What we learnt about smithing yesterday

My friend Dave came yesterday to make a couple of three leggers for his grandchildren. We also continued our woodland smithing studies. We found out that the impeller in a car fridge doesn’t seem to push the air in the direction you might at first expect so this set up was rejected:

It was: tuyere of sturdy recycled mild steel oblong section piping with a handy 90 degree bend, then a corned beef tin with no ends in, then a sweet corn tin, and finally something like a choucroute tin. All bound together airtight with duck tape (that’s duct tape for people on the W side of the Atlantic Ocean) (chapeau to the inventor of this stuff!)

This worked fine though:

Same tuyere with an Aldi cheapo airbed inflator for the blower, this produced some serious heat:

We easily managed to straighten a piece of coiled road spring, toughen my Bohemian bearded axe, and start a froe from a leaf spring … then the bench set fire. Should have set up the anvil on a separate bench, the hammering dislodged the firebricks making up the forge. Anyway, next time will be better.