Daniel Lea (AKA 99pppo)

Thanks Phil! Pictures look good, but I think this setup will only work in a closed shop. The wind in my shop will be too strong for this construction, I am afraid...

It would work to some extent but with low walls you'll still have a problem with wind blowing the smoke away from your flue pipe. I'd suggest you also put up a tarp above your short wall to minimize the effects of the wind.

Also go with at least 10" (250 mm) pipe above your barrel. Eight inches is not large enough for the volume of smoke the forge will produce.

Hey Folks,

I´d like to ask for your advise on a project I want to start soon. My shop is half oudoors so I have a roof over the head but literally no walls. Until now I have always had my forge standing just free and hoped for good wind... But as you can imagine I take quite a lot smoke and dust and I mustn´t damage my body with stuff like that at my age. So I want to install a smoke hood over my forge. The only problem is that I only have a very limited budget of about 180$. So I guess I have to take a DIY-solution. After some research and discussions with some fellow blacksmiths I came to the conclution that this design (I know I ain´t very good at drawing...) would give me the biggest bang for my buck:

This is my shop:





And this is the design I´d like to try:



The hood will be built from an old oil barrel, cut out on the front and bent upside to form a guiding-shield. On top of that the chimney will be installed reaching through the roof of my forge with min. 8" diameter.

Would you also advise me to do it like that or do you have a solution (any construction plans) that might be more (cost)effective?

I´d be very happy about any advise you give me!


- Daniel

Good to see that you did not resort to a mig welder to put it together
NICE JOB

Very nice. I am sure that your will like it very much. Glad to see that young blacksmiths are getting together.

Hey fellow blacksmiths,

some of you might allready have seen my YouTube-Video "Forging with TechnicusJoe July & August 2012." If not you may check it out because it shows some excerps on how the following project was put into practice:

As a project to make during Joe´s visit at my shop I had the idea to make a wine bottle holder as a present for my father. So after some sketches and discussions we decided to make the holder like it eventually turned out. At that moment the only source of steel I had available was simple rebar, so most of the work simply was drawing out material to the right shape.


The whole holder with a sample bottle:




The top ring was forge welded and rivited, the lower ring was also forge weldet and fixed with a tennon joint. The holding beam is decorated with a fishtale-scroll at the end:




The v-shaped base plate has curly cues at the tips on the one hand for decoration, on the other hand for safety and stability reasons:




The holding beam starts of sqare and then converts into flat bar...




...and is fixed to the base plate via tennon joint.




We both were very sattisfied and my father was very happy about his present.

I hope you enjoyed the post about my little project. I appreciate any tips and critique on how to improve my workflow and the way I report about it in this forum.




Regards
- Daniel