I never met either of my grandfathers, but both were metalworkers. One was a blacksmith and farrier, as was his father before him and so, as far as I can guess, back for generations. The other was a forge operator in the early 20th century automobile industry; one of seven kinsmen on the same hammer. So blacksmithing seems to be in my blood. Still, I didn't realize until about the year 2000, in my very late 30s, that smithing was something I needed, deeply, to do. At that time, I lived in a pleasant streetcar-era suburb in another midwestern state. While it is possible to do blacksmithing in the city, it was just something that I didn't want to undertake there - especially as I was right across the street from the local firestation.
It took several years, however, for us to make the move out of the city to someplace better suited for a smith's workshop. In the interim, I managed to take a grand total of six days of blacksmithing classes (which, while exceedingly valuable to me, is certainly not enough to qualify me for the honorable title of Smith). Life being what it is, it took another year and a half before I was able to start turning a rather decrepit old shed into my Forge. Finishing even the basic setup has taken (and is taking) several years since then. What follows here is a generally chronological account of building the forge.
This is the Circuitous Root Forge in April 2005 (after a fair bit of work already, though this isn't necessarily apparent).
The shed itself was built sometime in the early 20th century. I had to cut down a small forest of saplings behind the shed which had been allowed to grow up (damming the eternal migration of soil down the hillside and causing the periodic flooding (and icing in winter) of the shed floor). Consequently, I also had to dig proper drainage on the uphill side (during February in Wisconsin - the dirt came out in great icy chunks under the pickaxe - fine exercise!) The tree on the left is a black walnut which, alas, has since died from a lightning strike. The tree on the right (only one branch of which is visible) is one of the burr oaks characteristic of this region when, prior to the introduction of farming in the 1840s, it was prairie. The foundation under the left door is in fact toppled as shown here (but has since been righted), and the right door isn't even hung any more (I must fix that). It's all pretty rough, but somehow appropriate for smithing.
Just for the fun of it, here's a photo of the back of the shed nearly two years earlier (September 2003). Imagine that more trees have grown in (amazing how things grow here!) but also that it's the dead of winter and everything is frozen into solid ice.
Here's a view inside the Forge shed on that most important day, April 17, 2005, when I "test fired" the setup (not complete, but minimally functional). The forge itself (the apparatus with the chimney on the right, in which coal or coke (coke is to coal as charcoal is to wood) burns to heat the metal) is a Centaur Forge (brand) Model C with a heavy-duty coke firepot, a 12 volt DC blower, and a custom blower and airgate mounting (Centaur did an excellent job fabricating this). There is, of course, no electricity to the Forge shed. I find that I can get nearly 24 hours of blower operation on a medium-sized marine deep-cycle battery.
The anvil shown in this photo is an old Columbian® (brand) anvil from the 1920s that is basically sound but in otherwise poor shape. I use it now for rough work, but as it came equipped with a portable pedestal I used it here for the test firing. The main anvil is now a Nimba (brand) Centurion (model) anvil - a piece of steelwork almost too beautiful to use under a hammer (I've considered simply putting it under glass in my living room as the most beautiful piece of sculpture I'm ever likely to own - its maker, the late Russell Jaqua, was truly an artist.)
The slack tub (what looks like half an old whiskey barrel sitting on a pile of gravel in front of the forge) is, in fact, an old whiskey barrel. They're sold in the springtime in garden stores and large chain stores with garden centers, for use as large planting pots. When I got mine, I picked a fairly nice looking one and then filled it up with water. Almost all of it leaked out. I then filled it again; ditto. After a few such fillings, however, the wood expanded sufficiently and it now holds water quite well. A slack tub should be metal or wood, not plastic, as hot steel could poke right through plastic.
As this is a record of how I built this particular forge (rather than a treatise on the proper methods for building a forge, which would be quite different!), the photograph above illustrates (at least) two mistakes that I made.
Mistake A: This photo shows the battery and blower with the original cabling I constructed for them. I have replaced this this with metal armored cable Batteries can deliver tremendous (fatal!) amperage in a dead-short situation such as that which would occur if, say, I dropped a hot steel bar on this plastic-insulated cable. In other words, I recommend specifically against the non-armored (and uncovered battery) setup shown here. I now have steel armored cable, and the battery is completely enclosed in a nonconductive box.
Mistake B: This photo shows the original blower switch mounting, front and center on the forge. The problem with this is that in my particular setup this puts the switch right between the forge and the slack tub. Once I started working I discovered what should have been obvious to me (having previously worked at a coal forge, though only for four days of classes) that while this is not a problem when quenching items in the slack tub, it is a problem when dampening down the coal/coke fire with water from the slack tub. The "natural" path for a perforated tin can on a handle is right over this switch location. I have now moved the switch to the far side of the forge, well out of the way. As it turns out, this isn't any real inconvenience. I tend to leave the switch set at one setting and instead use the airgate to control the blast into the firepot.
If you take a closer look at the lower edge of the back wall in the center of the photo above (just to the right of the fire extinguisher), you'll notice an interesting and important feature of this building: the builders did not level the site, but instead built the building to conform to it. It's just an old farm shed, after all. So the level of the bottom of the walls slopes significantly from the high point up behind the Forge to the low point diagonally opposite in the building.
The original ground level has also eroded away about 20cm. My intent is to turn these apparent defects into advantages by putting down a deep gravel floor (probably at three different levels, so that I don't have to put down half a meter of gravel at the low end!) Gravel by the cubic yard in a big truck is cheap. Gravel by the half-cubic-foot sack from the home improvement store is not. It'll be July, at least, until the ground is hard enough to get a many-ton gravel truck up here, though, which leads to some interesting temporary measures. [It is now the fall of 2007, over two years later, and I've only just had 12 yards of 3/4 inch clear gravel delivered.]
Basically, I want to install the permanent fixtures (forge, slack tub, anvils, etc.) at their final levels. Here, for example, is a photograph of the forge itself set at its final height. The concrete blocks extend about 30cm below ground level. While they appear here to extend up into the air, the top of the concrete blocks will be the floor level once I get the real gravel floor shoveled in. The slack tub (which is, as noted earlier, half a whiskey barrel, sold as a planter to gardeners, and re-hydrated so as to be mostly watertight) is, similarly, set (on gravel) at its final height. This photograph also shows the sloping foundation level pretty well.
For those familiar with Centaur forge products, yes, they managed to mount the 12 Volt DC blower "backwards" so that it is entirely underneath the forge pan - well protected. This necessitated a special airgate mounting. It also means that the lever for emptying the firepot (though not the clinker-breaker lever) is on the far side; I don't see this as a major problem. I would very much suggest, however, that the airgate in addition to the three-way rheostat for fan speed control is an absolute necessity for fine control of the draft.
For those unfamiliar with forges, all coal/coke(/charcoal) forges require a forced air supply in order to cause the fuel to burn hotly enough for forging. Through the early 19th century this was done with the traditional, romantic-looking, bellows. In the 19th century, the manufactured hand-cranked centrifugal blower became more common, and is still the blower of choice for many smiths. Used blowers in good condition can be hard to come by, however, and at the time I purchased my forge the price of new blowers had risen sharply due to the poor value of the dollar - and indeed more traditional manually driven centrifugal blowers were, temporarily at least, unavailable as new items from Centaur.
Centrifugal blowers may be either manually powered or electrically powered. I have no electricity to my shed, so the conventional modern AC motor powered centrifugal blower was not an option. As noted, manual centrifugal blowers weren't available at the time. Moreover, I wanted to experiment in burning coke, and I had read that a coke fire requires a constant low-level draft in order to remain lit. I seemed, therefore, to be stuck.
The solution was to use the 12 Volt DC blower (basically an ordinary "squirrel cage" centrifugal fan unit) with a rheostat for speed control and a marine deep-cycle battery for power (hauled back to the garage and recharged every so often). Mounted together with an airgate for fine control, I have so far found this arrangement to be quite satisfactory.
The blower is the cylindrical black and silver unit below the forge on the right, in the photo above. It sucks air in from below and expels it into the short pipe to the left. An "airgate" (a sliding valve) regulates the passage of this air into the bottom of the "firepot."
I hope, as I write this [May 2005], to have the two anvils mounted permanently, and at their final heights, well before I can get the gravel in for the main floor [as of June 2005 both anvils were mounted at height]. While I was able to test-fire the forge with the old Columbian anvil mounted temporarily, as above, this won't work for this "interim permanent" setup. My solution may be clever or stupid; I'm not yet sure. What I did is this:
As you can see (in this photograph taken about a month after the "test firing), I've built a "gravel box" filled with a relatively small amount of (expensive) rocks in bags from the home improvement store. (In fact I used boards recycled from an old sandbox to build it.) I've already started to dig the hole for the wooden pedestal on which the Nimba anvil will be mounted. (The 4"x6" (nominal) timbers to the left are two of the eight I'll use - they're each about five feet long, and will extend about 30 inches below present ground level.) While the traditional anvil mounting is supposed to be a tree stump, I have no suitable ones (the one shown in this photograph works fine as a seat, but would be insufficient even for the smaller Columbian anvil).
While I'm not an experience (or even qualified, yet) blacksmith, I am a great reader about blacksmithing. To my surprise, however, I discovered while researching my forge that every topic related to building a blacksmith's shop is covered in great detail in many publications - with the single exception of the chimney. This is most frustrating to the novice! My guess is that it is due either to the assumption on the part of experienced blacksmiths that the chimney installation is the easy part (it isn't!) or their fear of being sued (a bad chimney installation can burn your building down). With that in mind, I'll offer photos of my chimney setup only with the following caveat: I AM NOT RECOMMENDING ANYTHING SHOWN HERE. This is just how I did it. I almost certainly don't know what I'm doing. So, however you can, please do research it for yourself before you install any type of chimney. Really. I'm sure I've done things incorrectly.
My basic problem was this: I wanted 18 inches of clearance to combustibles. The rafters of my shed were spaced more closely than this. My solution, if it can be called that, was to get two 3 inch wide steel channel sections, bolt them to two of the rafters, and then cut away the wooden rafters in the middle. In essence, I made two steel rafters (anchored at each end by the remnants of the original wood rafters). Crude, but apparently effective (they're now easily the strongest part of this rickety old shed). Here's a view of the steel rafters before the chimney itself was installed.
Here's a view of the exterior of the chimney.
These are 8 inch diameter black stovepipe sections. The top of the stovepipe proper extends over 3 feet above the ridgeline. The rain cap is just something I fabricated out of sheet aluminum and pop rivets. The draft with this chimney is excellent.
Notes: Hefting heavy steel channel sections aloft inside a cramped space on the top of ladders, alone, is no fun. Scrambling around on roofs lifting awkward sections of stovepipe is no fun. Both are potentially quite dangerous. I recommend neither. And you can get a nasty cut sliding your hand unthinkingly along sheet metal roofing edges.
As implied earlier, in a fit of extravagance, I purchased (new) a Nimba Forge (now Nimba Anvils) Centurion anvil. I am utterly unworthy of this exquisite piece of cast steel. It belongs in an art museum - not out in a dirty forge where I'll be hammering on it.
Sadly, Russell Jaqua, a fine blacksmith and artist, and the creator of the Nimba anvils, died in 2006 of ALS. I'll always be grateful to him for taking the time during what turned out to be the final year of his life to call me and answer my novice's questions about his magnificent anvil. Thanks.
To see why it is that I find this anvil to be such a satisfying design, consider first, by way of contrast, my "Columbian" (brand) anvil from the 1920s. While this older anvil, shown below, is in pretty poor shape, it is a good example of a traditional "London pattern" anvil. This is what most Americans, at least, think of when they hear the word "anvil." If you were in a cartoon and were going to drop an anvil on a coyote, this would be the one. It's a rough example of an otherwise perfectly respectable anvil.
Now look at the Nimba "Centurion" (which isn't even the largest or most substantial model of Nimba anvil).
Note in particular how much more substantial the Nimba is. This isn't just a matter of overall weight, but of the careful distribution of mass. Except for a small pillar in the middle, there's mostly air underneath the surfaces of the conventional anvil. With the Nimba, there's mostly metal. The larger "Gladiator" model Nimba anvil is even more block-like, without the four "feet" of thi model I have. The hardie (square) and pritchel (round) holes of the Nimba are also located very close to the central block. Although it isn't evident in the photo above, the hardie hole of the Columbian anvil is, as is common with anvils of this pattern, in a relatively thin portion of the anvil far from the central pillar.
Russell Jaqua described the Nimba anvils as being of an Italian pattern.
One final, practial, note. This anvil lives in a non-climate-controlled shed. Rust is therefore an issue. An anvil this beautiful does not deserve rust. I maintain it by coating it after every use with Rustlick™ 631, a moisture displacing rust preventative made by ITW Rocol North America. After two years of rather humid Midwestern weather, the anvil is just fine.
In any event, to mount it I sunk eight five foot long timbers (4x6 inches nominal, less in reality) vertically into the ground. Here are the first few of these. They're set in about 30 inches of earth.
Here is the Nimba anvil set upon the finished plinth:
It took me two months to go from Test Firing to the initial setup for the Nimba. I don't have much time available for this, as much as I enjoy it. Actually, two months seems pretty fast; sometimes things can take two years.
I have since bound these eight timbers together more permanently and (at the suggesion of Russell Jaqua) bedded the anvil in about a quarter of an inch of silicone.
The next necessary steps are re-doing the battery wiring with armored cables, building a safe enclosure for the battery, Once I do that, I'll have a working minimal forge setup.
I actually achieved this on my birthday, in 2005 - about six months after I started work on the building, and five and a half years since I took my first blacksmithing class. Had we world enough, and time...
In any event, here's the revised battery setup, now with a fully enclosed box and armored cables. Again, I am not recommending this, or even suggesting that I have achieved good or safe practice. It's just what I did. All suggestions for improvement are welcome!
Here's the first minimally complete fully functional setup. All that is missing from a standard traditional blacksmith's shop is the post vise, and you can accomplish quite a bit of smithing without one.
And here's the view from the anvil on this same day.
Of course, what do I do right off the bat? Burn myself stupidly picking up the wrong end of a bar that I'd cut off. Dumb.
I've also discovered that, while indeed I can light and keep a coke fire going, I'm really not very good at lighting fires, and I'm especially poor at lighting fires with damp, green kindling.
For all that, it's more fun than you can imagine (unless you're a blacksmith, of course, and already know this).
Since the photos above, I've finished the Nimba anvil stand (bound it with 2x4 boards, set the anvil in silicone), righted and reset the doorpost, dumped a few miscellaneous bags of sand and gravel just to keep the floor cleaner, and accumulated an unreasonable (but probably still insufficient) number of cinderblocks. What I haven't done is much blacksmithing.
Update, October 2005
This fall I've restarted work on the Forge, after doing very little at or with it for some time. I've now got 12 yards of gravel in a big pile behind it, awaiting the construction of retaining walls inside the shed to level the floors. The next project is to weld up a mounting for the post vise and stake plates. This needs to be set in concrete and painted before it freezes, which won't be long.
Things To Do:
... and of course:
Make things!
I also hope elsewhere in this shed to build a fully manual lathe (springpole, treadle, treadle to a great wheel overhead, or a combination thereof) along the lines of those illustrated in Moxon's Mechanick Exercises. That's another project altogether, though.
All portions of this document not noted otherwise are Copyright © 2005, 2007 by David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
Circuitous Root is a Trademark of David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
Columbian is a registered trademark of WMH Tool Group
Nimba doesn't appear to be a trademark, but it would be discourteous to treat it as if it wasn't.
Rustlick is a trademark of ITW Rocol North America
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons "Attribution - ShareAlike" license. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ for its terms.
Presented originally by Circuitous Root
Select Resolution: 0 1
