/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>122417
Here's some interesting links you may want to peruse,

http://www.beautifuliron.com/smithforge.htm

That link details quite a bit of beginner and advanced knowledge of forge use, design, and fuel types.

Backyard mud and old tin can forge using homemade charcoal,
http://www.survival.com/?page_id=105

I figure that link will really get people's creative juices flowing when they realize just how easy it is to make a simple forge to work metal with. This is the type I'm going to be making some time soon. Something simple for making knives, carving tools, and chisels.

Stuff like this makes me way to take some rebar and make a sword out of it.

I started forging blades as a side hobby. Here’s my advice on getting started yourself.

1) FUEL: Use charcoal (wood coal / biochar) for forging before you move on to propane. If it turns out you suck, at least you haven't sunk in a bunch of money into something you'll never do. You can easily make charcoal as per one of the million videos on youtube. Don’t use charcoal briquettes, they are expensive and do not produce coke (pure coal).

I make charcoal in a 55 gallon steel drum with ~48 evenly spaced 1/2" holes drilled in the bottom. I raise the drum ~1" off the ground with scrap tiles and fill it with non-pressure treated scrap wood, split softwood that has had the bark removed, or a combination of both and build a small fire on top.
PROTIP: Make sure that you leave adequate airspace between the pieces of wood so that they can burn quickly and uniformly.

After the fire burns to the bottom of the stack, I cover the top of the barrel with a steel or ceramic plate and cover the bottom of the barrel with dirt for an hour or two so the fire is smothered. After I open it up, I spray it with water until the charcoal is soaking wet. Wet charcoal works best, and it’s just smart to have hose handy when doing large burns to make charcoal.

PROTIP: Stand back when you take the cover off. Built up creosote can react with atmospheric oxygen and spontaneously combust in your face if it’s still hot.

If you want to get fancy or live in a city where there are burning restrictions, make a wood-gasification retort like this:
http://www.twinoaksforge.com/BLADSMITHING/MAKING%20CHARCOAL.htm

Wood gas does not produce sooty smoke.

2) FORGE:

You will need:
An old BBQ/steel box OR a bunch of firebricks OR a hole in the ground
Clay, dirt, sand, wood ashes, and water
A vaccuum cleaner or blowdryer
~2' length of steel pipe.

Make a pipe tuyere forge: it’s basically a pipe with upwards-facing holes drilled in it that you force air through. Be sure to plug the end of the pipe opposite the air intake. The BBQ will act as the holding tank for the coal, and will hold the pipe in the bottom as well.

If you want to be super cheap, you can just dig a pit in the ground and line it with a wet mixture of clay, dirt, sand, and ashes and lay your pipe tuyere in it.

Insulate the pipe (cover with about ½”)the pipe and bottom of the BBQ with a wet mixture of clay, dirt (or clay soil), sand, and wood ashes. Don’t plug the holes in the pipe. Let the clay/dirt/ash mixture dry overnight.

PROTIP: Most electric blowers are too strong for forging. Wire in a light dimmer to adjust the voltage going to the blower. Excess oxygen will react with hot steel to form scale on the surface, which degrades the quality of the metal if it gets hammered into the steel later on.

Example brick forge:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/green51.html
Hard firebricks (different from regular bricks) are unnecessary if you have a BBQ, but will certainly work well for making a brick forge.

3) STEEL: While it's possible to use cheap steel (rebar) for forging a blade if you heat treat it right after the forging process, it's better to start off with good quality scrap steel.

PROTIP: Trainspikes lying around along the mainline of a railroad are best, as they are usually high-carbon to begin with. They are also the perfect size for making a full-metal trainspike knife. An old car spring also works very well once you get it formed to shape.

4) ANVIL: McGuyver a makeshift anvil by setting a ~10 pound sledgehammer head into concrete.
You want to make sure that you are able to get in close to the anvil to work your steel, so it’s best to use a 6” PVC pipe as a form for the concrete that the sledge head will fit into, and then place this in a separate heavy concrete base. Make the base form out of wood or whatever.

Be sure to pound two perpendicular metal rods at different heights into PVC pipe at the bottom where it will contact concrete base so it looks like a + sign. This will prevent the PVC pipe from rotating in the concrete base and will greatly improve the overall stability of the anvil.

Use 80 pounds of concrete for the anvil, MINIMUM.

After you pour your concrete into the PVC pipe, settle the concrete by repeatedly poking it with a stick or metal rod. Then, jiggle the sledge head into position and hold it there with duct-tape and a wooden crossbeam (so it doesn’t sink into the concrete). Leave about 2 ” of the sledge head exposed. Wait at least THREE days to let the concrete cure to its hardest BEFORE using the anvil. While it’s curing, you can spray it down with a fine mist of water every once in awhile to made the concrete harder.

Shitty ASSKEY drawing below:

# = concrete
*** = sledge head
|| = PVC pipe
[] = base
o = metal rod

****
|****|
|###|
[##|###|##]
[##|#o#|##]
[#o|###|o#]

You can loop rope around the anvil and stake it to the ground if it rocks around too much during use.

PROTIP: Hold your arms loosely at your sides and ball them into fists. The top of the anvil should touch your knuckles. You’ll probably have to put this anvil on a post, so use stacked sheets of particleboard. The particleboard compresses and moulds itself over time to hold the anvil quite well.

5) FORGING: Alright, now that we’ve made all the necessary preparations, it’s time to cook. Build a small fire on your coal bed and get the coal started. Get air going to the forge and let the coal burn for about 5 minutes before you start heating your steel. Keep the coal surrounding the pipe damp, and make sure the biggest pile of coal is directly over the pipe. Sometimes it helps to bury your piece in the coal, or to cover your piece with a piece of plate steel or some other non-combustible heat shield while you heat it up.

When you heat your piece, it is best to work the steel at its critical temperature. The critical temp is ~1450 degrees F, but a much easier way is to just test it with a magnet. At the critical (transformation) temperature, steel looses its magnetic properties. This temperature is when the steel crystal structure is smallest and most malleable, and responds best to change.

Hold your piece with a good set of pliers and work it using moderate blows with a good hammer. Let the hammer and the anvil do all the work. Don’t try to use the pliers to work the piece if you can avoid it, your wrists will thank you later. A good 16 - 24oz. Ball peen hammer works quite well.

Don’t expect to make a masterpiece the first time, just focus on getting a feel of the whole thing. Once you get the hang of it, you can work up in the power of your blows and the intricacy of your work. Keep in mind that you won’t have much work time before you have to reheat the steel, so make it count.

PROTIP: If you work the steel when it’s too cold, it can crack and then you’re up shit creek.

PROTIP #2: After you finish your project, clean out your forge. Over time, non-flammable material (clinkers) will accumulate in the forge and block off the air holes in your pipe tuyere.

6) ANNEALING and GRINDING: Once you have your piece to roughly the shape and size you want, heat it slowly and uniformly up to the critical temp. Quickly remove it from heat and bury it completely in wood ashes to anneal the steel. Let the piece cool slowly overnight. Annealed steel is soft and flexible, and easy to grind down to its final shape.

Grind your piece to its final shape using a bench or belt grinder. This just takes a lot of time and practice. Remember, at this point it’s easy to remove steel, but nearly impossible to add it. If you’re making a blade, don’t put an edge on it yet.

PROTIP: Don’t fuck up.

7) HARDENING: Hardening makes the steel much harder than it is in its annealed state, but also more brittle. Get yourself a big can of grease. Do NOT use water for quenching when you go to harden your blade. Use animal fat with a high salt content (i.e. bacon grease) or used cooking oil with salt mixed with candle wax (about 70% fat to 30% wax) that has been heated to ~120 - 140 degrees before quenching.

Fire up your forge again and slowly and uniformly heat your piece to the critical temp, and then hold it there for ~20 – 30 seconds extra. Remove your piece quickly and stick it into the can of grease until it is totally immersed. Let it cool about 5 minutes or so. This makes for the hardest steel.

Another method of quenching a blade is called the edge quench. With this method, you quench only the edge of your blade by rocking it back and forth on top of a wooden block immersed in a pan of grease until the entire piece is cooled. This makes for both a hard edge and a flexible body, the best of both worlds.

PROTIP: Be careful, because the grease can ignite and start a fire.

8) TEMPERING: Tempering relieves stress in the steel that occurs after quenching, making it both hard and flexible. After the piece has cooled, remove it and place it in an electric oven set to ~400 – 440 degrees for an hour. Take it out and let it cool for an hour. Do this 2 – 3 times.

PROTIP: An electric toaster oven works great.

9) POLISHING: Get some 400 grit sandpaper and make your piece look good. Work up to a finer grit like 800 – 1000 or even 1600 if you’re totally OCD about this.

PROTIP: Rub your piece by hand but remember to just polish it, not grind it.

10) SHARPENING: (I’ve been assuming this entire time that you want to make a blade, but if not, consider yourself done) Fire up your grinder or other sharpening device and put a nice 20 degree edge on your piece. Don’t remove more than absolutely necessary.

PROTIP: Don’t an hero.

If you want to learn more, read "The $50 knife shop" by Wayne Goddard. Best DIY blacksmithing guide out there.

http://www.amazon.com/Wayne-Goddards-Knife-Shop-Revised/dp/0896892956

p.s. Apparently I fail at ASCII drawings. Oh well, hope this is helpful to some anon.

>>122899
This guy has fantastic advice, theres some pointers I'll be taking from there (especially about charcoal) but there's only one thing I'd like to point out.
Using a sledgehammer head can be dangerous as fuck because you can't verify the quality of the steel. Same goes with hammers. Now of course you'll be wearing a face mask or safety glasses, but I'd rather not have chunks of steel coming towards my face with or without glasses. If you're going to pick up blacksmithing it's better to put in an extra half-days effort driving to a scrapyard, picking up a piece of railroad track and mounting it on a piece of wood (look up some tutorials.)
This works better than a sledgehammer aswell, I mean if it can handle trains running on it for decades it can definitely handle your hammer. I have one of these and it works great for it's price (really shouldnt be much more than 30 bucks for a 3' piece of railroad track). And with your hammer - GO ENGLISH, don't get an Asian hammer (no offence) but you can't trust the quality of steel. A family friend of mine did some farrier work on his farm and a piece came off of his hammer and nearly took his eye out.
That's just my two cents, I may be stupid or paranoid but I really think its worth the effort. The other guy has excellent advice though, I wish I had someone like him when I started off to give me a rundown on everything in one single thread. It took me days to research before I started.

>>122903
I've read that you can check critical temp by when the metal loses its magnetic propertise? Haven't had time to verify this in my own forge, but it seems logical. Do you know anything about this?

Also, what's your smitty look like? Got any pics? I just wanna compare mine and make some improvements

lol captcha: improve scales

OP, do you have any skills in welding? can you use an oxy-torch and do you own an angle grinder? I'd recommend investing in an angle grinder or oxy torch (whatever fits your budget) as they are a near necessity.

>>122896
>>122897

That, and please for the love of fucking christ read anvilfire.com. DO IT. DO IT NOW. DO IT YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW. DO IT EVERY FUCKING DAY UNTIL YOUR EYES BLEED AND YOU PISS BLACKSMITHING INFORMATION

it is just a hobby, but it's an exceptionally fucking dangerous hobby at that. so unless you fancy missing limbs, eyes, parts of your face, or being dead, you'll read it.

>>122909

Definitely agree on the safety equipment. I've had scale blast off pieces I've been working on and cut my face, and fortunately I was wearing good goggles so my eyes were spared.

Invest in a good pair of welding gloves if you want to keep your hands from getting singed as well.

Also agree on the railroad track anvil. You can either grind down one end to make a makeshift horn, or just use it as it is. Either way you'll have to find some way to beef up the weight on it. I have an 180 pound peter wright anvil on loan that's 110 years old, and honestly I never really use the horn.

And yes, definitely invest in a decent (non-asian) hammer. I started out with an old 16oz. ball peen and it's still my favorite to date.

If you get serious in blacksmithing, you'll find that old gear tends to be better than newer gear.

>>122925
Good to see others agree. Also, a good way to make your RR anvil heavier is to mount it vertically not horizontally. This gives the anvil alot more 'mass' as there is alot more weight under where you'll be striking. It may reduce the workable size to a couple inches square, but that is pretty much gonna be all you need considering your hammer is small and if you were using it horizontally you'd only be using one 'sweetspot' anyway. You can try to weld on a horn, but if you're just doing bladesmithing etc its not urgent.

Forgot to mention this little protip.

PROTIP: The easiest and most objective way to test the hardness of an anvil, or other metal surface that will be used for an anvil face, is to hold a large (1/2" - 1") ball bearing about 18 - 20 inches above the metal surface. If it bounces back into your hand after you drop it, it's damn hard metal and you can definitely use it as an anvil.

Also, certain granite stones are hard enough to be used as an anvil as well, but I do not recommend this.

>>123118
if you set up a video camera and a tape measure, you can measure the height of the bounce on the steel ball, thus calculating the percentage of rebound, which then means that you can tell if it's good, bad or fuck ugly.

i'd recommend not working on something with a less that 25% rebound

http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/

There's some awesome stuff on this site about forges and foundries. The used motor oil injection foundry is pretty damn awesome actually and the final design he came up with is super simple it seems.

>>123118
>>123317
Should one test their hammer like this too?

>>123355

You can try testing it in that manner, but chances are it won't have enough mass to provide an adequate ball-bearing bounce of any sort, and if you did use a ball bearing it would have to be proportional to the mass of the hammer (i.e. like a BB or something tiny).

Basically, the hammer applies pressure to the hot, malleable steel that is being worked, and the anvil provides a hard backing surface for said steel. It's like squishing out silly putty flat on a table with your fist - the table provides a hard surface and your fist provides the necessary pressure to make it happen.

Does that make sense?

>>123495

Oh, and a couple more protips.

PROTIP #1: you can test the hardness of a hammer by placing a nail on its face, and hammering the nail with another hammer. A good hammer will flatten the tip of the nail and have NO damage on its face.

You can also decide between two hammers by hitting them together and picking the one that doesn't end up with a dent in its face, but don't be a cock and do this to hammers you haven't purchased yet.

PROTIP #2: You can reforge a hammer to become harder by following the points outlined above in the tutorial above, ignoring the annealing part. Basically, find a nice hammer, stick it in your forge and get it slightly beyond the critical temp, and then quench it in hot oil. Proceed by tempering it for at least 3 cycles.

This is sometimes referred to as "Baking" or "Dressing" your tool. Works pretty well on shitty anvils too, but you'll need a fucking monster forge and extra help to work on something as big as an anvil.

Keep in mind that reforging a hammer will burn the handle to ashes, so you'll need to fit a new handle to the hammer afterwards.

You can also soak your hammer in water before using it to swell the wood and make for a very tight and secure fit between the metal head and wooden handle.

>>123495
The hammer bounce test can be performed across many hammers to determine the worse, average, and best hammer metal.

Any give, from the blow from the hammer, that is not the metal you are working is energy lost. Meaning you need to work harder for every degree the hammer or anvil is softer. Obviously, there's a point where hardness and brittleness need to balance, but that is where the soft metal you are working on comes into play.

Checking in! Just spent two hours bashing around in my forge, getting ready for the final stage on an arty project I'm doing for a friend. Good advice in this thread.
I'll also point out, STICKY.

>>123553
>>123118
>>123317
Only thing I'd add to this is that you can also test steel by heat-treating it (hot, then quench), and running a file or heavy sandpaper over it. If it shoots sparks, it's high-carbon. If it doesn't, it's mild and not hardenable. Mild steel can be useful (like for art projects or tongs or hooks or nails or any other tools that don't need a force-bearing surface), so don't throw it out, just be aware that it's there.

Rebar, by the way, is of _famously_ variable quality; don't make swords out of it unless you're damned sure it's high carbon and you can get it to R55-65. I use rebar for big stuff like stands, but I've got better sources of scrap for tools and blades (PROTIP: leaf springs from cars, and rr spikes as mentioned).

>>122896
Fuel can go one way or the other; propane fires are a buttload easier to maintain for a newbie than a coke fire, and if he's got a tiger torch or another kind of 80K+ BTU venturi, he can build a kaowool forge for $20 and shoot the flame directly into the side (see anvilfire from the sticky link, they've got designs). If he doesn't, then yeah, getting into propane burners can get expensive- but if he wants to build his own, anvilfire has $30 venturi assembly plans, too.

Which isn't to say one or the other is superior, but I've used both and I'd say propane is probably a lot easier to run, once the forge is set up. It's a bitch to get to welding heats, but as a newbie I had a terrible time keeping track of my forge heat while I was doing everything else.

>>123585
I don't think anyone would actually be using a sword for actual swordly things. Unless they want to cut tatami mats in competition or something. Otherwise, just melt it to properly heat and recast it as an ingot and work it from there into a good metal.

>>123589
If I build a forge I think I'm going with two foundries, a small one for low temp metals, a larger oil injected one for stuff like iron smelting, and of course a forging area to whack on the metal and keep it hot for whatever purpose I see fit to whack it into shape for.

>>123605

An electric foundry works well for low temp metals, but for high temp metals you'll need a blast furnace.

Two more protips.

PROTIP #36: While forging a blade, Japanese swordsmiths soak their hammers in hot water between use, and paint their anvils with a layer of hot water. When a hot piece of steel is placed on the wet anvil and worked with the wet hammer, the steam produced from the transformation of water blows any scale off the steel and prevents it from being hammered in.

Be careful though, as the steam produced when a wet hammer strikes a hot piece of metal can quite literally blast the hammer out of your hands if you're not expecting it and the blown off scale can cut you a good one as it flies.

PROTIP #37: Anhydrous borax (20 mule team borax roasted in an oven for a few hours works fine) dusted onto a hot piece of steel will act as a flux when the piece of steel is heated and will allow it to reach its critical temperature at a lower temperature than normal. It will also inhibit the formation of scale on the surface of the steel. Anhydrous borax is "almost" necessary to successfully forge damascus steel.

>>123647
And from my experience, while you _can_ forge mild without borax, borax makes it a hell of a lot easier. Hit the grocery store, it'll be in the cleaning aisles, cook it at about 300F. Uncooked borax is full of water and will just fizz and bubble uselessly when you sprinkle it on hot steel.