Failed Attempt Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Hello everyone. Boy is it hard to start a new thread and do it in some sort of intelligent fashion. At the moment I have an anvil, some hammers but no forge or anything to burn. I'm inclined to fabricate the forge myself since it's, well, cheaper that way :). Building a forge: Haven't been in a hurry at this since I don't have anything to burn yet. I've started on the firepot with charcoal in mind. From what I've gathered reading the various discussions on this forum charcoal needs a deeper firepot than coal or coke. So my design is about 140mm deep. I was wondering if it's possible to have a grate to lift the bottom upwards to make it shallower if need be. Just in case I have to burn coal. Or is the grate going to melt? This is what I have so far. Dimensions at the top (outer): 290x280mm Bottom hole: 100x90mm Height: 140mm Thickness: 12-16mm It's made of scrap steel so it's not uniform thickness and ugly as xxxx, but I don't think the coal will mind. :) On the subject of having something to burn in my forge, I had to make a charcoal retort of some sort. This thing didn't have an easy birth. And it's at prototype stage at the moment. The first burn I tried was half full and didn't have any insulation on the outside. That test run ended with two logs having charred ends and the rest very dry and blackened. I guess it didn't quite reach the temperature to start gassing the wood and I didn't keep strong enough fire going so most of the heat went to drying the wood. The next test run in the photo is a full drum, insulation on the outside and as I'm writing this, it's outside burning on it's own on the wood gas alone. I'm hoping it's going to be done by the end of the day and I'll have charcoal by tomorrow. I'll probably cut a 200l drum and fit it on top as a sleeve and stuff some insulation between the drums. The current solution is hardly ideal. I'll keep a build diary of the forge in this thread and bug you with more stupid questions. -FA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Failed Attempt Posted September 2, 2014 Author Share Posted September 2, 2014 Sorry about the incoherent babbling in the first post. I'm not very good at expressing my thoughts in english. Anyway. I got some work done on the forge today. Welded a flange on the fire pot. I only have a tiny 150A mig at home so I have to push it quite hard to weld material this thick. The flanges are 6mm scrap plate. I'll drill mounting holes on them once the whole thing is welded together. Salvaged some plate from the scrap bin at work and got started on the table top. The plate is 6mm thick and the bent flanges make it rigid so I don't have to reinfoce it in any manner. Lucky find. This is my current idea for the "tuyere". I just tacked it together just in case someone thinks this is a bad idea and I need to take it apart. If it's ok I'll weld the pipe on this and weld the gaps shut. This is going to be the air pipe. 60mm outer daimeter from an old boiler. The flange is my own product. Crude but It'll do. Since my opening post was so convoluted I didn't get an answer for the question about the adjustable depth firepot. I assume most people thought "who is this guy and what is he on about?" or the question was so stupid it didn't deserve an answer, or my english is so bad no one understood a thing (very likely). :) I do wish I could edit it, but sadly it is something I can't do on this forum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Bill Posted September 3, 2014 Share Posted September 3, 2014 Stop apologizing! Your English is excellent. Your welding looks exceptional. Your fabrication skills are inspiring. Are you related to Rob Wilson? Rest assured, someone will be along answer your question... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Posted September 3, 2014 Share Posted September 3, 2014 Your doing good. If you want to edit your post, send me a PM with the link to the thread. You can get this by clicking on the post number on the top right of any post. Copy the URL and put it in the PM. Now copy the OLD TEXT and then put the NEW TEXT below. This way I can identify the post, identify the old words and replace it with your new words. I would suggest your air pipe be 2 - 3 inches in diameter or 50-75 mm. You want as much of the air to get to the fire as possible. The tube below the T should be long enough to hold some ashes and be dumped early and often.I like 12 inches or .3 meters or more for my coal forge. For a grate I like just enough grate to hold the fuel in the forge. I use coal so for a 2 inch 50 mm pipe, I use a single 3/8 inch bar 9-10 mm, For a 3 inch 75 mm pipe I use 2 each 1/2 inch 12mm bars. You can burn wood directly in a forge for fuel. It will been to burn down and make charcoal. It may takes a deep fire but you can use wood for fuel. No need to make charcoal first. Keep us informed as to your progress. Ask questions about the parts you do not understand and someone will try to help you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farmweld Posted September 3, 2014 Share Posted September 3, 2014 I built a similar size fire pot out of 4mm mild steel plate to go in a cast iron buffalo forge I was loaned (4mm was all I had on hand at the time). Mine was a bit deeper, about 150-160mm from memory, and I raised the floor with a piece of 10mm bisalloy plate cut and ground to fit at about 100mm depth. I drilled 5 x 8mm holes in this for air blast. I used it with coke and it worked well, I managed to burn enough steel in it if I wasn't careful. Turned down it had a nice oblong fire and cranked up the gaps around the edge came into play and it had a huge fire. Worst problem was clinker and ash collecting in the bottom so after a couple of hours there was a soupy mess in the bottom that had to be scraped out and the fire rebuilt, Second worst problem was when it was cranked up it started burning the steel on the sides, no steel in there but sparkles coming out. Surprisingly the plate in the bottom hasn't looked like burning, just the sides, don't know whether that is because of the air going through it or because of the alloy. My suggestion would be to go for a plate in the bottom to start with, you can then keep drilling holes/cutting slots until it works how you want and if it doesn't work you can repurpose it and try something else, grid of bars maybe. Andrew Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Failed Attempt Posted September 3, 2014 Author Share Posted September 3, 2014 Thank you for your kind words Randy. I'm a welder/fabricator by profession and it's what keeps me fed at the moment. Thank you Glenn. I'd rather leave the charcoal retort bit out of this. That's perhaps best left to it's own topic. I'll just concentrate on the forge build in this, but then the topic title and tags need changing. I messed that up when I started this trainwreck. Yes, using wood crossed my mind but I'd rather cook the steel and not myself. Besides my retort seems to be working ok. At 2,5-3 hour mark there was so much gas coming from the twin pipes that the flames were pushing out of the firebox. After trying several drawing programs on my computer and the frustration caused by their limited capabilities I just grabbed traditional pen & paper. I'm used to working with real CAD programs, and MS Paint is a poor substitute. This was my original plan for burning coal. Thank you Andrew for pointing out the clinker and ash problem with a similar setup. So If I make the coal grate a shallow 4 sided pyramid and leave some gaps at the sides, that should circumvent the issue. If I make it from 20mm plate I probably won't have to worry about the grate melting. The lower grate will be just 12mm round bar for charcoal use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Failed Attempt Posted September 5, 2014 Author Share Posted September 5, 2014 I got a day off from work today and spent the whole day in the workshop. Now the firepot has a grate. 12mm round bar. I also made a fitting for the flange. It's a smooth transition from the square hole to a round one. There's nothing that could start collecting ash or anything now. I bought some 40x40x4 angle for the legs. 30x30x3 angle holding the legs together and providing support for a shelf. As the legs are now the table stands about 90cm (3ft) off the ground. Which is about waist level for me. I can adjust that easily later if need be. Pretensioned the table top prior to welding to keep it from warping. Ash dump plate. Now hinged. I can easily add more counterweight if the weight of the plate isn't enough. Fitting the air pipe to the vertical pipe. Added removable side walls to the table. These can be removed by just lifting them off. All I need now is a blower or bellows and she's ready to go. I'm sure there's something I overlooked. I will use it outdoors at first. Eventually it'll be mounted indoors, so I will need to make a hood and a stack. Side draft most probably, but that's another topic entirely. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyingXS Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 What happened to the pics?? The forge sounds great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Menard Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Nice looking forge, it should serve you well. Once years ago I had a coal forge that had a grate at the bottom of the firepot instead of a triangular clinker breaker. It would degrade over time and I would have to replace it. I would suggest keeping a grate in place to protect difficult to replace fabricated parts and have an extra on the shelf to throw in when you are in the middle of a project and the primary burns out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Failed Attempt Posted September 13, 2014 Author Share Posted September 13, 2014 I finally got the necessary parts gathered to hook the forge to my air compressor, but it's so small and breathless that I didn't get enough airflow for long enough time to get anything past bright red. I have to look into another solution for air. A small radial fan with speed control would be ideal, but that may be out of my price range for now. Box bellows maybe. I might need to add more bars to the grate as smaller pieces of charcoal tend to fall straight through. FlyingXS, I can't imagine why you would have problems with the images. I directly linked them from my web page space. Thanks for the tip Bob. I haven't made the removable coal grate yet, but I will most probably over engineer it like I tend to do with most things. I did however get some free 50mm rock wool out of a skip at a construction site. I insulated the charcoal retort today, and made a sleeve from 0.5mm sheet over the insulation and riveted it together. I also cut the bottom off from a 200l drum for an insulated lid. If I can finish that construction tomorrow I will post images and explain the idea behind the design. Might aswell do it in this topic since the charcoal retort is in the title. I'm really itching to get hammering steel, but progress has been slow. Hard to find the free time and necessary parts to get things working. If we can not see the photos, the thread could become useless. In the past we have had to removed soem threads, when we could not resolve the issue. When they have been posted off site, against our recomendations, then it is beyond our control to remedy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Failed Attempt Posted September 14, 2014 Author Share Posted September 14, 2014 Sorry, I didn't know linking images off site was frowned upon. Never before has anyones forum alias been more appropriate. I uploaded the images, probably in the wrong section of the gallery. Knowing my luck this will not work, but I linked the images from the gallery. I'll only know after I've posted and then it'll be too late since I can't edit it afterwards. Here goes the first post. Hello everyone. Boy is it hard to start a new thread and do it in some sort of intelligent fashion. At the moment I have an anvil, some hammers but no forge or anything to burn. I'm inclined to fabricate the forge myself since it's, well, cheaper that way . Building a forge: Haven't been in a hurry at this since I don't have anything to burn yet. I've started on the firepot with charcoal in mind. From what I've gathered reading the various discussions on this forum charcoal needs a deeper firepot than coal or coke. So my design is about 140mm deep. I was wondering if it's possible to have a grate to lift the bottom upwards to make it shallower if need be. Just in case I have to burn coal. Or is the grate going to melt? http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/38482-firepot-basic-structure-2/ http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/38481-firepot-basic-structure/ This is what I have so far. Dimensions at the top (outer): 290x280mm Bottom hole: 100x90mm Height: 140mm Thickness: 12-16mm It's made of scrap steel so it's not uniform thickness and ugly as xxxx, but I don't think the coal will mind. On the subject of having something to burn in my forge, I had to make a charcoal retort of some sort. This thing didn't have an easy birth. And it's at prototype stage at the moment. http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/38461-char1/ The first burn I tried was half full and didn't have any insulation on the outside. That test run ended with two logs having charred ends and the rest very dry and blackened. I guess it didn't quite reach the temperature to start gassing the wood and I didn't keep strong enough fire going so most of the heat went to drying the wood. The next test run in the photo is a full drum, insulation on the outside and as I'm writing this, it's outside burning on it's own on the wood gas alone. I'm hoping it's going to be done by the end of the day and I'll have charcoal by tomorrow. I'll probably cut a 200l drum and fit it on top as a sleeve and stuff some insulation between the drums. The current solution is hardly ideal. I'll keep a build diary of the forge in this thread and bug you with more stupid questions. [edit] Well it worked. I could re post the images like this, but I don't think it's a good idea on my part to make more mess than I've already managed to do on the forum. [/edit] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyingXS Posted September 14, 2014 Share Posted September 14, 2014 I can see the photos now… Nice forge, can't wait to hear how you find it in use. Bet you will love it, as it looks well thought out and professional. What method did you use to attach the removable side walls? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Failed Attempt Posted September 16, 2014 Author Share Posted September 16, 2014 The sidewalls sit on small hooks bent from 13x3mm flat bar. Didn't want anything complicated like nut&bolt fittings. Now you can just lift them off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Failed Attempt Posted October 4, 2014 Author Share Posted October 4, 2014 So I started at 8:00 this morning and made the pipe fittings for the blower and finished connecting it to the forge. Once I got the forge fired up about midday, I started heating metal and practicing some simple things like tapering. I learned and noticed a lot of things today I need to address. -The hot spot in my forge seems to be deeper in the firepot than the hearth level. I may need to lift the grate from the original 140mm depth to about 120 or 115 and adjust the depth and shape with bricks as needed. -A trench shaped firepot with even steeper sides might be more fuel efficient. -The blower struggles if I pack too much small bits of charcoal into the firepot. -I need to learn to manage the fire better. Sometimes it looks like it's hot enough, but when I take the steel out after heating, it's only dull red. I probably can't "read" the fire properly due to my inexperience. -I need to add an adjustable railing in the front of the forge to support longer pieces. -Smoke hood and stack required ASAP. -I need to remember to take care of my own needs while going at it. I started at 8:00 with the blower build and proceeded to forge afterwards. Got a head ache at 3pm and suddenly remembered I had not drinked or eaten anything during the day. -My hammers are awful. Mainly because they are not blacksmiths hammers. Apart from a light ball pein I bought recently, but It's so light it's like hitting an elephant with a pillow. I've got a 1kg one with a fiberglass handle that's too long. Another with too thick wooden handle that's good length, but the head is too heavy. Most of the little control I have over the hammer is lost due to the awkward handles and excess weight. The heads are sharp edged and leave dents on everything I work on, including my "quality" russian anvil. I need to fix the hammers before I try anything else. -I need tooling for the anvil. I had to cut against the edge of the anvil since I haven't got a hot cut tool. Need to look for an old axe blade. I also need a jig for bending. http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/38517-blower-hooked-up-to-the-forge/ Blower connected to the forge. Finally. http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/38518-old-file/ An old file I stuck upright into the forge against the bottom grate in order to see the depth of the fireball. http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/38519-my-slack-tub/ My slack tub is an old milk churn. http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/image/38520-done-for-today/ Covered the firepot with a brick and left it to cool. And the flock of barnacle geese flying by just as I stopped working. Here's a video of heating steel. First bit is a 12mm round bar. The other one is the file. No youtube link, sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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