Home Built Forge 2.0

I am still very proud of my boys for building the large forge as their summer project. It was the first post I put on this blog. I did however run into an issue with the forge, it's a fuel hog. I figure that if you had 4 or more people all needing a forge at the same time the large forge is awesome but, unless you're working on something big the forge turns out to be too large for just 1 person. So a new project was born, to design and build a smaller more fuel efficient and more versatile forge. I again did some scrounging for materials and came up with what I think is a good design.

So I based my design on the brake drum ideas that are popular online. However I felt that the normal brake drum forges where too shallow so I got 2 matching drums and welded the open ends together. I then cut the top off to make a nice deep fire pot. I used some rebar for handles and supports and tubing for legs and tuyere. I also added an ash dump to this design. 

First thing that you notice is the handles. I made them taller and centered so that I can use a rod, pipe or anything through the handles to remove the lid or place the lid on while the forge is hot without being burnt. You'll also notice the tabs coming down from the lid. These lock into the ridges and keep the lid stable.

I wanted my fire pot to be removable for cleaning or any needed repairs. So to do this I welded small stubs of 1/2 inch rebar to the old rim to match the bolt hole pattern in the bottom of the fire pot. This allows the fire pot to easily be removed but, keeps it study for operation. The fire pot also holds down my diffuser plate. That way if it ever gets damaged it can simply be removed and replaced at a later date without having to rebuild anything.

I added the ring of rebar to act as a handle be able to move the forge when needed, to act as a buffer to help keep anyone from getting burnt and to give me a place to hang s few tools to tend the fire. The ring could also act a s a base for a support if I ever needed to add one.

Here you can see that I made a fairly deep fire pot in order to get some good controlled heats while at the same time attempting to conserve fuel. Both the large forge and this small forge were built with the idea of using wood and charcoal as fuel but, from what I've been told coal or coke could be used as well. I don't know of any coal suppliers near me in the middle of the Arizona desert but, we have lots of mesquite hard wood. I cook with mesquite cuttings all year long and always have some on hand.

I also did some research and found out that the EPA allows you to burn used oil and wood scraps form construction sites to pallets as a fuel source in forges, heaters, boilers, foundries and more. According to the EPA this is allowed, legal and considered recycling because none of it ends up in landfills and since it's considered waste the EPA sees it as using that energy for another purpose with little to no waste product left.

You can see here that I made 2 removable cutouts. I bent some rebar to match the curve of the fire pot to attach to the cutouts. Then I added 2 upright bars connected to the fire pot at an angle so the cutouts could be removed when needed.

My idea here was to be able to remove either side as needed or for longer work I could remove both cutouts in order to heat small sections at a time.

The nice thing about this design is the flexibility. This allows me to use a relatively small forge for many things and since the smaller forge is more fuel efficient I can conserve fuel, which is always a good thing.

Here is a picture with the cutouts removed and the top on. I plan on using this option for anything that needs concentrated heat like the forge welding of pattern steel.

Also I left the bolt and axle holes open in the top. I wanted use the top to get a chimney effect but, not blow all the heat out of the cutout openings.

I also had planned to use the cutouts in place and the top on when I was finished in order to help extinguish the fuel rather that just burn everything out every time.

Just a note on the fire pot. As you can see from this picture I did not try to completely weld the seem of the 2 brake drums. I was afraid that if I did then the weld may crack during a heating or cooling cycle. Once a crack starts it will run the entire length of the entire weld. So by only welding short beads if one cracks I don't have to worry about the entire upper half of the fire pot suddenly coming apart from a  crack that occurred during a heating or cooling cycle. This would be very bad to have happen while the forge was being fired. So I thought it would be a good idea to try and avoid that and not make a continuous weld.

I added an ash dump on this forge. The angle iron that I used wasn't wide enough so I had to add short triangular pieces to each side to make the closer wide enough to seal the bottom of the tuyere pipe. I just used 2 oversized nuts for the hinge point welded to 2 small steel plates to provide enough space for the pivot. I used a nut and bolt or the pivot pin and welded the angle iron to the pivot pin. I lined up the angle iron and the bottom of the tuyere to get a good seal and welded the steel plates to the tuyere.

I also decided to weld on some counter weight to the end of the angle iron to counter act the force of the air coming in through the tuyere. Depending on the force of the air that I need to use I ma have to add a little more counter weight.

Once I use the forge for a little while and I make sure everything is working right I'll give it a coat of black heat resistant paint to clean it up.

I also wanted to say that all of the material I used foe this forge was also scrounged for free so there was no cost for any of these materials.

The only other thing that I may end up doing is to add some clay and sand refractory around the base or the fire pot inside the old rim to help reflect the hat back to the fire pot instead of radiating out. I'll use the forge and test it out first to see if I need to add it or not.

I hope this has helped answer some questions or maybe given you some ideas.

More Home Built Anvils

I have now made another anvil just to show another idea and how much simpler it could be. I was also given a small homemade anvil as well that I thought would be a good thing to show.

So here is my second home built anvil. I used the bottom of the center post that I cut off of the first anvil, some rebar, an old truck rotor and a pipe. The leg pipe had a steel flat welded to the bottom already so I left it on and used it. 

So the first thing I did was to file and grind out the center hub of the rotor so that I could press the pipe into the rotor hub. At first I was using long bar clamps and a 2"x4" piece of lumber to press the pipe through but, in the end it was much faster to use a 3 pound sledge hammer to just tap it through. I also made sure to leave the flat of steel level with the bottom of the rotor so the base will sit level on the ground. I ran a weld bead around the bottom of the exposed pipe and top of the hub. I added a steel ring left over from a bearing race on the top of the hub to give a solid surface fro the  rebar to mount on the base.

Then I spent some time getting the top of the anvil level with the base and welded it the anvil to the pipe. I ran a second weld bead to reinforce the connection to the leg pipe.

Next I measured and cut 3 pieces of rebar to again reinforce  the anvil top. Just to add a little more stability I tied a wire to the bottom and middle of the rebar to pull it in adding a slight curve to the upper section of the rebar. The rebar was welded to the bottom of the anvil, the middle of the leg and to the flat ring on the top of the hub.

The last thing I had to do was to turn the whole thing over and drill a hole in the center of the steel flat on the bottom of the leg. This was to fill the leg with sand to deaden the bell ringing of the leg when the anvil was struck. After filling the leg I took a small steel rod and tamped the sand down to add some more. Once the leg was packed full I welded the hole closed and ground it flat. No more ringing and the anvil is solid. 

This anvil like the first one I built was made entirely out of free and leftover scrap. Not to bad if you ask me. This just proves that anyone can do this if they want to put a little effort into it.

This was the anvil that was given to me. It was made out of an old railroad rail. It had been cut on and drill on the back end and was really rusty. I was able to weld up the wholes damage on the back end and use a flapper disk on a grinder to clean, smooth an polish it up. How ever the day before I took these pictures we had a sudden rain and it flash rusted the top of the anvil. This is really no big deal since it's just a little surface rust and comes right off. It turns out here are a lot of these little anvils floating around and they are pretty solid. I've even seen a couple that had a hardie hole put into them. 

So my conclusion about home built anvils is that they are very doable. When you think about it the blacksmiths of old had to make their own general and specialty anvils so this is just part of the learning curve that I would think all blacksmiths of old would have gone through. For me this is a journey of discovery of myself and the skills of the past. I am enjoying this journey so far and I hope you will too.

Home Built Anvil

Well I started down this path to get into blacksmithing with the idea of starting from scratch with a nonexistent budget. My boys and their friend decided they wanted to build a forge which I documented in an earlier post. So here I have this huge forge but, nothing to use to work anything on. So I start down the road to finding an anvil. All I can say is that this road was one heck of an experience.

First off I figured on finding an inexpensive anvil at someplace like Harbor Freight but, that was a nightmare. I tried to buy one that was in their advertisement but it was always out. After trying to buy one for 3 months I finally called the corporate office to find out what was going on only to find that they were no longer carrying the anvil. So scratch that idea. Next I tried find a used anvil but, after months of searching I couldn't find any in my area and the ones that I could find were not cheap and the shipping was even more in some cases than the cost of the anvil. So scratch that idea too.

So I started reading everything that I could about anvils to figure out what to do. Well what I found kind of shocked me at first. The earliest anvils were just stones and after that they were just a block of iron. It wasn't until just the last few hundred years that anvils started to take the shape that we think of as an anvil today. So I got this idea to try and make my own anvil and this how I did it.

First I scrounged some steel pieces. you can see in the picture below the steel was varied, rusted and dirty but, hey you don't complain when you get the steel for free.

I was able to get 2 steel blocks that were cutoffs, 3 used high carbon steel pieces from some heavy equipment, a used steel pivot pin and a piece of hardened high carbon steel scraper blade. I can thank my father in law for helping me to find this steel although he wasn't quite sure about my idea but, he was willing to wait and see.

So I cleaned up the steel with wire wheels and grinders to be able to get some good steel exposed in order to try and get the best welds I could. Next came the challenge to figure out how to design and assemble the anvil. After some test fits I also found that I had to cut the angled sides off of the rectangular late that I was using for the top of the anvil. This let everything fit together better.

Once I had the top plate cut (which turned out to be harder than I expected because that is some tough steel) I set the center post and welded it to the top plate. Then lined up the sides and welded those on. I used some extra cut steel bolt lengths that I had to put through the holes in the side to weld to the center post to help stiffen and support the sides.

For the record I over welded this thing like crazy to make sure that it was strong enough to stand up to the repeated impacts and vibrations. It's hard to see in the picture but, I had ground down the corners to a 45 degree angle about 1/4 inch deep on the sides and on the center post. I did this to get the best penetration and the strongest welds I could. It's also hard to tell in the pictures but those weld beads are about 1 inch thick.









Next I had to figure out the horn (beak or bick depending on where you are from) and the center support. Here I laid out the steel blocks to be able to measure and cut the center support as well as mark to weld up the horn.

Here you can see  I welded up the center support as well as the steel blocks for the horn. I also welded the other part of the center support but, you can't see it in the picture as it is behind the center post. I again ground a 45 degree angle about 1/4 in deep on all of the edges to be welded. I also went back and made 2 more passes on the welds for the center support. I figured this support would end up taking the brunt of the impact vibrations so I wanted to make sure those welds were pretty beefy.





Next I added a square tube and round tube. I added these as liners for the hardie hole and the pritchel hole. I wanted to make sure that I could keep things from blocking those holes.

Here's what the top looks like at this point. My plan was to keep just the hardie hole and pritchel hole open and to weld up the other holes so that I can get a solid flat surface that I can file and grind level and smooth.

Thanks to my son we were able to scrounge these 2 large flat pieces of steel for the feet. They are about 60 pounds each. After adding the feet the anvil is now pushing 200 pounds! I have a friend of mine that is a professional structural welder that stepped in at this point to help add some serious welds on the feet and top of the anvil for me. Let me tell you his equipment welds so much faster that mine and has the high carbon wire and rod. I was amazed how fast it was but, I won't try to get one because my wife would kill me.

I ground down the filled holes on the top plate as you can see in the picture. I just have to say that wow that high carbon steel welding wire is much harder to grind down than even the structural rod that I had been welding with before. So once all that was ground down flat I started to shape he horn, Rather than grind it all of I cut the angles off first then started to work on it with the grinder to smooth it and round it out. I did however run into a problem on the bottom side of the horn. Do to the angles that I cut off and the amount of steel that I ground down, to help round out the horn, I lost my connecting welds on the front bottom section of the horn. So the joints had to be ground out and I then rewelded. This made the horn nice and solid. You'll also notice that I cut off the rest of the center post that extended past the feet. I cut it off and then ground it down level with the feet to give the anvil more contact and support down to whatever I mounted it on.

Here you can see my finished anvil. After some filing and grinding. I may still have to round the horn a little more but, I figured I would try it the way it is first to see if I would need to our not. My hardie hole is about 1 1/4 inches square. I also used a file to give a little relief around the hardie hole. Man does it take forever to file that steel! I also left the edge on one side with an almost sharp corner and the other side is rounded more.

This is the back of the anvil. I put a plate on it for several reasons. Also notice the bottom of the plate is notched out. This was to leave and opening for the pritchel hole so anything punched in it would be able to fall out or be cleared. The reasons for the plate were both structural and to cover all of the filling. Ok now I know you're saying what filling? Well in the beginning my anvil rang like a bell. Oh it was bad. I had to figure out something to deaden that ring or there was just no way I could use it. So I took some bent up old T-post fence stakes that I had and cut them up into pieces and hammered and welded them into the open spaces inside the anvil that were acting like resonance chambers. This also added more weight to the anvil. My idea worked pretty well and the bell ring is gone. I didn't like the metal T-posts showing out of the back though so the plate was there for double duty. I did leave a few places open like the holes in the side and a couple on the bottom in the front and back just in case I need to deaden the sound any more. If I have to do anything else I figured on melting some lead and pouring it into the openings that I left but, only if needed as my anvil now is already about 225 pounds. This thing is rock solid!

My next project was a stand to support the anvil. I used angle iron to make the frame and distribute the weight. I also included a cutout to allow for the pritchel hole to be cleared without the anvil having to be removed from the frame. The anvil fits great and the frame worked great but, I ran into a small problem, the legs. Because I used hollow pipe that I had on hand I ran into the bell ringing again. It took me a few minutes but I cam up with an easy solution that worked great, fill them with sand. One thing we have a lot of here in the desert is sand. It worked like a champ and it makes the stand very stable.

So now I can setup m anvil and give it a try. After I work out any bugs and finalize everything I'll give the sides of the anvil and the stand a coat of black high temperature paint to give it a little rust protection and make it a little nicer.

As I've been writing this up I just had a thought about possibly adding a hanging rack for the hammers I've collected to the side of the frame. Then again maybe I should make the rack separate so I can hang my tongs on it too. Hmm so food for thought for future projects maybe.

Home Built Forge

Two of my teenage sons decided that instead of sitting around playing video games or staring at the television this summer, they wanted to build a forge and learn how to use it. I figured this was a great idea. They have been interested and wanting to learn blacksmithing for some time and I feel that these are great skills to have. So we begin our adventure in blacksmithing with our home built forge.

My two boys Jason and Charles invited their friend Jordan over to help with the project. I want to say that I'm proud of the three boys, they did the majority of the work.

We started out looking for materials to build the forge out of so we didn't have to spend any money. We found a steel drum, rebar and galvanized steel fence posts to use.

We split the steel drum down it's length. Charles got the fun job of cleaning out all the dried paint out of the drum. 

 

 

 

We then welded the two open ends of the drum together to form the trough of the forge.

After welding the trough together we cut some of the tubing to make a frame and started welding the frame and trough together.

Here's Jordan welding up the frame to the trough. This was Jordan's first welding experience and he got right in there eager to learn and do it. He did pretty good.

The next step was to measure and cut the angle on the ends of the legs so we could attach them to the side of the frame and trough.

Here we're setting the legs in place and tack welding them. After I tack welded the legs in place I let the boys finish up the welding.

The boys really did most of the cutting and welding. I only supervised, taught, explained and fixed a few things. They did almost all of the work.

 

 

 

We cut and welded some smaller pieces of pipe to act as supports from the frame to the legs. We also cut and welded rebar across as a brace between the legs. Finally we cut the legs down.

Here is the forge for the first time standing on it's legs. After we stood it up for the first time we cut, ground down and filed the edge of the trough so that it was fairly level and not sharp.

Next was to add the tuyere. Ya I know, you asking what the heck is a tuyere? Basically a tuyere is the air pipe that you attach to a bellows, fan or other forced air source.

The forced air is what increases the heat of the coals in order to get metal to the desired temperature. The more air the higher the temperature. 

 

Also you'll notice that one end of the tuyere extends away from the forge. This is for the connection to the forced air source. The other end will just have a removable cap so that it could be use as a clean out if needed.

So now that the tuyere was welded in place we need to come up with something to use as a diffuser. The job of the diffuser is to distribute the forced air evenly so all of the coals are heated the same at the same time producing even heat through the forge.

We had some very hard steel posts with holes in them all the way down the front. The posts reminded of street sign posts with holes to bolt the signs through. 

We cut them to length and then set them at an angle so there was an opening in the center and the holes were pointed to the sides. I welded only about one inch every six inches or so. This was to allow the center slot to stay open for air down the center.

So now that we have our diffuser done our next step is to place the forge out in the open away from anything flammable.  We cleared everything so we were down the dirt, and here in Arizona we have a lot of dirt! Now that it's in a safe place to use it we can move on to the refractory.

Ok what is the refractory and why are using it? The refractory is a substance used to reflect the heat back towards the coals. This helps to concentrate the heat towards the center of the forge where the metal is placed. The refractory also helps to protect the metal barrel and frame from over heating during use.

 

Since we do have so much dirt here in Arizona and the clay content is so high we used the dirt for our refractory. We also went to a local wash (dried stream bed) to collect sand to use in the refractory mix.

We used a screen to sift out any rocks, organic matter or anything other than fine clay particles and fine sand.

We mixed the refractory and applied it in layers. 

For the first layer we mixed two parts sand to one part clay. Only enough water was added to make the mix stiff and sticky.

We let the base refractory layer dry in the 110 degree weather so it didn't take too long. 

We the places a small amount of charcoal down the center on top of the diffuser. I wanted to dry the refractory a little faster and find the cracks caused by the heat early so they could be filled before the second layer is put on.

The first firing lasted for about an hour. When it was done several cracks had appeared but, overall the refractory stayed intact and worked very well.

We waited until the next day and cleaned out all of the ashes. We then made another mix of the refractory. 

 

This time however the mix was made one part sifted sand to one part sifted clay. The refractory mix was also mixed a little wetter than the first batch so that it could be pressed into all of the cracks.

A wetter mix is stickier and adheres to to the first layer better.

We applied the second layer to make sure there was enough thickness to make to refractory even and effective.

We'll have to wait until tomorrow to check for cracks and begin to fire cure the refractory.

We did also spend some time building a box to house a a recycled vacuum impeller and motor. Unfortunately the motor bearings self destructed after it ran for about 10 minutes. So we had to scrap that part of the project. 

 

Our current backup forced air supply is to use the exhaust port from a shop vac. We've tested it and it seems to work well enough.

Tomorrow we'll check for cracks and fill anything that have shown up and maybe begin to fire cure the refractory. 

I'm proud of Jason, Charles and Jordan for all of their hard work.