Brand new here (and to the craft), just finished building a JABOD and made first forging

[TommyVee]

I already sort of "introduced" myself in the JABOD subforum, but here I am doing it again.

I have been reading and following threads here on IFI for a couple of weeks, and am looking forward to being part of this community in the coming years.

I'm located in central New Mexico, in the mountains about 15 miles SE of Albuquerque.  I've been fascinated with blacksmithing for a few months and have been voraciously consuming videos on Youtube from Black Bear Forge and several other channels like his (and not like a certain young man from England whose videos are far too "energetic" and flashy for my tastes).  I signed up for the very first blacksmithing class I could find, which just happened to be yesterday.

We made the obligatory drive-in hook in the class, and it got me over the hump to finish my JABOD and mount up the piece of railroad track I will be using for my first anvil until I find better.  Even the mounting of the track is temporary until I put together a better mounting system (my current plan is to use some 3" wide x 1/4 (?) thick steel bar I have to make sturdy clamps, but what I actually had ready to use in short order was pipe hanging strap).

I made my first forging this morning using lump charcoal as fuel, simply making a crude coal rake that would really have come in handy for maintaining the fire I needed to forge my crude coal rake.  I had intended it to be less crude, but had a little trouble getting things hot enough for long enough to do what I really had intended at the outset.  But now I have something that can  help me keep the fuel in the right place and to poke around in the fire to keep the airflow going well.

Here's a link to a few photos my wife took while I was starting up the forge for the very first time, and that I took after I finished forging and was cleaning up for the afternoon.  I chose to post them to Google Photos and share the link rather than uploading them all, because they're not all so interesting and I don't need them to be up here permanently.  https://photos.app.goo.gl/x6xuTBwGQ4S19oKv8

The forge is a 2'x2' wooden box made entirely of scrap I had in my lumber pile.  The box is of 2x10 (with some notches cut out because that's pretty deep, but I didn't have any 2x8s).  The legs are 2x6, and I've added workbench wheels that can be raised and lowered so I can move it from my driveway (where I'm going to be working for the time being) to the carport where I'll store it.  I live in an area of high fire danger (we were evacuated once because of a rapidly spreading wildfire), so I'm hypersensitive to the danger of sparking one (hence the probably-strange decision to mount a fire extinguisher to the forge).  The box is filled with layers of garden soil, kitty litter, and soil I just skimmed off the surface of the property around my little hovel.

The tuyère is a 3/4" ID, 12" black steel pipe nipple.  I chose to use some firebricks to make a fire pot 9"Lx4.5"Wx3.25"D, with the tuyère about 1 inch above the bottom of the pot.  This did seem to make the hot spot of the charcoal fire a bit too deep and I will probably need to change it around --- after getting a better blower set up to see if that still holds.

I already know that at the beginning of the session I was using bits of charcoal that were far too large, and this made getting the fire hot enough much more difficult.  I learned, and later in the session used smaller chunks that made it easier to keep the fire good and hot, but still not exactly easy.  My "bellows" was just a "dual-action" hand pump air mattress inflator.  I wore myself out pumping it hard enough and fast enough to get the hot spot hot enough to get the metal hot enough to get a few good hammer blows in before needing to go back to the forge for more heat.  But it worked.  And convinced me to buy an electric air pump tout de suite (which is to say, about an hour after finishing up for the day, it should be delivered to my door by Thursday).

 

[George N. M.]

Tom, you're off to a good start.  You are now an official blacksmith and can call yourself that.  Now, you can spend the rest of your life becoming a better blacksmith.  With the internet, videos, and other smiths around you have a great advantage over where I started 44 years ago.  You'll be surprised at how fast you come along.  A lot of it is hand/eye coordination like riding a bicycle or playing a video game.

I don't live in the "Red Zone" but I have a 5# dry chemical extinguisher within arm's reach in my forge/anvil/vise work triangle.  Part of that comes from being the son of a Chicago Fire Department Captain.

Keep posting pics, either here or by link.  We luv 'em.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[ThomasPowers]

Did you ask about that fork lift tine that was over across from the Crusher?  I saw it Saturday.  BTW Amador will be closed this weekend; they are buying a Baler and I don't mean Hay Baler.  They told me they hope to start reducing the pile soon. As I will be retired I plan to spend some time seeing what turns up from the depths.  Last time the reworked the pile I found a mint condition stake plate for my tinsmithing/armoring stakes.  Retail 900+ US$, scrapyard under 9 US$ as that was what I paid for all I got that day.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Howdy from eastern Oklahoma! An welcome to the forum!

[TommyVee]

Thomas P:  No, I did not ask about the forklift tine, and didn't even see it when I was down there on Friday.  I had been poking around right near the crusher and clearly just missed it because I didn't really know what I should be looking for, and hadn't brought a vehicle capable enough to hold anything large and heavy (though I didn't miss the loverly large coil spring near there that turned out to be one of their excavator parts when I was told "no, you can't have that.").

Twisted Willow:  Thanks!

 

 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Welcome again from the Ozark mountains.

[pnut]

It didn't take me very long to ditch the double action mattress pump and switch to electric and as soon as I found a hand crank blower I ditched the AC pump. With the buffalo blower if I crank it too fast I blow the fuel out of the pot.  Good luck and happy forging.

Pnut

[ThomasPowers]

I went from electric to hand crank to double lunged bellows, stayed with the bellows till they were wearing out and I had to move and so went back to hand crank and with good coal hard to source I now do most of my forging with NA burners.