just as well..

One could all So bend up the feet as you pointed out and this would lock the swivel collar in place also..

What book did you find the drivers in? I'm always looking for more reference materials..

Oh one other thing about the trivet.. if you need more height you can slip 3/4" pipe on the legs  the required height..

[ThomasPowers]

"What book did you find the drivers in?"     

Drivers?

 

(Hunting through my books I did find the one I based my 3 piece forge welded ends simple trivet on, so thanks!)

[jlpservicesinc]

13 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

"What book did you find the drivers in?"     

Drivers?

 

(Hunting through my books I did find the one I based my 3 piece forge welded ends simple trivet on, so thanks!)

Sorry about that..  Auto correct using the smarter phone..    What book did you find the trivets in?

[ThomasPowers]

bunch of books! I'll try to post a list tonight.

[jlpservicesinc]

3 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

bunch of books! I'll try to post a list tonight.

Thanks

[ThomasPowers]

I'm going to start a trivet topic in a more appropriate forum.

Blacksmithing => General Discussions => Trivets Historical Sources and Modern Examples