backyard forge
The reason I wanted to build this was my interest in being able to get into basic blacksmithing without spending a lot of money.
(This should be preferably 3+ lbs depending on how much weight you will be comfortable with swinging around for a few hours)
(This can basically be a huge chunk of metal or a large flat piece of granite. I use an old piece of railroad track which weighs about 15 lbs. It has been plasma cut to have a horn )
Portable Forge Stand
You should arrange your concrete blocks in order that the blocks form a box with an open front. You should have an extra concrete block to block some airflow from the front and to keep some more heat in when you start forging. Now, attach the large steel pipe to the tube of the shop vacuum using the easiest way possible for you. For me, this was gorilla tape. Place the other end of the pipe sticking into the backside of the forge and try to make the hole decently sealed by placing bricks around it. Your forge should be about ready.
To start the forge make a small fire using paper and the wood or hardwood charcoal. You should cut a few pieces of wood ahead of time to make sure you have enough once the fire gets started. Once the fire has gotten some embers going in the wood, you can add the air induction. This much air might actually put out your fire if it has not been going long enough, so make sure the fire is really going. Once it starts, you will know if you have it right, as the fire should be very impressive and hot.
Twisting: This is a simple way of making a piece of metal decorative. Simply put one end of a hot piece of metal in a vice and twist the other end with a pair of tongs.
England Travels: Backyard Blacksmith Workshop (016 Dsc_1135)
Upsetting: This is when you take a long piece of metal pointed towards the base of an anvil and hit the opposite end. This causes the metal to form outward at the base.
I hope you have greatly enjoyed this Instructable. It was fun building it myself. If you have any questions or comments please ask them below in the comment section. I would love to hear feedback/what would you have done differently.New hobbies can be expensive. Remember the cash you had to shell out the last time you took up something new? It was probably painful. But I’m here to tell you that doesn’t have to be the case with backyard blacksmithing. Sure, you usually get what you pay for, but you can still have a lot of fun smithing for cheap. Here’s how I just set up a budget backyard forge for only $30.
Aside from hammers, fire, and steel, the two most important parts of the blacksmithing equation are the anvil and the forge. The broken anvil I’m using is a loan from my dad, though you may find your own at a scrapyard for as little as 20 cents a pound. As for the forge, many people get by just fine making a forge from a vehicle brake drum. Braze some legs onto the sides, add an old hand crank forge blower and fill it with fire.
I Made A Forge In My Backyard
But if you can’t score these junkyard treasures, you can make a forge with the materials you have at hand. For this experiment, I used a $5 yard sale Hibachi hamburger grill and some local rocks that I know to be fire safe. Make sure you get your rocks from a dry location and test them in a campfire (while you’re at a distance) to make sure they don’t explode. NEVER use rocks you collected by a waterway (high rate of explosion). As for my forge blower, my daughter’s purple hairdryer works great. It even has variable speeds! I taped it to a pipe that goes into a fitting attached to bottom of the grill. And what does this eyesore burn? I’m using the same fuel that frontier blacksmiths used – hardwood charcoal. Yes, it burns up fast and it won’t get your metal too far past orange heat. However, the price is right, the availability is there, and it burns very clean. It’s clean enough, in fact, to cook my lunch over the dying embers when my work is finished.
Smithing is a complex craft, full of variables, and you’ll go farther and faster with some expert tutelage. If you can study with a pro, your learning curve will be shorter. But if all you have is a book on smithing, you can gain the basics with a little reading – and some trial and error. My favorite books on the subject of beginning smithing are Edge of the Anvil by Jack Andrews, and The Black Smith’s Craft by Charles McRaven. With a little book research, a few well-chosen supplies and some imagination, you can create your own backyard blacksmithing forge for a lot less than you might think. Here’s a breakdown of my supply list.It was a beautiful day out today, and I felt guilty about sitting in the basement doing nothing, so this afternoon I decided to build a backyard forge. I’ve had a forge in my backyard before, a couple summers ago. It worked really well but it was something I built as a temporary ‘proof of concept’ sort of project, and it only lasted a few weeks or so.
During the short time that I had it, using the forge was a fun little hobby, and I managed to create 3 different knives on it using railway spikes as my metal stock. They were nothing particularly special, but it was a pretty cool feeling being able to take a chunk of metal and hammer it into whatever shape you want. You don’t have to be exceptionally talented or creative to still enjoy the process of creating something.
Clay And Cinderblock Backyard Forge... Will It Work?
A forge is a relatively simple thing, all it has to do is contain some coals and allow you to bury some metal in to heat it up. Having a way to flow air through it helps to get the coals white hot which in turn makes it more effective at heating the metal. There are of course plenty of advanced designs and builds that people have done including using propane or coal, but I like to keep things simple (and cheap). Besides, the results are what matters, and I daresay my results were satisfactory with my primitive setup.
Since tearing that temporary forge down two summers ago, I’ve attempted once to rebuild a more permanent one, but I encountered some real big snags. I had figured on using cinder blocks for the general frame, and lined the inside box area with fire brick. This setup gave me a good flat bed area to stack and light my coals, however when it came to airing the coals I was just blowing the air in from the top.
This worked ok, but was definitely not efficient nor convenient to do. The result was that it took an incredibly long time and a huge amount of coals to heat and re-heat my metal each time. The other major failing of that design was that even through the layer of fire bricks, the cinder blocks simply couldn’t handle the heat, and after lighting the forge only a few times, they started crumbling apart rather quickly.
Simple Forge From Red House Bricks
So with that experience behind me, I had some definite goals in mind for today’s attempt at a working forge. For starters, I needed some materials that wouldn’t crumble away after a few exposures to the heat. Fortunately, one thing I have plenty of is rock, and so I figured that would be the best option for holding up to the heat, plus it would match the rest of the decor in my yard.
The next thing I knew that I would need for sure was a way to reliably and conveniently flow air into the coals, preferably hands off. Lastly, I of course needed a way to contain the coals. My solution to these problems was to buy a 4 gallon stainless steel utility pail as my container. At the bottom of this pail I cut a hole and fit a brass drain tube, which in turn sat in a 1.5 inch PVC elbow. The PVC elbow attached to a 4 foot length of PVC pipe, for which I dug a shallow trench. The PVC pipe lay in the trench and stuck out of the ground at an angle for easy access for my shop vac.
The pail sits on an old brake drum which was handy because of the hole in the center allowing access to the PVC elbow, however the main purpose of it was just to give the pail a flat, solid surface to sit on, and this project would have worked just as well without it if I merely flattened out a patch of the dirt appropriately.
Homemade Forge Plans To Meet All Your Blacksmithing Needs
A handy solid surface for the pail to
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