I decided that I wanted to get into making knives two weeks ago. My wife and I were in Leavenworth WA for our 26th anniversary and I saw a small custom knife shop on the side of the road. We went in and looked around. Come to find out the guy teaches classes on how to make custom knives. My wife said I should do it. Understand that I have a huge collection of knives that my dad started me out on back in the 60's when he shipped me a box of Filippino knives. Most of my knives are working knives...not your fancy "put on a shelf" type. Anyway....I came home and told my son-in-law what I wanted to do. His face lit up with a smile from ear-to-ear and says that he has always wanted to have a forge since shop in high school.
I get home last night from work and Justin is out in the shop. He has two boxes of fire brick and a roofing torch. So we talk about designs and come up with one that we liked. My shop has a fireplace in the corner so that sounded like the perfect place to set the forge so the heat and fumes will ventilate out the chimney. We are going to add a hood on the front edge of the fireplace to pull the heat and fumes into the opening. The forge is 23" long and the fireplace is 23" long so the heat and fumes go into the room and not up the chimney.
Please click on the link below and visit the pictures I took and posted in my Yahoo Photo Album. Please give me all of your comments on what you like and anything you think we should change. I had a piece of 1/2" round stock sitting in the corner. We stuck it in and it was red hot in about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes.
We are making a few adjustments today like angling the handle to the right by 45° so it is not in the way and the flames don't lick up your hand when you make an adjustment. We also are going to try and use a fan and pipe the air into the torch for more air flow. We had to make some adjustments last night because the flame blew itself out.
I loaded all of the pictures in order but for some reason Yahoo. mixed them all up. I added comments to them so you can at least know what you are looking at.
Red Bear's First Forge
Reid Allen
and what looks like the start to
BearKat Custom Knives
I get home last night from work and Justin is out in the shop. He has two boxes of fire brick and a roofing torch. So we talk about designs and come up with one that we liked. My shop has a fireplace in the corner so that sounded like the perfect place to set the forge so the heat and fumes will ventilate out the chimney. We are going to add a hood on the front edge of the fireplace to pull the heat and fumes into the opening. The forge is 23" long and the fireplace is 23" long so the heat and fumes go into the room and not up the chimney.
Please click on the link below and visit the pictures I took and posted in my Yahoo Photo Album. Please give me all of your comments on what you like and anything you think we should change. I had a piece of 1/2" round stock sitting in the corner. We stuck it in and it was red hot in about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes.
We are making a few adjustments today like angling the handle to the right by 45° so it is not in the way and the flames don't lick up your hand when you make an adjustment. We also are going to try and use a fan and pipe the air into the torch for more air flow. We had to make some adjustments last night because the flame blew itself out.
I loaded all of the pictures in order but for some reason Yahoo. mixed them all up. I added comments to them so you can at least know what you are looking at.
Red Bear's First Forge
Reid Allen
and what looks like the start to
BearKat Custom Knives
