beginner blacksmithing

[Wendelspanswick]

I perfected fire welding making snails, I must have made over a couple of hundred over the years. It's a good exercise in jumping up, splitting, thinning out, fire welding and scroll forming.
I still have some floating about so I will take a picture.

 

[blenkie1]

Sure my mate was saying you have to be really fast soon as it cools then thats it.

 

[Wendelspanswick]

A bit dusty!
I used to make these at country fairs with a portable forge. Nice and quick to knock out plus you can rope in members of the public to help you.

 

[Am333rcr]

Hi

Well thanks for all the replys. I will have a lot of reading . The college up here do a course but sadly not at night

Cheers

 

[Kent]

View attachment 80093
A bit dusty!
I used to make these at country fairs with a portable forge. Nice and quick to knock out plus you can rope in members of the public to help you.

Heck I don't think I could do that due to safety guidelines and restrictions issued by shows
Most want serious levels for just a little camping stove and kettle. Got one to fill in presently

 

[Kent]

I have not actually done much forge welding. I was fortunate enough to be shown properly by a real Smith in his eighties and still working. That was nearly three decades ago though

If I can avoid it I will, there is many ways to replace it. Proper restoration work as mentioned isn't one though it's hardly a place I intend to focus any great attention

 

[Wendelspanswick]

Heck I don't think I could do that due to safety guidelines and restrictions issued by shows
Most want serious levels for just a little camping stove and kettle. Got one to fill in presently

I did the local agricultural show one year, I think it cost me £90 for the weekend. The following year they invited me back and I declined as although it generated work I already was struggling to cope with my order book. They then rang up and offered me a nice fee to demonstrate at the show so for the following 3 years they paid me to exhibit.
Part of the agreement was it had to include audience participation so as well as having a mains powered blower I borrowed a set of traditional forge bellows off the guild and I would have a never ending queue of children waiting to operate them!
I did enter the live forging competion at the Royal Bath And West Show and got a highly commended but the pressure and competition is intense so I chickened out after that!

 

[Kent]

I did the local agricultural show one year, I think it cost me £90 for the weekend. The following year they invited me back and I declined as although it generated work I already was struggling to cope with my order book. They then rang up and offered me a nice fee to demonstrate at the show so for the following 3 years they paid me to exhibit.
Part of the agreement was it had to include audience participation so as well as having a mains powered blower I borrowed a set of traditional forge bellows off the guild and I would have a never ending queue of children waiting to operate them!
I did enter the live forging competion at the Royal Bath And West Show and got a highly commended but the pressure and competition is intense so I chickened out after that!

Neat but you can never have too big an order book imo
The only tough thing isstopping yourself jumping your own schedule to the jobs you want to do and leaving s pile of the tother in future

I should love to demo some stuff but in a risk adverse society I think I will pass

We get a few demo stands at our local steam fair but the attitude is very different as regards risk assessments and such at that

 

[Rudi McAnichal]

I have not actually done much forge welding. I was fortunate enough to be shown properly by a real Smith in his eighties and still working. That was nearly three decades ago though

Only three decades ago, you must be quite young! My entire blacksmithing training was just one week, back in 1972, with a chap named Alan Knight, who had a forge near Droitwich. He was getting on in years even then, but still did restoration work (fancy gates for stately homes, with lots of intricate leaf work). He taught me to weld a head onto a bolt shank, and to make a short length of chain.

I have never had to forge weld anything since, but all the other blacksmithing techniques that I learned from him proved extremely valuable (I was heading off to work in a fairly remote spot in West Africa). The speed at which tasks could be done by forging was a revelation to me, my previous engineering lecturers having rather tended to sneer at blacksmithing as something outdated and primitive. How wrong they were.

 

[Windy Miller]

I'm very pleased to see that we have a few other Blacksmiths on here - I never realised how many there were!

Only a rank amateur myself, but very keen none the less!

 

[desmo11225]

Hello All
Helping the colliery blacksmiths during the war, we used to regularly forge weld the shafts and guns, used for horse drawn drams/trams of coal, The metal was 1" to 1"1/4" round, a lap joint was formed about 2" long and thicker than the bar itself, heated in a blacksmiths forge to white hot and to help it get really hot the blacksmith dribbled some sand by hand to the roaring fire when he was satisfied it was hot enough both parts were quickly put together and us boys hammered it as hard and as fast as we could, then back in the forge for more heat and more hammering.
I must say though that they would regularly break again and while I was there a welder was bought for one of the blacksmiths, which was a much stronger job.
A long time ago gents and ladies . All the Best desmo11225

 

[steve t]

The sand could of been silver sand and is often used as a flux