The making of a blacksmith

[VaScout]

I decided to begin learning the fine art of blacksmithing, so I started gathering some materials.

I got a nice big piece of railroad track from a friend of mine.

I went to the junkyard and picked up a 55 gallon barrel to use as a stand and hearth for my forge.

Another friend hooked me up with a super awesome brake drum... this thing is huge! I have no idea what it came from, but it's about 5" deep. This became my firepot.

I assembled the forge by cutting the bottom 4 inches off of the barrel... flipped the thing upside down and cut some notches in the lip for my work to sit in... then I cut a hole just the right size to fit the brake drum into... welded it in place and attached a homemade tuyere that I welded together from a floor flange and some exhaust pipe with a cheap heat gun for a blower. I put a grate in the bottom of the brake drum and this completed my forge.

I then went looking for a good stump to mount my "anvil" onto... no luck. What I did was get some solid concrete blocks from Lowes and some mortar... I built an anvil stand out of the concrete blocks and screwed a piece of wood on top of that using concrete anchors. I then attached the anvil to the wood... it's got pretty good bounce and not too loud.

I got the forge finished on Saturday. I set up the anvil and started the forge with some royal oak brand natural lump charcoal that I had picked up at walmart. It burned great, and got plenty hot enough for forging... I even overheated a piece so I know that charcoal will get plenty hot enough to forge weld. On Saturday, I forged a coal rake for the forge, and a crappy little firestriker.. I did notice that I used up a whole 10 lb bag of charcoal in about 3 hours... This was not good considering the charcoal was about 7 bucks... I started thinking about acquiring some real coal... I figured that coal would be considerably cheaper in the long run. After I had finished forging, A buddy of mine came over to see the forge... I think it got his stamp of approval... It ended up even better than I had hoped with the larger brake drum, I have a very deep firepot and get a pretty easy to maintain fire. the hearth is the perfect size (bottom of the 55 gal barrel)... everything went very well considering it was my first time blacksmithing in my whole life.


Sunday, I bought another bag of charcoal (used cowboy brand this time)... burned it up in about 3 hours again... I was thinking that this was going to get really expensive really quickly if I don't find a source for coal or build a kiln to make my own charcoal... All I did on Sunday was forge another firestriker... this one was considerably better than the last one with a flat face and some scrolling on the ends. I also attempted to make my first set of tongs using some rebar... I have been using large channel locks up to this point... the tongs came out pretty good until I went to hot-punch the hole for the rivet... I ended up overheating the metal after hot punching it and split the doggone thing! oh well... live and learn. I'll start on those again pretty soon.


First thing monday morning, I started calling around about some coal... I found out that there are no coal dealers in the county, but could probably get some delivered from a place just accross the North Carolina line... I did find that a company who used to sell heating coal had what was left of their coal pile after they quit selling it... he said that I could come out and help myself and he would charge $2.50 per 5 gallon bucket... That's about $27.50 for a full 55 gallon drum full... pretty good price if the coal turns out to be good... so I grabbed my shovel and some buckets and headed for the pile... When I got there I found out that there was very little coal left, but what was left was the perfect size and looked good and black (very little sulfur in it) I got pretty excited and spent the day picking around the pile and filling my buckets... ran into a bunch of copperheads in the grown up area of the pile... had to stop and say a prayer... then kept exploring... what I found supprised me... there was a very deep spot of what looked like really good coal, and by the looks of it there was enough to fill several barrels.


Didn't get any forging done on monday because I was busy exploring for coal.

Well... that brings us up to tuesday...


so tuesday morning, I jumped online to do some research on forging with coal... I figured that I have 3 buckets full and I was going to try it out before I started filling up barrels. I found some good information and also found out that ABANA (artist blacksmith association of north america) has a self-study distance learning program for aspiring blacksmiths... I joined, and printed out the first lesson... There was a section on setting up shop, and It suggested that right-handed smiths put their anvil on the left side of the forge so that the work piece has less distance to travel from the forge to the anvil thus loosing less heat... I decided that it was good advice so I re-arranged my shop to a mirror image of what it was. this took until about lunch time... I had built my anvil stand out of solid concrete blocks and mortar... it was a heck of a job to move it but I got it done.


so now it was time to start experimenting with the coal... I wanted to see what kind of heat I got, how big my hot-spot was, and how much coal I would burn compared to charcoal. I ate a healthy lunch of left-over dried out homemade lazagna from Saturday, and went to work.


I had been told by several smiths that I've talked to that coal would be difficult to light... I guess the bushcrafter in me won't accept that a fire can be hard to light... I was right. It only took me one piece of fatwood to get the coal roaring. The fire was very hot and the hot-spot was about 50% bigger than it was with the charcoal... I began to get excited so I started forging... The first item I forged in the coal fire was a clinker poker because I figured I'd need one now that I'm using real coal. The clinker poker turned out really good. I then grabbed one of my railroad spikes and started playing around... I roughed out a knife out of the railroad spike using some of the techniques that I'd learned from making my previous projects, plus some others that I'd seen demonstrated on youtube... It turned out pretty good considering it was my first one... I hammered down the head of the spike just a little to slim the profile but maintain the general shape of a railroad spike... then I heated it again and put it in the vice. I did my first hot-twist and it looked great... that took care of the handle of the knife, so I started working on drawing down and shaping the blade... it took several heats and a couple of hours of trial and error, but I got the blade to a nice roach-belly shape and drew down the bevel... It looks pretty nice and it was a lot of fun.


so lesson learned Coal is vastly more economical than charcoal for forging there is no contest... I forged for about 5 hours today at really high heats... this would have eaten up about 2 ten pound bags of charcoal, but I only used about 2 shovels full of coal (about 1/6 of a 5 gallon bucket) and I still had a nice batch of nice fluffy coke in the forge when I was finished. I probably could have gotten another hour of forging out of what was still in the pot! This is another benefit of burning coal... when you turn off the blower, the coal stops burning whereas charcoal will continue to smolder down to nothing but ash.


So... bottom line is that I can use up about $14 worth of charcoal per day, or about $.60 worth of coal for the same amount of forging... and the coal is more efficient... To be fair, some brake drum forges would have probably required more coal than that for the amount of forging that I did today, but I put alot of planning into my forge, and it's fairly efficient.

Some Pictures in the next post...

Ed

[VaScout]

Here's the overall view of the workspace:



Here's my "anvil":



Here's the forge:



The view from where I stand:



Inside the firebox:



Here's the coal I'm using:



My spool (workbench)



continued on next post with some of what I've done so far

Ed

[VaScout]

Here's the coal rake and clinker poker I made:



A couple of crappy firestrikers:



Here's the tongs I screwed up:



This is where I split the hole on them:



And last but not least... here's the knife.  Be kind... I know it's ugly as sin, but it was my first attempt and I haven't finished it yet:



Well... that's it for now... if it doesn't rain on me today, I'll be burning and pounding most of the day... we'll see what comes out of it.

Ed

[FrankG]

Looks like yer off to a good start ! 

[sherpa]

Awesome! If I had a place to set it up & time to do it I would be in the same boat. Good job!

[old salt]

Looks good. Better start than I had.

[William]

Fascinating!

[DEADDAWG]

I like the way you did your forge, all I have is a small portable forge with a hand crank blower. Gonna have to steal your idea if'n ya don't mind.

[twobarrel]

Nice job on the forge. A good air supply is a blower from an old car. Attach it to ur pipe and use a reostat switch with an ac/dc converter. You wont use as much coal and wont burn up as much steel. Controlling ur temp is crucial. Try other setups to find which way is more efficient and comfortable for u. During my 40 yrs as a farrier and blacksmith, i put my anvil on the right side of the forge about an arms length away,that way theres no wasted motion and youre not pulling hot steel across ur body. Congratulations on ur fine start and HAPPY HAMMERING.

[Ranger]

Looks like you grabbed onto that with both hands! keep up the good work! 

[VaScout]

Nice job on the forge. A good air supply is a blower from an old car. Attach it to ur pipe and use a reostat switch with an ac/dc converter. You wont use as much coal and wont burn up as much steel. Controlling ur temp is crucial. Try other setups to find which way is more efficient and comfortable for u. During my 40 yrs as a farrier and blacksmith, i put my anvil on the right side of the forge about an arms length away,that way theres no wasted motion and youre not pulling hot steel across ur body. Congratulations on ur fine start and HAPPY HAMMERING.

Well... that didn't even cross my mind!  I'm gonna have to make another trip to the junk yard.  That would also make it (kind of) portable... would run off of a car battery with the inverter unplugged.

Thanks for the compliments everybody... I'm having a great time.  I just finished my tongs... I just started over.  Used a much smaller punch and was very careful with the heat this time... they're kind of ugly, but they hold on way better than the channel locks I was using!

and by the way, deaddawg... it's not stealing.  I'm sure it's been done before.  There's nothing new under the sun you know. LOL

Ed

[alsask]

Look in the yellow pages and see if there is a foundry in your area.  If there is you can probably wrangle a couple of hundred pounds of coking coal off them.  It outlasts brickets probably 10 to one but you will have to start it on coal or brickets.

[twobarrel]

Ed, you will soon find out that one set of tongs isnt enough. You will end up making a pair for every thickness of flat stock imaginable plus all sizes of round stock. When i retired i had over 60 sets. WARNING: Coal smoke and anvil music are highly addictive !

[VaScout]

Thanks.  I made these tongs for railroad spikes.  Now that I know that I can make a functioning set, I'll be making more for other stuff.  I think I will start my tong collection with these and I'm also going to make some for small round bar and some for flat stock.

Ed

[voyageur1688]

  You are off to a good start. As for the tongs, you can add to them as you need to and you can taylor them to what YOU want as you get more experienced. Its something that can be addicting and will give you much joy for years to come. Wish I had more time to get out to mine but its just been real hectic for me.
By the way, keep your eyes open for an old hand crank blower that you can add to it at a later date. Nice thing with them is you can heve more control over the fire temps and you dont need any electricity to run it so as long as you have coal, wood or some form of hot burning fuel for it you can still use the forge.
Voy