My Workshop!
Since buying my house, I've spent time building myself a workshop in my garage for blacksmithing and bladesmithing. It's not the roomiest of spaces, because I have far too much stuff crammed into half the garage, the other half being occupied by my brother's 1976 TR6 Triumph convertible.
Due to lack of space and good lighting, part of my workshop is inside my house, in my living room. This includes my knife handle assembly area, my etching station, and hte toaster oven that I use for tempering. That is probably a good place to start my shop tour.
Inside my house
I have a large coleman workbench with a pegboard back that I use for my handle assembly and general storage. The drawers are mostly filled with handle material, sand paper, steel wool, and epoxies. Top and center of the pegboard you can see two forged shapes. The one on the left is a blade forged to shape by Christoph Derringer. On the right is a tomahawk head forged from a railroad spike by Joe Szilaski. I keep those up there as inspiration as to good blade forging techniques and how to get the right shape and size without grinder work.
To the right of the workbench is my etching station. I have two Lectroetch electro chem etchers; on top is a smaller V-10A and beneath it is the larger and nicer VT-15A. These now both work after some repairing and rewiring, but I mostly use the VT-15A for my etching because it has a built in timer so I can position my electrolyte soaked pad over my stencil and then tap the foot pedle to have it activate for a fixed duration per press. This allows me to get a much more consistant etch for depth and clarity, without over heating the stencil and making it wear out prematurely.
I get my etching stencils from TUStech where they are very helpfull to small customers, and have very reasonale prices and a fast turnaround time on stencils.
For my heat treating, I dont have a digitally controlled oven for tempering, so instead I use a cheap $20 toaster oven. Inside the toaster oven I've put a thermometer and a piece of hard firebrick. The firebrick helps to normalize the temperature while the heating elements cycle on and off, and the thermometer is much more accurate than the settings on the dial for temp.
Outside Shop
Working around my shop from the side door in a clockwise direction we start with my welder, an old Lincoln AC buzz box older than I am. I keep it next to the door because it is the easiest place for my extension cable to reach. It is almost exactly 45 feet from my dryer outlet to my garage door, so I use a heavy 8/3 SOOW extension cable that I
made to cover the distance.The small workbench in the corner between the door and the garage door has belt grinder and two smaller belt sanders used mostly for handle shaping. The large grinder is a 2x72 Coote grinder, being driven currently by a 1HP Baldor motor, using a pair of step pullies to change the speed. Next to it are cheap 1x42 and 1x30 sanders.
On my 'tower of two by fours' is my mini imitation hossfeld type bender and a post vise. The bender is usefull for bending shapes and forms of specific radi. The vise is an 80lb Iron City and needs a new spring. It is the most beat up vise that I have so it gets abused the most, holding items when I grind them with an angle grinder, nicking the jaws, but not worrying about minor scrapes and dings. The 2x4 tower was the result of too many 2x4s and too much time, when I needed a stand for my bender and some other stuff. Note the all important fire extinguisher in the background.
I've nicknamed my treadle hammer "The Green Monster" in a tribute to left field wall at Fenway Park. This foot powered hammer hits very hard, and the bottom has a 1" hole to fit tooling such as hardie tools if needed. The top hammer face is changeable as well, and I plan on fabricating a holder so that I can use the same tooling with my treadle hammer as I can with my fly press. In the photo to the side I have my basic flat bottom tool in the hole.
Beside the treadle hammer is the forge which I use most often in my shop. This is an NC Tool Co. Whisper Baby, single burner venturi propane forge. This forge is wicked frugal, and I can run it for 10 hours straight on a single grill propane tank without any problems. The lare blue barrel is a 30 gallon barrel which I use for my slack tub. When the weather permits, it is filled with around 20 gallons of water. The large ammo box next to it contains 4 gallons of vegetable oil, for quenching tool steels. A sealable box is important for your quenching oil otherwise you find lots of dead things in your quench tub after a few days.
My main shop anvil is a 146lb Peter Wright anvil. As can be seen clearly in the image the weight is stamped on the side with the English hundredweight system. The first number is the number of hundredweight, which is 112lbs, the second number is the number of quarter hundred weights (28lbs each) and the last is the remainder in lbs. This can many times be confusing to people looking at anvils, because while many american made anvils are stamped in pounds, most Brittish made anvils are not. At first glance most people would think that this anvil is 116 lbs, and could be in for a suprise when they go to move it.
One of the new additions to my shop is a small fly press. Small is however a relative term, this press along with the base is over 600lbs, very massive and hard to move. This is, size wise, either a large #2 or a small #3, being right about inbetween the two by dimensions. I need to make more tooling for the press now that I have it set up. I fabricated a whole bunch of 3/4" shafts with collars ready to be welded on, and just need to weld tooling to the ends of the shafts to use them. A tool holder is used in the ram of the press to preserve the face of the ram. In the picture there is a veining chisel in the holder ready to be used.
My swage block stand is another 2x4 construction, and originally was my anvil stand before I got a proper stump. It was designed with my swage block in mind however. My swage block is a very nice Wally Yater block, one half of a pair of blocks which he made during the 1980s. I made the stand to have enough room for the pair side by side once I get either the other Yater block, or the imitation being created by Centaur Forge today.
My tongs all hang on a bar on the front of the stand, and the stand has a slot down the length of the center. This slot is so that the swage blocks can be stood on end in the slot to have the side swages used properly. Also in the picture are my cone mandrel which fits in the hardy hole of my anvil and a hardy plate for use with the fly press so that I can use the same bottom tooling with my anvil, my fly press, and my treadle hammer.
I have a coal forge and a very nice Canedy Otto hand cranked blower which I picked up at the New England Blacksmiths' fall meet. The firepot is made from an old truck break drum, and has a clinker breaker in the bottom. The blower is in excelent condition, with the original red paint still adhering in places. I plan on building a
more permanant forge base table with chimney at some point in the future, using this forge as the firepot, but intend to build it such that the firepot is removeable. In that way I will still be able to use the forge in a portable fashion such as it is currently, but not need to get a second firepot for a bigger coal forge in my shop. At some point in the future I may build a portable forge cart such as the one that the NEB uses for demos, or those that some of the NEB members have built which are more or less the same.
I store my coal inside a 30 gallon galvanized trash can. I'm fortunate in that Aubachon Hardware near me is able to order good soft blacksmithing coal in 50lb bags for a reasonable price. It's not the best quality, producing a moderate amount of clinker, but it's much better than some coal that I've used which seemed to be half sand. A 30 gallon trash can holds about 250lbs of coal, this will actualy last for quite a long time when using a hand cranked blower so as not to consume a lot of coal when you dont need to.
My second propane forge is one that was originally built by Larry Theroux and is a very long two burner venturi propane forge. This does not get up to welding heat, but it does get to a good forging temp. The forge is built like a tank, and weighs so much it takes two people to get it on and off of it's stand. I use the 40lb propane tank in this picture with this forge and my blown propane forge, because they will freeze up a 20lb grill bottle.
Also from Larry Theroux is this little anvil. It was a 75lb miss-cut of 4140 from a factory which he then welded a pair of feet to the edges so that it could be bolted down. He then almost burnt down Indian George's smithy while heat treating the face to be hardened... But that's a story for another time. When mounted to the top of this large stump, the whole thing combined weighs around 200lbs and works very well for forging. The surface of this is flatter than my main shop anvil, so I tend to use this anvil when close to being finished when forging a blade, or other flat objects.
My metal cutting bandsaw is a cheapy one from Harbor Freight, but it works well enough, particularly when you buy higher quality bi metal bandsaw blades for it. At some point I need to get myself a chop saw, because this bandsaw is currently the only way I have other than hotcutting steel to shorten bar stock.
This massive shop fan I got an incredible deal on at a used tool store in Worcester called The Tool Shed. Normally a huge shop fan like this, with a heavy base and a 3/4 horse power motor would sell for $300 or more, but I picked it up used, and in perfect working condition for only 50$ This thing moves an ton of air, and helps keep the shop ventilated, and to keep me cool when forging in the summer.
I dont currently have a proper rack to store my raw materials. This is my pile of barstock. If i need to order a lot of a single size of stock, I use Nightengale Metals in Lincoln RI, but when I need small pieces or small numbers, or scraps and cutoffs, I go to Turner Steel in Bridgewater MA. The people at Turner Steel are great to deal with, and it's a very good place to go to get shorts and cutoffs. They treat small customers great and their minimum order is only 25$. With the cost of steel going up so much as of late, I dont mind having a lot more steel than I know I have plans to use. Unfortunately my suply of tool steel for blades is rather small and pitiful currently, almost everything in this picture is mild steel or wrought iron.
In the corner of my shop is my anemic Craftsman "5HP rated" single stage oilless air compressor. It is neither 5hp (it's only 1.5hp) nor is it good for any tool which requires a large air suply, and being oilless it wont have the longest shop life either. That said, the price was right on it, 66% off new price for it and only a few months old. It works well enough with my impact wrenches and for blowing the dust out of the shop.
This blown propane forge is my "welding" forge. It uses a single blown propane burner and uses a decent amount of propane, but gets wicked hot. I dont like blown propane forges as much as venturi ones because they tend to produce a lot more fire scale on your steel than venturi burners. This is probably because the amount of oxygen input to the system by the blower is more than can be burned off with the propane before getting to the steel. I also dont like the blown propane forges as much because they get the distinctive dragon's breath effect infront of them, where it's hard to get your steel in and out of the forge without long tongs.
I own two drill presses, although one of them is never used. The first, and unused one, is a very nice old hand crank post drill press. This drill press is outfitted with a v-belt pully instead of a large fly wheel. It works great, having a newer style modern chuck in the old chuck to make swapping drill bits faster. That said, without the large fly wheel, it is easy to get bogged down when trying to drill through metal, and it gets exceedingly difficult to drill through thicker metal as the friction on the bit builds.
My other drill press is a modern 5 speed drill press which I picked up on double clearance from Lowes for only $35. For the money I spent on it, I have zero complaints with its performance. I've been able to drill 5/8" round holes through half inch plate with this drill press, so I cant think of the need for a bigger one any time soon. I could use a mill someday though. Latteral pressure on this type of drill press is not very good for it.
Two of the oldest tools I own are my two stump anvils. The first one is a massive 125lb stump anvil. Stump anvils this size have not been made in hundreds of years. Unfortunately the stump which I carved a hole out of to mount this giant split a while after the stump anvil was placed in it, despite the strapping I used. I have another stump ready to have a 4" hole carved in it to recieve the anvil, but I'm going to reinforce the face with metal plates in addition to strapping the outside this time.
The second is a much smaller 55lb bickern / stake anvil. This too is very large, and very old. It has nice shield shaped emblems forged into the sides and a nice octagonal tapered stem. One side has a round cross section, and the other is a square cross section. The base for this is a bunch of laminated and bolted 2x10 boards, one of which had a hole cut in it. The bolts were then tightened down untlil the stake is unable to wiggle. It's not as pretty as a real hardwood stump, but it's just as functional, if not moreso.
My workbench is always way too covered with junk to actually use. Unfortunately I'm out of room untill such time as my brother sells or moves his TR6, but when that happens the first thing I'm doing is building another large workbench. Even with shelves above and below the bench to hold most of my tools I'm completely out of space. You can see on the bottom shelf several boxes of 20 Mule Team Borax. This is the same stuff you buy at Walmart or the like to use with your laundry, and is what I use for flux when forge welding. Also in the picture
you can see my respirator, facemask, hearing protection, and other pieces of safety gear. Safety is always of the utmost importance in the shop. When doing any grinding or sanding, lots of dust gets in the air, and without a respirator, even if I did have a dust collection system, which I dont, much gets in your lungs. This large shear is meant for using on your anvil to cut stock, and is suprisingly effective.
My largest leg vise is this 110 lb Peter Wright leg vise with 6" jaws. This vise is in such nice condition that I'm many times reluctant to use it for any heavy work, and instead turn to my 80lb 5" jawed Iron City mentioned above. The table holding my hammers and hardy tools is very old, from the early to mid 1800s, though it's been used pretty much continuously since then. The top and bottom shelves are each single boards over 2 and a half feet wide. I'm not sure how much of the rest of the bench is 'original' other than those boards though. It's suffering some dry rot in places,and has had numerous hand forgednails re-driven into it all over to keep it together.
It is however holding a good hundred pounds of hammers and hardy tools as well as some other tooling. Along the right side is a rather complete set of chasing and repouse hammers, for which I need to learn the skill before I can really put them to use. The hammer which I tend to use the most is the 2.5lb craftsman crosspien in the lower left corner. The 2lb square faced hammer next to it is my next most used hammer.
I need to bulid a better holding system for all my files and punches and chisels so i can more easily find what I'm looking for, currently they're all in a large metal trough which I usualy keep pushed under the table with the hammers. This makes it very hard to find what I need when I need it. I plan on building a rack that I can hang on the side of the bender / vise tower to hold my most used punches and chisels.
Iv'e got a lot of other tools hidden around the shop both in my house and in the garage. For example in the corner behind the welder and grinder bench are two more leg vises, one needing mounting hardware, the other needing a spring, both around 40lbs with 4 inch jaws. I plan on welding up a portable stand for one of them and probably keeping the other in the corner as a backup.As you can see by the length of this page alone, I have a whole lot of stuff jammed into my shop. Space is at a premium, but in the future I would love to get myself a digitally controlled kiln for heat treating steel, a power hammer, and a hydrolic forging press for making mosaic damascus. Those are all going to have to wait untill I get both the money and the space. I have plans in the future to expand my shop space outside the garage to the side with the door by building a patio or maybe having a slab poured, and then building a roof over it, leaving it open on 3 sides, but that's going to have to wait for both time and money.