Hing plates

OK, yesterday I spent the day in the shop working on the hinge plates and got all four of them done. Here are some pictures showing the process.

 Drawing the cut lines out on each plate...

Holes are drilled to make the cutting easier....

 The band-saw is used in the upright position to do most of the cutting.

After the cutting is done I start by putting a bevel on the end of the two tabs.

Now it's time to roll the hinge barrel. This takes one heat to make the general hing barrel shape.

One hinge barrel shaped!

Shaping the second barrel.....

Fumbling tools....

Now I have the tool in position.

I'm working with large hot steel and it is a very strenuous task, requiring frequent water breaks. I'm also waiting on the metal to reheat.

Each hinge is stamped with a certain number of dots which corresponds with one of the strap pieces that the plates go with. That way, each plate gets a custom fit to its matching strap hinge. After the barrels are rough formed, the plate is allowed to cool for another cutting.

The corners are cut off at a 45 degree angle to match the existing strap hinges.

Now the edges need to be "chamfered." This just means that the edges of the steel will be hammered down or beveled.

After the edges are chamfered, the hinge barrels are aligned using a dummy hinge pin.

Once the hinge barrels are aligned, they have to be fitted around the strap hinge. This requires precise filing to remove small amounts of material at a time, frequently checking to see if the matching strap hinge fits.

Once the hinge is aligned and fitted, it is allowed to cool again. The screw holes are marked and drilled and then the hinge plate is cleaned with an aggressive wire brush.

I will be working on the hinge pins today, Lord willing.

Finished oven door and beginning of a hinge job

After having some internet difficulties, lacking some parts to finish the oven door, and plenty of other unforeseen difficulties, I have completed the oven door job and it is now packaged and ready to ship off.

Once again the frame on the front of the door is for a ceramic piece. 

showing the texture, one hinge, some chain, and the corner of the door frame.

The chain bracket on the door.  

The chain bracket on the outer frame.

One of the two latches.

My touchmark!



I hope to get pictures after the door is installed in it's new home, but for now that job is completed.

Next in line is a hinge job. This job is more of a restoration type. What I have is four 32-inch strap hinges that need straightening, along with new hinge plates, hinge pins, and mounting hardware.

The long piece to the right in this picture is the existing piece. It is a very old, hand forged, strap hinge.

I am constructing the plate piece to the left in the picture

I have made a couple of test pieces to determine the amount of stock I need, the method I need to use, the pattern or shape of the piece I need to cut, and the tools I need to execute the job.

Here are a couple of tools and the test pieces. I should have pictures of the plates tomorrow.

That's it for now!
Dave Custer
Fiery Furnace Forge Blacksmith LLC
http://www.custerfamilyfarm.com/

more progress

Here are some pictures of SOME of today's progress on the oven door.
I got the hinges nearly finish, all the chain done and assembled, the frame attached to the door, and I started welding up the main door frame.

This is the door with the outer frame attached. This frame will hold a ceramic centerpiece. The top lip on the frame will be bolted on so that the ceramic piece can slide in.

Here is a close up of the above frame.



Here are the chain pieces! (the rust will get cleaned off later!)



This is the frame the door will be mounted on. I have just welded the first corner. The corner has to remain clamped until cool so that it does not warp from heat distortion. The welds will be ground and blended.

More pictures tomorrow. Nearly all of the rest of the work is assembly of the pieces so I am hoping to have the door mounted on the frame tomorrow and maybe the finish applied!

Dave Custer

Fiery Furnace Forge Blacksmith LLC



progress on the oven door

I spent all day in the shop again yesterday working on the oven door. From the pictures it may not seem like there was much progress, but things are coming along nicely. It just difficult to get pictures of everything.

I finished the texture on the new door and it is nice. The door still has to be cleaned and finished but here it is now.  It didn't warp but it required a lot of persistence to texture it cold.....AND earplugs.

I made over 60 pieces of chain yesterday from 1/8" round stock. That is a tedious process simply because the metal is so small. By the time I reached number 59 though I had established a good routine! 

Finally the holes where drilled and the rivets cut for the chain brackets on the side of the door. These are very nice looking and I can't wait to get the attached. This picture is just a preview of what it will look like. 

Today I'll be finishing out the chain, making the door handle/latch, and the chain brackets that will attach to the door. I might even get to the hinges. Pictures later!

'Till then it's to work!

Fiery Furnace Forge Blacksmith LLC

Dave Custer

Italian style pizza oven

I have completed the fire poker and oven grate for my dear clients down in North Georgia. They have been quite patient while I took time out of the shop to work on the problem with our dam. Now I have finally gotten back out to the shop to begin work on their "pizza oven" door. The set-up is a large stacked stone fireplace located outdoors. The fireplace is centered and on one side is an oven operate by placing hot coals from the fire into the oven.
This is the oven!

I started by cutting and sizing an insert frame that will be attached to the masonry. I am basing the sizing off of measurements I took onsite so everything should fit just perfectly when the piece arrive at it's new home.

There are two little brackets that will hold two pieces of chain to the frame.These chain pieces will support the door. This is the bracket. 

These are two links of chain.

I also cut out the door and textured it yesterday. Only the edges will be textured because there is another piece that covers the middle of the steel door. I cut the plate out of 3/16" plate steel.

The rectangle drawn on the plate designates where the center piece will cover the plate.

I used a 4-inch cutting disk to cut this out of a larger piece of metal. I think I got my money's worth out of the one I used! (Pictured is a new one and the used one.)

I threw the piece of plate metal into the forge. (Actually I laid it in the forge because it is too heavy and cumbersome to throw.)

I spent several hours texturing the outside and the texture turned out great. However, there was a lot of heat distortion in the piece of plate. I should have recognized and forseen the problem before I spent all afternoon texturing the piece, but I sturbornly persisted. At the end I started trying to forge the heat distortion out, but to no avail. Long story short, the first door gets trashed and I am cold texturing a second door that will be the actuall door that the clients receive. You may be thinking, "aww a little heat distortion? what's the big deal?" Well, take a look at the pictures and you will see!

The plate is warped in BOTH planes. If it was only in one plane it would be simple to forge out but with both planes being distorted, I do not have the equipment to fix this door. I would have to heat the entire plate up evenly and the use a large roller to reflatten the plate.

It is frustrating of course to have a part of a project fail in the first attempt, but that is part of the fun of blacksmithing. Each unique job I get is a learning experience for me. One thing I learned from an extremely knowledgeable smith is ALWAYS do a test piece. In this instance it would be impossible to do a test piece, but I should have identified the problem in the first ten minutes and chosen a different method.

Another couple of notches up for me on the the blacksmithing experience scale!







Grate for oven

This piece is for the same client that ordered the fire poker pictured in the previous blog.
I am building an oven door and an oven grate for an outside, stacked-stone fireplace. There is a large fireplace and inside the stone there is an oven. Hot coals from the fire are raked into the oven for heat.

This is the grate! It is quite stout so that there will be no fear of warping from heat.

I have been running a bit slow on this job because of some disturbances on the farm. A while back we had the dam on our pond raised to increase the depth and size of our pond. We gave the dozer man a time limit of two days work and he did a lot of work in those two days. However, the sides of the dam were left too steep and due to the large amounts of rain we have had here, the dam was giving way so that there was only about a two foot wide dam at the top. Chunks of dirt and mud slides were falling off the dam, and if we had gotten one more heavy rain, the water would have washed over the top of the center of the dam and the whole 20-foot deep, 1/2-acre pond would have washed away along with several hundred fish we just stocked. It is due only to the helping hand of God ALMIGHTY that the dam did not give way!
The only likely place to get more dirt from around the pond, was the backside of the dam. This was just where the dozer pile of trees, stumps, and brush was placed. We needed to clear this out as much as possible to save the dozer man the time when he got out here to fix the dam.  So, dad and I spent two and a half days work on the pile, cutting and hauling limbs and trees out.
These are before pictures!

the stumps of logs that we cut and hauled off



Other views of the brush pile!

For proportion!

This is what the dam looked like. See how the back center is cracking and sinking down. It had sunk down about 3 feet below the water level. The photo does not capture the scale or gravity of the situation.

We hauled over two dozen trees out and countless limbs and small trees.

This is what it looks like after the dozer man worked on it all day today!

Starting with the backside of the dam.



Much different and much better!

That's all for now!

Fire poker under the big hammer!

I finished up a 4 foot fire poker the other day for one of my clients in North Georgia. This one was forged from 1/2" square bar. I forged it round under the big hammer, put a nice loop for hanging on the handle end, and a large hook for poking, pushing, and moving logs in the fire.

The finished piece!

More new forge works are well uhhh......in the works!