Hobby blacksmithing

[TradLife406]

I played way too much kingdom come deliverance the past month or two.

Kind of thinking about setting up a forge to tinker with. Something my kids and I could do.

There's way too many dudes making knives and selling them. Don't want to be that guy. Just want to give my boy something to mess with. He's obsessed with making toy knives and swords from whatever he can find.

Anyone know how to start? I see there's a lot of different DIY forges on YouTube.

What other basic tools do you need besides an anvil?

Too bad taking railroad spikes from work is a fireable offense

 

[survivalistd]

What's more important your son's happiness or your job??

 

[Lil-Rokslider]

Forge, tongs to hold whatever dimension stock you are working with, anvil, rounding hammer, steel to make whatever you want.

That's the basics, and like anything, the further into it you get, the more things you can buy. The cool thing about blacksmithing is that you can make yourself the tools that you don't have. Make a bunch of different sizes and styles of tongs, hammers, hardy hole tools, punches, drifts, etc....

By the time you've made what you need you'll be better and forging, understand how metal moves, have better hammer control, and have a bunch of tools.

 

[AZDC]

If you’re close to a city you can go to a makerspace and try it out while you gather tools

 

[Nicaburns]

There are lots of great YouTube vids to get started, Christ Centered Ironworks, Black Bear Forge etc.
I made one set of tongs an decided I wanted to make knives and not tools so I buy my tongs from fiery furnace forge but there are lots of choices.
It really doesn’t take much to get started but you can go down a rabbit hole awfully fast!

 

[Wrench]

In my youth I worked in a shop that produced springs, forgings and did heat treatments. I had a small furnace that was essentially just a small box with a narrow gap on the front for inserting the pieces. The box was heated with a propane weed burner torch that had a stainless tube that fed compressed air into the torch diffuser.

I would light the torch just like any weed burner and insert it into a hole in the rear of the box (hole sawed in the refractory brick). It took a couple of minutes to warm the box enough to let me start coming up with the fuel and air....but when it was hot, I could work 10 pieces of 7/8" 4140 in a pneumatic hammer and never have to wait.

The entire box had maybe 20 bricks total and was super simple. I don't remember if I drilled the propane jet out or not....but it was all stuff that I had laying around the shop and nothing difficult to build in more than an hour or so.

 

[Cedarsavage]

I made a few knives with a wood fire and hair dryer for forced air pretty cheap and simple. I think it may have heated faster than my propane forge.