blacksmithing take two

With the cold weather ensuing one thing is eminent in my family, a fire. now your normal wood fire has very little practical smelting or blacksmithing applications, too much soot, not hot enough etc. However there is one thing they are good for, making charcoal. We all need some sort of fuel to heat our kilns, and some including me do not have the ability or time to go drive into eastern Oregon to get a tonne or so of coal to use, even though it only costs a few dollars. which leaves my fuel of choice to be charcoal, at least until I can get my waste oil burner working properly.
     So how do you go about making charcoal in a fireplace without it all burning up with the fire? It's really not all that hard, all that you need is a good nice steel can, the thicker the better. The can needs to have a loose lid or holes in the top to allow the wood gas somewhere to escape to. Fill the can full of wood and stick it in your fire and let  It sit in the fire until you don't see any more smoke or flames coming out of the holes or edge of the lid then let it sit in there for another ten minutes then pull it out leave the lid on until its cooled down then use the charcoal to your hearts content.
      About the flames coming out of the lid this is because of wood gas production which then the wood gas catches on fire, you don't have to worry about your charcoal burning. Wood gas is a product of heated up wood it is highly flammable, so flammable in fact that it can be used to power a car if the engine is converted slightly.
      So after an entire winter of this I should build up enough of a stock to be able to run the entire summer without having to buy any charcoal. if you have any questions leave a comment or shoot me a message.

Smithing smelting and learning

     Today i completed my first ever smelting with a little homemade foundry. it consisted of 10 1' x 2.5' x 1.5" gray blocks, a bent 2 centimeter diameter steel tube, the front off of a large dog carrier approximately 2' x 3.5', a lot of a dirt, charcoal, a iron/ steel can, 3 wire metal hangers, and a large air compressor. well obviously that is not real helpful to anyone looking to create their own foundry for aluminum, so i guess if you know you clicked on my ads and made me some money i could continue to write on here so you would get more consistent information.

     So what did i do to make my little foundry and melt my aluminum cans? first i took three of my nice large grey bricks and lade them out in a blockey u formation, =| like that so that the outside edges were flush. next came the dog grate, i just put that right on top of the blocks. then we take four more bricks and lay them on top of the grate on top of the bricks but on the skinny face. so that the foundry is taller.in a block formation |=|. the reason we didn't put a fourth block on the bottom row is so we can put our bent pipe in for air flow. now as mentioned previously we take the bent pipe and put it into the bottom where we left out the fourth bottom brick. now we take a lot of дирт, preferably wet dirt. when i say wet i don't mean sogging almost runny mud, just wet enough that it doesn't have lots  of porous holes for heat and air to escape out through. then we take this dirt and pack all the way around, make sure to get a lot of dirt around the bent iron tube, you can go as high up as you want but a minimum of four inches above the top of the bottom blocks for sure. you could even put dirt all the way over the top when your done. now we take the charcoal and put a 1 charcoal high layer down. then we take the iron can or other crucible and put the aluminum into it, then we put it inside the box we have made on the opposite side of the bent iron tubing. after that we need to put as much charcoal as we can around the can. now light the charcoal however you normally would, for me this was a little bit of trial and error but what i found worked was dumping tons of starter fluid on the charcoal. once the charcoal has gotten hot and red take the air compressor hose and put the nozzle end on it and put that end into the end of the iron tube. so that means:    air compressor>tube-------->nozzle>bent iron tube------>furnace>charcoal>iron can or other crucible. then let the air through at full power. at this point when you look at the coals there should be ones that are glowing red still and slowly getting brighter and spreading around the base of the can. if this isn't the case you need to make your charcoal hotter before letting the air loose. then take the remaining three bricks and make a roof for our little box. after a few minutes the metal you had in your crucible should be melted and you can do whatever you please with it.

     As i said earlier i really probably wont continue to write stuff unless i realize someone wants to read my stuff, and the way i know that is when my ads get clicked on cause then i make money and i remember to keep writing stuff. good luck with your smelting, tomorrow we will talk about smithing and my future plans for my smithing.