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I Forge Iron

Newb Setup for Wood Tool Making


Kooky

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I don't know how to describe how useless the area I live in is. It's South Florida. Everyone here is retired. It's a small beach town with tourists and older folks that don't do a whole lot and there's not much of an industry or economy outside of catering to that. Any time I need to find something, I pretty much can't find it unless I buy it new. 

Thus, either I buy an anvil online, namely the Atlas Knifemaker or Graham as of now, ideally I'd save for a Nimba... or muster the patience to wait, refrain from starting to blacksmith, and find a scrap chunk of steel at one of very few places that might have it. I'd be totally satisfied with a cut chunk of steel beam. It's a time is money thing, I don't feel compelled to wait until I get lucky, yet I also can't afford an amazing anvil right away.

One thing I do know is, and it was actually your comment from another thread, I'm scrapping buying a coal forge entirely, going full on JABOD! Maybe once I get a JABOD forge I will feel ready to build an earthen oven right next to it so I can have fresh bread ready at the smithy...

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Ahh the JABOD can be a coal forge. 

I was given a swedish cast steel anvil by a retiree and just remember there were more anvils in the cities than in the country!  I lived in inner city Columbus Ohio when I got most of mine locally. I didn't get the one that was in a car repair business that had been in the same place since 1918; I got their 6" post vise at that Auction.  I did get the 134# HB at a HVAC business that had moved to their "new" building in the 1930's.

You close to any boat building or maintenance areas?   

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Boat building... not really, maybe some structural work, nobody around here builds them. Lots of boat carpentry and such but no builders (another thing I've looked into related to woodworking... traditional boat building)

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I've got a bowl adze that I can't use since I can't find green logs anywhere. I stop at every log I see on the road, none of them are suitable, it's usually palm tree :) I would l love to make a real chunker of a "chouna" at some point, basically a Japanese hewing tool, similar to an adze. 

Oh and absolutely a yariganna... sort of like a Japanese planing knife. I love this tool, it provides very nice curly shavings.

 

sP3030149.jpg

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Kooky, a brief Google search showed 3 scrap/recycling dealers in Stuart, FL, just next door to you.  Not all of them may sell to individuals.  Some places have exclusive contracts where they buy scrap from the public and then sell it to a single buyer.  I suggest contacting or visiting all of them.  Even if the first 2 turn you down that does not mean the 3d will.  There are also various fabrication and repair shops in every town which may be a supply source of metal.  All you have to do is search and keep searching.  BTW, visiting in person is the best way to make contact.  Telephone calls are less good. And using the internet, email, or text is a bad way of making contact.

You should look on the character of your area as an opportunity rather than a problem.  Lots of retired folk mean lots of cool stuff in thrift stores and estate sales.  It also means there may be a larger market for certain hand forges items.

On a personal note:  If you want to get out of South Florida the way to do that is a skill or profession or trade that will support you someplace else.  It has to be something that someone will pay you to do for them.  It could be plumbing, carpentering, diesel repair, teaching, IT, etc., etc..  And if you don't have a particular skill then education is the first step to having one.  This could be a trade school, night classes, or a traditional academic college.  The key to most life dreams is education.

My wife is originally from Florida and is glad to be gone from there.  She loves Wyoming.  She and her late husband lived for years in Albuquerque, NM.  Both places, IMO, are a great improvement on the heat, humidity, and flatness of FL.

BTW, don't be hating on retired folk.  Many of us here are of retirement age and some of us are actually retired.  That said, most of us here are not "old" mentally or in attitude.

I hope you come to love the craft as much as I have.  It's been 44 years since I started and it has been a great outlet in good times and bad.

Good luck and I hope you stick around here.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

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I am of course not hating on all retired folk! But surely you understand Floridians are a different breed, at least the ones that stick around.

I am a beyond avid gardener and growing in pure sand is just miserable and I’m not a fan of raised beds. You read something online related to gardening and it will apply to every place in the US except South Florida. Home of 100% humidity, feels like 100F, flat sand and monster bugs. 
 

With that said I’m not sure I’d be able to eat any other food than tropical inspired food, and possibly southern. They're just my favorite. 
 

by retired… I think I mean retired from life, not whatever they may have been doing. 

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Note; even some "closed" scrap yards may make an exception by fetching you a piece to buy; A good way to suborn folks is to give a box of doughnuts to the office for them and ask that if it's a closed yard if they could let you buy a chunk without going in. Don't forget to explain what you are trying to do...folks like smiths for some reason...

Also fork lift tines; I don't know any town in America that doesn't have a fork lift or two around it. 120# anvil made from a 190# forklift that was free.

MarcoBorromeiForkLiftTineAnvil.jpg.6c90be40ca997e14452e5be1ba6abc35.jpg

When my wife started her raised bed garden plans I had to point out that single digit humidity and 368 days of blinding sun a year called for a different raised bed plan than places where they were trying to get rid of water in the raised beds and were worrying about getting enough sun.  She finally found some folks using them in Arizona and was able to get workable suggestions for out here where we get 9" of rain a year.

 

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You don't know how excited I am that all I have to do is find a chunk of steel. It beats my previous endeavor.

I really, really wanted to do luthiery as my sort of woodworking specialization since I have been a musician for years, and since there's no luthier for a hundred plus miles I would've had to build my own shop, we're talking about dozens of specialty tools on top of my standard tools, plus I would've had to break down and finally go electric with a Chinese made band saw, drill press, belt sander... Blacksmithing came to me in a strange way... I wanted to craft the tools I need, for something I really can't do (we don't have a garage here so the wood shop has never been able to manifest...) but at the same time, I am a huge fan of the aesthetic, simplicity, and mysticism behind a forge. It's simple on the surface, a couple items, but it takes that something special to do things properly. Blacksmithing is the stuff of legends and masters! I do hope to pursue woodworking again on the side, but blacksmithing is easier for me right now to try and learn, earn a living from, and do properly, because I can do it all outside on a concrete slab we have.

I have plenty to go off tomorrow, I saw many of these suggestions basically right after they close.

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A common thing is for the old salts to not only be talking to you but the lurkers and those who discover this thread in the future. So if some one has a couple of grand to drop on starting a forge and buying good tools and equipment, we aren’t trying to talk you out of it, nessisaraly. Many of us can show you how to set up a forge and forge usable stuff for $100 or less, and we want others to understand that they can too. 

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Actually, there is a luthier in Stuart and another in Port St. Lucie.  They may just do guitars rather than other stinged instruments but they are still luthiers.

Here in WY it's similar to Thomas in NM, a 100 mile drive is a pretty casual trip.  That's one of the reasons that WY has been described as a small town with really long streets.  Although in the winter some of those 100 miles can be very long.  100 miles on i-80 in a ground blizzard is a memorable experience and not a good memory.

Also, heavy equipment repair places often have big chunks of steel.  Bull dozers and other heavy equipment are basically a collection of anvil boted together.  A track plate from a D7 Cat can be a dandy improvised anvil as well as tractor weights.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Edited by George N. M.
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Should've clarified by luthiery I meant building/making, not repair, I often forget the word covers multiple things.

Thanks, I will look it up... Ground forge is definitely my go-to, it's perfect. Adaptable, cheap.

I could not live in a car-centric place like that, maybe I will count my blessings in the suburbs that I can live by barely driving (compared to the average) and never have a desire to. I guess my ideal place to live is some sort of ancient town, or a village, self sustaining relative to food and water, everything is well managed in walking distance, except for imports... alongside a source of water used for irrigating said food, like the chinampas in Mexico, some of the best design there is, of course destroyed down to a single sliver left surrounded by developed city . Netherlands infrastructure comes to mind, it's very good, America has some of the worst infrastructure for human-centric living in the world, especially in cities. Rural areas, you're right, you just have to drive unless you homestead.

I know doing things so old school is "ridiculous" today but modern society is fragile, it can break in an instant, that's why I prefer things like a JABOD forge and learning abou tit. These techniques stand the test of time and are strong. The same philosophy I take with what I try to do. We are so smart that we can cure all sorts of diseases and live to be 100 yet we've destroyed our very self-sufficiency and dangle what we have on a tiny thread. COVID and war... These are my proofs.

I don't do traffic. I would leave the car in the middle of the road and walk back home the first time I sit in San Fran traffic, I can't imagine some Chinese traffic. Gives me the heebie jeebies thinking about that smog. I know it's for livelihood and passion and all but to me, sitting in 3-4 hour traffic everyday for a job is a screw loose.

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For one of the smiths that planted this seed, from Crossed Heart Forge, I notice he uses what looks to be a pretty simplistic forge (as far as I can tell). The bellows seem tricky to build, but it's a Japanese style forge that looks to be entirely firebricks, and there's the specialty bellows on the left hand side leading to air tunnels at the bottom. Can this work? It's in the shape of I guess a right triangle, made of firebricks.. So closest to the smith is one brick, behind that a stack of two, so on, and the passageway is pretty narrow.

That seems pretty simple and easy to maintain if I'm understanding it correctly.

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I think for the type of forge you describe you'd probably want to use charcoal as fuel to eliminate the clinker problem that you would have with coal or coke as a fuel.  Without some sort of tuyere (the slotted or perforated plate the air comes through from the blower/bellows you could have a problem with clinker falling into the air passage and restricting the air flow.  A side blast design would eliminate that problem.  The good thing about fire brick forges is that you can easily take them apart and reassemble them in a different configuration.

BTW, I strongly suggest that you look up and consider joining the Florida Artist Blacksmith Association.  Learning from more experienced folk in any craft is much better than trying to do it all by yourself.  Some of us here, myself being one, started out as lone eagles and that is not an ideal.  Today you have some good You Tube videos (and some BAD ones) and other on line resources, like IFI.  When I started out in 1978 all I had were books from the library and ILL and lots of my own mistakes to teach me.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand." 

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Thanks, I will check it out. Not a single book at my library. I have a couple books on the way, two will be delivered today. No shipping notification on my forge yet!
 

The Home Blacksmith, The Complete Modern Blacksmith, The Backyard Blacksmith and I’m going to buy New Edge of the Anvil later this week. 

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Not familiar with The Home Blacksmith, but the other three are good. Together with the COSIRA books in the BAMsite link above, that should be more than enough to get you started. For now, save your money for tools and materials.

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Not to forget the pages and pages of information here. IFI is an interactive pier reviewed document. 
As JHCC coined the frase “JABOD” after the Just a box of dirt forge thread in the solid fuel forge stickies. That might be a good place to start to learn about them. 
many of the YouTubers over complicate things that they don’t take the time to understand in a rush for ratings. 
the same thing has happened with ASO or anvil shaped object coined here as well. 
 

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I live in a small rural town in New Mexico and our adobe library has NO books on blacksmithing; except that I can ILL books there from 90 other libraries including several University Libraries.  I am easily able to ILL a copy of a book I had on book search for over a decade on Amazon and ABEbooks with no hits.   So if you say your library has no books on blacksmithing; but have not asked the main desk about Inter Library Loan, you are suffering a misapprehension!    When it comes to the expensive books, always ILL first to see if you will be happy shelling out the big bucks!      (I have some books that were over US$300 *used*;  scholarly works with high printing costs and low demand get $$$$ fast! Cheap ripoff copies just don't have the photomicrographs in a clear usable state.)

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