Testing out Bruce's new forge

DEllis

DEllis

Part Time Steel Basher
Joined
Oct 17, 2007
Messages
966
Bruce Culberson recently finished up a new vertical forge, so we got to gether to test it out last evening. Neither of us have much forge welding experience so it was a trial and error sorta deal. Here're a couple pics, ended up with a three layer blade around 8 inches long. 1084 sandwiched betwixt 2 pieces of 15n20.
Me standing in front of the forge looking important.........actually looking like a cross between a hobbit and a garden gnome:D
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Bruce doing the real work........blade shaping up pretty nice.
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Also normalized and hardened my camp sword.......I posted this pic in that thread but figgured I may as well put it in here too.
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Hopefully Bruce'll add some progress pics of that san mai blade soon.
Darcy:)
 
Good eye Salem, it is a Brooks. My previous no-name anvil was borrowed from my neighbor, the heel is busted off it, and the face...well it had a face that only a mother could love. All the corners were rounded off and the surface was a mess (someone had done welding on it, there was slag on the surface). Forging on the old anvil just made a thud, whereas the Brooks likes to ring. One thing about the old anvil is you didn't need a texturing hammer to put a forges finish on the blade!
 
Nah, there is a pile of them at the dump. I got luck and even found one that had the valve removed. It has two layers of insulwool and clay coated. The floor is cat litter. I have some Plistix on order, but I couldn't wait though and had to give it a try to see if it would weld. The internal volume is 265 cubic inches and she is powered by 1 Darren Ellis ventrui side burner. That vertical forge was my first ever welding project that I put together with a $99 Princess Auto flux core wire feed. I just won't show any close ups of my first welds with it, they hold it together but don't look pretty....
The big (16"x24") heat treating forge is from an old water heater that I salvaged from the dump too.

The san mai blade is soaking in vinegar to loosen up the scale before grinding. If it is a success we are going to try a bigger stack next time!
 
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