A Blast from the Past

Background

After several years of working with flat ground stock and grinders to produce good single steel homogeneous knives from O1 tool steel we wanted to expand into more traditional methods of making blades.  This would mean moving into the world of blade forging, i.e. taking steels and heating them in a forge so we could hammer them into shape.  Rather than moving straight to modern equipment we decided to experiment first.

Old School

For our first experiment we we decided to try and build a blacksmiths double chambered bellows and see if using that we could turn a simple double hole fire pit into a forging station. The design comes from a couple of different sources but is essentially what you would have seen in a smithy from about 1700 AD. Other than using plywood, copper piping and a bit of hosepipe to reduce costs, this would be as traditional as we could make it.

Results

After some tuning in, the bellows produced a good consistent airflow that allowed us to bring a 3/4 inch piece of rebar up to forging temperature and flatten it out on a makeshift anvil.  Whilst this kind of setup works, it was obvious to us that it was impractical in  terms of time and manpower.  For practical purposes we needed a more modern approach. 

Afterword

This was a really fun project to do.  Recreating something that probably hasn't been made and used for well over a 100 years and proving how well it works is a big thrill for us.  The bellows have been retired and now sit proudly in our historical gallery (my front room) probably never to be used again accept for an apocalypse when it will form part of our bug out equipment ;-)