Gas Forge

[jet2]

Originally Posted by steve sells

I have been welding in coal for years, what is the problem you are having, details please?

Steve like i sead i have been forging blads for some time.i am mostly self tought trial and earror mostly earror. I wanted to try some forge welding so i tryed heating and folding steel back on its self i was able to get it to weld. So i tryed bulding bellets heating and folding after some failure ok a lot of failure i did get enough for my first blade after that i was hooked. My first blade had about 150 layers but it was a lot of work and it tok a lot of coal. I did manage to make one more blade with 350 layers that looked pretty good. My set up is somthing out of the distent past. I cant afford to put a lot of money in all the stuf i need. So thiufgt in the long run it would be easer to go with a gas forge. I looked at your web site it had a lot of good info any help you be would great. Thank you Greg.

Please use sentence case in your posts

[EdCaffreyMS]

Personally, for Bladesmithing, I think gas is the only way to go. I forged in coal for a number of years, and upon moving to Montana in the early 90s, I had a difficult time finding any sources of good forging coal that didn't require cross country shipping.
After some trial and error I managed to build a propane forge that would weld. After the first couple of damascus billets I was thinking to myself "I wish I would have done this 10 years ago!" Much cleaner, far better control than I could ever achieve with coal, and in my situation, much more cost effective. I admit that there are times I do miss my coal forges, and even the smell of coal burning in the shop, however, since about 95% of my work consists of blades, when those times come I just place a small chunk of coal (leftovers from the coal forge days) at the front of the propane forge so I can have the smell of coal.