Collected wisdom on break drum forges

Alot of folks are asking about brake drum forges, so i'm collecting the repeated answers here
mastly in the form of photos of how to do it

A basic coal forge is made up of a few basic parts,

A fire pot, 

Which is made of stronger metal and is where the burning coal goes, in a brajke drum forge, this is the job the break drum does.

A "tweer" or tuyere, 

which is the pipes at the bottom that control the air flow.
I don't know the right name, but let's call it the table... it's thinner steel, the firepot it mounted on it
and it holds the coal and such and makes it easier to support the working metal...

Then you need legs 

or something to hold is up.

Next an air source, 

an old hair dryer will do, or a 12v fan out of an old car... If you can adjust the air flow thatch good, whether it's with a electrical speed controller or just something to block the air from moving.

A way to connect the air source to the "tweer".

they sell rubber couplers with hose clamps on each end that work, or flexible air tubing and duct tape...it doesn't' get hot this low on the "tweer".

Finally you need some kind of grate

to go over the hole where the "tweer" is connected to the fire pot (brake drum)  so coal
does not fall through.. if you can also cover up the holes in the brake drum where the lug adn lug nuts went through, you're even better off.

Here come the pics

 

In the pic above, notice the rubber coupler so the air source can be hooked up, 

and all the rest of the parts are labeled.

A clever addition to this one, is the end cap.. there are all kinds of fancy ways to make the bottom of the pipes so you can open to get ash and such out, but this is the simplest.

The part that does that is called the "ash gate"... it purpose is to hold the air in, until you want to let the ash out... and then go back to holding the air in again...

Here is a link to an instructable for one with no table at all...still works
Another one

Here is a long series of pics that explains an easy one if you can already cut and weld metal..

I wanna make a tommahawk.. what do I need on top of the basics...

I wanna make a Tomahawk.. what do I need on top of the basics...

Ok,, you need

1 piece of metal to make a tomahawk out of.. Needs some carbon,

I made one out of a rail road spike following this tutorial Rail Road spikes are about the same as 1040 steel, just hard enough to make a decent tomahawk.

http://www.anvilfire.com/iForge/tutor.php?lesson=spikeaxe/demo

Here is a video tutorial too

The hardest part of this, by far, was upsetting the end of the spike to 1" square,
So I just bought a piece of 1" square carbon steel to make my next one from..

Instead of upsetting to make one end bigger, you just hammer the rest down to what smaller shape you want...

You can also use 1040 or higher carbon steel (the 40 is how much carbon, it goes up to 1095)
Here is 1045 1" square for about $15 a foot...

12" is plenty for several axes..

Next you need a slitting chisel...

I bought this one.. it worked great

http://www.blacksmithsdepot.com/hot-slit-chisel.html

Or you could use a Dasco flat chisel and regrind the bevel shallower, (that Dasco steel is so crazy tough, I make all kinds of tools out of them)

Or you can make one out of a piece of carbon steel, like part of a car spring..

Here is a video on how to make several tools, including a hot cut chisel and 2 others you will need
a round punch and a slot punch. Both of which can be use later to drift the slit large enough for the tomahawk drift to fit.

Next you need a normal chisel to drift the slot bigger... Anything will do it just has to be big enough to stretch the hole till the small end of the tommahawk eye drift will fit... I used a cheap Chinese hexagonal cold chisel... What is a drift you say???

Next you need a drift to shape and stretch the hole you cut for the eye to the right shape.

I bought this one off ebay, if you just search tomahawk drift, you will find it, for about $25

Here are 2 more drifts for a mouse hawk (smaller) and a regular hawk, i have nto used them but they
look forged instead of cast with shoudl make them require less work to smooth them up. You can buy them with matching handles too.

http://www.blacksmithsdepot.com/products/knife-making.html

The advantage of this drift over using whatever you have at home is this is shaped for the
premade tear drop shaped tomahawk handles.. and I wanted to use them.. I believe I used the size Medium handles ... After you are done drifting, just measure and pick the size that fits off this page at Crazy Crow.....

http://www.crazycrow.com/tomahawk-handles

If you plan to hammer the drift all the way through, you can just measure the drift ahead of time...
the eye of my hawk was getting too thin, so I stopped before it went all the way through..

The Drift is sand cast steel, so you should sand/grind it to make it smoother.. but I used it as is and it worked ok. The smoother you make it the less work it will be to hammer it through.

You can make your own drift too, Google how to make a hammer drift or tomahawk drift...I'm making my own now to make viking axes, but the ebay one is how I did my first hawk.

The last tool you need, that you may not have, is a way to fuller the blade...

There are lots of ways to do this, including a simple bottom fuller as shown in the tutorial above.

You want a top fuller and a bottom fuller to match in Radius.. So if you only have one bottom fuller.. make it the diameter of the straight peen on your hammer... If it's not the same diameter, just use the hammer face on top as in the tutorial and keep turning the work over to work both sides...

Here is a tutorial on making a simple spring fuller yourself

I made one like this because I had a welder..

and it worked okay... if I had it to do over I'd use thicker metal for it, as the uprights kept bending on me...(The one pictured is not mine, my uprights were just angle iron I had laying around.)

Here is a tutorial on how to make a stronger one..


Other than that, just follow the tutorial above and will have a tomahawk!

File the hawk blade so it has a nice shape, then sharpen with the file.. and/or sand or stone it to put a final edge one it..

Stuff you can make on the first day....

When you first start forging, every books says to make these, drive hooks, ... but if you don't have a barn with exposed timbers they are not that useful..

In my garage with plastic shelves from home depot I found these much more usefull

Here is a video of me using them on my plastic shelves in my garage.. very handy

 Here are more things you can make day one that are pretty and or usefull

I made some of thse for my wife the first weeks, some with twises and more curly ques, but
she loved them

I make these to go in my medieval pavillion to hang stuff

I haven't made these but they are handy too

chain

tp holder, can make longer for towels and the like...

a shelf bracket


a belt buckle

a toilet paper roll holder

stakes for holding wine glasses

a celtic torque, this is a bracelet, but a neck torq is jsut as easy... you dont' have to do this many twists either...