story from beginner

[Blacksmith village]

I live in a village, which is in translate named blacksmith village. My dad live here from the beginning and he does not know any blacksmith last 60 years. So these must be an very old name. My father is metal worker and his wish is always to forge somethng at home. 10 years ago he get more than 100 year old coal forge in very bad shape and he never fix it. Also I was being in mechanical high school where in practical class we have some forging. Also with pneumatic 75kg power hammer (that I fell in love with. haha ) I have probably never had the opportunity to do this again
So, long story short. Now was I decide to restaurate old forge and buy an anvil. Here is some pic of my forge and my first piece of art hahahah. Dad got sparkles in his eyes as a kid Dad was happy as a kid getting a toy So the blacksmith village now has a blacksmith (Otherwise, I don't know when that time will be, when I can tell myself I'm a blacksmith.) 
Sorry for my english 

 

More pic (and better pic) of foge come in new topic in coming days.

 

[Glenn]

Anything that with weight that you can hit on is an anvil.  High tech anvils

Where are you located?

[Blacksmith village]

I add a countrey. I am from Slovenia, Europe
I wrote poorly .. I already bought the anvil. But thanks anyway for the tip.
And I'm lucky to work in a company, where I can get a mild steel plate up to 6 "thick. For example, for striking anvil.

[ThomasPowers]

Welcome!    When I teach; I tell my students after their first heat and pounding hot steel on the anvil:  "Now you are a blacksmith; however you can spend the rest of your life working on becoming a *better* blacksmith!"

It's good that the blacksmith village has a smith; in certain places in Europe at certain times having a blacksmith was a requirement to get village status rather than just being a hamlet. (Took things like church, blacksmith, market to be considered a  village and when you had more people it could grow into a town.)

I live in a rural town in New Mexico USA that has a small University in it so we're divided between farmers and University staff and students. (Around 10K people when the University is in session).

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Welcome aboard... Your English is very good so no need to apologize. If I remember we have several members who are in Slovenia and may be close enough to you to visit.

 My mothers parents emigrated from Slovenia to the USA in the early 1900s and she was born in this country. It's a shame that all of our family records from there were destroyed during WWll so its not possible for me to trace ancestry from there.

[Blacksmith village]

Thanks for the welcome! 

ThomasPowers.  It really was like this here in previous centuries. I need to somehow better explore the history of the place. Last year I found an axe under ground. The name of the blacksmith was stamped on it. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a clue about this man.

Irondragon Forge & Clay. realy? nice and interesting to hear that you have roots in my country In these years many people moved from Slovenia to America. It is sad to hear that your records have been lost. 

I can't wait to start learning blacksmithing. In the previous picture it was just a test of a forge with anvil on the ground. Now I really need some anvil base. Stump or something. In the meantime, now it's a little harder to get . Although I'm home on the edge of the woods haha. 
And one question for you with experience. It is ok to use black coal? it is impossible to get coke in our country. We have only one store, but these is store for blacksmithing and coke is soooo expensive. Because blacksmithing here is something exsotic. Ordinary shops with firewood sell only brown and black coal (mostly brown). With the price of coke here, it is much better to use a propane forge.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

If your black coal is soft bituminous coal, that's what we use. It turns into coke around the edge of the fire and then is raked into the fire to heat the steel. Burning green coal is very smokey and the coke burns cleaner. A lot of us use lump charcoal, not BBQ briquets, which burns very clean and is good for knives & cutting tools like chisels. 

[Blacksmith village]

Oh I don't know if it is soft bitumnous. Hope it is. Ok now I see why everyone has a whole bunch of coal by the fire. I never understood how not to burn all the coal. 
Cheapest charcoal is also twice the price of black coal. Since this is for a hobby rather than making money, it will be necessary to choose a cheaper option. Why is better charcoal for knifes? It is hotter? 
I have so many questions, but you guys have a lot of experience :)

[Glenn]

A solid fuel forge is a dance.  Fuel does not produce heat, air produces heat as it burns the fuel.  Excess coal is stacked over top the fire to insulate and hold the heat into the fireball.  The coal around the outside of the fire on the table is being converted from coal to coke as the gasses, smoke, volatiles are burned off.  The fire burns and consumes fuel. The coke is then moved or raked into the fire to replace the fuel that has been burned.

You can put a large bucket of fuel on the forge table and only that fuel in the fireball is burning.  The rest of the fuel is reserve waiting it's time to move across the table and into the fire.  It is a continuing process that people do not notice unless they look for it.

[Blacksmith village]

Thanks for the explanation. These saves a lot of experimenting and mistakes. 

It is really interesting how it works. How do you adjust the size of a fireball? With amount of air intake? What is the right (best) size of coal granulation? I can only get 20-40mm. I know these is to big. 

[Glenn]

You adjust the size of the fireball by the size fire you build, and the amount of air you blow into that fire.

Any size from the size of rice or beans to golf balls can be used.  Larger size coal may have to be crushed or broken into smaller sizes to work well in your forge.  Best size coal is what is cheapest to buy in your area.  With bituminous coal, usually putting it on the fire, getting it warm to hot, then whacking it with a shovel or hammer will break it apart with little effort. 

This is another reason to keep coal being converted to coke on the edge of the fire. 

[ThomasPowers]

Charcoal is good for knives as it doesn't contain sulfur.  You can get around that by making sure your coal is well coked before putting a piece of steel for a knife into the fire.  I often have an "ornamental" project I work on while waiting for the forge fire to get just right!

As for expense: everyone I know that uses charcoal makes their own and so it's "free". (Charcoal forges and coal forges are also slightly different in shape to make use of their different properties: with charcoal pretty much everything on the forge will start to burn wasting fuel. So charcoal forges are often trench shaped and only filled between the walls.  Coal will sit politely next to the fire and not burn so coal forges can have wider more open firepots.

[George N. M.]

Dear Blacksmith Village,

A slightly more technical explanation of what is going on in a coal forge fire:  Coke is "baked coal."  All the lighter chemicals in the coal have been driven off by the heat of baking and all that is left is pure carbon and any impurities that are too heavy and stable to be driven off by heat.  Coke burns much cleaner and generates little smoke.  In a coal forge the coal that is baking around the edge of the fire is turning into coke.  That is why you rake the fuel gradually in to the center of the fire. Different coals from different mines or different seams with a mine form coke better or worse than others.  In your case you may have to experiment with different suppliers who may be getting their coal from different sources.  As a general rule brown coal (which has not been subjected to as much heat and pressure after being deposited as plant material) will not form as good coke as a bituminous coal.

There is a lot of coal mined in my US state of Wyoming but it is primarily used in power plants to generate electricity.  It is sub-bituminous (sort of between brown coal and bituminous) and is a poor coking coal. But it has a low sulfur content which means it produces less air pollution which is why it is shipped long distances to power plants.  I started out using it as a forge fuel and it was not a good experience.

Another thing that you will notice with different coals and cokes is that they will vary in how much clinker they produce.  Clinker is the part of the coal that will not burn off and forms a deposit in the bottom of the fire.  It is the remnants of other sediments such as sand and mud which were deposited along with the plant debris that formed the coal.  Some coals have a lot of it which makes it harder to control your fire and some have little or none which is very nice to use.

I suggest that you get a 10 or 20 kilo bag of whatever coal is available and try it out.  If it works well, good.  If not, try a bag from a different seller, particularly if you can find out that it comes from a different source. 

Your fuel is only a part of learning to become a better blacksmith.  The biggest part is learning the hand and eye coordination of where and how hard to hit piece of hot metal to make it move in the way you want.  It is sort of like learning to play a video game.

You can probably tell from this post that I used to be a geologist.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[ThomasPowers]

Naw, I didn't see the term "lignite" anywhere; or "carboniferous"...

[Blacksmith village]

Thanks for the answers. That made things pretty clear to me. And thanks George N. M. for the detailed description of what this is all about. Here is the easiest to get brown coal which, as we found out, is not the best. That I have already assumed. For now I can find only one supplier for black coal. Hope this one will be as good as possible and I will definitely look elsewhere for comparison. I am aware that the main part of learning and knowledge lies in the forging itself. But anyway, it all starts with a fire otherwise you can't do anything. 

At this point I have to commend the forum, and you who are ready to help. For the most other forums (not for blacksmithing) are mostly not patient with newcomers. Thanks!

[pnut]

10 hours ago, Blacksmith village said:

 I can find only one supplier for black coal. Hope this one will be as good as possible and I will definitely look elsewhere for comparison.

Coal is a relative newcomer in the history of blacksmithing. Charcoal has been used for much longer and is still in use today. You might want to look into making your own charcoal.

Pnut

[George N. M.]

Dear B.V.,

I think that you will find that most of us feel an obligation to pass the craft on to others.  We feel a debt to the smiths that taught us that is paid back by teaching and passing on our knowledge to those who are starting out.  It is sterile and a dead end to have knowledge and not pass it on.  Since the smiths of your village are gone and cannot teach you we have to step in and help.  It advances the craft and honors all the smiths that labored in your village for centuries.  Also, passing on knowledge is a kind of minor immortality.  If 20 or 40 or 50 years from now when we are long gone from this earth you recall and pass on something that one of us told you to a new and younger smith something of us lives on.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Frosty]

My goodness George that's down right poetic, I almost feel all noble and everything just reading it! Hmmm, book title maybe? "The Hammer Blows of Immortality."  

REALLY well said George. Thank you.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Blacksmith village]

Pnut  -  The idea of making own charcoal is good. But I think it's more for experimenting and learning something not so much for long-term production. It is quite time consuming and a lot of wood needs to be burned. But maybe I'll try

George N. M.   -  in our country, I think there is no longer a place to learn this. I don't think the whole country has more than 5 real hand working traditional blacksmiths. The rest are hobby blacksmiths and self learning ones or companies that make forged fences but have nothing to do with traditional blacksmithing. So yeah. It's hard to get blacksmithing knowlage. Youtube and people like you are very helpful.

[pnut]

I use old shipping pallets that four-wheeler ATV's come on from the dealer down the road from me. They have to pay to get them hauled off so they let me have as many as I want. I'd estimate I get about a 60-70% return in charcoal. It's much cheaper than the $5usd I would have to pay for 4kg. at the store. 

If there was a good source of Bituminous coal or even anthracite I would use it more often but I still prefer charcoal. It takes much less fire maintenance. I just throw a scoop on the fire every time I put the steel back in the forge. 

The steel doesn't carehow it gets hot though. So whatever fuel you use I wish you good luck and I'm excited for you. 

Pnut