On Saturday, 4/9/16, HABA will be meeting at Armand Bayou Nature Center for the monthly skills building session. We will be making an icon of ranches and farms across the nation – a dinner bell. This is a triangular device that was used to call family, field workers and ranch hands to the dinner table when the food was ready for consumption.
It is simple to make and embodies several basic skills of the blacksmith – tapering, scrolling and bending. The basic formula for this was provided by EJ McCAnn of Three Nail Forge in Kinder, LA. He gives classes and uses this to introduce his students to the basics of blacksmithing as well as giving them something they can take home and put to use.
We start with two pieces of 3/8″ round stock, one 36″ long and other 12″ long. On the long piece we taper each end, put a rat tail on it and form a hook. We then mark it two places to divide it into thirds. The piece will then be bent at a 60 degree angle at each of the marks forming a triangle.
We then take the short piece and taper it on one end, give it a rat tail and then put a shepherds hook on that end. This will form the ringer that can be hung on the bell.
Below is a 15 minute video that demonstrates the process.
Last month we started creating tools to make a small hammer head. Due to the threat of rain we had a truncated session. People were able to get started on making their slitting chisel. This month will be a continuation of that effort.
We have the materials to make the drift and the railroad spikes for the hammer heads. For more details see my previous post ABNC March 2017.
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This month we will start on a project that will take two sessions to complete. We will be making a hammer. In March we will be making the tools needed. In April we will form the hammer head. The tools we will need to make are a slitting chisel and a drift. Continue reading ABNC March 2017
Below is a video on forging a set of BBQ tongs. It will take you through the major steps I took in making these tongs. I had not made a set of these before I started this video so it was a learning process for me as I forged them. This is reflected in the video. There were several false starts and changes of approach as I went through it. I had to heavily edit the final recording to get it down to about 30 minutes from the 1 hour and 20 minutes of the full video.
That said, the basic approach I took is sound and will work well. Some things to keep in mind as you watch this: Continue reading BBQ Tongs
On Saturday, 8/13, we will meet at ABNC for our usual 2nd Saturday skills building session. At that session we will be making some tongs. They will be patterned after instructions supplied by Sean Conner (AKA Whitesmith of Blackstone Forge). But we will have a slight change in our approach.
There are so many things you can do with iron when you have a hot fire. You can heat it up until it turns a nice yellow-orange and then move it around with your hammer. One of the best fuels to do this with is coal. With the addition of some forced air blowing on it, that fire can reach 3000 degrees.
If you are new to this whole business of blacksmithing there are many challenges that you need to overcome. One of the first is getting that coal fire going. If you have never done it before, it can be very frustrating.
To help out the beginner, I have put together a short video to show you one way of doing it. Every smith has their own favorite way of doing it, so there is no right way other than the one that works for you. Some people use paper (my favorite), others use wood shavings and one person I know uses “magic pine cones” (pine cones soaked in turpentine). I will show you my way and you can build from there.
As I said earlier, I like to use paper to get things started. Even in the paper community there are different approaches. Some people like to make a ball of the paper and give it a tail for lighting. Another approach is to twist the paper into doughnut rings. In any case, you want to get a good mass of paper so the fire can last long enough to get the coal lit. But you need to avoid packing the paper so tight there are no air spaces in the mass. I demonstrate how this is done in the video. Click the link below to view it.
Some other things noted in the video are the preparation of your fire-pot and the life cycle of coal as it burns.
Coal goes through some interesting transformations as it burns. I show you in the video how it starts as a dense black chunk. At this point it is a combination of carbon, various volatiles and other minerals. It is also in the form that is easiest to light.
As it burns, the volatiles cook away and we are left with the carbon and other minerals. At this stage it is called coke. This is the part that gives us the intense heat and is what you want the heart of your fire to contain.
In its final stage, all the carbon is burned away and we are left with the trace of other minerals that were bound up with the coal. This collects in the bottom of your fire-pot forming hard metallic like lumps that we call clinkers. These are good for nothing and rob the fire of heat as they build up in the bottom of the pot. If you ever lived in a part of the country where households used coal for heat in the winter you may have seen the one use for clinkers that I know about. They would line the driveways with the clinkers pulled out of the furnace as a substitute for gravel.
Since the coke is what we as smiths value in the fire, we will always save and reuse the coke left from the last fire in the forge. But before lighting a new fire we will go through and pull out all of the clinkers so we can start with a fresh, clean fire.
Take a look at the video above and please feel free to make comments or ask questions in the comment section below.