This is intended for the less experienced shoers that don't know yet how to handle aluminum.

Just to illustrate how easy forging aluminum is I posted a pic of a somewhat randomly designed shoe. I encourage you all to try this one for a forging excercise.

Good luck!



Ronald Aalders

i like working ali Ron but its so exspensive over here per bar
i ordered 2 bars 1x3/8 70 euros delivered to door

the only other modifications i use on ali plates is
fit them first and then weld a bar in this works well

do you do any different mod Ronald

You're being robbed Smitty! Really! Unless you're talking full lenght bars of 6 meters.


Ronald Aalders

O and Smitty I expected you of all to recognize this forging procedure I used here............. It goes like this. Fire the forge, put in an aluminum shoe and start talking to this pretty barn help. Go back to the forge, switch it off and wait untill the damn thing cools of........

Ronald Aalders wrote: these are 20 ft bars
dont grasp would mean about forge exercise
wasent taken much notice of the shoe do you mean over heating

when working the ali never leaves my tongs
for the first heat around 10 sec or so

each heat takes less and so fort
all ways holding your shoe in the gas fire around middle height

she would want to verry pretty and have a tray with tea and cookies
before i would forget about the shoe

OH! I get it, your forge is made by NC Tool Company?

tbloomer wrote:
dont get that one Tom mabe its me im not thinking straight today

I did a forge excercise at a friends shop makeing a pritchel end out of aluminum piece about 3' long. Just an excercise for hammer control and getting the idea of drawing out a point. All we did is heat the end of the aluminum for about 10-15 seconds. Boy it holds the heat and it travels up the length pretty fast. Ouch. Takes awhile for it to cool. But give you a long time to practice on one heat. Burning up an aluminum shoe shows you how easy aluminum can be destroyed and the importance of keeping an eye on it. Does not take long.

I've left a few in too long and found a puddle in the bottom, looked like the villian out of a Terminator movie...So, as I am too ****** to learn, I quit heating up al shoes. Later I learned that some al shoes lose tensile strength when heated, and should not be worked in the forge.

smitty88 wrote: The bottom brick in the NC Tool forges has a raised section in the front. Thus the shoe would melt and collapse like this one did with with the stair step effect due to the shape of the bottom brick.

see what you mean to tell you the truth i dident even look at the shoe
i just took it was an ali exercise

to early in the morning
as i mentioned i always hold the ali never let it down

smitty88 wrote: Smitty,

Perhaps you should have coffee with your morning tea.

.

My favorite is when I grab the shoe with the tongs and leave the whole shoe in the forge except for the small peice in the tong's jaw.
Bil

tbloomer wrote:
you recon that will do it Tom
i drink alot of tea in a day

one of my down falls

tbloomer wrote:

So would a Pro Forge Tom...........


Ronald Aalders

Ron ya dagg;)