Forge Bending a 1” Steel Tow Bar | by a ‘Carpenter’ 

You don't need to harden it, it will work fine as it is. Indeed, hardening it, if you could do it, would only make it brittle, unless you could temper it and you don't have a large enough heat source, to do either of those things. Also, it's mild steel, low carbon, so it wouldn't harden much anyway. I would however, as some of the commercial hitches have, which you showed, I'd wrap a metal collar around the base of your eyelet, just as insurance, on the chance of the eye opening, though I don't it will but it would be easy to do and it would make a nice decorative touch. When making your bends, you could have made your life a lot easier by keeping a oxy set or propane and oxygen set handy, to keep the metal hot, to help you bring your bends around. Also stop cutting your steel, like timber, you should keep your steal as long as you can, for as long as you can - it's all about heat and leverage. You also need to have everything ready to go, no searching for hammers etc - strike while the irons hot, not lukewarm. Other than that, well done.

your channel is definitely in my top three favorite. your problem-solving skills unique projects and the aesthetics of your workspace really take me away from the boringness of the typical garage workshop. not to mention you have a very soothing voice.

I love the fact you admitted right at the end to all the 'in between' attempts. Amazing result for a newbie to metal working. That was not an easy project for sure and it looks really good. Thanks for sharing and please keep up the good work!

Carl, As a retired metallurgical engineer all I can say is "great job"! All the best on this project!

A metal collar is a must. Dismiss hardening it, there's no point. Not for this, BUT, the collar you have to do, otherwise the forces involved when you steer the mahoosive thing about, will eventually snap it and all that work will be undone. If you feel like you don't want the collar, you can always just weld the underside, discreetly. Nobody will ever know. edit, if you insist on hardening it (and it's gonna be a big undertaking) then only harden the front most part of it, do not harden the hourglass area. And to do it on that scale, go buy carbon powder, make a fire pit with a blower pipe under it and put a hair drier at the other end. You'll want to wrap that area of the loop (front) with fire resistant plaster and fiberglass wrap (car exhaust tape wrap) and heat only that area. As airtight as you can make it, so that the metal sucks all that carbon into itself. Then clean it, heat it until it's no longer magnetic and dip it in car oil. You can do some tests with those discarded pieces. I say used motor oil because there's a lot of carbon in that oil as well, but also because it stops rust. Again, do not harden the hourglass portion. You want that to be parent material. So only dip the "bulb's" top.

- For what it’s worth - Forge Shops, UK Industrial. I worked for an UK aerospace company that required large forged components. The UK has some of the world’s best forgers. Your project and production of larger components is identical. Quality steel, heat, hammers or presses, fixtures / dies and experienced (brave) labor, no glory. You sure have the skill and will to finish the project…good luck buddy.

Hi Carl. This is where I blow my own trumpet, appologies for that. I'm known as a Golden Arm which is a 'Specialist Welder'. What this term means exactly is, for those who do not know. I'm fully qualified in all aspects and techniques of welding. I use all types of equipment, setups, and gasses. For example Mig, Tig, Arc = (stick), Oxy-gas, Plasma, Electron, and Laser welding plus several other types mainly known within the welding community. I'm also a qualified engineer and fabricator, which means I work with most metals. Although I'm not a smithy, that is a mild steeel you are working with. Therefore, attempts at hardening it will prove fruitless because of its composition and your setup. You seem to have wasted a lot of steel, and I get that. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, right Carl? So, in the future, if you have the necessity to make another towbar or a set of iron gates, for example, there are a few things you need to take care of first. 1. BIGGER Forge. I'm sure in the future you will need to make bigger things. Things used in old buildings like barns. Things used to secure or hold walls together as an example. Hinges, nails or stakes. So why not consider buying a mobile coal forge on wheels. They start from around £200 to £4,000 depending on age and condition. They use three ingredients, coal, charcoal, and oxygen, the latter provided either by a hand crank blower or an electric one. Hand blower is probably best for you and cheaper too. I recently purchased a mobile forge built in 1904 for £350 which needed some work including a new hood. I spent £260 on sheet and steel bars. Then, 3 weeks of evenings and weekends getting it back to good working order. I've been taking blacksmith lessons for the past 9 weeks to add to my many other talents, and it's harder than it looks. Having the background knowledge that I do has helped me immensely. Why smithing, you may ask? Why not, I love working with metal. 2. The right set-up in place beforehand. You have a good workshop, but it's better if you alter it without that gaping hole. Try adding barn doors. Good smithy work is achieved by working in a constantly controlled environment. When you see smiths red faced and sweating buckets, it's not through strength or brute force of hammering steel on the anvil, but the heat of the forge. Ok, that last part was tongue and cheek, a joke. Smithy work is hard work and extremely skilful. Its not just a matter of heating up metal then hammering or bending into shape. It's a skill learnt over years, not days, not weeks, or months but years. My blacksmith teacher tells me his apprenticeship was 5 years, and he's still learning 17 years on. 3. The right tools to hand. You need to have more than just an anvil, a hammer, and a pair of tongues. 4. A constant heat source. That is where coal forging is best, so im told. Better for the environment, better for forging iron and steel. Of course, gas forging is almost instant but just because you turn on the tap, then a few moments later the iron is hot, dosen't mean its the best way. Worthwhile tips: With your set-up, consider having an oxy acetylene torch on standby. When heating the steel, you are changing the molecular structure. Therefore, you would do best to try and keep the steel a cherry red colour throughout your bending period. Either return the steel to your forge or use the oxy set-up to reheat the work piece. My final tip would be to watch some blacksmith videos on RU-vid. Most are American channels but watch the two top or most popular British ones first, then compare them to the top four American channels. Instantly you will notice a difference in techniques. Its your choice which to follow but my choice, as is my teachers, was to follow the British ones. Why, simple. The British guys put all their effort into actually teaching everything there is to know about the trade. Whereas the Americans concentrate on their image and presentational skills, rather than actual smithing. I've not explained it well because I'm finding it difficult not to come across as insulting, rude, or ignorant towards the American guys. The top four channels are, just watch them and see for yourself Carl. Lastly, great work mate. What we must not forget is that this is your first time at blacksmithing. Yes, you had a few hiccups along the way, but learn from your mistakes. Don't cut off the mistake just because it went wrong. Reheat that mistake and bend it back again. Keep the steel hot at all times. You will find bending that much easier. As with a lot of things in life. Practise makes perfect. Last of all, no, seriously, I really do mean it this time. We see you using water to keep the steel cool where you didn't want it to bend. How did you know about this, Carl? That was a good thing to do, but with the steel you are using, if you were to say, plunge the red hot steel into a bucket of water. You would not harden the steel as most people think it does. You would actually make it brittle and, therefore, useless as a towbar. I'm looking forward to watching the next instalment. ⚒️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

1:40 I laughed out loud at your Dog's suspicious glare at the Furnace ...

Carl, you never cease to amaze me with your talent. you're a hard worker and you don't give up. Hello to your dad and hoping he's well and enjoying his life in France ... i am !

Perhaps you could get some tips from Maximus Ironthumper - this sort of project would be just up his street and he's also a Land Rover enthusiast so there's that.

Tu canal es mi favorito de todos los canales de contruccion, carpinteria, y cualquier tipo de bricolaje. La razon es que ademas de que eres muy habil, tus videos son muy dinámicos y nunca aburren en ningun momento porque explicas a la vez que trabajas a diferencia de otros que se pasan la mitad del video hablando sin trabajar(sobre todo los franceses jajaja), y ademas me gusta mucho la fotografia y la musica de fondo.

I truly appreciate your ability to say “why not”! Keep it up!

Change your tow hitch to a pintle / locking ring type used on industrial trailers for moving diggers and the like.

All the test pieces is just giving you more experience and knowledge. I enjoy your work and videos. Cheers from Philadelphia

This was awesome, very skilled. When I was young I was taught to soak the steel until it was cherry red hot, cut the oxygen back (or off) and cover the part with acetylene soot. This adds carbon to the surface. Then quench in water to lock the carbon into the structure. It would case harden the part, otherwise give you an outer surface that is locally hard for improved wear resistance but still retain ductility in the middle for toughness. They make carbon powder I've seen but I've never done that. I think that would work good for your forge setup. You could locally case harden the hitch eye and also the mounts at the back. But I've also seen old tractors with pivot pins on the frame that have gone thousands of hours in the field and only are a36 steel type hard (rockwell B scale). I will generally replace them however with 4130 or 4140 steel rod as they are worn down pretty good.

You are a talented young man… not afraid to take on anything. My husband and myself love watching your videos. Thanks for putting them out there 😊

thats a beautiful cotter pin 14:30

the harder you make that the more intense any failure will be. that's actually one of the most desirable qualities of steel, that it can be made to be hard and tough enough to hold up literal tonnes of cement but also soft and pliable enough that it will bend a lot before it fractures. that being said with how thick your tow bar is I would wager on it still being usable after a car crash so you shouldn't have to worry about its hardness too much

I've been following you the entire time, and I believe your father is proud of you. 🌹

Dude, you are some kind of genius! I love the way you decide to do your own thing when what's available doesn't suit you. Please...keep on keepin' on.

Very admirable. Love the trial and error and the result is simple and beautiful.The single curved piece is so much more aesthetically pleasing than the examples you researched with welded components. Thanks for sharing. Cheers.

Hi Carl! i was so excited when you started this project, looks really good! i build and restore living vans and shepherds huts for a living, along with various other things including being a blacksmith. Ive made a few draw bars in the past, 19 to be exact, ive found for me the best was to put 2 full twists in the draw bar behind the eye, however, you would really need oxy propane and superheaters for this, so not practical for you, but a collar behind the eyelet is also a traditional thing to do, its also worth welding in a spreader bar near the widest point, they do deflect a lot in use. wonderful to see you making such a lovely job, really keep it up! P.S. see if you can grab yourself a 'nato' hitch for your landy, or a large pin hitch, much safer when moving things around, if you mount it to a separate drop plate for your hitch, its just remover the pin and swap over.

I always enjoy seeing your trial and error approaches to your projects, Carl.

That is a heck of a cotter pin

Carl is a legend. Be more like Carl.

Considering you’re not in the black smithing union 😁 the improvisation was first class Carl, well done mate.👏🏻

I believe that alec steele would be a good practical source of knowledge as he does lots of proglem solving in his day to day life.

It's fascinating watching this, without you having the benefit of hours of training as most blacksmiths presumably have. It must also be so for the blacksmiths watching! Very encouraging to see what can be achieved by careful thought, research and ... chutzpah!

Just love watching your stuff Carl,no problems,only solutions. Looking forward to your next episode.

Just found you again , a whole year. What a surprise and the projects are beautiful. Thank you for sharing your life and talents with us. I wont lose your page again. Loving every single project.

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

not saying that you weren't already planning on doing this, but make sure to put some rubber or a shock absorber on the loop where it attaches to the tow hitch. That trailer is going to be very heavy, and the backlash of stopping and starting on the defender will wear out the transmission fast. Having some shock absorber or impact dampening will go a very long way. The steel could also be tempered and allowed to flex on the trailer itself to utilize the springiness of steel to aid with the shock absorbing too. Great project.

As always: excellent! Thank you.

Much awaited, much appreciated looking forward to excellent work as always from you.

Well done, that was amazing to watch and learn from.

Always a pleasure to watch your process and progress x

Your channel is the most fascinating of all that I watch - and I watch a lot!!!

This is excellent! Such a work ethic too! 🙂

You made that look so easy! Well done Carl! Thank you for sharing.

Awesome that you will try to do anything. That how we all learn.good job

Good job Carl. Brilliant ingenuity to work your way through that project. I’d have probably fabricated something out of angle or box steel with a modern hitch for the tow ball. Your solution is way more elegant and rustic, if tricky as all get out to make. Love your work.

It's wonderful to see you delving into several craft areas and following them along the way! Very inspiring.

Love the channel. Great work.

Thank you from Central Texas USA

You’re a great man. Your thinking process and problem-solving skills are fantastic.

Very interesting to watch your creative process. 👍😊👍

Necessity is the mother of invention! Well thought out sir !

As someone who has made literally many hundreds of eyes,staples, rings etc for harbours and quays for ship's moorings and whatever, I can attest to your achievement in manufacturing that. I had the luxury of big, flat steel work benches to weld pegs and stops etc. to and oxy-acetylene to direct the heat precisely. Give yourself an almighty pat on the back for turning that out with your available resources. A big well done.

Well done mate!

You are definitely on the right track! Watching your videos is a breath of fresh air.

Great effort! As someone a couple years into my welding I am intimidated by forging or smithing, and that was awesome to watch. Makes me want to build a forge along with the shop coming soon! I only did a cursory look to see if you have any videos of welding, but I just wanted to give you a shout of encouragement if you're considering trying it out. Start with flux-cored wire on a mig gun and you can start hotgluing metal together in an a day. It's ridiculously easy, at least, much easier than you'd think. And the ability to add and remove material much more like clay than like woodworking is revolutionary for one's fixing and doing. It's literally made anything in the realm of creation feel possible for me, and changed my life in a few ways. The welder paid for itself in a week or so of adding things to a buddy's work truck, and then went on to make me some seriously decent money doing some handrails and business-patio-grade projects for folks. You'll be able to make really strong and functional tooling to make other projects easier, as well as fix or modify the metal things we find ourselves surrounded by and reliant on. Thanks for the great vibes and entertainment. And if you do put your welds on RU-vid, remember the fools giving critique aren't learning a damn thing, learning on camera is heroic. Cheers!

Fantastic forge job😉

1st Project was brilliant!

Amazing work to find the solution. Thr jig was brilliant..Great video.

Practice makes perfect. Well done.

Now that you've got that forge, I'm guessing you won't resist the urge to decorate your shepherd's hut/van with all manner of beaten and curled ironwork. Nice video. You start out making something almost good enough and then end up with something that exactly meets your goals.

always great fun to watch your efforts, successful as always :). Btw, I've gotten a handful of positive comments when wearing my jacket out and about.

Je suis impressionné, c’est du beau travail…continue, thanks

Amazing job 👍

A combination pintle and ball hitch will give you safety when towing that it will not pop out when breaking.

Thanks Carl

awesome job carl

Carl nice job! Looks great 👍👍

That definitely did not look easy to make! The end result is awesome. It takes courage to try something you have never done before so hats off to you on a job well done. Love the vids!

Well done, be proud!!

Well done

I’m Mesmerised by what you’re doing. Never was interested in metalwork before, but you make it interesting to watch. ❤

Turned out bloody nice

Thanks for the video.

So cool what you achieve in this learning my doing process. 👏👏 natural craftsman

Well done Carl. Interesting to watch.

You nailed it man 👌. Just be careful not to burn the barn down 🙈

Well done Carl, once again proving the old adage that where there's a will there's a way

Great efforts Good results too It’s coming on It will last for ever when it’s finished 👍👍👍👍

Great video, very enjoyable !!!! thank you

Hi Carl, not a blacksmith but I am a mechanical engineer. For what this tow bar will do, you could look at case hardening the eye. Very simple process - heat up eye, apply case hardening powder to surface, cool.

The steel doesn’t need to be hardened for this application. I am enjoying your thought process. Keep up the great work.

Liked the shot of the massive cotter pin

Thanks!

Live and learn. Cool role model, Carl Rogers. Timely and welcome dad-assist. The trial runs are Greek to me but you figured out, novice and all, what to correct/try/create to achieve your goal at this stage. Good on you, boy-o. Fascinating watch beginning to end.🎉😊💪💯🖖

Great job as a first attempt at blacksmithing! 😊

Wow, so interesting! Look at you go!

Love your videos!

Carl, I'm not a blacksmith but, my impression is that what you did was very nicely done.

You're going to need some method of stopping the towbar bouncing off the tow ball, also you might want to consider the all up weight, your landrover might be up to it but what about the the towball ? The chassis looks quite heavy already and is unbraked, depending where you tow it when finished you may find yourself being pushed downhill

Having done a bit of metal work over the years, slow cooling in your case would probably be the most beneficial. Bury the work in dry sand,that would slow down the cooling

💪.. No worries, some of us can hardly use scissors correctly . 😎

I'm a metallurgist not a blacksmith but I fully concur with WildBoreWoodWind's comments - heat treating will make it worse (potentially much worse) rather than better. I would guess that it will outlast your Landrover by several hundred years.

Great innovation & result. As a former amateur welder, woodworker etc I now regret not always having used the right eye protection - take care.

Well done. Good job. Good boy and your dad. Good idea. Very Very Very hard work for you guys. Good luck

Very nice. Thanks.

well done

Excellent !

Good effort .

Since you´ve bought what is probably unhardenable steel, and you want the axle to be flexible anyway you probably don´t need a hardened one, as stated by WildBoreWoodWind already. Stock that´s this width keeps heat longer than thinner pieces, but working faster means less times running back to the forge, and having less problems with parts bent so out of shape, that they don't fit into the forge anymore. I´d also advice to go for a safety cable when you´re putting the trailer on the car, just in case your axle jumps up. Also as a little sidenote, hit the material only with some strenght when you´re sure that it lays down flat on the anvil / surface, so nothing jumps back up on you. And when the stock is that thick, give it some spice, so it´ll take shape faster. Oh, and if you have a welder, build jigs out of scrap metal, so things move less and you can change them easier than wooden ones. Great job coating the forge, and with the outcome aswell ! Just do yourself a favor and wear eye protection when scrubbing off the forge scale- escpecially when doing it on eye height. Don´t want to be the safety sheriff, but working 7 years as a blacksmith i´ve been 3 times to the eye doctor. The last time even wearing glasses, but you can never trust metal shavings and grinding sparks^^

You got it done and that was where you wanted to be, when using a gas forge you can get the steel up to a white heat with out burning it up. At a white heat you will have a litter longer to work , never try working steel when it is to cool. With a bar that size just because it may be red on the out side doesn't make it red all the way though. You have a good start and will only get better the more you do it. Take care and keep enjoy Blacksmithing.

Nice one Carl, you are a pleasure to watch. :)

Will all have start somewere nice finish

Very respectable. 👍

Thx