Chapter 3


  Dave set up the anvil on the stern of his boat and then went to work connecting up the forge he had made.  The forge was cone shaped. He used a piece of approximately 1/4 inch sheet metal and formed it to the shape by hammering and then riveted the seam. It was a fairly gentle cone so that at the apex a gap of about 3 inches was left. To this gap he attached the Tuyere, or air pot and the air pipe. The air pipe led to the Champion hand cranked air blower which supplied the air to the fire.

  I too as I said before, was interested in making tools and forge work in general. We decided that we would fire up the forge for the first time on the coming Sunday. Dave is an early riser, 5:30 to be exact.  For me Sunday was a sleep in late day so we compromised at 8 AM..  To start a forge fire paricularly for the first time one has to be slow and deliberate. The fire pot, that is the interior of the sheet metal forge, has to be lined with refractory cement to prevent the fire from eventually burning through the metal of the forge itself. The refractory cement powder is mixed with water and unless the cure of the cement is done carefully there might be water still within the applied cement. Trapped water+heat=steam and steam that is not allowed to escape=trouble in the form of a nice little explosion. So gentle she goes with that first firing.  We carefully crumpled newspapers and atop them a pile of hardwood shavings that I had brought from Nelson Hanson, mostly Oak and some Alaska Cedar. A forge burns Coke and Coke is made by burning Coal in a controlled manner.

  Dave lit a match to the paper and it caught without any trouble. Then the wood began to flame and then the coal carefully packed around the rim of the burning wood began to smoke. This smoking is part of the process of changing coal to coke. It is the burning off of the impurities in the coal to reduce it to coke which is mostly carbon and then it can be used to forge weld and work steel with out danger of introducing impurities into the work.

  We were like two kids patting each other on the back as this process began, for neither one of us had seen it much less done it before. Dave had some scrap metal he had gathered for this purpose of experimenting. The 'coking' was well underway by this time so he stuck a length of metal, called bar stock, into the center of the glowing fire and I cranked upon the handle of the blower. Whoosh went the fire and the stock got redder and redder and then changed to orange and suddenly the tip of the bar just exploded into sparks! We had made the most elementary of mistakes. We had overheated the bar and it had burned up in the heat of the fire. Just then we heard a siren and looked around to see where it was coming from. Recall this is one the stern of Dave's boat moored at marina on the Duwamish River in Seattle, WA..

  Around the bend of the river comes the Seattle Fire Boat going all out. She was throwing a bow wave that had every boat in every marina nearby bobbing like corks and loose gear onboard those boats was crashing and clanging to beat the band. As the fire boat approached us the men on the forward monitor, that is what those cannon like devices on fire boats are called. The monitors, are powerfully pumped devices that can throw water hundreds of feet into a waterfront fire. Well the forward monitor crew started pointing at us. We waved at them, and that was probably not too smart a thing to do under the circumstances, but the Captain in the pilot house was quick to see that there was no danger and ordered the monitor crew to stand down, whew!  The fire boat slowed and came alongside Dave's boat and for the next hour we wound up first explaining , that we were in possession of our right minds, that we knew what we were doing and then giving demonstrations of how Dave built the forge, how we or rather he got the anvil on the boat and then a tour of the fire boat. Oh it was a fun time.

  The situation was caused by a concerned homeowner up on the bluffs above the marina seeing the billowing smoke from our first firing of the forge and thinking a boat was afire.

Boys will be Boys.