After an excellent pitch at our 11th Dragons’ Den, we’ve been looking forward to hearing from local resident Mark about how his community project is getting on, here’s what he had to say…
This project has been a great success. The objective was to get a donated blacksmith’s forge up and running as a community forge for Radstock. This has proved harder than expected as the forge needed more repairs than thought to get working and time has been limited to get this done due to volunteers doing the work having limited availability. However lots of people have donated time, expertise and equipment so that the grant has stretched much further than expected.
Experts have donated their time to advise, help with design, welding, grinding and sourcing parts to get the forge running.
We have done the following:
Made the body of the forge stable.
Cut a new piece of iron to make a new back and welded it in place.
Cut a whole for the heat sink.
Detached the original blower and motor.
Dismantled the blower .
Sand blasted the blower.
Painted the blower.
Re assembled the blower.
Renovate the motor.
Attach the motor to the blower.
Machine cut a cast iron pipe for the heat sink.
Design and source the tubing for the blower.
Source a manual blower.
Source a control unit.
Source donated tools including: Anvil, 2 Large Leg Vice, 1 Bench Vice, 5 Hammers, 5 Blacksmith Tongs.
All the labour has been done for free, so the grant has been used solely for parts of the forge, paint and fuel expenses.
So, we are now at the point where we need to attach the blower to the forge with the controller and we will then be up and running.
See attached photos of the process.
We will then source some funding for running costs for the forge to offer workshops for young people during the week and adults at the weekend.
Overall, this has been a very good process which has ended up with a usable community forge. I was hoping to have been able to run some sessions by now but it has taken much longer and more money to get the actual forge working. But what has become apparent is the support for the project in the community of Radstock and the offers of help that have been forthcoming from the Blacksmith community to make this happen. I am convinced that we will have working Community Forge in Radstock by the end of the year.