arthur-deadmun

[arthur-deadmun]

Making a blower!

Coal gets hotter when air is directly applied into it. And it needs to get pretty hot to shape metal. How do you get it so hot? Well there are a couple of ways. You can get some bellows. Or a bellow. 

Didn’t think of that right? Great bellow! You just need to be careful, plastic is not very heat resistant. Of course you can also make/buy an old school bellow. I sure want one. With those things, you just put it in a pipe leading to the coal and you’re good to go.

Now, if you don’t want to pump all day with your legs or hands, you can buy an industrial blower. You can also use a vacuum that blows air. I think old models had that feature. But if you don’t have an older one, you can turn a normal vacuum into a great blower. Well, not great, but good enough! You’re gonna need a lot of tape and a funnel...

I lost the original pictures for the build, but lucky for you, the duct tape around my blower decided to melt! And I had to fix it. So what you see is one half of a vacuum. The metal-y thing with a hole in it is the motor, the thing in the front is said funnel and around it is a lot of tape. It’s the previous tape which got burned from the motor overheating.

I just set the funnel so it doesn’t move (a lot).

I’m studying for an engineer and let me tell you duct tape solves all problems! Just wrap the whole thing and your blower is ready! Pros are that it’s relatively easy to make and costs near to nothing if you have a really old vacuum like I did. Cons are that it’s lifespan is really short. Around 10 uses and tape burns from the heat. But it’s great for beginners!

[arthur-deadmun]

Getting an anvil

It turned out that getting a good heavy anvil isn’t as easy as I though. Nor is it cheap. But you don’t need a real anvil to begin with. [READ AFTER THE PIC]. For quite some time I forged on this: 

Okay, this is an awful example of blacksmithing. But I can explain quite a few things from this.

About the hammer. Don’t try to forge with such a light hammer. Do not hold the hammer with a glove.

About the really badly designed forge in the back. Seriously it’s design is awful. It’s way too deep, doesn’t have a lid, it’s made of sand and plaster and has a really short life. Got the design from Grant Thompson “The King of Random”, and as the video says, it’s a foundry (or a smelter).

And finally, the “anvil”. It’s a really small piece of railroad track. And always nail your anvils. Bad experience. But it worked. It worked just fine for playing with the metal and learning how to shape it.

But I desired an upgrade. Because this track was really light weight and I didn’t nail it to the log, it moved quite a lot. I found three ways to get an improvement  on the “anvil”.

Way one: Make it yourself! Get a bigger piece of railroad track and a grinder and cut it to make the shape you want. I found railroad track from websites like craigslist, OLX, etsy (Remember those, they’re really handy. I buy a lot of stuff from OLX). 

Way two: Buy it. Try searching at flea markets, garage sales (if there are any where you live) or at the online shops I mentioned. I’m sure they’ll have one at a relatively cheap price.

Way three: Get lucky! A neighbor near where my shop is gave me one for free! Would you imagine that!

Awesome! We now have a forge and an anvil. Now we need to get a hammer and some HEAVY METAL and we can start forging!

[arthur-deadmun]

Building the forge!

So I decided to build a forge. And because I love swords, that forge had to be a sword one. But there was a minor inconvenience in the form of a couple of lovely cows.

And our fence was pretty... nonexistent. So I had to build a fence, before starting the forge. It was a barbed wire fence, because that gets set up pretty quick (but you get quite a few cuts with it). Dug some holes, got some wooden poles, that I found in the basement, with cement and attached the wire.

Actually building the forge!

To build a blacksmiths forge you need 3 things: plans for said forge, building materials and a blower. Hardest thing from all of these was getting the materials.

My plans were pretty badly drawn but they still helped me get the number of bricks and tiles needed. 

The temperature will get pretty high, so you will need fire resistant bricks and fire resistant cement. Getting both of those without a truck can be hard, but it isn’t impossible. 

After getting the materials it’s time to set up the tiles. It’s good to have a layer of gravel or sand to put the tiles on. That way it’s easier to level the forge.

The line in the middle is for a pipe to blow air under the coal to rise the temperature. I put a crowbar in the middle to get the line to be consistent.

Now its time to put the bricks on. Pretty easy and self-explanatory. Put some cement under the brick and set it on the tiles.

I will put another post for the blower, because it has been upgraded a couple of times.

And you got yourself a forge! Next, gonna need an anvil...

[arthur-deadmun]

Introduction to me!

Hello! My name is Arthur Deadmun, and I’m an apprentice blacksmith. I’ve always had a passion about swords and axes, dwarves and vikings and the hot fires of a forge. I found a couple of videos on making swords, and I completely fell in love with it. So from a very young age I have dreamed of becoming a blacksmith. But for many years I thought that forging has become a dead art (at least in my country), because I have never heard of blacksmiths. And one day after watching way too many YouTube videos about blacksmithing and building a forge, I decided to give it a try.