Charcoal Welding

[draper84]

i am currently in a coal slump. i have none and i'm thinking of trying cowboy natural charcoal. I was wondering if you can get it hot enough to forge weld with? i need to know for my next project.

[Finnr]

Yup. I've welded over the same brand. Takes a deeper fire to do it but it works.
Finnr

[draper84]

excellent, i have a very interesting project in mind, but for now it'll remain classified....not much really just big for me

[ThomasPowers]

Charcoal was they fuel that all the viking/frankish blades were welded up with and what traditionally made japanese blades are welded up with to this day, (and they use softwood charcoal to boot!).

As was mentioned a deeper fire and "softer" air imput is needed. I generally place a couple of firebricks in my forge along the sides of the firepot to contain and deepen the fire. If you are using a hand crank blower slow down. If it's electrically blown back way off on the air! Make sure the charcoal is not too large of chunks too, large ones should be cut/broken into smaller ones---helps to get higher heat and less oxidation.

[draper84]

thank you very much, i knew that i could find the answers here

[outsider]

Well cool that answers my question w/out even having to ask, i just built a washtub forge (it's still wet even) and have a bag of cowboy ready for it.
I do have a question about it though, i have a wagner heat gun (for old flooring, paint and shrink wrap stuff) and i am wondering if i use the heat would that be good or not?
The heat gun has low volume and high volume settings and by luck it just fits the 1 1/4" to 1" reducer perfectly!
Any comments would be helpful and sorry to hijack the thread.

[JohnW]

The heat gun will get too hot in the pipe, and melt the plastic etc.

[ChrisB]

outsider what did you use for the clay?

[Arbalist]

Interesting Forge Outsider, how did you make it?

Vic.

[Sabre]

heres a link for how to make it Charcoal Forge