Anvil Stand

Since I've been moving into my new shop, I've been pretty busy trying to get everything up and running again. over the summer I was using charcoal in the side blast forge, which worked alright, although it was certainly far from ideal. The heat was too inconsistent for me to be able to do anything truly worthwhile. As the Christmas Season is upon us, I received four commissions for a Dutch Oven Cook Set. So, yesterday I went out and purchased 400# of coal and 140 linear feet of steel. It was a hefty sum, but I am now well stocked for quite some time.

Part of moving into my new shop is a new anvil stand. Previously I had my anvil perched on top of a tulip tree stump, just resting on top of the ground. Now, since I am in it to win it, I wanted a securely anchored anvil stand. I had a few 6x6's lying around, so I chopped one of them in half and bolted and screwed it together side by side for a 6x12 post. Then, I dug a deep pit, put some gravel at the bottom and sunk the post in.

That's a deep hole! It was a bear to get out of the tangle of roots and clay soil.

Set and leveled.

Backfilled.

An assortment of fasteners.

Now a quick tour of my shop for kicks and giggles. It is a lean to of dimensions 10x12. At the peak it is 12' tall, going at a sharp angle to about 6 1/2' towards the end of the slant. My dad built the majority of it, and I was able to help him. It has a galvanized steel roofing. 

The shop as a whole!

Coal bin opened, containing 200 lbs of coal.

Closed. All made from scrap lumber.

Already, without even having worked in my shop, I have made a mess. 

And in this corner, weighing in at 25#, general flotsam and jetsaaaam!

The shop, from the side. 

The vise is seen in the foreground, still unmoved from the original outdoor location.

Here is the olde log cabin style forge in the foreground.Compare with the following photo of what it used to look like. 

Quite a change, huh? This was back when I made a Stake Anvil

I will be keeping the forge in the foreground, as a memorial, as well as a cooking hob. 

Clutter... I need shelving!

I lit a small fore to keep me warm! 

It began to rain. I need to put up a small tarp on the overhang...it doesn't hang over well enough.

I am looking forward to the days ahead, the days where I will be forging long, hard hours of work. You can expect a greater output of work posted here in the next few months! 

Happy Hammering! 

Ridgeway Forge Blacksmith Company 

ridgewayforge@gmail.com

Wooden Forge

Greetings, of the season, which is Advent, soon to be Christmas (with all due respect to my readers who do not celebrate such a joyous time of rejoicing)!

Today I want to share with you all the forge that I constructed from scrap lumber, steel fence-posts and wire mesh, all found around my house. The screws were mostly extras that my dad had laying around, and everything was done with minimal tools.
I want to show what CAN be done, and that you don't have to go fancy to make beautiful artwork.

First of all, after I first bought my Champion 400 blower and Whirlwind Firepot, I knew I needed a place to put them, so that I could forge efficiently.

This was my original set up. I did work like this for about 6 or 7 months, which was a real drag. The fuel always fell out of the heap, as you can see from the bricks surrounding the pot.

So, with a little help from my dad, we scrounged some scrap wood and build this table: 

As you can see, the forge is wood, with a plywood top and adobe/mud topped with firebricks. This was amazing, forging on top of this puppy. Unfortunately, the first forging only lasted a few minutes...

We have smoke! Ignition! Fire!

The Champion 400 doing its thing, me, doing my thing in my Franciscan U T-shirt

Look how happy I am, posing for the camera! This was way before I had a big ole' beard. (although now I am down to a mustache. Go figure!)

Can you guess the obvious design flaw? 

(this one is my avatar for Iforgeiron.com)

So, this forge caught fire. The plyboard was only an inch away from a hot firepot, and so it reached critical temperatures.... Back to the drawing board! 

I knew that I was not going back to this rubble pile of a forge. It was just plain inconvenient!

So, I measured, and began to cut the fence posts! (note the bending forks in the background! I did a post on them while at school, featuring MS Paint in all its glory!)

The fence posts spanned the wood, now devoid of the plywood. Note the T shape of the fence posts: I had to cut a notch to accommodate the posts in each piece of wood.

A test fitting of my firepot! This is the general idea of my wooden forge. There is between 8 and 12 inches from the wood to the firepot in any direction. 

The next step, accomplished many months later, when the snow was long gone:

I covered the whole thing with wire mesh, and doused it with dissolved borax in water. Its a fireproofing thing. 

The back needed to be cut out, and so I did that and added reinforcements so it didn't cave in. I used old flex tubing for the air pipe. It works great!

This is the underside. I added cut open steel food cans as deflectors to reflect the heat back from the wood. This added layer of insurance is great, it works like a charm.

It is tied with wire to the mesh up top.

The forge, finished for now, and with a bright fire licking coal smoke off those smooth black rocks.

The fire bricks are movable and temporary. I am not quite done modifying the forge; I would like a steel top rather than the wire mesh, but that will come whenever I can find a filing cabinet or a washing machine shell...

Here's the whole smithy, under the sprawling elm tree or whatever the poet wrote. I'd rather have a roof.

After the fire was all raked away. The mesh holds the coal well enough!

A view of the ash dump, held there by wire. Slightly primitive, but its what I've got.

A view of the underside after I raked away the coals.

The blower, the thing that makes it hotttttt!!!

And an artsy shot!

I have the feet cut off and the tube goes straight int the stump, which has holes drilled to accommodate the piping.

There was enough airflow to keep the coals glowing hot for a little while. Amazing!

Thus, I completed my forge, in all of its glory! Its not DONE, but its getting there. 

God Bless us all, and to all a good night!