About Me

I am a 15 year old guy who is drawn to knives and other pointy objects. In this blog, I hope to cover basics of knife ownership and eventually DIY knives. Nothing is for sale (yet) as I haven't made anything yet...

Friday, August 5, 2011

My Forge

So this is my forge. A pile of rocks on top of another larger rock. It serves its purpose though. The inside is about a foot deep and 9 inches wide. The pole you see sticking into it from the left side is for air, and the rod is attached to a pump.


I do not yet have an anvil, so I had to find an anvil shaped object, and this rock seemed to do the trick. It is stable and heavy with a flat top which is just what I was looking for.


Starting the forge with the nail I was trying to melt in the bottom middle. We (my brother and me) went through a lot of wood trying to keep the embers nice and hot.


Later on in the operation of the forge we got some nice embers (which don't show up in this)  and the nail is still there.


At the end of the day, after 4 hours of heating, we were unable to turn the nail glowing. We did get a dull red glow however, but that didn't last. Our main problem is the wrong wood. We were burning pine boards which burned quickly but with not too much heat. The forge was still very hot, we got hungry and made toast in less than 5 minutes a few inches away from the mouth of the furnace. There is a lot i need to learn about using a forge correctly, but I know it will work eventually. When we decided to kill the fire, I got some water on the rocks making up the forge, and the water instantly boiled. Those rocks were hot... I plan to keep experimenting, and I will keep this blog updated.

1 comment:

  1. It looks like you are well on your way. Was the goal to melt the nail?

    ReplyDelete