Greetings Fam,
I just sent an email to George Wiseman expressing my curiosity about cutting, welding and forging metal using Brown's Gas.
I have been blacksmithing on and off for about 20 years, and recently made the transition from coal to propane forging.
Depending on the response from George, I may be considering switching fuel sources once again.
I have experimented with forging everything from jewelry to throwing stars and other shuriken, to daggers, knives and short swords.
Eventually I would like to expand into armor and more valuable metals like gold and silver.
The idea that I would like to propose here is an experimental crowd-funding campaign.
I don't exactly have the spare money laying around to purchase the machine and the torch accessories outright at the moment.
I could probably afford about 1/4 - 1/3 of the costs to get started.
What I am wondering is; would anyone be interested in donating to the start-up costs should I decide to move forward with the idea?
I was thinking that if I am able to get some financial help to purchase the equipment, then I would record my experiments and progress and make a video series out of it to share with the community here, and also make and send out custom creations to my donors. It would be a multi-tier donation system, where I could offer, say, a pendant or bottle opener to low level donors, a letter opener or throwing star to middle-range donors, and a larger dagger or something more elaborate for large donors.
Again, this is all up in the air for now, as I am waiting on more info from George Wiseman, but I thought I would get the idea ball rolling and await feedback before making any big decisions.
I will be very interested to hear what y'all think.
Thanks,
Neuron Crux
Update:
So, George Wiseman responded to me surprisingly quickly, and explained in great detail that he would not recommend his machine for what I am trying to do.
The small machine like the one Greg acquired is only suitable for small soldering jobs such as jewelry.
To even make cuts comparable to an acetylene torch would require over $10,000 worth of equipment...so I'm not going to be dabbling in that anytime soon.
Perhaps I was a bit ambitious posting here before I knew all the details, but the idea had me excited.
I am still forging with propane and MAP gas, so if anyone needs a dagger or anything, I'm still able to do custom orders.
Or if you had the funds for a 10k machine, would it have been insufficient and required a 50k set up?
