Welding Tips and Tricks

That's some fine work. I'll hopefully get around to making my own blacksmith forge one day.

Mick,

Thank you Sir! After retiring I've dabbled in several hobbies, luckily they are paying for themselves. Here is a picture of the front of the forge.

Nice looking forge, did you pattern the burners off the Porter book?

I like that little farrier hat, nice detail!

Alan

Thank you Alan. I used some of the information from I Forge Iron and Moose forge. It's lined with overlapping boards of KAO wool, the fire brick makes a replaceable floor. If adjusted it will forge weld but mostly I use it to form horseshoes and other small projects. It's easier on my old shoulders to mig parts together then hammer the look into them.

Very nice. I keep threatening to learn blacksmithing, as I said, but it'll probably be a long process.

Toobaro wrote:Thank you Alan. I used some of the information from I Forge Iron and Moose forge.

My understanding is that at least some research of these venturi type burners come from much of the work that Ron Reil and Michael Porter had done, and there are several variants. I have a burner I bought from Rex Price, but if I was to do it again, I'd probably machine my own burner on the lathe. One thing I HATE about this burner is the vent. If you loosen the screw which holds the cover on, it will drop down and put out the burner, spewing gas throughout the workspace. There was another design Rex had been working on where the cylinder cover rotates, but it was a lot more work for him. I could modify mine to do that pretty easily...but I haven't used it in a number of years. That might change as I am building a new shop/home and would like some forged iron in the home.

This build was close to 15 years ago before I had a welder, so the shell is riveted together.

http://traditionaltoolworks.com/mw/forg ... index.html

I was taught how to forge by a guy named Scott Thomas, he used to operate the blacksmith shop inside Ardenwood Historical Farm in Newark, CA. The shop has since closed, but you may have heard of Scott as he won the 2md season of Forged In Iron which was on cable/web. Scott made most of his income from being a farrier and he had a very similar small forge on the back of his truck which he used for farrier work. I never realized that farriers don't actually do much forging, it's mostly just heating up the shoes and shaping them, as you point out. Agreed on the shoulders...mine ain't like they used to be...

Welcome to the forum!