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At 3/31/09 10:16 PM, BrianEtrius wrote: HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO ARGUE IF I CAN'T TALK?!

Sign Language.

Okay, I need a bit of help with something.

I'm planning on making my own mini-forge, for the purpose of heat tempering/treating knives. This is going to be a trial deal to figure out whether yes or no I like doing this enough to make a full blown forge and start making knives on a regular basis.

My idea consists of the following; pile up grilling charcoal on the ground, light it, and cover it with a gallon sized steel bucket. The bucket itself will be sprayed on the inside with high-heat spray paint for grills, which can withstand temps up to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (815 degrees Celsius), so this will keep the bucket itself from melting as well as reflecting the heat back in on the coals. A hole will be made in the top to allow for smoke to escape, with a smaller hole on the side to allow for focused air from a compressor to heat the whole mess up.

So....

Bag of coals; $6
Bucket; $10
Spray Paint; $4.

Lighter fluid, air compressor, and access to a drill for making holes in the bucket are free.

Any flaws I should be aware of?

what kind of protection do you have for yourself? shit is going to be hot and you can't just stick a knife into there bare handed. What tools will you have to get it in/out. I don't think oven mitts will do the job....

You need some serious heat right? You will also need to consider what you are making this on top of, if you have any, and I mean ANY, type of organic material underneath that, it could very well smolder for days, and one dry day you may well cause a brush fire. It happens all the time out here where people will not fully put out a camp fire and it smolders for a long time in the organic material under ground, and then causes a forest fire. I'm not saying it will happen, but even with your spray paint, it is still going to heat up the ground under it.

I would suggest avoiding any type of previously used hearth, as coals or ashes or unburned material will do just that, and if there's a few layers..well, yeah. and anywhere with grass or roots (don't want to set your shrubs ablaze)...If you have like a cement fire place in the yard, or you can make one...

At 3/31/09 11:37 PM, Malachy wrote: what kind of protection do you have for yourself?

I intend to get some welder's gloves and tongs, right now I'm just trying to get the whole design of the forge itself down.

I don't intend to actually be pounding steel with a hammer and anvil at this point, I just intend to be getting the steel cherry red so I can take and quench it in oil to case harden it.

I would suggest avoiding any type of previously used hearth, as coals or ashes or unburned material will do just that, and if there's a few layers..well, yeah. and anywhere with grass or roots (don't want to set your shrubs ablaze)...If you have like a cement fire place in the yard, or you can make one...

I've got such a place scouted out. :-D

If I gave the finger I'd probably just end up losing the case.

Maybe I should just do paper work this week, and actually start doing what my job requires me to do.....

That stack of papers on my desk sure is high.......

At 3/31/09 11:21 PM, Proteas wrote:
Bag of coals; $6
Bucket; $10
Spray Paint; $4.

Skin Grafts: Priceless

j/k I know absolutely nothing about the subject

At 3/31/09 07:40 PM, SkunkyFluffy wrote: Can you change her diet to prevent this in the future? I know increased calcium helps a lot with this, as does making sure they get enough exercise.

It's one of those once-in-a-blue-moon sort of situation. All my birds roam free when I'm around because they're potty trained.

And they're on a peletted diet which has its sufficient calcium, and plus I give them their spinach and other greens.

She seems a whole lot better right now. I smashed up a calcium pill and put it in some water and forced it in her throat. In that way, she can have some calcium immedietly in her body.

OMG...
I just bought the East of Eden DVD from the 80s mini-series.

I bought, several months ago, a boot leg that looked real on Ebay. I was sore because I thought I was getting the real deal. instead, i got a poor VHS transfer.

Costed me 60 bucks, and I gave a negative review (and got one too)-- because the seller didn't say it was real.

But, anyways, I bought real one that barely came out this March.
I highly recommend every to get this one to own or rent. It's visually beautiful, and it fills in a fixes some of the problems (at least, the ones that I saw) in the novel.

Okay, April Fool's prank is over.
I thought it was annoying instead of funny...

At 4/2/09 03:42 AM, fli wrote: Okay, April Fool's prank is over.
I thought it was annoying instead of funny...

Join the club.... I purposefully avoided NG for the entire day. All I can say is thank god for friends with MSN who I can talk absoltue shit too for hours at a time. It's like being on the BBS, but with people I actually care about :P

Meh, april fools joke was impairing my free speech. I was cut off from posting in the forums the whole day it seems, so I spent my time watching very mature vids at redtube. That is a pastime too, I guess.

Anyhow.

I´m back from the baltics and I bring to you a proposition:

Free Hugs for everyone!

*Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuugggggggsssss*

At 4/2/09 05:18 AM, Tri-Nitro-Toluene wrote: Join the club.... I purposefully avoided NG for the entire day. All I can say is thank god for friends with MSN who I can talk absoltue shit too for hours at a time. It's like being on the BBS, but with people I actually care about :P

I'm with you and Fli, and I avoided the place too after I was done enjoying the few things I found funny. Unfortunately, I remembered I don't really have friends so I just had to get drunk and spoil the evening for PalTalk users and one or two people on my MSN.

:(

On a happier note, I'm drawing up ideas for writing to get stuck into after my exams in June, when I'm sure I'll be driving things "to the extreme": drowning in a stream of consciousness, references to references in references, and there will be attempted humour along the way.

I'm honestly considering an Adrian Mole parody for the 21st century generation of teens also.

And coursework is finally handed in with remarks, "it's pretty good". That's one stage up from "alright"!

At 3/31/09 11:49 PM, Proteas wrote: I've got such a place scouted out. :-D

;;;
Proteas...I am not attempting to rain on your parade.
BUT ! ! !
High heat paint, just means that it (the paint) can survive 1500 degree heat & not burn off...it will deteriorate though...I know this for a fact.
It will not protect a metal bucket made of light guage metal from heating to the point of melting. or at least distorting.
You want to deal with very high temperatures & you want to create very high temperatures, your going to need to be able to apply air in a controled way to the combustion chamber ( that's why blacksmiths use bellows)
Plus you really should used fire brick, the type that is used inside woodstoves might be good enough to experiment with.
Personally I would get fire brick that is just like a regular brick, in size & shape.

I know that if I was in the mood to burn down my house I could use my Vermont Castings ,cast iron wood stove to reach the temperatures your describing, but it would destroy my stainless steel chimney, before the woodstove itself (which has fire brick lining the inside of it) started to melt. This is because of the thiness of the double insulated chimney walls. If I decided to keep applying fuel & simply opened the air damper up (so I'm not physically putting in additional air...only what tth fire will DRAW) into it I would get the stove to a nice cherry red color & at that point this 220 pound chunk of cast iron would become maleable (remember cast iron melts around 1200 degrees) without any difficulty...& this in my livingroom .
for small and cheap see link.

www.backyardmetalcasting.com/wheelforge0 1.html
This is a small on the cheap forge... have fun with your idea. Remember steel or iron around 1/4 inch or thicker will stand up to the high temperatures better than a thin walled steel bucket.
Also please remember when you get a forge up to the temperatures your talking about, it is extremely important that if you see a problem & you want to shut it down...just dumping some water on it can be catastrophic. Cut the air. stand well back & then let the water flow.

Be safe man.

I went to the Cadbury staff shop today. So much chocolate... yet so little money.... still I walked away with a box of Dairy Milk for five pounds.

A rainbow could be seen behind Congress today, where 60,000 people said good bye to former President, Doctor Alfonsín.

At 4/2/09 08:44 AM, morefngdbs wrote: High heat paint, just means that it (the paint) can survive 1500 degree heat & not burn off...it will deteriorate though...I know this for a fact.

Scratch that idea then....

Plus you really should used fire brick, the type that is used inside woodstoves might be good enough to experiment with.

Zephiran just sent me a website where I can buy them. They're actually a little less expensive than I thought they were, and right to the size I want to be working with. Now I just have to scetch something up to maximize what I can get for my cash.

Vermont Castings ,cast iron wood stove

*sneaky evil grin*

My mother has a cast iron wood stove downstairs that she inherited from her grandmother. It took 6 guys (myself included) to bring it into the house. It's not hooked up, she doesn't use it, and it's basically just a giant conversation piece.... I wonder if it would have such bricks inside....
as

www.backyardmetalcasting.com/wheelforge0 1.html

Redneck engineering at it's finest. ;-D

I once saw a homemade forge where a guy took an empty freon can, lined the inside of it with a malleable firebrick material until there was only enough room for a like a 1 inch x 1/2 wide opening running lengthwise through the can. He then took a blowtorch and just focused it at one end of thing, and there you go...

Be safe man.

I'm just in the planning stage at this point, I'm not ready to put down hard cash yet.

My main thing is, I don't want to put cash into building a full blown forge if this is something I'll only do a few times. That's why I'm trying to figure out a cheap way of going about this, as a trial run.

The joke was funny at first, but then it was just stupid and annoying.

At 4/2/09 12:18 PM, LordJaric wrote: The joke was funny at first, but then it was just stupid and annoying.

AMEN.

You may see me on the dev team's shit list over this.

I don't know why, but I have been listening to a whole lot of Crash Test Dummies lately.

At 4/2/09 11:42 AM, Tri-Nitro-Toluene wrote: I went to the Cadbury staff shop today. So much chocolate... yet so little money.... still I walked away with a box of Dairy Milk for five pounds.

You know, I'm one of those people that swears constantly that chocolate isn't that great, only to turn to mush upon tasting some for the first time in ages. Personally I'm into white chocolate, but brown chocolate muffins... mmm.

And yeah, Dairy Milks. Did you ever go to Cadbury's World in Bournville? The molting place smelt strange, and the "ride" was overrated, but the shop is great if you have the cash. I haven't been there in so long.

At 4/2/09 11:57 AM, Der-Lowe wrote: A rainbow could be seen behind Congress today, where 60,000 people said good bye to former President, Doctor Alfonsín.

I like pictures like that. I like rainbows anyway, but when you have one in the background of a building like that with a large event going on, it's something special.

***

I think I need some "art guy" clothes. I'll look more into the attire of Russian revolutionaries from the 1910s, it's something along those lines. I can get glasses, because they're important, but I'd have to take the glass out. They'll look normal from a distance, I think.

I currently have three (possibly four) changes of clothes :)

At 4/2/09 12:40 PM, SuperDeagle wrote: I don't know why, but I have been listening to a whole lot of Crash Test Dummies lately.

;
mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm ;)

At 4/2/09 12:06 PM, Proteas wrote: I'm just in the planning stage at this point, I'm not ready to put down hard cash yet.

;;;;;
If your only trying it as an experiment.
You can probably use regular masonary bricks...if you don't have the fire bricks for cheap or free.
Because your going to be doing a small forge idea, you might want to look at just laying a piece of pipe on the ground & using something like a hair dryer or other type of small fan motor to blow air into your combustion chamber. Put your bricks around that.
I think the idea of charcoal brickettes will work out fine, make sure you can have the excess ash fall down below where you fuel is. (some kind of metal grate)

You really should make sure you've got good quality leather at least double thickness gloves (insulated would be better) & some type of pliers/tongs...a good set of linesman pliers might work for putting your metal piece in & out of your heat.

I've made small brick fires before to melt lead, & my brother who pans for gold wanted to try heating up rocks that we had crushed in a homemade press. He had removed them from the tailing pile of an old mine site from the last century ,when he found some 'color' in some of the rocks. He wanted to see if we could melt gold out , instead of playing with mercury.

It would be neat to see if you could get a metal blade to be hardened on just the edge similar to a japanese blade by putting a type of mud on the part you didn't want to temper as hard as the edge...just to see if that would work.

I mean if you going to play ...uh, em I mean experiment, why not .

At 4/2/09 11:42 AM, Tri-Nitro-Toluene wrote: I went to the Cadbury staff shop today. So much chocolate... yet so little money.... still I walked away with a box of Dairy Milk for five pounds.

Chocolate makes the world go OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM-NOM-NOM-NO MNOM.
Believe it or not, we finns stuff our chocolate with this stuff. It tastes better than one might think, and I´m snacking on one of those red boxes of black goodness right now. Yum!

On a related sidenote: What is the wierdest filling the lounge has ever seen in chocolate?

At 4/2/09 01:05 PM, morefngdbs wrote:

At 4/2/09 12:40 PM, SuperDeagle wrote: I don't know why, but I have been listening to a whole lot of Crash Test Dummies lately.

;
mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm ;)

Probably the only song I like on that whole album.
I tend to like Give Yourself a Hand more because I like music with that trippy feel to it.

At 4/2/09 01:17 PM, morefngdbs wrote: You can probably use regular masonary bricks...if you don't have the fire bricks for cheap or free.

I've thought about that. One of my customers at ork heard I was wanting to get into knife-making, and recommended a book called "The $50 Knife Shop." There's one trick in there for small blades (pocket knives) where they took a normal red-brick like what you would build with, and drilled a half inch hole through it from one end to the other with a masonry bit.

Put your blow torch on one side, and go to town.

I've made small brick fires before to melt lead,

Lead isn't that difficult to melt, really, it just depends on the quanitity your working with.

When I was in the cub scouts, my dad took pliers, a heavy aluminum can, and a blowtorch, and melted lead fishing weights to put in my pine-wood derby cars. Since lead melts at 621 degrees Fahrenheit and aluminum at about twice that, it worked pretty well. But now if you were doing a whole BAR of lead, I could see how that would become an issue.

He wanted to see if we could melt gold out , instead of playing with mercury.

Did it work?

I mean if you going to play ...uh, em I mean experiment, why not .

I can see that.

Eventually though, I'd like to make my own machete. I've found a website that sells steel by the piece cut to size per order (so you don't have to buy in bulk), and I'd like to make one out of 0-6 Steel. I'm thinking quart inch plate steel, with a cord wrapped handle, and since the steel is hard enough to take an edge that would take and hold an edge that would make Damascus envious.... perhaps give the bastard a run across a couple of my straight razor stones.

But then again, a Machete might be too heavy for that thickness. Perhaps a straight sword, or katanna would be better.

But then, I wouldn't have to forge on that. Just get the piece I want, and grind on it. >:-D~

as sexy and shiny as the Government Approved NGs was, it prevented me from getting my posting fix.

something for the to do list; make my own rifle. if only i had metal working machines :(.

At 4/2/09 12:26 PM, Proteas wrote:

At 4/2/09 12:18 PM, LordJaric wrote: The joke was funny at first, but then it was just stupid and annoying.

AMEN.

You may see me on the dev team's shit list over this.

It was a bit annoying because I couldn't post and logged off after that.

Oh, and related pic to the level icon. That was awesome.

I was not amused.

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