Quote:
Originally Posted by ThomasPowers  Aeneas; I'd like to see your "norse" forge, compare it to Atli's, Darrell's or mine... |
I know Darrell uses a sand table setup with a soapstone bellows shield. Our (Ken and mine) forge set up is actually a firebox made of 1.25" ash planks, standing about 3' high. It originally had an ash plank shelf for the firebox to sit on when we first tested it out, but we also only had enough fire brick to make a single layer of lining all around the sides and bottom. Burned out the ash bottom after 3 hours of demo, but the box carcass was unsinged luckily.
It now has a plate steel bottom, a sheet metal liner and 2 layers of soft brick all around and on the bottom, with 2 bricks standing on end to make a bellows shield. Gives us a 12x12x4 firebox. Works like a charm, and looks good too. Ken made a norse 2 lung bellows and we both made square anvils from 5x5 mild steel blocks. We "dressed: up the sides to make it look old and hand worked (I've never worked with that kind of mass ever before - the block was on the anvil 14 inches away from me and my apron was smoking), quench hardened them, ground and filed the table smooth, ground and filed 3 different radii on 3 edges leaving one edge sharp. I even hot chiseled my mark on the side.
All in all it's a nice set-up and looks good at a demo. Maybe not totally historically accurate. It was inspired by a firebox from the bayeax tapestry - in the image, it looks like they're cooking. I figured the only difference between cooking with charcoal and forging with charcoal is temperature and the volume of air delivery. So why not ???
Aeneas