Dirt Cheap Blacksmithing - hair dryer forge blower
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- Money can be tight for many people making it hard to start blacksmithing. But it can be dirt cheap to get started with some very simple forging. Using a hair dryer for a forge blower, old pallets for fuel and a sledge hammer as an anvil, lets start forging.
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Blacksmithing and related activities can be hazardous. These videos are not a substitute for competent professional instruction. Your safety is your sole responsibility. Always use appropriate safety equipment including eye and ear protection when working in the shop. Follow manufactures safety guidelines for the use of all equipment. In the event something shown in one of these videos seems unsafe, it is up to you to make the appropriate changes to protect yourself.t yourself.
In today's technological world, we have access to so many options. The tools might not be immediately obvious, but we're entirely surrounded by potential. Just takes a little bit of thinking to recognize!
Just visit local scrap yard! ❤
Too right mate, innovation. Teaching the young lad gets him thinking aswell. He actually is the inspiration for my chipping hammer. Cut the tip off* an old picaxe.
Not just that a black smith back in the day had that fire burning constantly to be hotter and hotter if they had to do it this way a couple days worth of coals she will be rolling heat
Thinking and experience. Someone who knows little about smithing or tools would never reach this conclusion, but someone who knows a thing or two stands a fair shake at striking genius every now and again.
Too many options lead to selection paralysis
John is going from the most advanced blacksmithing shop with presses and powerhammers to a forge on the ground, becoming more primitive. At the same time, John Plant of Primitive Technology is working on his smelting and working his way into the iron age. At this rate they are going to meet right in the middle.
😂😂😂
👌
This would be an amazing crossover.
I gues they will eventually join their homemade rails and drive a homemade vapor locomotive to visit.
🏆 winning comment ha ha ha
Many years ago I asked my grandfather if i could buy an anvil from him because I was interested in smithing. Instead He gave me a piece of RR track. I went to our abandoned RR tracks and found some hard coal. A brake rotor, some pipe, a hairdryer was my forge. Made some of my most beautiful wall hooks on that rig. Thank you John.
@lil.dogbyte It was 10 years ago+. There's still some around the tracks here in upstate NY (Adirondacks). The coal was trucked up to the Tahawus mine and was used to fire a blast furnace.
This video brought to mind a couple of your previous videos about historical Viking anvils. They certainly weren't using 150-pound anvils at their forges, and they managed to make everything they could ever need. An excellent video. Thank you!
Ah yes...the good ol hair dryer days... I burned up a couple Goodwill hair dryers as they're apparently not made for a 3-4hr 100% duty cycle. What I didn't like was that the hair dryer was way too much air for the small stock I was playing with so I upgraded to a bathroom exhaust fan from the hardware store and a makeshift damper... but that was 8-9yrs ago....I've come a long way since 😂 great video sir!
I love this video as it shows just how easy it is to start forging. I wanted to for years, and even though I had a number of tools to do the work, I struggled to find a forge. Of course, once I found one, several others just seemed to fall into my lap. There must be some sort of weird inverse proportion rule about how badly you want or need something and its availability to you.
" Once I found one, several others just seemed to fall into my lap",
Is true for girlfriends too.
@@honthirty_I must be missing something then...😂
I started in the same way with a $10 grill from Dollar General and some old fire wood and a large rock so basically I truly appreciate this video and I appreciate that you showed how to get started extremely cheap
My first forge was a hole in the ground, i used pine wood for fuel and a hair dryer with a pipe for a blower and an i beam for an anvil all over 25 years ago. God has blessed me with a few forges and a real anvil over the years.
That's a pretty cool example of how a simple improvised set of tools can still create useful things!
Thanks for bringing us along and taking the time to break it down to Ye Olden School!
Glad you liked it!
I used a propane grill some fire brick a weed burner . I also did the grill charcoal & hair dryer . It's a way to start & helps justify the money spent to get better stuff . Wife's can be encouraging or hindering in getting into something different
This is awesome :D
I reckon one could stretch fuel consumption just a little by turning down or off the hair dryer in between heats. Maybe hit the switch right before pulling the piece from the fire, etc.
Lovely video John!
I was just going to add the same comment! 😁
Get a good, foot operated switch perhaps...
John,
I love this video for the fact it removes the barrier of entry for many people. $500 is still a tidy sum of money for many, and flea markets/garage sales/Craigslist, you can find most of this cheap, if not free on the latter.
Thanks a million,
-John
I started out with a charcoal forge but built it from two cultivator disks connected by 2” pipe. I plugged bottom of the pipe, welded a pipe tee in the 2” pipe for an air connection, and welded a piece of plate drilled with air holes over the pipe connection in the top disk. I used this setup until I build my first gas forge and it works well. It does use a lot of fuel. Darlington, South Carolina
Its nice to see you showing this, I used to do this when i first started blacksmithing! Tho i used a small 5kg anvil, a cast iron pot as a forge and a fireplace bellows for air. Used to go out into the woods to do forging with everything fitting inside my backpack, except the charcoal i used! Dont have a youtube channel for my blacksmithing, Winter Heart Forge here by the way! Keep up the good work!
If you need more airflow, moving the hair dryer back so there is an air gap around it allows more air to be pulled into and forced through the tubing. I think I used nuts off 5/16th(8mm) bolts on mine. But that is dependent on the size of the hair dryer and tubing. Love this video, it very well demonstrates that we aren't limited only by our imagination but also the motivation to actually get down to doing. And burn bans. Like me right now. In Louisiana, outdoor forge and statewide burn ban. But I'm good with that until the temperatures drop below 90. In fact I'd prefer they were below 60, or even 50. Lol
Brilliant , should be very valuable for starting off or someone doing a particular project needing some bending . Thanks👍
You are the courageous blacksmith. Thanks John
Thank you for proving that this type of setup will work for simple purposes for those that can't afford the best blacksmithing tools but still want to get into it!
Thanks John. I have had the desire to forge metal as home on the farm in Northern Alberta dad had a forge set up on a stand that he used charcoal in. I remember the hand crank blower and how we go to crank it. I have purchased a cheaper anvil from Princess auto and you have rekindle my desire to beat on hot metal. Thanks.
I've been doing exactly this for 2 or 3 years now. It's pretty cool. I got a book that says most of Europe moved on to smithing upright in the 1300s, but I'm just fine being behind the times! They still do it this way in Southeast Asia.
This reminds me of something similar I did years ago on a camping weekend on a sheep farm. (The farmer had moved the sheep to a different field). There were different things you could try, one was forging a nail. The blacksmith used a hair drier and metal tube as you did, but used anthracite and a pit forge (hole dug in the ground) about the same size as your fire. It was really exciting, I was very pleased with my nail and showed it to lots of people there. I still have it.
This reads like I was a child at the time, actually I was in my 40s.
John, thank you for this video! I was also using a heir dryer but then switched to leaf blower as the air source. 🙂
Did it work well?
Always love to see these “you can do it too” videos. Great video and great commentary
Thank you for making this, I've always wanted to get into blacksmithing, and this shows that if you are willing to make the effort you are able to do it. Thank you for making this sir .
I found rusty rebar near a sewer grate but don't have any heat privilages because I am still a young teen but am also dying to make it into something, this has helped me to come up with a few methods to manipulate my mum into letting me heat up my rebar with other forms of heat, but before I do that, I need heat resistant gloves
Wow. This is really one of the blacksmithing videos of all time.
That is hands down one of the methods ive ever seen.
This was a super thoughtful thing to do to make forging accessible to anyone! Especially considering the equipment that you have at your disposal!
Exactly. I like to remind people that the Sutton Hoo Hoard, Mastermyr Find, and every other "amazing" work from our ancestors was made using tools as simple as that. The sledge anvil is probably the biggest anvil you'd find in ancient Europe outside of stone anvils, and being hardened steel means it's an order of magnitude better. If those guys back then could forge great wonders with what we would consider rudimentary tools, there's nothing stopping people from doing the same today. It's all about patience and perseverance.
Good educational content, once a smith understands the fundamentals, the road to improvement is open. Very good outline of the basic process, sir.
I’m a 17 year old looking to get into blacksmithing for myself, and may god bless you, honestly !!
now this is really motivate me to start blacksmithing. thank you.
You explain your choices and corresponding processes comprehensively.
Another great video!
Learn to use the tools that are in front of you, right? Busting the wood with your "anvil " was good, but my favorite was using you "forging hammer" to dig the hole.
My first charcoal forge was a cheap square grill body full of cat litter with a piece of pipe with holes in it running through the bottom. Cap on one end, hair dryer on the other. Legs gave out so it sat on bricks.
You can even do a wood box if you line it with something that won't burn and decently thick. Townsends did one on their channel.
5:30 That's why we normally use stone coal to heat the forge! But, wood does work if you can't get your hands on some stone coal! Great video by the way! It's nice seeing other ways of doing stuff, especially when its easy and affordable!
I was losing motivation until i saw this video. Just reignited my passion to go and try it. Amazing video
I did this on my first forge so far. I used a baking tin, an old tent pole and a hairdryer. Its certain not optimal but it works
Cool experiment! I wonder if it would be worth your time to revisit the viking stake anvils you made a few years ago? Specifically just looking at smithing from the standpoint of efficiency. Would it be possible to have everything you need in just one toolbox? Likely that was what defined the variety of tools the viking smith had at his disposal. It would be neat to explore some of the possible range of projects with just such a set up. Cheers.
It might be worth looking into.
This is so incredibly helpful! I've wanted to get into smithing for years, but I couldn't really set anything up while I was living with my parents, or since living in an apartment for university. Soon going to be looking for an actual house to live in, and if we find somewhere with any kind of backyard I'm definitely going to have a go!
Let me just make a suggestion as somebody that occasionally has to do metal work from home; be aware of your neighbors. Shaping steel isn't quiet, and if your idea of fun is to get out and bang on a piece of metal for hours on end, your neighbors are going to start hating your very existence really, _really_ fast and that can get ugly. I mean there's only so much you can do to minimize the noise, but absolutely do everything you reasonably can to minimize the noise.
Thank you! I think I have everything I need to do this and now I can finally make a childhood dream come true!
Best of luck!
Thank you again!
Love the amount of wisdom and knowledge in this video.
another important detail is that this setup is portable. it would be heavy in a backpack with the hammers in hand, but you could probably fit all of these materials into a typical home gardening wagon or wheelbarrow and transport them wherever you'd need to, possibly while out looking for usable scrap metal that's been abandoned.
What can I say to appreciate your ideas? Well, you are a master!
i'm just puttering around making stuff for myself for bushcraft but this is my set up (i want to stay mobile you never know especially these days!!) i've got a harbor freight cast steel anvil (i highly recommend those for starting out even the cheaper cast iron ones, they've got a 15 pound cast iron one for under 20 bucks!!) on a stand made of 2x4's and i took a splitting wedge i found on sale and cut the tip flat drilled out a hole in the end of a 4x4 and set the wedge in it for a stake anvil and both the anvil and 4x4 have water heater strapping to hold the anvil down and to reinforce the 4x4! (i'm still trying to figure out how to mount a small clamp on vice on a 4x4 though!!) for a forge i took the inner pan to an electric roaster fitted a pipe in the bottom for an up flowing air stream filled the sides and ends with a 50-50 mix of plaster of paris and sand that's sitting on fire bricks on an old side table with the blower on an old wire shelf sitting next to it connected by a hose! blower wise for a power driven set up i've got it set up to use either a hair dryer the exhaust from a shop vac or air mattress inflator/blowers and of the inflators i've got a battery powered one a 12 volt and an electric powered one i've also got it rigged where i can plug in a foot powered bellow style pump if needs be! for a quench tank an old 3 gallon enameled stock pot!! fuel wise i burn hardwood charcoal wood stove pellets and sycamore tree yard scrap mainly but i do have some forging coal from tractor supply when i can get that which is once in a blue moon!! finding a constant supply coal around here in north central ohio is next to impossible! tractor supply says they'll order it for you but you have to take a full pallet which is a ton and i wouldn't use a ton in a decade with what i do right now! tool wise harbor freight and the bargain bins at tractor supply are good sources! at harbor freight i got a set of files under 10 bucks and a set of chisels and punches under 20 bucks at tractor supply i found a 2 piece cross peen hammer (a 2 and 3 pound!!) set for under 15 bucks a 2 pair set of welding gloves for under a 10 and a pair of 14 inch channel locks and 10 inch linesman pliers (part of a set with fencing pliers) i use used as tongs starting out both of those for under 15 bucks!!
2.5 inch galvanized fence post fits a standard Walmart hairdryer perfectly. I used that for a blower on my coal forge. cool
Tape the cool button with duct tape to save electricity
I’ve heard many people rip the heat coil out, good solution as long as you don’t need it to be a hairdryer again.
I love this. My apartment neighbors below me don't. But i can't hear their complaints, nor my landlord, over my dual hairdryer setup.
Nice video, really shows what can be done if a person has just a little bit of okd junk and some desire.
I am very poor and have been wanting to do a bit of black smithing to make some draw knifes as they are extortionate to buy. Oh and a few adze as well. I have been watching some videos and I was trying to study how to make a cheap coal forge and was getting disheartened with all the videos talking about using this type or that type and was looking for something that was as cheap as possible. I have tonnes of old files and was going to use them for the draw knives. I am a master carpenter from Scotland and most of my tools were stolen and have been getting old tools from Ebay and restoring them but I cannot get Draw knives and adzes cheap so I will make them. This video has given me hope. This is the video I was looking for. I have been subscribed to your channel for a long time and always found your videos very informative and entertaining especially the video where you restored two chisels. A top notch video in my opinion. I had to give up my business due to ill health but I still do woodwork and hopefully some black smithing. That's if we don't get nuked by the Ruskies first!😁
Hay there first time commenting on your video's. I started out useing a grill that i got for free and some fire wood that i had sitting around and made my first forge. A guy that lives next door seen it and gave me a pice of railroad connector and some spikes to work and as your ground forge it only got the metal to a orange tint but it waa workable.
Another great video John! Thanks for all of the great work you do!
Fantastic video, thanks John!
My pleasure!
Built my 1st forge w/ a pot, a baking pan, metal intake tube, and a hair dryer. Sealed it w/ furnace cement
This is kind of "Back to the Beginning" of blacksmithing. It looks like it works. And with your suggestions it looks like it could work well enough for a person to get started in the hobby🙂🙂
Now you are just showing off.
"You see that hole? I'm gonna make art with it."
Good job.
I saw a really neat improvised anvil in Texas, they took a big 2' diameter firewood round of post oak, green, then drilled 3x 1" holes shoulder to shoulder to make a 1x3" slot. They took an old splitting maul head, ran a loop of chain through the eye, and through the log, stuck a bar through the chain on opposite side of log round, and cranked it like a Spanish windlass. He said it just gets better and better rebound as the oak dries and clamps down on the head. He had another with a piece of hydraulic ram in an old stump, he put it in green as well and that thing was solid, 100lb ram he git for scrap price, and it rebounded like a nice 300lb anvil.
In the beginning I was making charcoal by putting all sorts of scrapwood into a small barrel, putting a lid with a small hole on it for the gases to escape, and putting it in a household fireplace while burning wood there to heat the house. The gases that escaped would burn in the fireplace, and inside the barrel I would always be left with a little batch of bone dry charcoal.
This video is a very good one. I like to see you breaking from your usual. Very nice!
Glad you enjoy it!
This is awesome. I've been thinking of getting into forging
Thank you for the setup this'll help me in the long run when I make a company ill make a one of a kind knife for you
My setup uses an air matress pump epoxied to a 1/2 inch pipe a 3 inch flange connected to a rotor castable refractory and a used helium tank.
that set up was much less than 500 dollars and it has the benefit of being able to be set up and taken apart.
I used the cheap Harbor Freight weed burner in a modified oil barrel!
In Nepal and throughout Asia and Africa big sledgehammer heads are used almost exclusively as anvils.
Good job John
Excellent job, very impressive.
Good news for me because I needed to bend some rebar . I’m fabricating some ties for log barn and didn’t want to invest too much effort in a setup for a simple project. Heating with a torch was expensive, I’m using all the construction scrap, so it’s helping me cleanup.
I’ll probably roast some sausage after the work is complete so I’m killing one bird with three rocks and having lunch to boot.
(No birds were injured), but I had lunch, cleanup the job site and got my log ties fabricated.
This is starting to get tempting, I might come out of my bed one of these days and do something 😅
I imagine the Vikings did it similarly when out traveling.
made one of these myself using an old stainless steel sink from a camper a 55 gallon drum few iron pipes and a bathroom fan lol
How can somebody dislike this man's videos???
Very similar to what I used as a kid.
Благодаря за хубавото видео. Това ми дава кураж да започна. Благодаря още веднъж.
Has TB ever changed. Have some out there or just good idea and often there it is someone's experience and findings doing the very thing. Keep up the good work blacksmith. Blacksmith thats similar to my initial plan only I based mine around a cubevan heavy steel tire rim. The kind that separates from the inner section by simply unbolting it. And heck almost anyone can find those rusting out in some field. I will then encase that with cinder bricks and mortar like that after I bore out the air pipe intake hole to blow in the air. This way it reflects heat when you want warmth and holds my iron grill and contains it inside the outer rim flange. Those rims make fine steak and potato cooker when lunch time rolls around. And just a quick note to whomever feels like reading. Never keep anything un - inspiring around ya' for very long.
Very neat idea. I might just try this. Thanks for the vid!
Wow, super resourceful and helpful.
Thanks.
Vacuum cleaners are great blowers!
Your video just came up on my feed and i watched it & Subscribed to your channel, AWESOME experiment, gives me a base to work on in trying blacksmithing
Welcome aboard!
My first experience was about the same but I had a 12" piece of railroad track and managed to make my first set of crude tongs using old pallets and your good old video about the process thank you
This is so motivating to try it out. Thanks for the video, I think I will give it a try.
Have fun!
This is literally what I do. My anvil is a thick steel plate.
I love this. A cheapo hairdryer as bellows...I wonder why the thoguht never crossed my mind before. This still wouldn't work in my backyard though, because the HOA would be on my ass for the smoke alone. They get worked up whenever someone starts up a barbeque during the summer.
my first time forging was with wood of cuts in a trench shaped forge with a blower, ive never gotten as good of welds as i did that day
You can use a MOT with the secondary removed, add 2 windings or 3 of thick copper and shorth across you get the same results
Heat guns from Harbor Freight are $10-15. A well driller probably has old pressure tanks around that haven't gone to the scrap yard yet. The ends of these tanks can be cut off for a forge.
It kills your back and knees but it's a good way to get started
Holy smokes! This is awesome; thank you for posting this.
That was awesome buddy!!
I used to use the outflow from a canister vacuum to blow air on my makeshift forget. It works, but you have to use a fairly weak vacuum.
He sounds just like Nick Offerman. Super relaxing to listen to
Great work 👍
My first forge was a brake drum mounted to a barstool. .
Bar stool legs, what a great idea
With hit iron between the faces, it's not a problem.. But without the hot iron, I suggest safety glasses and a cup. I was hammering a carpenter's hatchet into a log while hewing some boards from a piece of elm. A conical fracture from the side of the hammering face sheared a perfect razor sharp piece of steel which went right through the crotch of my Duluth fire hose jeans, through my underwear, and sliced me in a very very personal area. The piece thankfully didn't get buried, it fell down my pant leg and ended up in my boot. Be safe out there folks.
the thumbnail! I thought it's like over-volting the hair drier to reach temperature of 1000 😂
Great idea
I did one with a leaf plower and propane torch and beer cans
I have an old piece of hydraulic cylinder full of lead that I use for an anvil. I only use it to make inlays in my woodwork so I don't need much.
Thank you.
This is genius, wow.
well done!
Thanks for sharing
Nice, thanks.
Thank you sir, great video!