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Perhaps the biggest hurdle to starting a home blacksmithing operating is the forge. There’s really no way around having a forge; somehow the metal has to get hot enough to work. Although we might be imagining huge charcoal- or gas-fired monstrosities, [Shake the Future] has figured out how to use an unmodified, standard microwave oven […]
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Small cylindrical parts are often formed through deep drawing — a process by which a punch forms the finished piece from a flat sheet of metal using a forming die. If it sounds like that stresses the metal, it does. But researchers at Fraunhofer have found a way to reduce friction protecting both the material […]
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Some projects seem to take on a life of their own. You get an idea, design and prototype it, finally build the thing and — it’s good, but it’s not quite right. Back to the drawing board, version 2, still not perfect, lather, rinse, repeat. Pretty soon you look around to discover that you’ve built […]
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Whether you’re a landlubber or an old salt, you’ve got to appreciate the effort that [The Aussie boat guy] puts into cutting an old brass propeller down into a far smaller and sleeker specimen. Especially since he does the entire thing with hand tools, a couple different calipers, and that most valuable of natural resources: […]
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Anyone who’s done a bit of metalworking will know how quickly your stockpile will pick up a coating of rust with even just a bit of humidity. While welding requires only a bit of wire brushing at the joint areas, cleaning a large frame for paint is a completely different story. The projects [Make it […]
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For most of us, a vise is the sort of thing you clamp onto the edge of a workbench and crank down by hand. It might even be made of plastic, depending on the kind of work you find yourself doing with it. But it’s safe to say that [WorkshopFromScratch] won’t be soldering any PCBs […]
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A door’s hinges are arguably its most important pieces. After all, a door without hinges is just, well, a wall. Or a bulkhead, if we’re talking about a hingeless hatch on a spacecraft. And so the assignment for creating hinges for Progress Egress, the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing by creating […]
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You know the funny looking side of the anvil? That’s where the best curves come from. It’s called the anvil horn and is the blacksmith’s friend when bending steel and shaping it into curves. The principle of bending a piece of steel stock is very easy to understand. Heat it up to temperature, and hammer […]
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For [Turbo Conquering Mega Eagle], the question was simple: Do I spend 20 minutes slaving away in front of a bandsaw to cut a bunch of short brass rods into even shorter pieces of brass rod? Or do I spend days designing and building an automatic cutoff saw to do the same job? The answer is […]
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For the past few months we’ve been running this series of Blacksmithing For The Uninitiated posts, exploring the art of forge work for a novice. It’s based upon my experience growing up around a working blacksmith’s business and becoming an enthusiastic if somewhat inexpert smith, and so far we’ve spent our time looking at the equipment […]