Forge Workout #1

[gfish]

Yesterday I spent a few hours trying out the forge with corivax and cow.


Wheee! It was a lot of fun. Kind of weird to be hammering away on an anvil in the middle of a residential neighborhood. No one complained, though. Yay for that.

First we just banged on a rod to get a feel for how it worked. Still very weird to watch steel deform under some not even particularly impassioned blows.


I started to work on a pair of tongs, but then, disaster! The front enclosure fell out, breaking in three. After letting everything cool down, I was able to wire the pieces back into place. I'll have to make a new one, or get some cement that can handle the heat, but it works for now.

With that fixed, back to the tongs. Next step was to rivet them together. Pretty cool to make a rivet out of bar stock.


Finally we shaped the jaws of the tongs by heating them up, gripping a 5/8" rod with them and hammer them to shape. This gave them a nice round groove down the center, good for gripping a wide array of shape with.


'Dude, I made a pair of tongs!'


Tongs in use while playing around with a section of cable. We weren't able to reach welding temperatures, so working on the cable wasn't as cool as we had hoped. You can also see the creative wiring job holding the front enclosure on.


Hi, cow!


As a quick little project, I then made a nice little coat hook. I still have to drill the hole for the screw. Technically I should punch it out, but I haven't made a punch yet, and I have this perfectly good drillpress sitting on my workbench...


All in all, very successful. And I'm going to need lots and lots of practice. I'm already thinking that this might be an interesting way to replace the broken handle on the fridge door...

Comments

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

We're not gonna have to change our last name to Smith, are we?

[jadine.livejournal.com]

Man, I want a forge now.