Junkhound, Sphere, and others who have those odd talents.
I know a kid who is just WILD about knife making. Interest level, not necessarily ability yet. But if he’s going to be able to play with it, he needs to be able to blacksmith a little, and probably in his folks backyard or garage or . . . he needs something that will heat and temper. So I dont have the foggiest but how does one go about making a small and relatively inexpensive forge on a budget?
Got any steering or direction? Books, websites, ideas, all welcome.
Real trucks dont have sparkplugs
Replies
bump da bump bump----BUUUUMP!
the story you have just seen is true...
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
I don't know much about it but I've heard of people making their own small forge out of simple stuff like a charcoal grill and a hair dryer to blow air up from the bottom.Edit - Oops - meant to address that to RW.
Edited 8/2/2007 12:42 pm ET by BobI
email me...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
Here's an outline of my forge:
- 1 old gas water heater, turned upside down.
- The top cut off to place the bottom, which is now the top, at a comfortable working height. The result is a dished thick steel bowl with a hole in the center for air.
- I cut a big "mouse hole" at the new bottom to gain access to the end of the flue. To this I attach a 4" elbow of HVAC duct. Connect your favorite air moving device here. I've used a box fan and a vaccuum cleaner discharge using an autotransformer to control the output.
- The flue hole in the bowl I covered with a piece of sheet metal perforated with an awl.
- I filled the bowl with sand and lined the periphery with fire bricks.
Fill the bowl with fuel like really dry wood, charcoal, coke, coal, whatever, start a fire, then turn on the air. It gets steel to dull lemon yellow heat.
jpegs . . . goooooooooood
got any?Real trucks dont have sparkplugs
jpegs . . . goooooooooood
got any?
Just for you, here is simplicity, just tie the weed buner to the hardie hole and have at it.
Oh, if you see another 400# anvil like this one cheap anyplace let me know. <G>
View Image
Edited 8/2/2007 8:08 pm ET by junkhound
A propane forge is easiest to start with, and for a $15 Harbor Freight propane weed burner and about 16 fire bricks, you can be ready to go in less than 1/2 hour.
Simply stack the bricks into a 'doghouse' in a fireproof area (even an open patch of dirt in the yard) with one end open and the other end with a 1" by 6" gap or so, stick the weed burner in the open end and have at it.
A leaf spring off a car or an old lawnmower blade is a good starting place for someone's first knife. My first 2 knives (55 years ago) were simply ground down from files.
When I was a kid in IL, we used the coal furnace in the basement during the winter for a forge, worked great, always hot.
Anvilfire.com and swordforum.com are good places to get some good forge building advice for more complicated setups.
The HF $40 weed burner works better than the $15 one. I have 2 coal/charcoal forges but have not fired them up in over 20 years, always use the propane type forge now - also better in that you don't get the sulpher from coal onto the steel, plus coal hard to come by on the West coast now.
PS: Most the time for small quick jobs I just use a propane weed burner as an open torch. First forged knife was using a couple of plain old propane torches to heat a lawnmower blade in the open.
Edited 8/2/2007 1:15 pm ET by junkhound
RFDTV had a forge & anvil show on for a while (don't know if they still play it). It was about metal working as a hobby. The first episode I saw, the dude made a forge out of a wheelbarrow pan and some 2x4's.
Looked very inexpensive. Although he did mount an electric blower on the bottom of it (rather than using a manual setup). The blower would have been the most expensive piece.
This might be the show's site:
http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/tv/forge/
I think they have books & videos. I kinda stopped watching it because it seemed to head more towards touring blacksmith places rather than showing techniques.
========
FORGE & ANVIL is a series of ten half hour television programs exploring the world of Blacksmiths. Produced in a hobby magazine format, the programs introduce viewers to the tools, materials, skills and personalities involved with modern blacksmith. The original notion for the series came from the series host, Dr. Alan Rogers, an experienced farrier and blacksmith.
"BLACKSMITH BASICS" #102
This second show continues to acquaint viewers with the blacksmith craft. From the open shot at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, Alan Rogers describes the series then launches into a demonstration of how to make a simple home coal forge with a wheel barrow as the main element. He then visits a steelyard and points out the various sorts of steel stock that will be used to make FORGE & ANVIL projects. Alan returns to his home forge and makes a watering can and poker that he will use in upcoming projects. This program ends with Alan talking to one of the John C. Campbell blacksmith instructors, Judy Berger, about how to get started.
jt8
"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
There are three knife magazines out there ... Blade, Knives Illustrated, and Tactical Knives ... that regularly have articles that discuss home workshop equipment, including kilns and forges.
Your basic requirements are for some kind of fire clay, and a means to force air into the forge.
Less obvious is that the forge and blacksmith area need to be fairly dark, so you can better see the glowing metal.
the forge and blacksmith area need to be fairly dark, so you can better see the glowing metal.
A spreading chestnut tree is needed for shade....
Joe H
Roar!
Now that's funny right there!
you know what happened to that chestnut tree?
be the smith a mighty man is he
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Edited 8/2/2007 4:45 pm ET by rez
I think I read recently they've found a few specimin trees and hope to revive the species.
Maybe hallucinating that, might have been American elms?
Joe H
I got them here, well, I DID. The damm deer ate almost all of em
American Chestnut Society has Hybreds for joining,,,250.00$ gets ya a slew of twiglings to plant.
I had 200 I think...don't recall exactly, but I was mowing back there just this morning, and most are just de-foliated by the deer..we had a late freeze and then a serious drought, they are eating everything they can find....hay is 50% of what is needed for cattle, and nuts and berries are scarce.
Due to that, folks are dumping cattle at rediculous prices, a 400 lb er is going for 1.00$ a LB. When corn skyrocketed last yr. same thing happened, dump the cattle, feed got too high to get em fat for auction, now it is hay shortage, second cutting is just now happening...first was dismal, this was delayed, and third may not happen.
Oh, Chestnuts...I thought it was good idea..therefore it was bound to destruct before my eyes. Damm rats with Hooves.
This crap actually did keep the deer off our stuff this year.
http://www.plantskydd.com/
It's blood & guts and whatnots - comes as a powder you mix and spray.
Spray didn't work, have to mix it thick & put it on with a brush. But it did work, the deer didn't eat anything that was painted.
Expensive, but cheaper than trees.
Joe H
Good Idea.
We've pondered fencing, but lawdalmighty $$$$$$$$$,and if I fence, swmbo will want the goats back there, and I aint doing goats again, if I can help it.
Chestnut is worth anything to bring back, what wonderful, tree.
here is some...I did back in NC.
View Image
Nice table, yours or customer?
Takes a hell of a fence to keep deer out here, be cheaper to buy new trees every year.
Don't need no stinkin' goats here either.
Joe H
I made that for display at a place I worked at in NC. Tiger Mountain Woodworks. We did a slew of furniture for R.Redford's Sundance Ranch/Lodge . That was just a whim on my part.
When the drawer is closed , if the knob weren't there, youd not know it had a drawer. I just love working with Chestnut, but that was as wormy as I'd ever want to deal with.
My kitchen table, and coffee tables and Hutch are Chestnut, I saw an add in FWW back in the 80's for 400BF of Chestnut in Philly..I was the first to call, and drive down there, it was all glued into panels 3'x7' x 1'' thick, for CASKETS,,,,it was in a basement of a funeral home. So I bought the whole pile, some cypress was mixed in, but all in all it was un-wormy Cnut, glued up in about 1880 or so.
I paid a buck a BF!
My exwife got half the furniture, but I still have the coffee table and Trestle table.
slammin' hand on the table and shouting!
ya gotta love a good deal
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Damm Skippy it was a deal. They just wanted it gone. two trips in a Toyota PU, it fared out to closer to 600BF, with about 200 of it being the cypress.
The casket ends were 3'x3' slabs, all "glue joint" ( like a T&G sorta) and hide glued. Funny thing is, a casket of rot resistant wood is still weakest in the glue holding it together.
Be the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out...
For experimenting, I don't think you need a forge right away....there is a book called The Making of Tools by Alexander Wegers, he describes how to do everything you need to do with a torch and a kitchen stove. Maybe not the most efficient way, but it works fine, and I've made a number of knives and tools using that method. I know other people that have had good luck with it too. I've seen some beautiful tools.
Anyway, the book is a really good introduction to basic toolmaking.Cabinetmaker/college woodworking instructor. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
Let's not get over-blown on this. A simple $20 tabletop BBQ, lined with fire clay and supplemented with a hair dryer for a blower, will get you started. I suggested the magazines, as they also will have advice for making the benches, anvils, grinders, etc., that the kid will want. Likewise, a visit to a knife show will allow him to start to 'network."
The Village Blacksmithby Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Under a spreading chestnut treeThe village smithy stands;The smith, a mighty man is he,With large and sinewy hands;And the muscles of his brawny armsAre strong as iron bands.
https://www.ruralheritage.com/village_smithy/poem02.htm
Lonfellow's blacksmith shop was more than poetic license. It sat at Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the proprietor was one Dexter Pratt. And yes, the spreading chestnut tree stood out front. When Brattle Street was widened in 1876, the tree feel victim to progress. In honor of the poet, the children of Cambridge, as well as the town, had a chair made from its wood.
The chair is described as "black-stained Eastlake-style armchair" made by H. Edgar Harwell of Boston from the wood of the "Spreading Chestnut Tree." The seat was tufted leather, the seat rail carved in the gothic or black-letter style with a portion of the verse from the original poem etched around the rails:
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
As you can see there as many forge ideas as there are Smithies.
My old one was a truck brake drum and a bellows reclaimed from a "Schwimmer" ( a part of a Pipe Organs breathing apparatus)
3 pipes welded to tripod it up off the ground, and exhaust pipe for the wind line to the axle hole in the center of the drum. Radiator hose for the bendy parts.
Files, and springs seem to be the carbon rich steel for tools and weapons of wood and flesh destruction.
Tongs are the secret, it takes a pair to MAKE a pair. I used horseshoe nail nippers as my first set of tongs, too short, so they made my next and so on. As the tongs get hot, ya need to switch out to a cool pair.
I had used mine for melting old pistons and doing some alum sand casting as well...crucibles are fragile and handleing them is a whole nuther education.
As an aside, Blacksmiths are Iron, Whitesmiths are Tin, copper, and pewter.
Go to:http://www.lindsaybks.com/
One of the great all time wish book sites.
cooooooooooolReal trucks dont have sparkplugs
Everybody that loves tools has to read this book - written by Nevil Schute, a British engineer in the 50s. One of my favorites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustee_from_the_Toolroom
Forrest