Sharp sand is sometimes sold as 'Plastering Sand'.

Well Thanks for starting this thread this will help me out a lot :D

It's also known as mason's sand.

You're welcome, I'm just passing on what I've picked up here and there. Like I expected things we did in the soils lab to come in handy in real life. Silly of me eh?

Frosty

new guy here too...i built my forge very cheaply by using a brake drum, here is a pic



the speed control is what makes it all work, 15.00 at Harbor Freight lets me slow a shop vac way down

that forge is awesome if my mom won't let me use our old weber grill i will to something like that with a frying pan and a heavy gauge steel pipe. thanks again to all who posted.

I found these last night while insomnia (iForgeIron) got the best of me:

YouTube - The Brake Drum Forge

YouTube - Building the Brake Drum Forge

I start welding school in three weeks. I know what I'm building!;)

Edited March 12, 200917 yr by Jeff Bly
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actually what suprises me is that the weber grill i am using is almost good enough for long term use and i i can make a decent forge out of bricks and cinder blocks.

It comes as a surprise to a lot of guys that you don't need 1/4" plate to build a forge. My 3' x 4' coal forge has a fire brick covered 14 ga. table with a couple pieces of 1" angle "joists" under it and it works a treat.

Frosty

thanks for the idea and speaking of 1/4 in plate, i use that as an anvil! 12 by 24 in `1/4 in plate works really decent as an anvil for a beginner like me. also is 1/4 rebar ok enough for making tongs?

1/4" rebar is probably on the light side for tongs but they'll work. Having small tongs is a good thing though, you don't want to have to handle larger and heavier things than you need to.

Keep your eyes open for a piece of RR rail or other heavy thick piece of steel. 1/4" plate only seems okay because you haven't worked on something heavier. Then again if it's what you have it's the best anvil you have. If it works it's an anvil.

Frosty

i agree but the plate weighs 40 or 50 lbs and it was $20 so i think it is good enough for now. noted i will see if i can locate a cast steel anvil somewhere in my viciity and turn the plate into tools. (yay recicling!)

The plate may weigh 40 pounds but directly under the hammer there is very little weight to resist the hammer impact. As Frosty says, look for something heavier. A good place to start is something with a mass of 50 to 100 pounds or heavier. You want as much of the mass directly under the hammer face as possible so think rr track, hydraulic cylinder, etc standing on end.

The following is good reading and should give you several good ideas on how to get started.

Lessons in Blacksmithing

LB0005 Blacksmithing Anvils

all of this is true and i can see if i can find a very heavy rr track (80lbs and drive it into this giant stump i have lying around. the stump is 3ft in diameter and 3.5ft high it weighs a good 220lbs of solid oak. i would like to note that the plate works for me beacasue it is easily portable and i need to move it when i clean up after working. can i mount the plate to the stump and use that for an anvil?

here are a cpl things that might help...

the first is a pic & the 2nd is a vid of the forge. ( I built )

YouTube - my forge vid

good forge but out of my price range. i have a $30 budget

just as an after though can i make a tamped down sand base for my anvil? and thanks to all who have posted i probably would not have the blacksmithing projects where they are without the help i have gotten here.

hey can i make a really decent knife out of an old file? will that be a good beginer project?

do a search on wood forge, you can make a big box out of wood, protect it and have a very serviceable unit, I plan to build one someday, just to see it done.

hey can i make a really decent knife out of an old file? will that be a good beginer project?

Yes, if it's a really decent file. Nicholson and Simonds both have excellent reputations. With some of the cheaper stuff I've read that it can be hit-or-miss. (OTOH my first blade was made from an Indian file I bought at Harbor Freight, and it got absolutely screamin' hard in the quench. So not all the cheap stuff is total junk.)

Grind off the teeth before you start forging, or anneal the file and then file off the teeth. If you just forge them flat you're likely to create cold shuts that won't do anything good as far as your blade's strength.

thats good to know, but i have some steel bars i found and am cooking them in charcoal to try and add carbon, so i am making a big bowie knife and a brush axe. when i am done ill post some pics.

OK. Good luck with that.

Did you seal them in an airtight container with the charcoal?

Frosty

Here's a very useful discussion of carburizing that's going on at one of my other daily-read forums right now. Blister/shear steel They're talking about wrought iron, but it'll work on mild steel.

I've only tried it once, using charcoal with sodium carbonate as my carburizing agent and an old cast-iron Dutch oven as my crucible. I cooked it for maybe 12 hours at somewhere around 1600 F (guessing from color) in a large wood fire. (Think burning a half-dozen or so dead trees.) It definitely made a difference in the steel, but I wouldn't have expected too much from it, performance-wise.

to frosty: no i did not i just buried them in charcoal and left it over night. it was cool by the time i got to it (1oclock today) and to matt blower i like the blister steel ideas and thanks for the helpp to all

Burying steel in hot charcoal and leaving it overnight would anneal it if it were medium or high carbon, but it's not going to carburize it -- certainly not to a degree that makes it suitable for making a knife. You'll save yourself a lot of time in the long run if you do a little research before you dive into this stuff.

very true, but this is medium carbon, and i want it annealed, so stupid but, it does not kill my idea and it will be easier to put a bevel on tomorrow. XXXX

can i directly hammer in charcoal dust to add carbon? or will this waste more time?