Blacksmith Apprenticeship

With God's blessings I am to begin blacksmithing this week.  I can't wait to make belt buckles instead of buying imported ones.  I can't wait to learn.  You might be thinking what are you nuts?  Why in the world would you want to pursue an antiquated technology.  We have CNC machines and cheap foundries in China?  This is the mindset that drives me nuts.  Cheap does not = good.  Everything is not a commodity.  Artists and makers do not create commodity they build community.  They strive to do their best in everything.

The work of the Blacksmith is the purest and most powerful of the Arts.  It combines all four Earth elements in perfect harmony to create perfection.  The earth is the iron ore which is the most abundant mineral here.  The iron is burnt at high temperatures in a wood fire to create Iron + Carbon or steel.  The Fire burns bright to heat a forge and bring life to the steel.  Wind is needed to maximize the fire without which it would not be possible.  Water is needed to quench and temper the steel so that it gains strength by tightening the density of the steel. 

Updates soon the anvil is coming in from Texas and other US made tools are on their way.

Forge and anvil arrived today:)  10/22/2015  Got to play for a half hour before sunset.  Last Winter my buddy Kurt and I built a coal forge with some antique bricks I found along the river.  It is so weird what you can find in the woods.  Often times there are abandoned construction sites and homeless camps.  You can find many useful things.  The woods are definitely where serendipity reigns supreme.  Anyway we were too dumb to have a blower and were blowing at the fire with metal pipes and using a brick as an anvil.  The head of Kurt's old two pound hammer kept falling off.  It was as primitive as you could possibly imagine on a cold December day in Ohio.

A modern gas forge and professional farriers anvil came today :)  Tomorrow is going to be awesome!

10/23/2015  It was a great day.  Leather work and Fall Cleaning took up much of the day.  During cleaning I had a dilemma of no where to hang my coats and bags.  Enter a piece of 3/8" steel rod and a beginner blacksmith :)  I turned the forge up to 10 psi after working 3/16" steel last night at 7 psi.  It seemed to work well the forge was up to temp in just a couple minutes.  It took about 30 minutes to pound out the coat hook and too long getting the correct drill bit.  Note to beginners the proper drill bit for hardened steel cuts through like butter.  Always use the proper tool!  A mason, wood or tungsten bit will not work.  You will think they are working but save yourself the time and frustration.

Above is the scrolled tip which only took a couple minutes to figure out.  If I make a mandrel for the pritchel hole on the anvil the scroll should look much neater but I think it looks nice for a first try.

Definitely room for improvement here.  This was my very first time cutting steel with a hammer; it wasn't pretty.  I should have turned up the forge or waited longer.  It was difficult to cut the steel on the step of the anvil; a hardy hole cutter is probably a good tool to make.  Practice; I can already tell this is going to take a lot of practice.  One time my mom asked me how long it takes to learn guitar.  I told her I didn't know; I have been playing 16 years and am still learning.

Coat hanger with brass wood screws.

Coat hanger in use.  Chalk one up for the good guys.  Baby steps.
Make new tools, make good work, be a good neighbor.  Have a nice weekend.

10/24/15  Fooled around for a couple hours today.  Cutting is easier when you do it properly and don't strike the face :)  It is pretty funny when a bright orange piece of metal falls on the ground because you have the wrong tongs.  At 2000F most things burn on contact.  When the dirt catches on fire you know that you are working with powerful forces.

A few hundred degrees more and it melts.  Pretty cool stuff.  This piece started off well but got smashed and I am still working on unsmashing things.

Coat hanger coming along.  With an actual scrolling jig I could do things much faster than freehand.

A jig would probably never make a coat hook that looked like a mother holding a newborn though.

You could hang from it if your wood was decent :)  It might not be pretty but it is damn honest.  I also worked on a belt buckle that didn't pan out well.  To work the way I like to work I am going to definitely need to buy some tool steel and make some jigs and tools. Which will be cool for sure to learn forge welding which is one of the single most badass things you can do.  Heat steel so hot that when you hammer it the molecules bond permanently.   Freehand, tool less is too hard and very time consuming without proper tools.

We finally got a good rain here tonight.  Perfect night to help an old friend move then relax a spell.  Hope your day went well.

10/28/15 Wow, that was a lot of rain hope to have a proper update tomorrow.

11/1/15 Clear skies today and it warmed up to boot!  The lesson of the day was Cool Your Tools!  Keep tools away from the fire until the heat is done.  For short pieces and short tongs cool your tools every few heats.  Nothing is worse than metal burning through leather on too your hands!

I wanted to forge weld a buckle today so I figured the only way to learn was too try!
Heated to bright orange and poured flux all over it because I figured I can't think of another way to do it.

This might be a little too cool still.

Ended up very nice in my opinion at least relatively speaking.  Relative to the buckles I made before that looked like a dragon would be wearing them.

Hands were burning, time too cool my tools!

Buckle pin.

Buckle pin loop, ended up needing some tweaking to work properly.

Lets try a scrolled leaf coat hook!  Peening and drawing out the end.  I was proud of myself as I had this in the fire when I was finishing up the buckle.  Working smart or something like that!

Scrolled leaf.

Hook still needs screw holes drilled out.

Simple and neat.  It was a fun day of practice on a beautiful afternoon. 

11/3/15 Gorgeous day, took the day off of leather work after catching up some over the weekend.  Went to the scrap yard to find practice materials.  You would be amazed at what is there.  It is about the shittiest place you could go next to a mosquito infested area.  There are antique tools from actual US Tool Steel for pennies on the $10.  Got some old wrenches, vise grips and a 5/8" drill bit with a 40 lb. 8 foot piece of 1 1/4" rebar for $30.

Today's lesson was materials and the importance of knowing what you are working with.  Working with the rebar was a lesson for sure.  Pounding away on it with a 12 lb sledge and a cement chisel was work.  Hard work.  The first goal was to cut off a 5 in. piece to make a hardy hole cutting tool.  Don't do it.  It is too soft use tool steel.  Kurt and I did it and it made a use able tool but it is too soft.  I mean if you want to clean up the edge with every use or if it is an emergency situation sure it would be fine. 

Then we made an upsetting block from the rebar.  I think it will be fine for the job.  So the upsetting block was also a belt buckle jig which wasn't what I had hoped.  Lesson learned no new belt buckles today.

The problem was that I was so set on making a belt buckle I didn't heed Kurt's advice.  It was an unused antique drill bit that would have been more useful as a drill bit.  You cannot forge weld it though I could be wrong I have only been doing this two weeks!  It forges just fine a little hard but at only 5'8" I imagine most things would forge easily compared to the 1 1/4" rebar.

It didn't weld so I thought it would make a nice coat hook and it did.  It was very nice until I tried to drill the screw holes in it!  You can't drill through a drill bit!  Which makes sense now!  So a future project is turning the coat hook into a punch since I ruined it as a drilling tool ;)  Funny stuff for sure and the reason people take classes on this.

It was perfect fall weather today and a great day to learn about taking iron from the earth and heating it with the fire from hell.  A good day to get sweaty and think.  I have already thought up a design for an awesome hardy hole cutter and figured out a better way to make a buckle.  The entire practice seems so simple yet requires so much practice to learn how to hold the piece and where to hit it.  If you hit it on the wrong side which seems like the correct side you deform the opposite angle.  Definitely a lot of trial and error but practice makes perfect.  Lots of practice.  The traditional apprenticeship was 7 years with 3-4 years of shit work so maybe three years of hands on learning.  Now a days with the internet you can learn as fast as you wish.  Hope everyone had a good day.  I know I did.  Winter is almost here and it has been dark for hours.  Time to cook some dinner and play the guitar.  Good night.