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I Forge Iron

What did you do in the shop today?


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Not so much what I did in the shop, but rather the fact that I took the shop outside and away from home.

I held my first blacksmithing demo last weekend during one of our local medieval event. Only did a little bit of actual smithing, but talked quite a bit about it. Also coached a young lady through the forging of a S hook.

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A fairly simple setup, with a JABOD, Champion 400 blower, 86# anvil and small 40# leg vise. I put a heat deflector/dissipator above the JABOD so that I could forge under the tarp without burning it, as we were expecting some rain over the weekend.

It was a lot of fun and I will do it again next year.

Only made a few items: my first BBQ forks (to heat up some sausages over the forge for lunch), a leaf and a duplicate of the S hook the young lady made.

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Looks like a great time Arthur!

The heat shield over the forge is a great idea for working under a cover, and an easy setup in a box of dirt.

In a medieval setting that blower would have been very height of technology!

Well done!

 

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Nope in a medieval setting that blower is centuries later.  Early medieval was twined single action bellows and late medieval/renaissance you could get a double lunged bellows, (came in from the gold smiths).  However getting a trained bellows thrall is *really* difficult and we often have to settle for the anachronism.  When I do week long medieval demos' for major SCA events I generally bring both the twinned bellows and the hand crank and build the medieval forge up front and have the hand crank portable forge off to the side. Hand crank blower is more generally found in the US and after the ACW where there was a great flood of items "invented" to make use of the excess cast iron production.

BTW; charcoal has been used for forge welding about 2000 years longer than coal has.  It helps to use a forge designed for charcoal rather than use charcoal in a forge designed for coal!

Lary; one quad-state I saw a "roping die" made by drilling two holes *close* together in the seam of two blocks.  It incised the line and rounded the edges.  A gentle twist and you had a good approximation for rope.  The fellow had made a small round glass top table that looked like a steel lariat was the support.

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