The Round Punch

Today I want to share one of my favorite tools to use, which I only recently made. It is easily made using only the tools outlined in Blacksmithing 101: Beginner Tools. (link)  The only tools you need for this are hammer, anvil, tongs, hot cut, and files. You could even do without the hot-cut and files if you forge to finish.

The tool I am going to show you is a round punch I made for punching screw holes in hooks and other such pieces. It is also helpful for punching rivet holes, and is much faster than cooling the piece and drilling a hole.

Behold, my Round Punch!

It is a 1/2" round bar of coil springs, tapered down to about 1/8". 

It is rather simple to make: 

1) Heat and straighten a 6" length of coil spring

2) Cut off the section, and dress the cut using backing-up blows

3) Taper business end by hammering square, octogon, round.

4) hammer flat 1/4" taper into the struck end, only slight taper, do not bring to a point. 

5) normalize in the air, them file it perfectly round. 

6) coat with oil to keep it rust-free! 

The profile is pretty round. It is slightly oval, but if you rotate the punch 30 degrees each time it punches well. 

the end is mushroomed from the hammering. Dress those edges to prevent chipping! It work hardens as it spreads, and can shear off suddenly. 

I need to dress it, it heated up a little too much and upset a little, deforming. 

When you use it, keep it cool every two hits by dunking it in water. A quick dip in oil or beeswax or coal dust will keep the punch from sticking in the hole. 

Here is what it does! 

As always, happy hammering and God Bless!

Ridgeway Forge Blacksmith Co. 

A New Tool: Nail Header

On this chilly Sunday afternoon, I write about something I've derived much pleasure from!
You may remember that in a previous post, I wrote about a demonstrator and the nail header tool he made, as well as a nail that he passed around. Well, although it is to some a mundane task, I have always been intrigued by one of the prime blacksmithing exercises.


So, I made myself a Nail Header!
Two, actually.
The first I began with a piece of 1060 steel. I beat it into shape:

Moving that metal was tough! It was the same stuff that I made my hot-cut hardy out of. Its really very tough, even with a 4-lb hammer. 

This was the first one, and the square punched hole is off center and crooked, which detracts from the overall quality of the header. 

It is beefy, but I may have to take it out and reforge a little bit. 

It is punched 3/4 of the way through, and then drilled out the back to allow the nail's shank to freely fall out of the header. Because the hole is punched off-center, it sticks a little bit. But it way my first, and I'm allowed mistakes, right?

The second is much better! 

I made it from a Railroad Spike: 

I cut off the head, and flattened the area a bit. I then rounded the spike portion of the metal, and drew the whole thing out a little bit. 

Here it is, post-forging and post-wire brush.

Again, punched from the top, almost all the way through, and then drilling the rest of the way. 

And now, NAILS! 

And, for these, I didn't quite "nail it", since I was new at the whole thing. It really helped me with my square tapers, though. Good practice! 

This is my best one!!!!

An ugly bunch, I know. I need to work on that.....

Ew. Ugly. But, its tough, there is only so much heat when it is in the lower 20 degrees F.

This nail header, I might add, is on sale from Craigslist, because I am a poor college student.

Happy Hammering, and Happy New Year!

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!