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Blacksmithing Part 18 Making a Brake Drum Forge

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Tags: Pathfinder,Survival,Bushcraft,Blacksmithing,Making a Brake Drum Forge,Brake Drum Forge

Video Transcription

when guys Dave Canterbury the Pathfinder school back out here in the area that we do our foraging at school what I did today was I went out and picked up the components to make a brake drum Forge I went to both the scrapyard and to a hardware store to get my components I'm going to show you how to put together the most simplistic form of a brake drum forward for the most part with one addition that I really like that I want to show you but you can between scrapyard scrounging and you know a hardware store you can build a brake drum Forge for well under 50 bucks I'm going to walk you through it today we're actually going to fire this Forge up show you how it works and we'll talk about some modifications that you could do to that forge as well so stay with me guys we'll walk through the components first okay guys so the first component of our brake drum Forge is obviously a brake drum that's going to be our forging pot this is where we're going to build our fire alright need something to get that up off the ground because we're gonna have some piping underneath it when we're done now you can use cinder blocks for that but I found something at the scrapyard today that I think is going to work better what this is is this is a this is an antenna I've got three sections of this antenna and basically we cut it down at the scrapyard with it with a settling torch you can see where it's been cut off right here but this will securely hold our pot and it makes it very portable without the weight of carrying around you know four or five 32 pounds cinder blocks this doesn't weigh very much it's nice and secure it's not going to go anywhere especially if I put this thing on the ground instead of in the rocks where I've got it now if I put this thing in the ground it's going to be very secure and I have three sections of this that I could use so that I can make three of these brake drum forges for my students out here so now let's get the forge pot set up for use with our stand okay guys so let's talk about our components we talked about our brake drum already

you need something inside this brake drum to keep our coals from falling through I picked up this old piece of hibachi grating at the scrapyard it's made out of cast iron I'll be able to break those off with a hammer very easily snap this thing in half and set it down inside there as a great right on top I only need a section about that big and then I can knock the jagged edges off and I'll have something I can take in and out for cleaning purposes but it'll work really really well for what I want now I've got to set the piping up for this to have an air inlet and a dump port to get rid of my ashes so the first thing I'm going to need is I'm going to need a flange and I've got a two inch flange here put that on top and the brake drum on the bottom like this you'll describe these holes in with a marker and we'll drill those in and then we will drill those holes out with a drill and we'll bolt that on there okay guys once you've got this thing drilled out

we just need to fold our flange on to it we've got four nuts and bolts here that we already checked at the hardware store to make sure they do it fit we're going to bolt them in from the top through this put those right here for a second just poke it up and these are a two and a half inch bolt definitely more than what we need it for sure but better to be safe than sorry okay now we'll just tighten those up and should be good okay guys so once we've got our flange bolted on we are going to take one of our pieces it doesn't matter I've got a couple different size nipples here that part really doesn't matter that much close I'll link to you good how much link you've got between the ground the top of your pot so I'm going to screw the longer one into its lands just like this the next thing we need to do is we need a tee all right we're going to put the key on top of that screw it down okay just like that and then we're going to need an inlet and a dump port

okay so Inlet we'll go ahead and use our longer piece for our Inlet we'll put it on and then we use the bottom shorty for our dump port and the only thing we're gonna do with our dump port here is we're going to put an end cap on that dump port that we can just take off and we want to empty it Ashin clinkers and things like that okay that basically completes a simple brake drum so now once I put my stand in the ground this port just goes down inside so I'll just take this air inlet off and drop it down through the middle just like that put the air inlet back on and my brake drum Forge is pretty close now remember we talked about the hole we have in here that we don't want our coals falling through so we're going to take a piece of this iron grating here where it break it off and put it down inside there

I've got enough of this for at least two forges so I don't want to waste it I could use this whole piece right here but I don't need to so I'm going to try to break it off here and here and like you should be able to do that just over an ambering a vice and just snap it off with a hammer okay so I took that piece and just put it on my anvil shelf pin it with a cold chisel and snap it right off and now that piece will lay right here on the bottom and that will keep too much of my coal from falling down inside now at that point again I got this is--we're option out there that's how points is one other modification I would do to this thing to make it to where is right as far as making it a forge then I just have to decide what my air inlets going to be my ear air inlet in this case is going to be a ten dollar hairdryer from any dollar store just after the commonality or common-man of this Forge so let me get this thing stable in the rocks here and then we will show you the outlet portion of the air inlet portion of this and the little trick or tweak to that and then we're going to fire this thing up okay guys so here's our brake drum for setting right beside our other Forge now we've been using this hair dryer for Inlet in our forwards the whole pond and we're going to use it again the same way I'm gonna set this off to the side now here's the trick this is an air inlet valve only okay the plastic piece of rubber with two two hose clamps on it a plastic sleeve in this cop of Alvin it only opens one direction so it's a port you get that direction right but what that allows is the air to blow through but nothing to come out no heat can come out to your device that you're using if you're using something as simple as a hair dryer you don't have to worry about air coming out as long as you have that Inlet on there correctly so we plug that in to get air here we'll go through but nothing's going to come out okay very very simple way to do this like I said these have hose clamps on them so you can loosen that up move it up on there really good clamp it down you can clamp it down to the hairdryer if you wanted to but because this is rubber it holds pretty good in there and then you turn it on and off and that gives you your air-blast $10 you can get a hairdryer that's got a high and a low setting that's going to work real good for you let's get this thing fired up okay guys we're just going to use this paper bag from the hardware store to light our folds with no sense of waste in the paper they double bag it it's gonna rip that open and use a piece of that and we'll save the other one as well I'll put that with my stack of papers that used to start my whole look we're just going to wad that up just like this we actually could you something just a little bigger than that you might get one more piece I like to leave a little bit of a tail on there and then I like out my lighter a little bit of airflow on and now I'm going to bury that coal there we go I already got flame now we just got to wait for that smoke to dissipate build our mound in there get our coke pile built up and we'll be able to heat metal in there okay guys so stuck a piece of file down in there you can see how things ready to rock and roll it's ready to be forged so two dollar pair of pliers you know old ball peen hammer or something from a yard sale less than 50 bucks except for that one-way valve you know that one-way valves about 20 dollars so I had 20 bucks it out if you want that one-way valve on there otherwise you could just take a piece of rubber to a couple of hose clamps hook your hairdryer directly into that thing but for you know right out 50 bucks or less you got yourself a good Forge now again yesterday at the scrap yard guys I've turned the air off of this thing now you remember I bought this old cast-iron pot lid from that scrapyard boom put that runner to the top my fire snuff it out cover it from the weather I'm good to go it fits on that perfect okay guys well I'm Dave Canterbury the Pathfinder school I appreciate you joining me for this quick video on how to set up a common man type Forge this will work really good for you like I said you know you don't have to spend a lot of money to get into this stuff but it is a skill that every man boy should know or at least be familiar with that's part of self-reliance is understanding how to do things for yourself and that includes making metal implements you

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wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

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