But do you have a forge?

[Mitch]

I am new here but this is a basic to long term survival. Even if you don't use it, build it! A good forge can be built now for less than $100 and you can still find anvils or a piece of heavy steel cheep! A broken fork from a large fork lift makes a great anvil as they are spring steel, have great square corners, and you ain't gonna bend them :) Just wondering how many had built a forge? (I haven't heard it mentioned)

Mitch

[patience]

I've built several, for myself and friends. I ilke to usea brake drum from a 2 ton truck for the "duck's nest", and bolt a 2" pipe flange on the bottom. Then, screw in a short pipe nipple and a Tee fitting. That leaves the bottom open, where I add a short piece of pipe and tractor muffler flapper with weight added to it to keep it closed. Just flip it up with the poker to dump ashes.

The side outlet of the Tee goes to the blower or bellows. I fill the brake drum with refractory cement, or very rich portland cement and sand mix, to which I add as much crumbled firebrick as possible. That will last quite a while, but fireclay mortar is best. While that mix is still soft, I lay a grate of some sort in it. Used to use cast iron basement drain grates, but can't find them now, so I scrounge up any chunk of cast iron and drill it full of holes. This works, but not as well as a real clinker breaker. The grate necessitates fooling with the fire more to keep it clean and drag out clinkers.

[Junie]

But do you have a forge?


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v412/gayleannesmith/smilies/hiya.gifOooo...Oooo...Oooo... I do! I do! There was a complete blacksmith shop in the barn when we bought the place!

[Teg]

If you're looking for tools to get set up you can take a look at the site below, some decent gear available.

http://www.spanishlake.com/shop.php?category=138

[patience]

Best blacksmithing site on the 'net, IMHO:
http://www.anvilfire.com/

Lots of info for everyone, and great help for beginners in the Guru section.

These people are associated with a meeting/demo/huge flea market in Ohio each year, I believe. A friend, who attends every year, told me it is a 10 acre flea market filled with blacksmith equipment.

[Lurch]

I don't have a forge, but I do have an oxy acetylene torch. Next best thing?

[Teg]

I don't have a forge, but I do have an oxy acetylene torch. Next best thing?

Perhaps, but only until you run out of gas. ;) :)

[recoilless_57mm]

I don't have a forge, but I do have an oxy acetylene torch. Next best thing?

A forge is a whole lot more universal than a torch. The torch is more of a single purpose tool. The forge is as basic as the hammer and anvil.

JMO;)

OT

[medic]

I actually have two, both portable horse shoeing models. My skills are not what they should be, but I can get by at forging and welding. If you check around you can find someone in your area that is a blacksmith or knows one that can get you on the right track for a good portable forge, vise, and anvil. The tools, tongs and such are available too. Something else you might want to look into are some timber framing tools. They are out there and can come in handy if you ever need to build something out of wood and want it to stand a while.

[Mad_Professor]

A forge is a whole lot more universal than a torch. The torch is more of a single purpose tool. The forge is as basic as the hammer and anvil.

JMO;)

OT

You've not seen what a torch can do.

But a forge runs on hardwood.

[recoilless_57mm]

You've not seen what a torch can do.

But a forge runs on hardwood.

Sorry Mad_Professor, you have no idea of my skill set. We can all set up a set of of circumstances that favors each tool. If you are interested in basics & in some circumstances capabilities, then a forge will IMO most of the time win. This goes without saying, what happens when you don't have gas as one posters pointed out. You want off the grid, then get a forge.

JMO

OT;)

[gunsmoke]

I agree that metal working skills will be prime barter assers for well forever but expecially after the SHTF.

This is a link to a book with plans to build your own propane-fired forge just in case anyone is interested.

http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/ffurn/index.html

I'm not affiliated with Lindsey Publishing in any way other than as a customer for more than 25 years - an excellent resource for information on intermediate technology.

[CapeCMom]

I wish I has all of that stuff- My Dad's godfather was a blacksmith-all of his stuff is sitting in a museum in New York. He had a crazy awesome shop on Long Island. What a great skill to have.

[patience]

CapeCMom,

My daughter does decorative/functional things for herself with metal. It started with copper wire jewelry, progressed into silver, then metal kitchen things she couldn't buy like she wanted. She spent 4 years in the Air Force doing sheetmetal work on Huey's, C-130's, and Galaxy transports. She bucked rivets inside wing tanks, hung from 65 ft. tall tail sections on ropes and did repairs in the rain, because her base (Bentwaters, Sussex, Great Britain), was an air/sea rescue unit and had to get the birds in the air, pronto.

Now, she does wrought iron for herself, among other things. She has used torches of several kinds, and a couple forges at our shop. We found an easy, safe way to practice what she plans to do. Red hot iron responds exactly the same as cold modelling clay--the old greasey stuff that doesn't dry out. You simply cut out the round or rectangular bar shape from a chunk of clay, the size and shape you want to buy and start with. Then, using the same tools you will use on the iron (with lighter blows, of course) you pound it into what you want. This gives cheap, recyclable practice material, and you can do it anywhere.

When forging hot iron, you have a very limited time to do your work before it cools off, and the smaller the workpiece, the faster it cools. Very frustrating for a beginner. The clay allows you to think out each hammer blow, and do it over and over, so when you actually heat the iron, you know EXACTLY what to do and how to do it. Works slick! HINT: cut out your raw material shape, then put it in the fridge for a while to make it stiffer.

A forge can be as simple as a cheap barbeque grill with a layer of dirt or sand in the bottom, charcoal fire atop the dirt, and a blow dryer (with a burnt out heater element) for an air supply fed through an old piece of water pipe. This can be all you need to do small pothooks, kitchen tools, and sundry items. A chunk of old railroad track, or a cheap anvil from Harbor Freight, plus a ball pein and a cross pein hammer, a cold chisel, a punch of two, and a pair of channellock pliers to act as tongs. A lot of people have all that lying around.

[CapeCMom]

That's a pretty cool idea. I would have to find a place to set it up where it would be safe to do so. I remember when I was a kid, going down to the Smithy shop and watching Paul work. He would be covered with soot and he would be using these massive bellows to fan the fire while he had his iron pieces in. I remember it used to be so ungodley hot in there, and he would usually shoo me out after awhile, not only because of the heat, but because of the soot. A lot of what he did was fishing rigs and equipment for the oyster fishing industry on Long island,(his shop was right on the pier) but he also did some decorative things if you asked him. Mom and Dad have an iron railing that he did on their front porch steps.
He was such a great man-spoke very broken english-we are german-, but found the most simple things in life a pleasure.

It would be such a valuable craft to learn. Your daughter sounds like my kind of girl! I love it when women do non traditional jobs! She is obviously very good at what she does working on planes like that.

[patience]

My interest in forging is to make things that are otherwise hard to find, such as the hardware for horse farming, which DD and SIL are setting up to do in cooperation with some neighbors who have some lazy saddle horses.

IF you can find such hardware, it comes dear, and mostly it is antiques = worn out. Our family has done this before, and DD grew up with Percherons, raised a colt, trained horses, etc., before the military, so she knows the way.

Now, they have 32 acres of steep woodland, so a horse or two makes sense there. (Log skidders have to tie off to a bulldozer to get logs out of their place. Think hills steep enough that you have to walk sideways and dig in the edge of you feet to keep from sliding down.) We have assembled most of what it takes to do some logging and subsistence farming there, but there are missing links, and it all requires maintenance and replacement when it wears out. Thus, the forge setup. I put about a ton of Eastern Kentucky hard coal in some barrels, so we'll have fuel for a while without making charcoal. Not as clean as Pocahontas coal for welding, but it works fine if you coke it out well.

The cool thing about forging is, you can use a lot of scrap steel at little cost. One book I really liked on the subject is "The making of Tools", by Alexander Weygers. The author was a sculptor, and needed special carving chisels that were very expensive, so he made his own shop, then made the tools. Should still be available at Amazon. Excellent beginners book, with an emphasis on making-do with found materials for the shop tools, anvil, grinders, and all. An inspiring read.:)

He covers hardening and tempering by using heat colors to judge temperatures, too, and tells about how to choose scrap steels for a given purpose, based on the nature of the part they were used to make originally, i.e., things like using an engine valve or an Allen wrench to make punches, since those things required a hard steel and are of suitable size and shapes. Junk files are used for some types of cutting tools, but ONLY after you grind off all the teeth, since those tiny lines can be the start of cracking later. I've used them to make a set of wood lathe chisels back when I was young and very broke! NOTE: Files must be retempered for most uses, since they are brittle hard (so they can cut metal). Simple process, too. LOVED this book.

[NCLee]

If I were younger and in better health, I'd have some form of blacksmithing type operation here. Getting too old to handle the heat and don't have the strength in my hands that I used to have. (sigh)

Neighbor's son is a blacksmith on the side. He's done some beautiful work. Gave his parents a matching set of knives in hand crafted leather sheaths last Christmas. He does hand forged kitchen implements, like those used when hearth cooking was the norm. Neighbor built an circa 1800-1850 kitchen with a cooking fireplace. Give demonstrations on hearth cooking and Dutch oven cooking, too. Their son as made many items that complement their collection of utensils of the era.

If someone has the skills, it's amazing what can be done with discarded lawn mower blades, files, and leaf springs from vehicles, just to mention a few.

Lee

[recoilless_57mm]

NCLee: It sounds like a nice place to take the grandkids. It never hurts to show them how things can be made using basic skills. Never know what sparks an interest in a childs mind.

Watching our town blacksmith struck a spark in me when I was a small child.

OT

[bookwormom]

I don't know a thing about forges. I really feel we can't do everything ourselves. boy do I wish for a kind of community where folks know how to do different things, the black smith, the butcher, the wood worker..... We could trade. We had a blacksmith in our little village, we could hear his hammering sitting in school and now thinking back I realize how wonderful that was.