Forging Ahead

To start out my first two weeks of Leap, I decided to follow an interest of mine that I have had for the past few years, forging. I’ve had this interest for several years now, and have always wanted to pursue this dream of mine, and I thought that if I joined Leap Academy, I would be able to follow this passion. I believe what kindled this interest of mine is that my great great grandfather was a blacksmith in New York, and my grandfather would talk about him, and tell me stories about what he did, and his life. Along with my ancestral connections, I also find the whole idea of forging, and other metal working techniques interesting. I don’t know how to explain it, but I guess the idea of the hot forge, and being able to make just about anything, as long as you have the skill, is just fascinating.

In the first few days, I was very ambitious, and expected to get places quickly without any setbacks. I just wanted to fire up the forge, and melt some metals without much thought about the potential failure and waste of materials. Before I could get a clear plan of what to do, I just started to make progress on getting the forge functional with little thought of how to do basic forging, and the steps to get there. The first thing I did was ask two of my peers who did the forge last block for their design, and what they did. Almost everything I did was what they did in the past, and I added little to nothing extra to their original design and process. I feel a little cheap about doing this, but I wanted to replicate their process, and try to see what went well, and what went wrong, and see where I can improve from there.

While making the forge, I ran into a few roadblocks that caused me to have to postpone lighting up the forge. At first, I had no clue what to do, and I had to get instructions on how to make and start up the forge, but I got help quickly from my peers, so this wasn’t much of a problem. I got some help on making the forge from the two people who did it last block, but I was still missing some crucial parts, one being the crucible, which was a huge pain to get. At first, I was set on using a fire extinguisher, like how I’ve seen in Youtube videos, but after going to shops in Denpasar, I discovered that they were way too expensive. Also, buying a new fire extinguisher is not an environmentally sustainable solution.

After this realization, one of my teachers told me that I could use a pipe that is welded to some more metal at the bottom, with the bottom piece being about 1–2 cm thick, so it would trap heat and can therefore be used multiple times in one firing. Although this is a great idea, I decided to get it some other time and use it in a future forge, maybe the next one I make.

Another thing that I had to do before I fired up the forge was get fuel and a bellows system or hair dryer. Getting the fuel was easy, as I just got some coconut husk charcoal, which burns quickly, but is super hot, and so it is great for getting fires to hot temperatures in a short period of time. Originally, I already had a hair dryer, but it either got stolen or lost a day before I wanted to fire up the forge, so I was setback by a day or so by that. However, after some searching for a replacement, I was told that the kitchen has a vacuum cleaner that can also push out air, instead of sucking air. This was a hundred times better than the crappy hair dryer that I previously had, and I think it may have actually been too good for the forge. Although the vacuum cleaner was really good, and I could easily get away with using it for the rest of the time I have in Leap, I want to make a bellows as a replacement. I believe that if I make the bellows well enough, it can be much better in heating up the forge, and I don’t have to worry about potentially ruining the vacuum.

Here’s my diagram of how to make the forge:

Here’s what I did step by step:

First, I made layer one and layer two with a little bit of sand at the bottom in case the crucible breaks, and the molten metal escapes

Then I filled up the bottom with crumpled up paper

Then I put on the rest of the layers

I filled up the bottom of the forge with charcoal, up to the rhubarb bars

Then I put the cruciable in

And up the cover on, and filled the rest of the forge with charcoal

Then I put the vacuum in(turned off) and lit the paper underneath with a blowtoarch

You have to hold the blowtorch there for a about 10 secands for the paper to catch fire

We had to try a few times for it to catch, but when it does it should cause the charcoal to also catch, and smoke should come out of it, like this

You also have to turn on the vacuum cleaner immediately after the charcoal catches, otherwise the fire might not get enough oxygen, and it will extinguish itself

After a few minutes, we put in some cut up aluminum cans, and after some waiting, they melted

We melted about 35 cans

While we were melting cans, we would continue to add charcoal, and the forge would continue to get hotter, and as it got hotter, the hot air would begin to escape from the cracks in our forge, and we had to pile on more bricks, so we wouldn't loose heat, and so we dident burn our legs as we walked around the forge

After we melted the 35ish cans, we decided to to try to pour it into the mold, but with no success

Our failure was due to our pouring methods, and we dident really think it out, and because of this, I couldn't properly hold the crucible, and so it wouldn't get at the correct angle to pour it out, and so we had to bail on it, and call it quits

The rhubarb bars melted to the crucible, causing the bottom of it to break, and some aluminum to pour out

We then decided to take apart the forge, so it can cool down, but while we were disassembling it, we encountered a few suprises

For one, we found the rhubarb bars melted in two, and were hot enough to be used as fuel, and we also caused the silicone in the bricks to melt, and glassify it, which is about 1400°C which is over double the melting point for aluminum(660)

We melted several bricks, and had to wait around for about an hour for then to cool down in case some young kids touch them, and severely burn themselves

Here are some photos of what our forge created:

Here you can see the melted rhubarb, and an entire can that has been melted down, along with some pure aluminum, and another brick