Blacksmithing and Casting in a Backyard Forge

In this Instructable I show my homemade backyard forge. I use coal for fuel, which gets hot enough melt aluminum and blacksmith steel.

To make the forge we are using an big old brake drum and some black pipe. We built a very simple stand out of concrete blocks.

Start the forge start with small tinder and work up to big sticks. Once the fire is going well, turn on the hair drier and get that air flowing. Now add a little bit of coal to the fire and now the real heat will start! When we first started forging we used wood but when we tried using coal for the first time and it changed everything. It burns so much hotter. Coal is a necessity.

So lets put a block of aluminum in a steel can and put it in the forge and in about five minutes it's all molten. Now pour it in to whatever mold you want!! We are pouring this in an ingot so it is smaller and we can remelt it easier.

We tried to melt brass bullet shells which melt at a higher temperature than aluminum. When we put the can in the forge it melted though the can and the shells went in the forge. The next morning we were cleaning out the forge and we found this piece of coal that has pieces on melted brass in it so we did melt it!! So it was not a entire fail!!

When we were done casting we stared some forging. We are using a railroad spike to forge a knife. First we heated up the tip and stated to flatten it, this part will be our blade.

Forging stuff form railroad spikes is really fun! There are so many thing that you can make from them. Making this knife was really fun and I learned a lot! Hope you have fun

Watch the video if you want to see a more in depth process!! :)