Luke Horobin

I had to hang my head in shame. What I wouldn't do for such a tool and these muppets are using it so inappropriately. A crying shame!

I'm working on making a valve for the air flow, I need to pick up a welder so I can finish the job. I've also been trying to cut 3mm sheet steel with my grinder, but it isn't going well. I'm not very good at straight lines apparently. Sadly I'm not in the US, I'm living in England! Where we can't even buy blacksmith hammers, never mind anything else useful. Sure, we have expensive forges, but for a do it yourself weekend project, I've been struggling. At the moment I can either have a small amount of air or full air... I think the problem has been, I've got the fire going, opened up my air to full and used up all the fuel in that area in a matter of minutes. Then the fire dies down and rather than add more fuel, I've been trying to add even more air. I'm a proper muppet I know! I'm going to make a video for you guys next time I'm able to try this out. Thanks for the help so far, you guys have all been great.

Ah, so nearly 8 inches in total? No wonder I'm miles off getting this thing going. I'll try again today! Cheers folks for the help. I had no idea where I was going wrong!!

I'll try the temp fix, but if it works.. I could cut out a large hole in the table, build the same brick bowl below it and then level it out so the table is as you said you'd like it. It sounds like I'm not burning near enough fuel. Which makes sense, as the fire gets up to a good heat after I pile the coke on, but a few minutes later burns down and down and I wasn't adding more fuel as I thought I had enough. I really assumed 3-4 inches would be MORE than enough. I never checked the depth of other peoples fires, it just looked to be a few inches. How deep are folks pits??

I cleared the coke out of the way to give you guys an idea of how I was getting the air through the base in case that was an issue. I usually have the coke piled up so it is a good 3-4 inches deep, though that could well be the problem if that isn't deep enough? I understand after reading some of the posts on here a bowl would of been best, but if I can make what I have work for awhile I'll change for the next forge. I'll try with deeper coke! Any more suggestions? Thanks Rich for that.

Hey folks! This is my first post on these forums, so please be gentle. I'm learning as I go from resources I find online and forges I visit, so I know I'm probably not doing everything the BEST way, but I'm just trying to gather enough knowledge so I can get started with what I've got! That said, I really need some help. I've come to the end of how far I can take things and I'm hoping some folks here can help. This is my current setup! Forge Mark I. You can see here where I've in the past had the heat up enough to melt the steel grate. That wasn't good as it damaged the tray! Here you can see how I pipe my air flow into the base of the tray. And here is my blower. It is an old bouncy castle blower. It blows enough to blow the coke out of the forge if I let it, but airflow control has been an issue. Right now I'm using a bit of cardboard and duct tape! Ok, so my issue is this! I'm struggling to get the forge burning, it often goes out and getting the balance just right with airflow and the amount of coke to put on the wood is tough. If I do get it going however, it works great for a few minutes. Long enough to get a bit of steel to weld heat, but minutes later the fire dies down and no matter how much more air I put through, it just goes out. I have no idea what I am doing wrong. I'm going to make a video if no one can help from what I've included here. If anyone has any advice, please fire away! (Pun intended hehe)