ThomasPowers

"Geschmiedetes Eisen", Fritz Kühn, and Schöne alte Wirtshausschilder (Beautiful old tavern Signs" both have a goat example in them but they are Steinbok: Mountain goats

You will either need a fan driven system or a chimney to pull the gasses out. How soon are you planning to forge weld in it? The insulation on a gas forge is a consumable and you should expect to need to replace it after a time (dependent on what you do and how you do it...) Which means you can start with one liner and change it to another later on. I'd start with kaowool with a half hard firebrick on the bottom. As far as sword forging your really DON'T want to heat up more than you can work in a single go as you get unnecessary decarburization, scale losses and grain growth in areas that are heated but not worked. So a sword forge may very well be *shorter* than one used for ornamental iron work--but with a back door on it so you can slide long pieces through to heat a bit in the middle of them. The only time you really need the whole blade to temp is heat treating and it's far cheaper to build a forge for that than to have an overly long forge for the other 95% of the time.

I've read of them using peat to forge with in some places; sounded worse than briquettes!

If the dies sit well I'd not touch the base and work on the faces.

Frosty I often change the burn on my forge depending on what I am doing---more reducing for blades, more neutral for heating large objects, etc. So a set it and forget it burner would not work for me. I use both blown and aspirated systems and adjust each as needed during use.

How long? Make it long enough for what YOU PLAN TO DO WITH IT! (But no longer as that would waste gas) Kaowool or brick mainly depends on what YOU PLAN TO DO WITH IT! (Kaowool is much more insulative than hard firebrick but a lot more fragile and not good with forge welding flux) Regulator is a "high pressure propane regulator" 0-30 psi should work for a forging set up. (like a red-hat regulator---ask at your local propane supplier) When I use my propane forge I have 2 10'x10' roll up doors open and the gables and a 1'x30' roof vent open, unless the wind is blowing over tools and stock in the shop---then I close *1* door. Can I have your blacksmithing equipment if you poison yourself with CO? Gas forges produce a lot of CO if they start re-running the exhaust back through the burner. Be sure to have a CO detector mounted *correctly* as you figure out if your window is enough ventilation. Coal you *know* that that nasty smoke is bad to breathe. Propane is an odorless but deadly issue.

Do a spark test first which should tell you if heating and quenching will make it harder or softer! Very mild steels get softer when heated and quenched...

You can also make a simple bending fork by taking a piece of round stock---say a 1/2" diameter and 6-8" length of automotive coil spring and bending it double and forging it to fit catty corner in your anvil hardy hole and then separating the upper lengths by the distance needed. You could even make this such that you could lag bolt it to the side of a stump, no anvil needed. (reply to below)

Yup one blow too many and a 1600 degF chunk of steel can go flying 20 feet away inconveniencing passerbys and *always* landing on the *only* flammable material withing a dozen feet! (Blacksmith version of Murphy's law)

Anyway Steve Parker is in the midwest somewhere I see him at Quad-State. Google: "Steve Parker, from Illinois, is an industrial blacksmith, who has studied with long time power hammer guru Clifton Ralph." (Yup that's right) "Please make checks payabe to Illinois Valley Blacksmith Association. Please mail check and order to: IVBA. Steve Parker. RR4 Box 336. Clinton, IL 61727" I'd see if this was the right one.

I'd look into buying new at that price point! generally an anvil has had to have a *lot* of abuse before it needs to be completely refinished and as mentioned the quick and dirty methods tend to LOWER the value of the anvil compared to just leaving it alone.

Nozzles: back in the early 1960's it was popular to make kitchen tables with tapered thin steel pipe legs. when found at the scrap yard or dump they make quite nice nozzles, just cut each end off at the size you want.

Andrew are you willing to pay international shipping to the place or will you give us a hint on what continent you are on when you ask for something that probably needs to be "local" to you....(why we suggest folks put a general location in their profile) I would go over to my friends in the MatSci department of my local university and see if they will do it---maybe use it as a lab specimen. (I've always wanted to make up a billet with each side a different steel and sneak that into a lab test...) Anyway should be great tooling material, probably good for larger blades too. You can do the heat treat testing to see what it likes/profits from. Too heavy for hand hammering but I see a powerhammer in the back of pic 1...

Give some thought to your question---If I asked you "should I get a dumptruck or a Honda accord to drive?" You would be kind of lost making a recommendation without knowing if I needed to transport a ton of gravel or commute to a job. Just so with recommending a forge with no knowledge as to how you plan to use it! The lively forges are easy to build and are tweaked both for use of real chunk charcoal and for bladesmithing. If you don't plan to go that route then it's not a good fit for you! Frankly I think the Popular Mechanics forge STINKS! For one thing you don't want or need a quench tank right next to the forge most steel you will be forging will be A36 or higher carbon and should be normalized NOT quenched! The other thing is that I don't see slots in the side of the forge to allow you to get long stock down to the hot spot---a MAJOR FLAW in the design. To me it feels like it was designed by someone who had heard about blacksmithing but never done any! Note my first forge was made from a cast iron sink---but an old Farm sink that was about 1/2 as deep as the new sinks are and so the hot spot was about level with the edge of the sink and not down in it. They did raise the tuyere up using firebricks that would help some; but then the make it deep and then pay extra to shallow it seems a bit off. Remember in use you generally want your metal going in horizontally or a very shallow angle. The forge fire has layers, starting from the tuyere: Oxidizing, neutral, reducing, neutral, oxidizing---the top where it's exposed to air. You want to get your piece in neutral to reducing if you can. I strongly suggest you spend some time going to the local ABANA Affiliate meetings and getting an idea of how things work; who knows someone may even have a loaner forge or even a "give away" I gave away my brake drum forge when I moved. Search on a brake drum forge or 55 gallon drum forge

That sort of stuff gets sold at school auctions back where I lived in Ohio, anvils were all Vulcan though...

Very slight differences in the die is what comes to mind. With steel I would wonder about possible temperature differences too but with copper alloys that generally isn't an issue. (ie: one side of the forge is hotter than the other.)

Actually a blown burners is much EASIER to get a neutral to reducing atmosphere than with a aspirated burner! Since the system is much less dependent on lack of back pressure or getting the venturi just right you can adjust the air from gosh awful oxidizing all the way down to barely burning with way too much gas---for each level of gas input. You adjust your aspirated burner's air way down and it will want to start huffing. Don't know where you got the idea that blown burners couldn't get neutral atmospheres.

Wow he really ties together a lot of aspects of the craft---and in a very good way!

Daughters: My oldest is in Vet School and my youngest just had a second son. A "welcome your daughter's date kit" with det cord, rusty barbwire, kerosene, and a dull aluminum spoon is suggested.... (actually with my step daughter I learned that welcoming any guy *not* to our liking with effusiveness and start including them in the family activities was enough to get her to drop them like a grenade missing the pin!)

My old 100# tank was purchased for US$25 and tested by my propane company for free. They replaced the valve on it and I was good to go. However I would go with piping off the main line as the cost difference will make a big impact over time. A good shut off outside the shop and one by the forge should be sufficient---as would a regulator at the forge and not one back in the line.

Many used blowers get a preferential cranking direction through wear. I chalk an arrow on the casing so students and visitors know which way mine like to go. Is it really worth the possibility of breaking the blower just to have it bi-directional?

So what did the manufacturer and seller of that forge say when you asked them about common working pressures for it? I don't have that brand/model but the gauge on my propane forge for general use was about 8-10 psi---given that gauges are notoriously prone to being off by substantial percentages. I'd talk with your propane supplier about running a line to the shop. My supplier is always happy to discuss the customer using *more* gas. They also inspected my work when we put in a propane stove for our kitchen.

Actually any rheostat spec'd for that load should be interchangeable; doesn't surprise me at all that similar items for similar tasks might be interchangeable.

I see two holes for punching but not a square hole for a hardy in the back one.

Nice looking using blade! A bit pointy for how I skin though.