Want to start without making a huge initial investment?
RULE NUMBER 1: Under no circumstances ever tell anyone who's selling something that you are a blacksmith.
That anvil that's being hauled out to the curb with the "for sale" sign on it will magically transform from a $400
anvil, which they're tired of looking at, into a $700 heirloom that great grandpa brought over from Sweden to
shoe horses until the day he retired. That's a true story from a friend. Once people find out that you can use their
"junk" it suddenly has great personal and monetary value. Let them think you're doing them a favor by cleaning
out their garage. Tell them the wife wants one for the garden. I had a place tell me that they paid a guy to haul
away their scrap steel. When the manager asked me what I wanted the scrap for, I told him I am a hobbyist
metalworker. Suddenly, steel that they paid by the pound to have hauled away was worth $10 per strip.
Actually, it was worth on the order of negative $2 per strip because I told him I was no longer interested. We
went back and forth and he couldn't see the economic advantages of good will and future incoming business (it
was an auto repair shop and I race my car- he must not have thought about transmission repairs, alignments and
such).
STEEL:
I'd love to say you can find usable steel on every street corner and in every ditch you come across. I happen to
live in a well-kept suburb and this sort of "junk" is looked down upon. However, some items that might otherwise
be thrown away are usable.
You'll be going to a scrap yard (in all likelihood) to find your first anvil. That's a great place to find mild steel
scrap. Most stuff in small round or square shape is either steel or aluminum. If it's not rusty it's stainless steel or
aluminum. I don't recommend stainless for beginners. I don't use it for anything and I don't know anyone who
uses it. It's hard to forge and it really wants to fall apart under heat, in my limited experience.
Resist the temptation to buy the entire yard- a lot of this stuff you won't be able to do anything with for a good
long time. Do take advantage of crates of square 1/4" thick plates, cheap angle iron, smaller jackhammer bits and
automotive springs (you can't do anything with them just yet, but later on you can make all sorts of tools). Keep
in mind that you'll be making tables, rests and stands for the tools you'll acquire, so shop accordingly.
You may have to go to a steel yard. An intimidating experience, to be sure. Call first and find out if it's a walk-in
yard or if they only do delivery. If they only deliver chances are they won't deliver to your home, but ask
anyway and thank them for their time if they don't. You need a place where you can go for a small quantity of
steel. Eventually you'll find a place where you can walk in, tell them what you want, they'll cut it and you'll pay
for it.
A few places have cropped up that cater to the hobbyist metalworker. I strongly encourage you to do your
homework. I was going to go to my regular place, but had to buy some 1/4" square from a hobbyist place (my
regular doesn't carry square that small). I got lazy and made my entire order at the hobby place. My bill was
$165.00. My bill from my regular would have only been $47. That was an expensive lesson.
Quick and dirty: practice with rebar (concrete reinforcement bars). It's cheap. It's plentiful. You can buy 2 feet or
100 feet at the home store near you. It generally comes in 3/8" and 1/2". Near the rebar you'll likely find other
pieces of inexpensive metal you can heat and hammer on (but do stay away from the galvanized stuff). There are
some folks who have had good luck making rebar into tools. I haven't. Rebar has a very relaxed minimum
standard. You'll find some sections that work like basic mild steel and some sections that are tougher than alloyed
tool steels. It's great for practicing blacksmithing techniques, though.
My most important bit of advice here is to always be polite and be prepared with some "business" cards that at
least have your name, phone number and a message to "call if you have scrap metal" on them.
Special note for aspiring bladesmiths and tool makers: don't bother with scrap for tools/knives. If
you're going to take the time to make a knife, it's really best to place an order with a place like Admiral Steel. The
steel you order will be approximately the size you need so you can start forging to shape. Otherwise, you'll be
pounding a piece of scrap into the size you want to start with and then you can start forging your shape. I have
had a few springs show fractures in the forge, but I'm not going to tell any horror stories about scrap knives that
failed at a critical time. However, because of the significant amount of work involved in forging down to a
reasonable size, I don't use old springs much anymore. I do like files, but mostly I use them to make flint strikers.
QUENCH:
A plastic 5 gallon bucket will work so long as you don't drop the piece. Galvanized tubs work better, but the
bottom will rust if you drop heavy or pointy metal in the bottom. My favorite to date is a 1/2 wine barrel filled
to the top of the highest band- above that and it'll leak. The home store where you buy your rebar will likely have
these around spring time. They're sold as planters and look really "authentic". You'll want to fill them outside of
the shop and let them leak. Keep filling and allowing the leaks until the leaks stop; the wood has to swell.
Usually they'll hold water up to the largest band, or a little higher. If you let it dry out, even part way, you'll have
to start over- so keep your quench tub filled as much as you can. Add some baking soda and dish soap to the
quench water. The soap breaks the surface tension so bugs and such can't breed in the water and most everything
will sink. Baking soda seems to inhibit rust formation, too.
Quench sparingly. Modern "mild steel" is usually now called "A36" and is a lot like rebar. If you quench it, it will
become brittle and can break. I forget this once in a while when I'm in a hurry. When a piece isn't quite right and
I try to "nudge" it into place it invariably breaks then I have to start over. If the yard swears that it's 1018 or 1020,
just assume they're wrong and treat it as mentioned above.
FORGE:
My first forge was a coffee can lined with refractory cement and I used a plumber's propane torch as a burner. The
refractory cement was pricey and not really suitable for a forge. For literally a few dollars more I could have used
superwool refractory blanket and some ITC-100 refractory slip. This would have made a more reflective forge
interior and would have given better heat- live and learn. Even simpler forges can be made from soft fire bricks.
White, porous brick is the best for this, though they are fragile, even when they don't have a hole drilled through
them. These are not the red bricks you find in your fireplace or at the hardware store. All you do is drill a hole
the length of the brick and then drill perpendicularly into the main hole from one side. This is your burner port
(the side hole) and your forge (the longer hole). It's usable for smaller things like hooks and tent pegs and some
small knives.
Making that drill bit is easy and a good first project. Set up two bricks into an "L" shape. Put the piece that you'll
use as your drill rod in the corner where the two bricks meet. Since the bricks are relatively soft, you can use any
steel for the bit, so long as you can work it. Rebar would be a good choice. Heat the tip, flatten a little on your
anvil, make sure everything is still straight and quench. If it looks something like a screwdriver, that's what you're
after. I suppose if you were not interested in making your own tool but for some reason wanted to make a
mini-forge, you could cut the handle off of a long screwdriver (8+") for the same effect. Now put the not-worked
end of your newly forged tool into your drill's chuck and use it like a drill bit. Drilling a couple holes on top of
each other makes a larger forge interior.
Other simple forges can be made from mud and wood ash in a metal tub (usually sold for storing ice and beer at
picnics). They're galvanized but a thick coating of adobe or refractory cement will keep the zinc from burning off.
These can be powered by a hand cranked blower or bellows and burn solid fuels such as coal or charcoal. Check
out Tim Lively and Tai Goo for "neo-tribal" back-to-basics forges and techniques. One word of caution: hand
cranked blowers are becoming harder to find as people scrap them or hide them away for their aesthetic value.
Do not expect to find one for $25 like some folks will tell you. Do expect to pay over $100 for a functional unit.
Do not feel like you're "cheating" if you use a hair dryer. If you must use a hand powered blower, search for
Japanese style bellows (box bellows) for info about building a traditional wood bellows. Bathroom fans (available
at the samehome store as your rebar and galvanized tub) can be used with little modification. Find something to
act as a "choke" on electric blowers. As shown in the pictures above, a piece of stiff cardboard works well. Adding
too much air wastes fuel. It burns fuel that much faster and it can cool the metal if you're forcing in more air than
the fuel can use.
HAMMER:
Almost any hammer will work. Most hardware stores are now carrying a cross peen style hammer. I started with
a 1.5# ball peen. Go a little heavier than you think you might want, surely no less than two pounds.
ANVIL:
You have lots of choices here. Railroad track, forklift tine, large piece of scrap, a block of granite (really)- anything
that has mass to it. The larger, the better. Tool steel is preferred to mild steel or cast iron, but you're not picky
right now. You just need something to back up your hammer blows. Softer steel can be "work hardened" by
pounding on it with a hammer until you've compressed the face some. I've heard of people taking an 8# sledge,
filling a 5gal bucket with dirt, ramming the dirt until it's very firm and planting the hammer head halfway into the
rammed dirt. I'm sure it wasn't fun but it probably worked. Securing the anvil to a stand or into the ground will
help keep the energy of hammering in the material being hammered on. A lot of energy is lost when the anvil
bounces around which will make you tired sooner.
TONGS:
You can get away with pliers for a while. Tongs are available from several sources until you forge your own. See
my blog for an excellent tutorial video about tong making.
LEARNIN':
Previously, I'd said " I'm not gonna say 'just take a welding class' or any of that hokey BS that doesn't reflect how
the real world works," but I found out recently that there's a fine arts school in Seattle (www.pratt.org) that has
introductory welding classes with no prerequisites. I stand (somewhat) corrected. I will say that the internet is an
awesome place to meet other smiths and a quick google search of "blacksmith forum" or something similar will
give you lots of information. You might even meet some like-minded folks. My "links" section might also help
you start. Explore every avenue that you can afford in order to expand your knowledge base.
This is just the barest of beginnings. Smithing can be as expensive or as inexpensive as you want it to be. Those
cool tools require a lot of time to learn how to use them, in addition to the price you're going to pay in dollars.
For example: files can do most of the work of a belt sander; albeit more slowly. There are occasionally some
problems with my knives that my belt sander won't fix, but a few minutes with a file often resolves the issue.
Plus, it's a lot easier to mess up a perfectly good knife blade with a belt sander. That's the trade off. You probably
know how to use a file well enough to do what you want. Learning to use a belt sander to put an even edge on a
tool is difficult and can be frustrating, but is faster once you get the hang of it.
Lastly, if you do go out and buy fancy equipment and such and you decide that this isn't the hobby for you, please
don't hide those tools away. Give it a reasonable amount of time then if you're really not interested, please find a
local smith and see if they're interested or know folks who might be. Drop me a line and I might be able to take a
hand cranked blower or venturi propane burner off your hands- but to "collect' tools that others desperately
search for is really borderline criminal and makes this avocation very difficult for those of us that need those tools.
Thanks for reading BE SAFE and good luck!!
Updated:
11/9- bladesmith steels
11/18- re-added paypal buttons.
RULE NUMBER 1: Under no circumstances ever tell anyone who's selling something that you are a blacksmith.
That anvil that's being hauled out to the curb with the "for sale" sign on it will magically transform from a $400
anvil, which they're tired of looking at, into a $700 heirloom that great grandpa brought over from Sweden to
shoe horses until the day he retired. That's a true story from a friend. Once people find out that you can use their
"junk" it suddenly has great personal and monetary value. Let them think you're doing them a favor by cleaning
out their garage. Tell them the wife wants one for the garden. I had a place tell me that they paid a guy to haul
away their scrap steel. When the manager asked me what I wanted the scrap for, I told him I am a hobbyist
metalworker. Suddenly, steel that they paid by the pound to have hauled away was worth $10 per strip.
Actually, it was worth on the order of negative $2 per strip because I told him I was no longer interested. We
went back and forth and he couldn't see the economic advantages of good will and future incoming business (it
was an auto repair shop and I race my car- he must not have thought about transmission repairs, alignments and
such).
STEEL:
I'd love to say you can find usable steel on every street corner and in every ditch you come across. I happen to
live in a well-kept suburb and this sort of "junk" is looked down upon. However, some items that might otherwise
be thrown away are usable.
You'll be going to a scrap yard (in all likelihood) to find your first anvil. That's a great place to find mild steel
scrap. Most stuff in small round or square shape is either steel or aluminum. If it's not rusty it's stainless steel or
aluminum. I don't recommend stainless for beginners. I don't use it for anything and I don't know anyone who
uses it. It's hard to forge and it really wants to fall apart under heat, in my limited experience.
Resist the temptation to buy the entire yard- a lot of this stuff you won't be able to do anything with for a good
long time. Do take advantage of crates of square 1/4" thick plates, cheap angle iron, smaller jackhammer bits and
automotive springs (you can't do anything with them just yet, but later on you can make all sorts of tools). Keep
in mind that you'll be making tables, rests and stands for the tools you'll acquire, so shop accordingly.
You may have to go to a steel yard. An intimidating experience, to be sure. Call first and find out if it's a walk-in
yard or if they only do delivery. If they only deliver chances are they won't deliver to your home, but ask
anyway and thank them for their time if they don't. You need a place where you can go for a small quantity of
steel. Eventually you'll find a place where you can walk in, tell them what you want, they'll cut it and you'll pay
for it.
A few places have cropped up that cater to the hobbyist metalworker. I strongly encourage you to do your
homework. I was going to go to my regular place, but had to buy some 1/4" square from a hobbyist place (my
regular doesn't carry square that small). I got lazy and made my entire order at the hobby place. My bill was
$165.00. My bill from my regular would have only been $47. That was an expensive lesson.
Quick and dirty: practice with rebar (concrete reinforcement bars). It's cheap. It's plentiful. You can buy 2 feet or
100 feet at the home store near you. It generally comes in 3/8" and 1/2". Near the rebar you'll likely find other
pieces of inexpensive metal you can heat and hammer on (but do stay away from the galvanized stuff). There are
some folks who have had good luck making rebar into tools. I haven't. Rebar has a very relaxed minimum
standard. You'll find some sections that work like basic mild steel and some sections that are tougher than alloyed
tool steels. It's great for practicing blacksmithing techniques, though.
My most important bit of advice here is to always be polite and be prepared with some "business" cards that at
least have your name, phone number and a message to "call if you have scrap metal" on them.
Special note for aspiring bladesmiths and tool makers: don't bother with scrap for tools/knives. If
you're going to take the time to make a knife, it's really best to place an order with a place like Admiral Steel. The
steel you order will be approximately the size you need so you can start forging to shape. Otherwise, you'll be
pounding a piece of scrap into the size you want to start with and then you can start forging your shape. I have
had a few springs show fractures in the forge, but I'm not going to tell any horror stories about scrap knives that
failed at a critical time. However, because of the significant amount of work involved in forging down to a
reasonable size, I don't use old springs much anymore. I do like files, but mostly I use them to make flint strikers.
QUENCH:
A plastic 5 gallon bucket will work so long as you don't drop the piece. Galvanized tubs work better, but the
bottom will rust if you drop heavy or pointy metal in the bottom. My favorite to date is a 1/2 wine barrel filled
to the top of the highest band- above that and it'll leak. The home store where you buy your rebar will likely have
these around spring time. They're sold as planters and look really "authentic". You'll want to fill them outside of
the shop and let them leak. Keep filling and allowing the leaks until the leaks stop; the wood has to swell.
Usually they'll hold water up to the largest band, or a little higher. If you let it dry out, even part way, you'll have
to start over- so keep your quench tub filled as much as you can. Add some baking soda and dish soap to the
quench water. The soap breaks the surface tension so bugs and such can't breed in the water and most everything
will sink. Baking soda seems to inhibit rust formation, too.
Quench sparingly. Modern "mild steel" is usually now called "A36" and is a lot like rebar. If you quench it, it will
become brittle and can break. I forget this once in a while when I'm in a hurry. When a piece isn't quite right and
I try to "nudge" it into place it invariably breaks then I have to start over. If the yard swears that it's 1018 or 1020,
just assume they're wrong and treat it as mentioned above.
FORGE:
My first forge was a coffee can lined with refractory cement and I used a plumber's propane torch as a burner. The
refractory cement was pricey and not really suitable for a forge. For literally a few dollars more I could have used
superwool refractory blanket and some ITC-100 refractory slip. This would have made a more reflective forge
interior and would have given better heat- live and learn. Even simpler forges can be made from soft fire bricks.
White, porous brick is the best for this, though they are fragile, even when they don't have a hole drilled through
them. These are not the red bricks you find in your fireplace or at the hardware store. All you do is drill a hole
the length of the brick and then drill perpendicularly into the main hole from one side. This is your burner port
(the side hole) and your forge (the longer hole). It's usable for smaller things like hooks and tent pegs and some
small knives.
Making that drill bit is easy and a good first project. Set up two bricks into an "L" shape. Put the piece that you'll
use as your drill rod in the corner where the two bricks meet. Since the bricks are relatively soft, you can use any
steel for the bit, so long as you can work it. Rebar would be a good choice. Heat the tip, flatten a little on your
anvil, make sure everything is still straight and quench. If it looks something like a screwdriver, that's what you're
after. I suppose if you were not interested in making your own tool but for some reason wanted to make a
mini-forge, you could cut the handle off of a long screwdriver (8+") for the same effect. Now put the not-worked
end of your newly forged tool into your drill's chuck and use it like a drill bit. Drilling a couple holes on top of
each other makes a larger forge interior.
Other simple forges can be made from mud and wood ash in a metal tub (usually sold for storing ice and beer at
picnics). They're galvanized but a thick coating of adobe or refractory cement will keep the zinc from burning off.
These can be powered by a hand cranked blower or bellows and burn solid fuels such as coal or charcoal. Check
out Tim Lively and Tai Goo for "neo-tribal" back-to-basics forges and techniques. One word of caution: hand
cranked blowers are becoming harder to find as people scrap them or hide them away for their aesthetic value.
Do not expect to find one for $25 like some folks will tell you. Do expect to pay over $100 for a functional unit.
Do not feel like you're "cheating" if you use a hair dryer. If you must use a hand powered blower, search for
Japanese style bellows (box bellows) for info about building a traditional wood bellows. Bathroom fans (available
at the samehome store as your rebar and galvanized tub) can be used with little modification. Find something to
act as a "choke" on electric blowers. As shown in the pictures above, a piece of stiff cardboard works well. Adding
too much air wastes fuel. It burns fuel that much faster and it can cool the metal if you're forcing in more air than
the fuel can use.
HAMMER:
Almost any hammer will work. Most hardware stores are now carrying a cross peen style hammer. I started with
a 1.5# ball peen. Go a little heavier than you think you might want, surely no less than two pounds.
ANVIL:
You have lots of choices here. Railroad track, forklift tine, large piece of scrap, a block of granite (really)- anything
that has mass to it. The larger, the better. Tool steel is preferred to mild steel or cast iron, but you're not picky
right now. You just need something to back up your hammer blows. Softer steel can be "work hardened" by
pounding on it with a hammer until you've compressed the face some. I've heard of people taking an 8# sledge,
filling a 5gal bucket with dirt, ramming the dirt until it's very firm and planting the hammer head halfway into the
rammed dirt. I'm sure it wasn't fun but it probably worked. Securing the anvil to a stand or into the ground will
help keep the energy of hammering in the material being hammered on. A lot of energy is lost when the anvil
bounces around which will make you tired sooner.
TONGS:
You can get away with pliers for a while. Tongs are available from several sources until you forge your own. See
my blog for an excellent tutorial video about tong making.
LEARNIN':
Previously, I'd said " I'm not gonna say 'just take a welding class' or any of that hokey BS that doesn't reflect how
the real world works," but I found out recently that there's a fine arts school in Seattle (www.pratt.org) that has
introductory welding classes with no prerequisites. I stand (somewhat) corrected. I will say that the internet is an
awesome place to meet other smiths and a quick google search of "blacksmith forum" or something similar will
give you lots of information. You might even meet some like-minded folks. My "links" section might also help
you start. Explore every avenue that you can afford in order to expand your knowledge base.
This is just the barest of beginnings. Smithing can be as expensive or as inexpensive as you want it to be. Those
cool tools require a lot of time to learn how to use them, in addition to the price you're going to pay in dollars.
For example: files can do most of the work of a belt sander; albeit more slowly. There are occasionally some
problems with my knives that my belt sander won't fix, but a few minutes with a file often resolves the issue.
Plus, it's a lot easier to mess up a perfectly good knife blade with a belt sander. That's the trade off. You probably
know how to use a file well enough to do what you want. Learning to use a belt sander to put an even edge on a
tool is difficult and can be frustrating, but is faster once you get the hang of it.
Lastly, if you do go out and buy fancy equipment and such and you decide that this isn't the hobby for you, please
don't hide those tools away. Give it a reasonable amount of time then if you're really not interested, please find a
local smith and see if they're interested or know folks who might be. Drop me a line and I might be able to take a
hand cranked blower or venturi propane burner off your hands- but to "collect' tools that others desperately
search for is really borderline criminal and makes this avocation very difficult for those of us that need those tools.
Thanks for reading BE SAFE and good luck!!
Updated:
11/9- bladesmith steels
11/18- re-added paypal buttons.
Tips for Beginners
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donating a little to keep the site running? I appreciate it very much!