Fire Irons - campfire cooking pot hanger

last summer we made a tripod set for cooking over the campfire welcome back to black bear forge I thought this year we would get a little earlier start on campfire cooking ideas and we would make a different version of the classic tripod and this one can be set up either as a tripod or as a long set of bar so you can hang multiple pots over the campfire I had grand plans I was going to build a fire pit and I was going to start a campfire and we were going to talk about how you use these things and show some examples as we discussed how you make these various things for campfire cooking and I am still planning on doing a full series of campfire cooking implements from the fire irons which is what I call the set we're making today to some more more hooks Dutch oven lid lifters grills grates things like that that really helped make campfire cooking more pleasant but unfortunately as I was working on the fire pit and I was getting my second wheelbarrow full of rocks to move up I managed to take a wrong step and while I didn't fall down I did land in the emergency room and now my knee is in a brace for a week or two weeks so there will be no more hauling rocks or pushing wheelbarrows or squatting down by fire pits to do any campfire cooking so we're gonna start this series by making some of the implements and hopefully before we're done we'll have that fire pit done and we'll be able to gather around the campfire to discuss just what we do with some of these things today's project is one of those that I used to make in quite large numbers it's something I became very good at it was a production item and I'm going to discuss some of those production issues and how I streamline and make this faster so I can make enough of these to make it worth my while to sell them at a reasonable price I have historically made these in multiple sizes from an extra small set a medium-size set a large set which is what we'll make today and an extra large set and you can adjust sizes and lengths just keep in mind the bar weight or how thick your bar stock is has a lot to do with how much weight you can hang on these when they're done for this larger set I start with half inch square bars so that's 13 mil square bar I cut three pieces 48 inches long or about 1.2 meters long now this measurement is important when you're doing production work I buy steel in 20-foot sticks if you cut it in 4 foot lengths you end up with 5 4 foot pieces if you cut it in some slightly longer or slightly shorter increment you end up with either only four pieces and an odd scrap or you end up with five pieces still but you still end up with an odd scrap that you don't really need so this makes it come out even and when I go to the steel yard and I buy steel when I cut my half-inch bars I don't cut them in half at ten foot to put them in the back of the pickup and bring them home because then I only get four four foot pieces into two foot pieces I cut the bars instead at 12 foot so I get three pieces out of that one and eight foot so I can get two pieces out of that and if you buy enough bars that eventually all comes out even in four foot pieces hope that all makes sense so what do you say we get started [Music] [Music] a gas Forge is ideal for this kind of production work you can heat all the bars up at once even if you're not using a power and we're being able to put one bar back and pull out another hot bar really adds to your efficiency any more than about three bars in there at a time starts to be overkill too many irons in the fire as they might say now some of you been asking about the little giant power hammer this project is just meant for working under the Little Giant it's going to start with three short points on the part that goes into the ground with a short point on all three bars the next thing I want to do is slide these through the back door of the forge so that the middle of the bar is hot getting hot and that's where I'm going to put a decorative twist [Music] and these just get a simple twist I usually don't ornament the twist too much one time around one and a half times around whatever you feel like doing but you can do fancy twists if you want to entirely up to you by squeezing the bar on the diagonal on the diamond we can straighten that out a little bit and sometimes those still need just a little straightening at the anvil yet I work it on the diamond I don't actually Hammer the twist if it's real off go to a wooden block with a rawhide or wooden mallet I don't bother to lay these twists out I do them by eye if you need to go ahead and lay it out but do try to make them all the same the food you're cooking over the campfire doesn't usually care too much if they match perfectly just close if I'm doing multiple sets which is why I typically work from a production point of view I do twist slightly different for each set so I know which ones belong together so how did we do with her twists being mostly the same looks like I actually twisted one backwards boy I can't believe I did that but otherwise they don't look too bad and the backwards twist really won't hurt anything either it's just now a style thing the next thing we need to do is work on the other end so we're gonna let all of this cool typically I do the first part of this in the morning throw in a pile on the floor go to lunch what I come back they're cool enough to turn around and work on the other end if you're in a hurry and you're gonna quench them at least let them get down to a black heat before you're quenching and I have this highly specialized jig that I will use to make the bends in this so that they all come out relatively similar I'll start by making a little curl on the end of it and that hooks around this post here this little bar here was intended to be able to form that curl in the jig but it doesn't really work well so I never use it that gets bent around here then to form one leg drops down in on a second heat then it brings it back this way and that'll all make sense we actually see the jig in use and only two bars get done this way [Music] just give these a little cleanup the anvil and then put the curl in them by hand and generally I do all this from the same heat that I draw it out under the power hammer this is purely ornamental so if you've got a different idea for a little scroll end you can do whatever you feel like and I like to cool the little curl off just so I don't mess it up that goes in that first position on the jig and you go all the way around to there in this case it's until I hit my tripod I'd usually go just a hair further I'll move the tripod for the next one you just clean it up if it needs cleaning up then we'll take another heat controlled heats are important if you have too long a heat through here it just makes a real wide lazy Bend and it's real hard to get it to drop back into this second position then so this is just what we want and we only do this exact step to two of these there we've been that one a little further pays to be able to walk around your amble then we reinsert the bar just exactly like we had it the first time and then bend it back on itself depending on your heat this may end up a little bit bigger and sloppier here than you want that's easy to correct just put that over the horn and then I can bring this down if need be if your heats are all perfect you don't have to do that and it's all we need for this end now the third bar just gets a round ring and that's important when we put these together as a tripod and you can do that in this same jig if you want to just by using it like a set of bending forks remember these get really hot after bending a couple of these but I actually prefer this simple jig it's just a piece of 3-inch pipe with a little bar to catch the tail on that and this is more efficient and makes the exact same sized ring every time sometimes you have to lift it out of there depending on how much room you have in the shop to swing things and frequently you'll have to get this hot a second time but there again don't get it too hot for too long of a heat on the bar or it'll start bending really big down in here that's all I do on this jig now we're gonna go to the horn I just straighten that out so that the ring sits centered over the top here that's really all about all there is to that now to set your fire irons up as a tripod it's really just a matter of linking the ring to the two hooks this is perhaps not as secure as a regular tripod but I almost never set them up like this the beauty of this set is that you can set it up as a crossbar you just drive that in the ground a little bit how deep depends on how solid your ground is it's nice if they're fairly level across the top and then this just goes right across there and you can hang two or three pots generally I would say this set is large enough for a family of four the next size smaller I make out of three-eighths square bar and I start with three feet of three-eighths square bar the next size up starts with five feet of 5/8 square bar so you just adjust and adapt based on what you need and if you're never gonna set it up as a tripod you don't really need the ring the set the set I use all the time actually has ram's heads on the end so you can just do whatever you want with it depending on what your needs are I hope you enjoyed the video and I do hope this is something you can use around your campfire make some time to get out to your shop but stay safe wear your safety glasses we'll see you for the next one [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Black Bear Forge

Views: 104,456

Keywords: Blacksmith, blacksmithing for beginners, black bear forge, john switzer, fire irons, campfire cooking, campfire, camp fire, cooking, camp cooking, cooking over the fire, pot racks, skewers, pot hanger, outdoor cooking, bushcraft cooking, cooking crane, pot suspension system, dutch oven, blacksmith shop, blackbear forge, blacksmith forge, blacksmithing projects, hand forged, how to, blacksmithing project

Id: sT-gacyANxQ

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2019