Hello from Aiken, SC

[Jim A]

Hi, all!

I’m 51, retired Army, now on my second career. I’m married and have 3 kids (now grown and moved out). I own a house with a big backyard, but live in town.

I’m a brand-new hobbyist. I was trying to learn how to cast small bits for a project, and while researching DIY foundries, I discovered forges instead.

My interests lie more in making tools, hooks, simple strap hinges and brackets for my woodworking projects, and so forth. I’ll bang out the occasional knife, probably.

So far, my forge is a hole in the ground with a few common bricks around it — but I’ll be posting a thread in the Solid Fuel section here in a bit, because I’d like to ask for suggestions on how to build my next one.

I’ve done a fair bit of lurking already, and learned some valuable stuff. Glad to be here!

Edit: I guess I should add that I’ve made one thing — a simple rebar knife. I did that to get an easy win starting out, and to see if I like it. I’ll probably use rebar a bit to begin with. It’s lousy metal, but I have a fair bit of it around, and I guess it’ll be useful for learning to square, draw out, bend, etc.

 

[George N. M.]

Welcome aboard, Jim.  I suggest that you visit the website of the Artist-Blacksmith Association of North America (ABANA) and find your nearest local affiliate and join or contact them.  That will get you under the wing of more experienced local/regional blacksmiths.  Also, once you watch someone making something either on a video or in person try to do it yourself as soon as possible.  Muscle memory lasts longer than mental memory.  Doing a task sets it in your mind much more firmly.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand." 

[ThomasPowers]

So in town Blacksmithing:

1 Smokeless fuel:  it can be anything from charcoal, coke, anthracite for solid fuels and Propane or Natural gas for gassers or an electric induction forge.

2 Quiet anvil: you can work with a naturally quiet anvil like a Fisher or Vulcan or by fastening it down correctly you can silence even loud anvils like the swedish cast steel ones.

3 Gifts for Neighbors: a bottle opener or forged flower can keep your neighbors encouraging you to forge more!

4 Authorities: getting a fireman or a cop as a forging buddy can turn you from a dangerous weirdo to the neat guy that *makes* *stuff*!  

5 Non-Authorities: living in the inner city one time I taught, with permission, one of the teenage "starter gang" members smithing.  Funny, after that, my smithy was never vandalized or robbed...

I did have an issue with a neighbor who would call the fire department anytime they saw smoke over at my place, (I mainly used bituminous coal back then), by sheer luck the 4 times they did it, I was using my smoker to cook food, an allowed use of fire by city ordinance!  After the 4th time they wedged the huge fire truck down the narrow alleyway to find me cooking salmon; the calls stopped. (I was told sub rosa; that the caller was told that the next time they called in a false alarm there would be an US$1100 fine...)

I don't like rebar, usually the money you save is outweighed by the extra work it requires. (Sort of like which is better: a free car that requires $2000 to get running or a car you pay $1000 for that works perfectly?)  For mild steel I used to get free drops from an ornamental iron company in the city.  They had to pay to have their scrap hauled to the scrapyard and were happy for me to reduce their need to do so.  For higher carbon steel for tools and blades, I like to start students off with a low mileage coil spring---places that do lifts and lowers may have brand new ones that they scrap!

And Welcome!

[Jim A]

Thank you, George! I will find my nearer affiliate; I discovered tonight how much I have to learn at just the basics. I threw in a piece of rebar to start squaring it and drawing it out. I got a few inches done, but I know that both I and me fire were working very inefficiently!

Thomas, thank you also! I was hoping that by mentioning living in town, someone might give me some pointers. The info is going to be very useful. As for rebar, as noted above, I certainly am realizing the truth of what you say. It does seem hard to work. Not sure if that’s good right now, as I need stiff practice, or bad because it slows down progress. I did indeed lay in some scrap to try.

i do very much appreciate the welcome!

[ThomasPowers]

Well, it may be just me but when I teach I try to have the student succeed; I find I get frustrated if I keep failing and have no successes. So I try to get the student to succeed a few times; so when they do flub up, they know it's merely a speed bump on their road to smithing success.