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How complementary are smelting and blacksmithing? I'd really like to try my hand at blacksmithing, but it seems to be pretty limited by the availability of appropriate raw materials. I can see myself buying everything, getting super-stoked, sloppily repairing two or three of my dad's garden tools and then looking forlornly at my dusty anvil every six months or so. Smelting seems, to me, somewhat the opposite: as far as raw materials go you're only limited by how much appropriate scrap you can round up, but casting stuff doesn't sound nearly as fun as beating the poo poo out of red-hot iron. Combining the two- rendering scrap down into ingots and then pounding out whatever my heart desires- sounds like it's a match made in heaven, but I've never done any of this so obviously I don't know. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Nov 19, 2010 |
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Nov 19, 2010 15:53
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Slung Blade posted:In your case, I would look around for a technical college, a local smith, or a historical village or something where I could try blacksmithing first, before you commit to it as a hobby. That's what I did, and I found that I really enjoyed it, but it's too much of an investment (both monetarily and mentally) to just jump into. Yeah, I'm already doing this (looking, that is). There are a couple dudes who offer multi-day courses in blacksmithing, I might jump into one of the basic ones and see how much I dig it. Is it possible to make a living as a blacksmith nowadays? I'm not asking because I'm planning on it (lol), I'm just curious. I've always known about farriers, but they're a pretty specific subset of blacksmiths- beyond that, I can only think of the dudes who sit around in pioneer villages and maybe people who do high-end wrought stuff. e: reading about trip hammers- "The head usually weighed a quarter of a ton." 
Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Nov 21, 2010 |
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Nov 21, 2010 18:13
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'Nother blacksmithing question- What are some basic, fairly-common pieces of scrap which are ideal for smithing? I've heard about the leaf springs from cars being good for swords or tools, but beyond that I don't know much. I figure I might as well start keeping an eye out for raw materials, even if I'm nowhere near actually being able to use them.
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Nov 24, 2010 16:40
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jovial_cynic posted:I'm also interested in this question. d'you mean rebar? Now that my Scavenger-Vision's on, it's the closest thing to a steel blank that you see a lot. Strikes me as just about the right size for pounding into knives and such.
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Nov 24, 2010 20:30
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'Cause it died in A/T about as fast as I expected it to, and 'cause it's relevant, anyone know anything about harvesting bog iron?
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Nov 27, 2010 22:14
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http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/oilburners09.html How does this burner design stack up? It looks stupid-simple to build compared to others, doesn't need much in the way of machine-tool resources, can run off of either waste oil or propane and it's apparently able to melt iron. Also, where does one get a tuyere? They're referred to in most furnace designs but only in passing and I'd have no idea where to get one.
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Dec 4, 2010 01:58
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So how'd you get in if it's not open to the public? (i don't know what most of that poo poo does but it still looks hella cool)
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Dec 12, 2010 20:59
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I'm gonna use Christmas to actually get my foot in the door, so- what's a good blacksmithing book or two, the kind of thing you ought to start off with? Some were posted earlier in the thread, but fat loving chance of me finding them. I realize hands-on classes would be a lot more useful- and I'd like to get into one of those too- but I figure it's a decent start.
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Dec 14, 2010 23:41
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Carbon Copy posted:this... this thing. hmm quote:That phase diagram, and others like it, is a fantastic resource for a practicing blacksmith (or anyone who works with metal). I'll probably get one or two of the comprehensive ones, as well as the bladesmithing one just as a huge cocktease (so I hurry up a bit and actually do more than just admire other people's work).
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Dec 15, 2010 02:32
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Slung Blade posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62iHEaE8uzI  'Cause I'm curious: What happens to the wire they used to bind the steel billets? It looks like you'd need it until you began welding 'em together. How long would this entire process take, from beginning to end (aside from cosmetic poo poo like the fancy grip)? How much time does the log-splitter deal shave off?
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Dec 18, 2010 15:17
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I got the Art of Blacksmithing and the Complete Modern Blacksmith for Christmas and have thumbed/read through them, so naturally questions How viable/frequently-done is it to weld steel scrap together to make larger stock? It was suggested that hammers can be manufactured by folding flat bars/strips of steel back upon themselves, and that seems really convenient seeing as how stock of the size/mass needed to make a hammer isn't going to be an easy or convenient find (beyond older hammers themselves). How many of your tools can you make out of mild steel? High-carbon steel is always recommended but it looks like the sort of thing you'll never have enough of. Could you get away with case-hardening mild steel hand tools/knives/etc, or splitting/welding high-carbon blades into chisels?
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Dec 31, 2010 23:50
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I actually have; I used to beat the poo poo out of scrap metal in my grandfather's shop when I was a kid and I walked around for two weeks with a rusting splinter above my pupil. Optometrist thought it was a brain tumor at first 'cause he couldn't see the metal at first. good times 
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Jan 1, 2011 02:06
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Where do Canucks (Slingblade being the only one I know of) buy their blacksmithing poo poo from? I've got an eye on a 75-lb anvil and a starting hammer or two from Princess Auto, if only because it's cheap and no big deal if I lose interest, but beyond that...
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Jan 6, 2011 20:23
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quote:Are you looking for something else specifically? Let me know, I might be able to help Nothing in particular; I'm mostly concerned with the anvil, seeing as how forges are pretty straightforward in design and you can make nearly any tooling you need once you have the basics. It seems like you end up needing things like hardy/pritchel holes for anything more than basic shaping, and any improvised anvil's gonna lack that. Or maybe I'll just get a 300-pound Peddinghaus and hope like poo poo I end up getting into it.
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Jan 7, 2011 02:10
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RE: anvil construction- What's the best/easiest/cheapest way to harden the work surface? Right now I'm leaning towards (not that it's based off of anything) a 1-1.5 inch plate of 4140 (with pritchel/hardy-holes cut, if I can manage it), welded to the biggest mass of steel I can scrounge up. I see a lot of people recommending using hardfacing instead and then grinding it flat afterwards, and that would probably be cheaper in the end, but that sounds a lot less durable. Or should I just not care and let it work-harden? I'd imagine I'd have to be pretty careful to not ding the poo poo out of it for a while, but energy return seems to be the biggest factor in anvil design so it intuitively seems like it'd work. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Jan 12, 2011 |
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Jan 12, 2011 16:14
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Slung Blade posted:I would recommend against a bit of plate for actual forge work. It works really well for Jovial because he's doing sheet metal. If you're putting real force behind your strikes into plate, even 1.5" plate, it will bend and deform eventually. I figured as much, which is why I'd want it backed by a lot more mild steel. Obviously a whole anvil made of tool steel would be awesome, but that poo poo is expensive. The 1.5" was kinda arbitrary, but plate seems to max out at 2" anyways so it doesn't make much of a difference. I don't have any solid plans yet, but if I find a really nice lump of scrap steel to use, I figure it'd be worth taking the time to extend its' life a bit. quote:Is this going to be "the" anvil for your rest of your life, or do you plan to buy a regular one at some point. The answer to this question will dictate how much effort you should put into that project. I'm probably gonna take a basic course in February or March with these dudes: http://thak.ca/ It's more expensive than other equivalent courses in the area, but it makes a point of having you make your own basic tooling (tongs, chisels, rake/poker, etc) to take home, which is pretty neat. Most other places offer a single take-home tool, but this way I'll be set.
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Jan 12, 2011 22:41
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Gas vs. coal forges? Coal seems like the first, natural choice; it's cheaper to start up with, it sounds way more fun than a gas forge, and it has that rustic appeal. I've been doing reading, though, and a gas forge sounds a lot more convenient- it sounds easier to learn on, as they supposedly don't burn the iron like a coal forge does, and a lot of the commonly-cited issues- gas forges that run too cold to forge-weld with- seem to be avoidable if you go with tried/tested burner designs or just buy proven, pre-assembled burners (like the T-Rex/Shorty, whose site seems to be down). Also, gas won't irritate the neighbours nearly as much, and blacksmith's coke seems to be a pain in the rear end to get a hold of in my area (propane, not so much).
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Jan 16, 2011 23:45
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Slung Blade posted:Gas forges are great and all, but they're somewhat limited. They're limited in three dimensions, whereas you can put almost anything into a solid fuel forge, provided you can make a fire deep enough to take in whatever little bit you're working on at that moment. I actually came across a 'clamshell' forge design that comes pretty highly-recommended. It has a heavily-insulated 'hood' that can be moved up or down, and you stack firebrick underneath it to make any size of forge you need for a given project. Looked pretty clever.
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Jan 17, 2011 02:24
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waffleking posted:Here is a replacement power cable terminal I made from a piece of scrap copper-clad aluminum this week at work. This was a 3" thick piece of 6061 aluminum explosion bonded with a piece of 1/8" thick c101 copper. Out of curiosity, what's the point of cladding aluminum in copper? Was it a cutoff from a one-off project, or does it have an actual application?
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Jan 31, 2011 01:05
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I finally got to spend some quality time with a forge. Results: Left to right: -Cat's tail -Fire-poker -unfinished wall-hook, still attached to stock rod -coal rake [little things] -Centre-punch, hot chisel, cold chisel -Iron Cross (heh) -wall-hook [/] -left-handed tongs designed to hold round stock -clinker-poker Blacksmithing is a lot of fun and very rewarding  e: and, naturally, I only notice that my cold chisel is really, really wonky now.
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Mar 10, 2011 00:43
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Slung Blade posted:Ambrose: nice work. Is the cold chisel tempered already? If it's not you could just fix it up before you do. If it is, you can use it as is, just be careful when striking it. The Scientist posted:Ambrose, nice job man. Bastard who ran the course knew exactly what he was doing, too- on the last day he showed us all the cool poo poo we'd make in his intermediate course, stuff like bolt-headers, drifts, scroll jigs, you know, actual production tools. Good thing it doesn't run until the fall, it'll give me time to gently caress around on my own.
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Mar 10, 2011 14:27
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I took a crack at a mini-tomahawk drift on the last day, when we had an afternoon for a personal project, but it kept getting worse and worse 'cause my hammer control was/is awful. I gave up and used it for twisting practice. Tomahawks seem pretty easy, relatively speaking, and I want the forge-welding experience. Plus they're cool and people will love them as gifts Now I wanna do it on my own. I figure I'll end up running any forge I build off of charcoal ('cause my parents own a cottage with lots of trees and a cord or two drying/dry at any given time, and free fuel is free fuel)- are there any particular caveats to building a forge with charcoal in mind? Does it matter? And is there an accepted 'economy' pattern of improvised forge? I've heard a few mentions of brake-drum forges, but beyond that not much.
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Mar 10, 2011 20:17
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I didn't think of not needing an ash dump. That'll make things way easier. I think I'm gonna drill a dozen holes in some 1 1/2" steel pipe, throw an end-cap on one end, and bury it in a wheelbarrow-ful of earth. I'll rake up some river-clay (yes I know there's plenty on our property) to line the firebowl with, and that should work for anything simple. If I leave the end-capped end protruding I can unscrew it to clean the pipe out, too. e: with the obvious caveat being that it won't be portable or relocatable at all, but I'd only be needing it for weekend stretches at a time so it doesn't sound entirely unreasonable to just build a new one for every weekend project I want to do.
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Mar 11, 2011 18:08
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Probably...? If you're decent at playing the flame right? I don't have any acetylene experience, so maybe this is all dumb navel-gazing, but it isn't too hard to punch past oxidization colours and get into a low-red glow with a boring old propane torch (depending on the stock, natch), if you've got patience and don't mind wasting a lot of propane for a single kinda-half-heat. Acetylene burns hotter, so yeah, it's worth a shot. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Mar 13, 2011 |
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Mar 13, 2011 01:42
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Those are both awesome. Any particular reason you don't just push into 'knife' territory with those letter-openers, aside from the extra hassle of a nice handle/handguard/etc?
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Mar 13, 2011 16:17
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Out of curiosity, how long/how many heats did it take to get the approximate shape of that chisel? Working really heavy stock is a huge pain in the rear end, and I more or less avoided it when I had forge-time because it was either a struggle to shape or I risked burning the work trying to get it sufficiently soft.
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Mar 14, 2011 14:22
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The Scientist posted:Now that you've explained that its an anticlastic raising snake, I still have no idea what it is. http://www.oldworldanvils.com/anvils/4x4.html I've given serious thought to picking one up myself, but I'm a Canuck so shipping will suddenly start sucking a whole bunch. I haven't figured out if it'd be cheaper to just buy a chunk of 4140 locally and get it milled to a useful shape.
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Mar 15, 2011 16:07
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http://www.appaltree.net/rusty/index.htm someone please take google away from me
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Mar 15, 2011 22:09
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One of the blacksmithing books I have mentioned that the easiest way to make rasps is to kludge together a... rounded-off pointy tool with one bevel, and then tap/hammer it into the hot rasp blank, kinda 'rolling' it upwards to lift up a rasp-point. I'm not describing it very well, but I don't have access to the book at the moment. The main point of that passage was describing one of case-hardening's neater/less time-consuming applications- heat up the more-or-less-finished mild-steel rasp, sprinkle on case-hardening compound, wait for it to burn off, and your rasp-tips are now carbon steel.
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Mar 17, 2011 15:56
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Am I a complete retard for wanting to build a billows instead of just buying a pharmacy hair-dryer? I'll be working with charcoal in an earth-pit-of-a-forge, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to go Full Primitivist while I'm still learning. I'd imagine working a billows gives you a much more... tactile feel for the fire as opposed to fiddling with a butterfly valve. I'm mostly looking at building a box billows, if only because it's simple as poo poo and it provides constant airflow. Like this: 
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Mar 20, 2011 23:47
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Slung Blade posted:A lot of guys still use the hand cranked blowers, this is pretty much the same thing. Having more air than necessary isn't a problem since you can just pump it less. In this case, having as much air as possible would not be a bad thing, provided you can pump it. Yeah, I had the opportunity to use a cranked squirrel-cage blower-equipped forge, and I honestly preferred it quite a bit to an electric blower. The fire never 'gets away' from you, in terms of control. And yeah, I was considering building it out of PVC piping instead, which would make things like piston alignment way simpler. Then it's a piston bellows, not a box bellows, but V  V
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Mar 21, 2011 12:08
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I'm throwing around ideas for a first project, and I'm leaning towards "as many nails as possible until I can do a nail in one heat and/or I want to kill someone". Mostly 'cause they're hard to gently caress up and the endless roteness of it will help me develop better hammer control/work efficiency. It's either that or hooks, and I'd imagine I could sell off my finished nails a lot easier/faster than hooks. Which I may or may not opt to do, depending on how lovely they turn out and how many I end up with. e: the point to this post being, is this a terrible idea that will make me put a sledge through the side of my garage? And I can do this without a real anvil if I throw the nail header in a vice and get a hold of a Caterpillar tread/a sledgehammer head set in concrete/whatever for lightweight drawing out? Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Mar 24, 2011 |
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Mar 24, 2011 00:25
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How should I go about securing/building a gently caress-off huge work-bench? I can't really see 300-pound masses of hardwood being a thing you'd find at Lowe's, and yet it seems requisite for a lot of stuff I'll be doing, especially metalworking with a non-post vice. I can probably spin this into "baby's first welding project/excuse to buy that buzzbox you've been vaguely eying", but I don't think a workbench is an ideal first likely-to-gently caress-up project.
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Apr 3, 2011 19:45
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I was only concerned because I'll almost certainly be doing a lot of work directly on my vice for some time (anywhere it can replace an anvil/hardie hole, basically). I've got a coupla huge rounds cut from some big trees we cut down a while back, I might bolt the vice to one of them for the time being as a compromise. E: That reminds me- should I get a well-built ~nice vice~ or cheap out, on the assumption it'll be a total loss in vice terms after a couple of months? Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Apr 3, 2011 |
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Apr 3, 2011 21:20
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gently caress. gently caress That's the kind of poo poo I imagined cobbling together when I started looking into blacksmithing. They're all awesome
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Apr 6, 2011 01:40
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For hammers specifically, can't you punch the eye with a round drift and then dress the sides flat, ending up with an oval eye?
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Apr 6, 2011 15:19
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The Scientist posted:Ambrose, I've been watching the rebroadcast of Ken Burn's the Civil War (the American Civil War, that is), and for the first time ever found out that you're account has a name sake. Well, natch. If I didn't have this stupid loving Forums Cancer you'd see my titillating moustache av  #driftchat: is there any reason you can't make hex drifts? It seems like a stupid excessive thing, but as long as you can buy hex bar alongside normal stock it seems like a neat little touch to stuff you're punching (and you could probably use it for handles proper, as it wouldn't spin like it would in a round hole). And if you could make Hex Handles, it'd seem like a reasonable compromise on the usual oval/teardrop drifts- it's probably way, way easier to buy some hex bar and grind it to a taper, rather than free-hand forming a rounded drift. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Apr 6, 2011 |
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Apr 6, 2011 23:42
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am I reading that wrong, or did it take multiple attempts with the bottle jack, including one that almost damaged the jack?  e: also, if you put up pictures can you include one of the double-hosed cold-rolled rod?
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Apr 13, 2011 18:03
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Try #1 at making charcoal. I spent all yesterday morning chopping wood and tending a 55 gallon drum full of burning hickory. When it was mostly reduced to glowing embers, and I could break a 'log' with the fire-poker, I capped it with a steel sheet weighted down with rocks. Then, late last night, my dad took the steel off to check it out, and didn't put the weights back on. This morning I wake up to an inch or two of hot ashes. 
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Apr 23, 2011 20:43
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So I Built My First Forge. Turned out surprisingly capable for a hole in the ground, and for something I built and then broke down in a day. Cameraphone takes goddamn tiny pictures, but ehhhnnn V V It's a very simple charcoal forge. The bowl is just dirt and charcoal-dust/ashes built up over a steel plate I drilled holes in. Below that was a trench that ran to the wee blower unit (the only fancy thing I had access to), which I later covered with birchbark and buried. The 'tuyere plate' ended up being too small, and the fire began 'leaking' around the edges and burning unevenly, but other than that it worked just fine. I don't think I could have welded in it unless I fixed the leaky tuyere and built the bowl up more to get a deeper fire, but other than that it worked just fine.  I hammered out this vaguely spooney-gougey thing from a bit of scrap angle iron, mostly to demonstrate that the thing works. I'll probably take the corners off, do some interesting twisting with the handle and turn it into my fluxing spoon.
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Apr 25, 2011 22:01
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