GETTING STARTED

I retired in November of 2008 and my kids/grand children live out-of-state. I have three main interests aside from my wife. Fishing is an old addiction and I never get enough of it. Knife making is something new for me but I have had an interest in it for as long as I can remember. I made 10-20 knives by stock removal method in the late 1980's but I always wanted to forge knives. My farm has been neglected for the past twenty years while I worked in Nebraska. Now I am having to pay the price. I would like to spend most of my time fishing or learning to make knives but the farm takes most of my time for the present.

I have managed to put together a small bladesmithing shop. It is pretty primative. A lot of the equipment is home made or things I had on hand. The forge is made from a gas can for an outboard motor. I cut the top off, drilled holes in each end, and ran a 2" pipe through the holes. The pipe had holes drilled at one inch intervals and was capped-off on one end and connected to a blower on the other. the can was packed with a clay and sand mixture for insulation. The blower is an old BUFFALO FORGE hand cranked blower. I got it for free because it didn't work. It was an easy fix and now I have a very nice little forge set-up. I set my forge in the end of the quonset hut and added a squirrel cage fan in the end of the wall to carry out the smoke from the charcoal I burn in the forge. My anvil is a 4"x4"x32" square piece of steel that I got for 30 cents/pound ($42.00) This was my most expensive purchase for the shop. I welded a frame of scrap angle-iron to an old Frieghtliner brake drum to hold the anvil in a vertical postion and mounted the drum to a piece of 3/4 inch plywood. I had intended to pour cement in the brake drum to make it more massive and add weight to the bottom but this was unnecessary. My wife and I go to the WORLDS LONGEST YARD SALE every year. This year I looked for things to use in the shop. I came back with eight hammers, twenty-odd files,and over fifty chisels,punches,jack hammer bits, and odd pieces of steel. I spent less than forty dollars.

It is bed time, more tomarrow.