THE FORGE

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

A fast if inelegant way to cut metal is by using one of the aforementioned grinding wheels or discs along with pneumatic tools. My air-powered high speed cutter cost under $25, makes up to 20,000 rpm and uses a 3" abrasive mineral-coated (Carborundum) disc that will go through steel rod, pipe and plate like butter. It's a must for rough-cutting old metal plumbing pipe, muffler clamps and bumper bolts. Heat buildup is avoided, as cuts are typically quick and much potential heat energy is absorbed by the ablating disc, which self-destructs as it goes. Despite their designed dispensability, discs last for a surprising length of time and replacements cost less than a dollar.

We all need a good demolition saw. My little air reciprocating model weigh four pounds and goes from the crawl needed to cut thick metal to 9,000 strokes per minute. At that rate it will rip effortlessly through 150-year-old, rock-hard chestnut beams.

THE FORGE

The most romantic aspect of metalworking is the forge, leather apron and clang of hammer on anvil. Blacksmithing as a craft and art did not disappear with Longfellow's village smith and his chestnut tree. The old-time skills are kept alive'' by a small army of teachers, re-enactors, skilled art smiths and the 7,000 professional farriers that shoe over 2 million riding hones in America today. There are courses you can take and books and videos you can buy if the romance appeals. We typically find smithing hard, hot and dirty work - smelly, too, if super-hot-burning anthracite coal is used rather than charcoal - and do as little as we can get away with. Still, we did inherit the use of a small coal forge and huge anvil for a time a while back, and learned that some things can be made right only one way - by forging them yourself.

We needed a set of steel grills to put across doors and windows of the cabin to keep out a variety of unwanted critters. Such a grill is best made of tempered steel, fabricated before hardening. The grill is riveted or welded at crosspoints, then installed using long, flat-headed, square-shanked 1/2" steel bolts. (The bolts extend through square holes punched into fiats hammered into the steel, thence through holes bored through the logs to be threaded and scored with holts on the inside.) A metalworking shop could do the work, but it would cost more than the stuff we want to protect.

To forge our own, we are in the process of assembling a budget-priced smithy; following is the plan in case you'd like to do the same. This is how smithies are built on sheep stations in the Australian Outback, where store goods are in short supply, but ingenuity isn't.

All forges contain a firebrick or cast-iron firepot to hold the 2700°F fire needed to forge-weld steel. The Aussie forge uses an old truck-size cast-iron brake drum. They are large and thick enough and have an axle hole in the middle. On ours, an iron perforated-disc runoff drain cover will be placed over the opening and let rust in place. Using 2" or 3" iron plumbing pipe and flanges. a tube will be run to a surplus squirrel-cage fan. A rheostat regulates the blower speed. The Aussie firepot is placed in a home-welded angle-iron forge table with a hood and chimney rigged over it. We plan to set ours in a bed of sand in the firebox of a fancy cast-ton wheeled backyard gas barbecue that somebody left at the dump when the burner broke. We'll get a pair of sheet-metal flanging pliers and form a hood and flue to fit from sheet metal and blinds.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print