New and looking for advice

[Iron Fangs]

Just southeast of Pittsburgh

New and just starting out with a longtime interest in both Iron and bronze age smithing, with a particular interest from Chinese, Japanese, and Renesaince Era pieces. I have about a years worth of experience working in an industrial foundry that alloyed Zinc and Aluminum.  I have taken a safety course and an intro project course in blacksmithing with guidance from an experienced blacksmith but I would also like to do some work on my own.

My father was a Mason and worked construction for almost 30 years before his passing and he made a hearth-style fireplace in the yard, it was made of fire bricks and refractory cement and lined with cobblestone around the rim, my main question is this: will I be able to use this hearth as a coal forge to shape iron and bronze? What is the best place for me to source materials? And what advice can anyone give me so that I do not buy the wrong tools, hurt myself or others, and simply be the best blacksmith I can?

[Glenn]

Look into the Pennsylvania Artist Blacksmiths Assoc. PABA, and Pittsburgh Area Artist-Blacksmiths Association PAABA. A few hours at one of their meetings is well worth the trip.

Click on the read this first tab at the top of the forum page.

The more you read and research your area of interest, the less mistakes you will make and the less expensive things become. To get started you only need a 2# hammer, something to hit on, (improvised anvil), and something to get the metal hot so it moved easier.  Search the site for JABOD, just a box of dirt.  Build one for little or no cost in a couple of hours.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Iron Fangs]

Thank you, I actually talked to someone at PAABA and they were the ones that sent me to that safety course, it was in Fort Allen Antoque Farming Repair, but I will see if PAABA had any other resources for me. I will also look into that JABOD you mentioned, but do you have any advice about the Anvil? Will any metal do or should I buy an actual one?

[Daswulf]

Hi Iron fangs, if you had a question on anvils I'm sorry but I missed it. 

I'm in southwestern PA. 

I'm in your area. I doubt your dads fire pit will do as a forge but can help lead you to a few different options to a more suitable buildable forge. I'm a member in the PAABA but can't make it to many meets yet. Fort Allen is good but a one on one can be more helpful. If you need some help getting started message me. 

 

[Iron Fangs]

And for a moment I forgot how a compas works and just realized I am southwest of Pittsburgh. Not southeast, still I would love to connect with a more experienced blacksmith close to my area. Shame about that fireplace, but I would rather build something suitable than ruin such a lovely momento. I'll look at that just a box of dirt thing Glenn mentioned

[Glenn]

A collection of improvised anvils 

in the anvil section on the site.

[Daswulf]

We love pictures here if you have one of that fireplace.

Let me know if you can meet up. My "messy" shop is open to anyone wanting to learn. I can get you pointed in the right direction. Im in the charleroi/fallowfield/bentleyvill area right off rt. 70. 

[Iron Fangs]

Those improvised anvils gave me a lot of ideas. And I would greatly appreciate the help and 1 on 1 guidance, I am about 10 miles from the Pittsburgh IKEA to give a rough perspective of location, I'll have to get a picture submitted tomorrow of the fire pit. Forge worthy or not it is a real masterpiece of Masonry

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Iron Fangs, glad to have you. How about a pic of your Father's fire place? There isn't really that much special about a forge there's probably no reason to damage it to use it to heat steel / iron. On the other hand there's nothing really special about a forge, they're easy to make the JABOD being a case in point. A JABOD is basically a hole in the ground in a box with a tuyere pipe. EZ. PZ.

A blow drier will provide plenty of blast for most purposes so you don't need to wait till you find a hand crank one or build a bellow or . . . 

Lots of guys envision a masonry forge in a dedicated smithy but few of us realize one. We settle for a good working kit where we can fit it. 

An anvil is a LITTLE more difficult you have to locate a decent size piece of steel and mount it at YOUR working height. Forklift tines are PRIMO, a little work and you're in business. Shafting or largish truck axles are high end too. The more steel directly between the hammer and the ground the more depth of rebound it will have and more effectively it will move metal. RR rail mounted on end works really well and provides a largish menu of bottom tools you can grind from the web and flanges. Charles provides some excellent ideas to get your creative juices flowing. 

This is a fun addictive craft and we're here to help you along.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[JHCC]

Having spent time with Daswulf in his forge, I can heartily recommend the experience!

[Iron Fangs]

Pictures to come of the fire pit, but this would be my new idea for the dirt forge: I have 2 x 20 lb pags of paving sand from when I refinished my garden, I was thinking of putting clay from the creak outside my house for the well and upper level to help insulate the wooden box, but is a plywood sheet ok for the baseboard of the box?

I will gladly work out a time to learn from Daswulf, he has been on every post I've looked at on this forum and always offers meaningful advice from what I have seen. Frosty and Glenn too!

[Daswulf]

Hey, thanks! 

Yes, plywood would work as the box or base of a jabod sideblast forge. The sand and clay mix would insulate the wood from the heat. The heat from the fire is pretty concentrated to main pot or trench depending on how it is built. You will want to line the area of the plywood with the sand clay mix. 

 

 

[Glenn]

Do not overcomplicate simple.  It is just a box to hold dirt.  It is a hole in the ground raised to a convenient working height.

Ash is a good insulator, and cheap.

[Iron Fangs]

I was thinking of an inch of sand and an inch of clay between the bottom of the pot and the plywood

I already have the sand leftover from another project so I don't have to invest in that, most of PA's river valleys are clay so that's as simple as putting a shovel in the back yard

[Goods]

Don’t put separate layers of clay and sand, mix them together. If you have ash available, mix that in too. The ash will help with clinker sticking to the mix, and the sand helps with shrink checking.

David

[Iron Fangs]

I probably have some ash in my charcoal grill, I usually throw it in my flower pots but I can throw it in a sand-clay mix, any special ratio?

[ThomasPowers]

A variation of the JABOD is to build it in an old propane grill; no worries about the wood charring and a lid to close during bad weather!

There is not one right way to do things in smithing so don't get all worked up about having to do it one way!  Most of the folks I know of with masonry forges now use them as a place to set their propane forge...

[Iron Fangs]

Interesting, I'll probably start with a wooden one just due to availability and price of wood for now, but i may upgrade to a converted propane grill eventually, I'll experiment until it works properly.

What about Material? Once I have my forge up and running, (and safe), where can I get steel and bronze? I have heard scrap yards and railroads after trains pass for Iron and steel, but is using rusted metal as is the standard or is there some sort of refining or grinding process I have to use to get the rust off of pieces I find before they are workable?

[Frosty]

A basic ratio is 1 pt. sand to 3 pts clay +/- but it's just an approximation just eyeball it. Any box will work so long as it's not plastic, years ago I picked up a couple 3 drawer file cabinets for shop stuff, one of the drawers would work a treat. Get close to the size Charles recommends and you're good to go.

Rust is a GOOD THING when you're picking up salvage steel. Heating plated steel in a forge is dangerous, you do NOT want to breath the various oxides of zinc, nickel, CHROME, or heaven forbid CADMIUM! Cad plating is a true carcinogen, if you live long enough after exposure you WILL get cancer. That's not just a tiny whiff but welding or heating it in a forge is likely to be above the threshold. Cadmium is B A D stuff.

No plated steel in the forge. EVER!

If the steel is really rusted say flaking then wire brush it, otherwise it's not a worry. Hot steel will oxidize when removed from the fire fast enough to watch, it's in the form of black scale. You'll want to brush it off before it builds up much or you'll hammer it into the surface of your project and leave marks.

Forgeable bronze is probably something you'll have to buy outright but I don't know enough about it to try scrounging. You might want to learn basic forge practices and hammer control before experimenting with expensive and tricky to forge metals.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Iron Fangs]

Thanks for the tips, yeah I use to get light headed in the foundry cause it took them 2 weeks to tell me that zinc fumes were toxic when inhaled, which was fun, but I digress. Rust is good, Zinc is to be kept away from heat. And cadmium is to be avoided at all cost, scrap yard is a good place to start looks like... can I also forge steel pipe?

Got those pictures of my dad's (now my mom's) fire pit.

[ThomasPowers]

The idea for a junked propane grill is to use it to hold the dirt for a JABOD, as such it's FREE as compared to the price of lumber nowadays.  (I see a couple each time I visit the scrap yard at 20 USCents a pound; but I find them discarded around town and illegal dump sites almost as often. 

Building a propane forge is suggested as a future project and a junked grill is not a great starter point---For mine I junked everything but the cart. fastened a sheet of steel across the gap where the grill housing used to go and set my propane forge on that. (Tube forge, two Frosty T burners.)

[Iron Fangs]

So when I go to the scrap yard see of I can find a metal propane grill to make my box of dirt forge, I don't plan on using gas fuel any time soon as I prefer the idea of solid fuel forges.

[JHCC]

There are several good threads about salvaging steel for use in the forge. One thing to avoid is picking up anything from a railroad right-of-way: most US states have pretty strict laws against trespassing there, and removing anything is prosecutable as theft, even if it seems abandoned. (Some people will say that it's a federal offense, but as best as I can tell, the federal regulations are merely to ensure a degree of uniformity among state laws.)

If you go with the wood box, make sure you've got at least 2-3" of dirt between the fire and the box. Any less probably won't insulate the wood from the fire, and you don't want it charring and weakening.

[Iron Fangs]

I'll definetly take a look at those salvage forums, and I'll keep off the rails to avoid trouble, thanks for the tip

[ThomasPowers]

The junked propane forge is only 1 way to go; lots of wooden JABODs out there. 

The exPropane grill does have another virtue---it's rather self camouflaged in many urban and suburban settings. 

Back when I lived in the old part of Columbus Ohio; just south of a "historic district" where the houses didn't have any storage; some folks would buy a new grill every spring and get rid of it in the fall.  I used to check out the alleyways to recover *full* propane tanks in the fall from junked grills.