Homemade Forge - Knife Making

[Nightwalker]

Back in 2007 I discovered GreenPete's free knife-making video, I had no experience in this sort of thing but it taught me how to make my own Bushcraft knife out of an old metal-working file. I made a video of a little homemade forge I made (for heat-treating) here is a video of the forge that myself & a friend built: Homemade Forge - Making a Bushcraft Knife

 

[jon r]

wow! thats a great little forge you have there! I love it! Well done !

 

[TobyH]

Love the bit about safety eye protection, when the guy's got bare feet!! Made me giggle!!

 

[pothunter]

Well done lads.

The bare feet is that part of an Indian forging technique

Pothunter.

 

[Nightwalker]

Yeah.. that guy is me I did infact have safety goggles on at the time and I did have protective work gloves ready but forgot to use them, :11doh: We was working out on my balcony where we usually have a firebasket/BBQ going and my friend's always telling me to put shoes on; he's worried I'll get splinters in my feet :yikes:

 

[oops56]

O K that a good idea .Here some hints put you holes just in the middle about a 4 in. circle
get a spray bottle with water spray the out side edge so it don't burn as the middle gets low pull some in. plus use your forge in dark area so you can see the color better. Have fun. If your mom saw you no shoes playing with fire she put some sprinters in your butt P. S. Turn off your fan when you taking piece out of forge to save fuel turn on as you put it back.

 

[Nightwalker]

O K that a good idea .Here some hints put you holes just in the middle about a 4 in. circle
get a spray bottle with water spray the out side edge so it don't burn as the middle gets low pull some in. plus use your forge in dark area so you can see the color better. Have fun. If your mom saw you no shoes playing with fire she put some sprinters in your butt P. S. Turn off your fan when you taking piece out of forge to save fuel turn on as you put it back.

Cheers for the advce. The circle of holes on our forge is 5inch wide; I think its perfect gives us a perfect size core to work with. As for turning the fan off, yeah we gathered that, but at the time there was only the two of us, me working and Scott filming so we couldnt turn it off right away it got turned off after the film ended.

Also another tip I would recommend for conserving fuel... when testing the forge sometimes we would fire it up with a load of charcoal, but wouldnt want to consume all the fuel even though it was well lit. We put all the lit charcoal in a quality-street tin and sealed it up, it staves the charcoal/fire of oxygen and conserves your fuel for another day.

 

[pibbleb]

Nice video and cool idea, I was thinking how I could build a small patio forge, and that seems ideal.

A couple of questions if I may. How is the fan from the hair dryer holding up? What kind of plug did you use? And are you actually forging or just heating? of forging hat are you using as an anvil?

Cheers.

Pib

 

[Nightwalker]

Nice video and cool idea, I was thinking how I could build a small patio forge, and that seems ideal.

A couple of questions if I may. How is the fan from the hair dryer holding up? What kind of plug did you use? And are you actually forging or just heating? of forging hat are you using as an anvil?

Cheers.

Pib

The hairdryer fan is holding up great! Its superb for what we want, small and can perform. I also liked my idea of buying a variable voltage plug which I got from eBay for like 3 quid and then wired it up to allow us to just flick through the voltages and pick out speed. A maximum of 12volts being pumped into our current system works great and is more than enough. The hairdryer was only like a little travel-hairdryer too I would guess that most normal hairdryers would out-perform this one.

We are mostly using it to heat the steel, however we have hammered out a few bends here and there. Neither me or my friend have done any blacksmithing etc. but we wana get into the basics of it, and you can actually find a whole book about blacksmithing for free here on BCUK:
http://www.bushcraftuk.com/downloads/pdf/blacksmithing.pdf
I havent yet read it! But I will.

And yes, we're keeping our eyes open for a anvil!

 

[pibbleb]

Nice one cheers.

I've done a foundation blacksmithing course and can strongly recommend.

I'm also on the look out for an anvil or a suitable altenrative, but seems it seems, that if you own a big country home you need to have an anvil to hold your door open.!

Sorry one more question, did you buy any old pan and wok or were they just lieing around?

Might be wortha tutorial?

P.S. the ebook is pretty good I found it helpful with homework!
:You_Rock_
Pib

 

[Nightwalker]

Between me and my friend Scott (Machete Madness) we had the pans to create the chamber. Yeah I might take some more photos and do a tutorial on it sometime lol.

 

[Nightwalker]

Ok, for some reason youtube broke the video & it was barely watchable, real shame as it had tons of views & comments. I've re-mastered the video & re-uploaded it, I'll edit the first post to reflect the new video URL.