Forgery

I made some modifications to my forge today... I really should remember better to take pictures. Anyway, I picked up a t-joint thing, so now the ashes and small coals can fall past the incoming airflow and out of the way, which is a good thing, since I realized that apparently some hot coals had fallen into the airtube and burned right through the thin metal (I'm just using like a dryer tube thing at the moment, one of those accordion style ones). Also I picked up an electric blower fan. It's a Stanley pivoting blower fan. I connected it up in place of the shop vac I was using before. That fire really gets hot now, so I'd say it seems to be a better blower, and compared to the price of actual blacksmithing blowers, it was a good deal. I'll post up a link of it from Amazon. I still would really like to get an anvil and especially a source of coal instead of the charcoal I'm using. The charcoal burns so fast that it's hard to get much done before it's gone. the bag only lasts maybe an hour if I'm careful, which is not a lot of time, combined with my inexperience and the inefficiency of using a piece of steel plate set on the concrete as an anvil.

http://www.amazon.com/Lasko-655702-Stanley-High-Velocity-BlowerFan/dp/B0001BJDUQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1305855747&sr=8-1

Fire is hot

Made a poker today, and did some work on my rake. I went to Menard's today and picked up some stuff for it too. I now have some goggles (I like to see) and some ear protection headphone things with a built in radio and an auxiliary jack for mp3 players and the like. Also, I picked up a piece of steel about 4'' by probably 10'' or 12'', I didn't really pay that close attention to the dimensions, and probably 1/8'' thick. maybe less, i dunno. but i'm hammering against that on the concrete, instead of directly on the concrete. It's still not great and kinda bounces around, but at least it keeps the rocks from getting ground in so much.

went through another 8lb bag of charcoal. I need to get my hands on some coal. I don't know if there's anyplace around here that I could easily get quantities of it, i might ask around, but if not I might just have to order some from like centaur forge, cuz those 6 dollar bags of charcoal go fast. In further news, I burned my finger and got a blister on my thumb from the hammer.

That is all.

P.S.

Oh yeah, and I guess it would make sense for me to tell you that I forged my first piece of... forgery? today. I made a coal rake (technically I only have charcoal at the moment, but shhh). It's every bit as rudimentary and unprofessional looking as you would expect from a first attempt ever at forging, especially considering I don't have an anvil. I used the concrete slab we have in the back yard. Pretty classy, I know. It created a not unexpected side effect of that my rake has pieces of rock/concrete imbedded into the surface of the steel. Meh, I don't plan on trying to sell the piece as a work of art, I plan to use it to move my coals around in the forge.

-edit- Here are some pics

My forge. I'm thinking I'm gonna get some more bricks or something so

I can cover the sides better and give me some more room to hold the fuel. 

This is after we spread the coals to let it die, and then I remembered I wanted a picture

so I quickly had to build it back up a little bit again.

The next three are the rake I made. It's just a piece of round bar flatted a bit and bent at a 90. Very basic.

P.P.S. The white pieces of charcoal are hot, even if you only touch them for a second-and-a-half... and I'm an idiot. Just throwing that out there. Don't touch the white charcoal with you hands people!

It's kind of weird in a way, starting a blog. I mean, why write something if no one knows to read it? But, if you don't ever start writing blogs, then no one will ever read them. It's an interesting conundrum, at least in my mind.

And so our story begins...

I thought maybe I should put up a blog, since it seems to be "the thing" to do these days, but I wasn't sure what kind of blog. I mean, I guess I could just have a blog where I put random stuff that's happening to me (and I'm sure that'll still get into the blog) but I mean, I already have that; it's called facebook. But then it dawned on me that along with my brand new hobby I'm trying out, I could create a brand new blog to document my progression (hopefully). So here it is, my brand new BLACKSMITHING BLOG! w00t.

I have some clips and pics of my first forge, which I built out of one of those portable firepits you can buy at the store, so hopefully I'll get those off my phone, edited, and online soon... hopefully. I also have a hobby of sleeping in, and of video games, and of not working on projects as much as I should, but hopefully all these conflicting hobbies won't interfere too much. Hey, maybe a blog will even help motivate me more.